Tag: ICE
Archaeologists Have Discovered a Pristine 45,000-Year-Old Cave Painting of a Pig That May Be the Oldest Artwork in the World
Archaeologists believe they have discovered the world’s oldest-known representational artwork: three wild pigs painted deep in a limestone cave on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi at least 45,500 years ago. The ancient images, revealed this week in the journal Science Advances,…
S
Street Artists Around the World Captured a Turbulent Year in Real Time—See the Beautiful and Unforgettable Works of 2020 Here
For much of the year, the best—and safest—place to see art was on the street. And perhaps more than in any other year, street art offered a real-time distillation of the events shaping our lives. Across the globe, artwork speaking…
The 10 Most Astonishing Archaeological Discoveries of 2020, From an Ancient Cat Carving to the Amazon Rock Paintings
Despite its many difficulties, 2020 gave us some incredible discoveries. Shortly after scientists confirmed that the Museum of the Bible in Washington, DC, owned Dead Sea Scroll forgeries, putting the authenticity of some 70 other known fragments in question, the…
The Caspian Sea is set to fall by 9 metres or more this century – an ecocide is imminent
Imagine you are on the coast, looking out to sea. In front of you lies 100 metres of barren sand that looks like a beach at low tide with gentle waves beyond. And yet there are no tides. This is…
2021 will harden the winners’ and losers’ brackets created by the pandemic economy
Heading into 2021, the economy is in a state of gross divergence, presenting opposing narratives that are drifting further apart, creating ostensible winners’ and losers’ brackets. Why it matters: The pandemic has accelerated shifts in the economic makeup of the…
Vital Signs: 4 things Australia’s COVID response got right
2020 began simply, if dramatically enough in some sense. We spent the first months preoccupied with bushfires that blackened both our natural environment and our international reputation for taking climate change seriously. Who would have thought that would have been…
Beluga whistles and clicks could be silenced by an increasingly noisy Arctic Ocean
Under the sea ice, the Arctic Ocean is one of the quietest places on Earth. But it can be very noisy when the ice is forming and breaking up or during storms and when glaciers are calving. Beluga whales, the…
The Venus of Willendorf and Other Voluptuous Ancient Figures May Have Been ‘Ideological Tools’ to Shape Body-Image Norms
Europe’s prehistoric Venus figurines, dating from the Upper Paleolithic, are one of the world’s oldest art forms. With their voluptuous female figures carved from stone, ivory, horn, or clay, the sculptures have long been thought to have served as fertility totems.…
Threatened Species Rely On Ecotourism To Survive. So What Happens When The Tourists Stop Coming?
Most years, the Beaufort Sea is freezing over by November and a busy season of polar bear viewing is winding down in the Arctic. As the ice takes hold, the flow of tourists slows to a trickle in the Inupiaq…
The UK has bold plans to reach net zero emissions, but it must go beyond just turning off the CO₂ taps
Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s ten-point plan for a “green industrial revolution” to get the UK to net zero emissions by 2050 is a significant commitment. Although the root causes of climate change are global, and therefore so are the potential…
24 Astounding Art Facts From the Guinness Book of World Records, From the Tallest Statue to the Most Prolific Painter
To set a Guinness World Record is no easy accomplishment—there are currently some 47,000 record titles, with more than 1,000 incoming applications to set new records each week. (Wait times can be up to four months.) Tucked inside these tomes…
Greenland is melting: we need to worry about what’s happening on the largest island in the world
Greenland is the largest island in the world and on it rests the largest ice mass in the Northern Hemisphere. If all that ice melted, the sea would rise by more than 7 metres. But that’s not going to happen…
In praise of glaciers, those dragons of ice viewed with concern and fascination
As global temperature records are set one after the other, we are becoming increasingly concerned about the fate of our glaciers, these emblematic victims of climate change. We are worried by the sudden change in the colour of the ice,…
200 years ago, people discovered Antarctica – and promptly began profiting by slaughtering some of its animals to near extinction
Two hundred years ago, on November 17, Connecticut ship captain Nathaniel Palmer spotted the Antarctic continent, one of three parties to do so in 1820. Unlike explorers Edward Bransfield and Fabian von Bellingshausen, Palmer was a sealer who quickly saw…
