Reports this week of alleged Russian murder of civilians in Ukraine on a large scale – denied by Russia but essentially confirmed by German intelligence and aerial photography, which showed bodies strewn on the ground – are horrifying on many levels. It has been called genocide by President Zelenskyy: other commentators are more circumspect, but … More Possible genocide in Ukraine? Humanity never learns
I was intrigued by reports last week on the discovery of a previously unknown extinct human species, Homo luzonensis, in a cave in the Phillipines. It’s the fourth new human species – genus Homo – discovered in the past twenty years. All are extinct, and much clearly remains to be revealed, but it’s nonetheless clear … More Another species of human discovered – and what it means for us
One of the outcomes of the way the Age of Reason unfolded in the eighteenth century was an attempt to reduce the world to categories. Everything, it seemed, had its place: a slot into which it could be put. That’s often useful – take the periodic table of elements, for instance, which is a way … More Dinosaurs and birds – mixing up the classifications
Have you ever noticed how, more often than not, pictures of ‘early humans’ in action often show them walking somewhere. And the pop-image of our evolution, unscientific though it actually is, has much the same imagery. Part of that is because there’s empirical evidence that ancestral humans did walk a lot, and various tracks have … More The endless human journey…
Thinking about human evolution never stands still. A little while ago I checked out where science was in regard to the Red Deer Cave People, an extinct species of humans who were discovered in the early 2010s. They’re intriguing – a species who manifestly aren’t us, Homo sapiens, but who seem to have been just … More Rethinking human evolution – again
The special effects for the latest Planet of the Apes movie are being made right in the city where I live – Wellington – by Weta Workshop. That’s very cool, but I’ve always found the concept rather silly. The original 1968 movie took the human/chimp relationship and reversed it, largely as a statement against human … More Requiem for the planet of the apes
I sometimes despair about the nature of the human condition and the likely future of our species on this planet. We don’t behave at all well towards each other – something that’s been thrown into sharp relief in the last generation or so in the west as we’ve become increasingly ‘wired’, and as the culture … More I despair about the future of humanity
It would be nice to think that, as humans, we have something special about us. But when I look at the mess we’ve made of the world – at the way we’re destroying the planet that sustains us, all the while fighting among ourselves, with increasing venom and intolerance, over abstractions, I have to wonder. … More Are we exceptional humans? Or just stupid apes who do stupid ape things?
A retired Professor from the University of Arizona, Guy McPherson, told an audience in New Zealand last year that the human race will be extinct from climate change in a decade. Except here. Apparently we’re well placed at the bottom of the South Pacific to survive. And there’s a precedent. Until the 1280s, for the … More Why do we always see an apocalypse around the next corner?
It’s always intrigued me how apparently intractable puzzles emerge in science, then disappear again without any new evidence being found. What’s changed, instead, is the pattern into which we’re trying to slot the evidence – the ‘organising principle’. It’s an innate human thing: we always look for patterns. And the pattern then becomes reality, often … More Making science problems go away by changing our thinking
Matthew Wright 
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