LINKS - October 26th, 2022
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.
Fossils Upend Conventional Wisdom about Evolution of Human Bipedalism
By Jeremy DeSilva, Scientific American
“But paleoanthropological discoveries made over the past two decades are forcing scientists to redraw this traditional, linear imagery. We now know that various hominin species living in different environments throughout Africa, sometimes contemporaneously, evolved different ways to walk on two legs. The emergence of bipedalism kicked off a long phase of rampant evolutionary riffing on this form of locomotion. Our modern stride was not predetermined, with each successive ancestor marching closer to a particular end goal (evolution has no plans, after all). Rather it’s one of many forms of upright walking that early hominins tried out—and the version that ultimately prevailed.”
A New Procedure Could Expand Reproductive Choices for Transgender Women
By Jacqueline Mroz, The New York Times
“Transgender women take medications to suppress testosterone production and increase estrogen, which tend to decrease sperm production and often shut it down entirely. But a new procedure called extended sperm search and microfreeze, or E.S.S.M., makes retrieving that sperm possible, unless sperm production has stopped altogether.”
Did Aliens Build the Pyramids? And Other Racist Theories
By Stephanie Halmhofers, Sapiens
“These pseudoarchaeological arguments may seem to be simply fun to entertain. But they are invariably heavily biased against Black people, Indigenous peoples, and other people of color (BIPOC), who are doubted to have been responsible for their own histories. Archaeological sites from Africa, Asia, and the Americas are often put forth as proof of external interventions, while the achievements of those who lived in ancient Greece or Italy, for example, are rarely questioned.
“In other words, these arguments are often racist.”
Swedish archaeologists find 17th-century warship
By Agence France-Presse in Stockholm via The Guardian
“Launched in 1629, Äpplet (the Apple) was built by the same shipbuilder as the famed 69-metre Vasa, which was carrying 64 cannons when it sank on its maiden voyage outside Beckholmen, in the capital, Stockholm.”
Why People Find Historical Sex to Be So Sexy
By Justin J. Lehmiller Ph.D., Psychology Today
“Part of the reason steamy period dramas have such wide appeal is that a lot of people fantasize about historical sex in general. In a survey of 4,175 Americans’ sexual fantasies I conducted for my book Tell Me What You Want, one of the many things I asked people about was whether they had ever fantasized about having sex in a historical setting. Here’s what I found.”