LINKS - November 15th, 2023
Welcome to LINKS — my attempt to provide Rhapsody readers with five interesting stories that tell us something about what it means to be human. LINKS is published every Wednesday. Have a link you want to share? Drop it in the comments.
Archaeologists discover previously unknown ancient language
By David Keys, The Independent
“The discovery suggests that even the most obscure languages in the empire were being recorded, studied and preserved in written form. That in turn raises the possibility that other small previously unknown Middle Eastern languages will be discovered, recorded on Hittite imperial clay tablets, in the particular series of ancient scriptoria that the archaeologists are currently excavating at Bogazkoy.”
The first great European war took place in the north of the Iberian Peninsula over 5,000 years ago
By Miguel Ángel Criado, El País
“There, in front of the hermitage of San Juan Ante Portam Latinam, researchers eventually counted 338 bodies. While there are women and children, most are men, especially young men. Dated through the radiocarbon dating technique, researchers found that the bodies were dumped there between 5,000 and 5,400 years ago, at the end of Europe’s Neolithic period. The results of that research were published in Scientific Reports, and they show that a quarter of the remains have fractures in their skulls or, more specifically, holes resulting from a strong blow with a blunt object. Most of those with these cranial traumas are young and adult men, and many of them sustained several injuries. In some cases, the bone shows signs of healing, evidence that those people survived their injuries. But half of the marks reflected wounds that had not healed.”
Why the Life Expectancy Gap between Men and Women Is Growing
By Lori Youmshajekian, Scientific American
“In 2010 women were projected to live 4.8 years longer than men. By 2021 this gap widened to 5.8 years, the largest disparity since 1996. During the 20th century, heart disease was the main cause of death that created the difference in life expectancy among women and men. But now COVID fatalities and a growing number of drug overdoses among men are to blame, according to a new analysis of CDC data published in JAMA Internal Medicine. (The report designated gender based on binary gender data that were recorded in death certificates.)”
The Emptiness Of Literature Written For The Market
“McGurl, on the other hand, introduces new theoretical concepts that form a kind of connective tissue between readers, writers and the institutional pressures to which they respond. His notion of “fiction as a service,” a business model writers have increasingly adopted to meet consumer demand for instant gratification through therapeutic literary experiences, neatly explains why Gilbert would have pulled ‘The Snow Forest.’ McGurl makes cogent connections between the significant influence of Amazon’s commitment to customer service and the financial incentives it passes along the chain to its Big Five suppliers as well as the writer, regardless of which company publishes a book. He goes further to argue for the potentially generative quality of the view, in the age of Amazon, that literature is seen as intellectual property.”
What Long-Term Care Looks Like Around the World
By Jordan Rau, The New York Times
“Around the world, wealthy countries are struggling to afford long-term care for rapidly aging populations. Most spend more than the United States through government funding or insurance that individuals are legally required to obtain. Some protect individuals from exhausting all their income or wealth paying for long-term care. But as in the United States, middle-class and affluent individuals in many countries can bear a substantial portion of the costs.“