November 20, 2024: How horses shaped human history, why we like extreme versions of our own beliefs, and extreme weather in the Pacific Northwest. —Andrea Gawrylewski, Chief Newsletter Editor | | | A weather system poised over the Pacific Ocean. NOAA/NESDIS/STAR GOES-West | | | • The National Institutes of Health, the world's largest public funder of biomedical research (a $47 billion research portfolio), is bracing for severe cuts and changes under the second Trump administration. | 5 min read | | | Drawings of horses in France's Chauvet Cave dating to more than 30,000 years ago.Heritage Images/Getty Images | | | The ancestors of modern domestic horses originated on the Black Sea steppes around 2200 B.C.E., according to new genomic analyses. Archaeological digs have unearthed burial sites associated with Russia's Sintashta culture containing horses and chariots, some of the earliest evidence of domesticated horses. From there, radio carbon-dating and genetic records show that within only a few centuries domestic horses spread over huge swaths of the Eurasian continent.
Why this matters: Domesticated horses rapidly transformed human civilization. People began using horses for transportation or labor. Some cultures used horses with and without chariots to dominate other cultures. Domesticated horses on the Silk Roads moved goods, plants and animals, ideas and culture, and even diseases across Eurasia and beyond. The roads and train routes of the modern world were built upon much older horse trails, including many postal roads.
What the experts say: "The world we live in was built on horseback," writes William T. Taylor, an archaeozoologist at the University of Colorado Boulder, in the December issue of Scientific American. "Many people today rarely encounter horses, but this is a recent development. Only a few decades ago domestic horses formed the fabric of societies around the globe. Almost every aspect of daily life was linked to horses in an important way." | | | People are attracted to those with similar political views, yes. But that's only half the story. In a series of studies, researchers asked 1,200 people to give their opinions on hot-button political issues–from police violence to gun control. Then the participants selected which peers' opinions they wanted to appear next in the study. Whether liberal or conservative, participants tended to choose peers whose views were more extreme than their own. This tendency is called acrophily, or a love of extremes.
Why this matters: Not only do people who think alike cluster together, acrophily speeds up the segregation of ideas. This makes it more difficult for politically-opposed groups to cooperate, compromise and find common ground.
What the experts say: Correcting people's biased impressions about their own political leanings might help reduce acrophily. The most extreme members of a given group are unlikely to reflect the "average" perspective within that community, yet some people believe that to be the case. | | | Scientific American visited the American Museum of Natural History to meet paleoanthropologist Ashley Hammond, a curator at the museum, and to learn why Lucy is such an important fossil. Watch the video on TikTok. And read more about the 50th anniversary of Lucy's discovery here. | | | • In March NASA slashed the budget for the Chandra X-ray Observatory from $68 million in 2024 to $41 million in 2025 and $26 million a year later, leaving only enough funding for mission closeout. This is a mistake, writes María Arias, an astronomer at the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy. "Chandra is the only high angular resolution x-ray telescope in space, and there is no mission with similar capabilities scheduled to replace it until 2032 at the earliest," she says. | 4 min read | | | • Oceanographers have discovered the world's largest coral, near the Solomon Islands. | National Geographic | | | • One hundred years before Zoom, the American Institute of Electrical Engineers held a virtual meeting by phone that included 5,100 participants. | IEEE Spectrum | | | • Rather than improving aged and dangerous roads, most state-run departments of transportation leave them as-is. | Vox | | | A surprising fact I learned today that perhaps I should have known: Horses originated about 4 million years ago in North America. According to the Bureau of Land Management, federally-protected populations of wild horses have been declining over the last three years because of population control measures and severe weather. The agency has a delicate balancing act on its hands--the horses are a vital member of the natural ecosystems, and yet their herd sizes can grow rapidly and trample landscapes and overgraze. | Thank you for being a part of our community of science-curious readers! Tell me how I can improve this newsletter by emailing: newsletters@sciam.com. We'll be back tomorrow! | —Andrea Gawrylewski, Chief Newsletter Editor | | Subscribe to this and all of our newsletters . | | | | Scientific American
One New York Plaza, New York, NY, 10004 | | | | | | Support our mission, subscribe to Scientific American | | | | | | | | | |
