Human History Research Articles

Why religion and spirituality are important in human biological research.

The study of human biology includes exploration of all the genetic and environmental influences on human variation and life history, including impacts of sociocultural and physical environments. Religious practice and spirituality may be one of these influences. There are more than 5.8 billion religiously affiliated adults and children, accounting for 84% of the world's 6.9 billion people. Furthermore, 70% of Americans consider themselves spiritual in some way, including 22% who do not consider themselves religious, and the numbers for Europe are lower but proportionally similar. Such a high rate of religious affiliation and spiritual belief suggests that religion and spirituality could be sociocultural influences on human variation, but human biologists have scarcely attended to their impacts, as indicated by the limited numbers of relevant articles in the two flagship human biology journals. In this article, we discuss why human biologists may have overlooked this important force for human variability and highlight foundational work from human biology and other disciplines that can give our colleagues directions forward. We review the impacts of religion and spirituality at population and individual levels and call for human biologists to attend to the many aspects of religion and spirituality that can impact human biology and are much more than simply influences of denominational affiliation.

History of the use of chemical weapons for military purposes and the possibility of their current use

Throughout the history of mankind there have been many wars of both local character and large-scale wars. At the heart of military actions necessarily lies the use of weapons, one type of which is chemical. Chemical weapons, the basis of which are diverse in their effect on the body and chemical composition of poisonous substances, began to be used for military purposes during World War I, namely, the first use occurred on April 22, 1915 in Belgium near the city of Ypres. Germany used gas cylinders filled with chlorine in this attack. The man who created this weapon was German chemist Fritz Haber, who became known as the "father of chemical weapons". Since that time, scientists from different countries began to actively study the effect of poisonous substances on the human body, synthesize their new types, as well as search for reliable means of protection against its effects. Throughout history, attempts have been made to ban the use of chemical weapons. In particular, after the end of the First World War, the Geneva Protocol was adopted in 1925, prohibiting the use of asphyxiating, poisonous or other similar gases in war. However, this agreement failed to limit the use of poisonous substances, which led to their further use, mainly in localized wars. Much work on the prohibition and destruction of chemical weapons belongs to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, established in 1997 after the adoption of the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling and Use of Chemical Weapons and on Their Destruction in 1993. The purpose of this paper is to summarize the history of chemical weapons for military purposes, as well as to study the activities for their prohibition. Literary data of recent years on the history of creation, use of chemical weapons and international legal agreements on their prohibition and destruction, the main types of toxic substances, means of protection against their effects are analyzed. Conclusions are made about the possibilities of chemical weapons use at present.

Production and Characterization of Recycled Polypropylene Composite Reinforced with Cotton Fabric Waste

Composite materials have played an important role throughout human history, from housing early civilizations to enabling future innovations. This study explores the development of composite materials from recycled polypropylene and cotton fabric waste targeted for different applications. The composites were manufactured by the melt-mixing method. The effects of cotton fabric waste content on various composite characteristics were investigated using tensile strength, tensile modulus, flexural strength, flexural modulus, impact strength, compressive strength, and water absorption. The study showed that with an increase in cotton fabric waste content, properties such as tensile strength, tensile modulus, flexural strength, flexural modulus, impact strength, and compressive strength increase up to the optimum level, while a decrease in these properties is observed after the optimal level. The maximum tensile strength of 57.84 MPa, tensile modulus of 1.31 GPa, flexural strength of 55.32 MPa, flexural modulus of 2.7 GPa, impact strength of 33.06 kJ/m2, and compressive strength of 53.68 MPa were obtained. The water absorption rate increased with an increase in the cotton fabric waste weight proportion. From the result of this study, it can be concluded that the optimal mechanical and water absorption properties were achieved at 30% cotton fabric waste content. Therefore, creating composites from recovered polypropylene and cotton fabric waste can have both environmental and financial benefits.

Comparative analysis of meat products made from various chicken meat raw material

Animal food, especially meat, has played an important role in the history of mankind. Different meats can be used in the production of meat products. In addition to lean meats, mechanically deboned meat (MDM) and mechanically separated meat (MSM) can also be used in meat products. However, the latter does not qualify as meat due to damage to the muscular structure due to the high pressure applied during the separation, therefore cannot be included in the meat content of products. The aim of our research work was to compare the characteristics of Bologna sausages made from chicken fillet, chicken MDM and poultry MSM. After evaluating our measurements (cooking loss, colour measurement, instrumental chemical composition measuring, stock measurement, determination of water activity, pH measurement, and sensory evaluation), we concluded that in the case of production with MSM, we produced a lower quality product using the same amount of meat raw material, which can be improved by using more additives (e.g. carminic acid, tetrasodium-pyrophosphate).

The benefits of physical activity for depression

Depression is an affective disorder present throughout human history, characterized by feelings of sadness, pessimism and low self-esteem. Medical care is essential for proper diagnosis and treatment. Estimates suggest that more than 300 million people worldwide suffer from depression, which differs from normal mood fluctuations. When chronic and intense, it can cause great suffering and dysfunction, and can even lead to suicide. With around 800,000 deaths by suicide every year, depression is one of the leading causes of death among young people. Regular physical activity is considered by some scientists to be one of the best antidepressants, bringing a range of benefits for mental and emotional health.

Role of phytochemicals isolated from Cirsium japonicum in neurological disorders

Phytochemicals are richest source of medicines since human history. Cirsium japonicum (Asteraceae), along with other members in the genus are a rich source of flavonoids, polyacetylenes, acetylenes, phenolic acids, phenylpropanoids, sterols, terpenoids and numerous other compounds. Current study aimed to describe an updated review of the literature on the hidden potential of the C. japonicum extracts and its active biological components on neurological disorders. Among various active phytochemicals in C. japonicum includes luteolin, hispidulin, cirsimaritin, acacetin, apigenin, diosmetin, linarin, pectolinarin, and silybin B. Flora of China has been reported around 50 Cirsium species, of which 13 species are reported to be used for treatment of stopping bleedings, removing blood stasis, reducing swelling, treating bleeding syndrome and neurodegenerative disorders like Alzheimer disease (AD). In addition, C. japonicum enhances antioxidant and anticancer activities at cellular level. Moreover, antidepressant potential of ethanol extracts of C. japonicum has also been well described are primarily due to positive modulatory impacts on GABAA receptor (GABAAR) complex. The presence of huge number of active ingredients report in multiple plant species altogether in C. japonicum, appealing for extensive studies for indepth examination of mechanisms and ultimately their usage in clinical trials.

A Crisis Like no Other: Understanding and Defeating Global Warming

.: Robert De Saro has written an important book that provides a comprehensive and accurate account of the scientific basis of climate change and the human activities that cause it. More importantly, the author explores in considerable detail how the information about climate change is processed. For example, he discusses how cognitive biases might affect the appreciation of evidence, and therefore either facilitate taking actions to address climate change or divert from doing so. De Saro is an engineer, a scientist, and an astute observer and student of human behavior. His book is thus an important tool for those who wish to communicate effectively about climate change. In fact, his book is itself a model of good communication. De Saro injects humor into the discussion and provides illustrations when they are most needed. He writes with a personal touch, giving the reader a chance to know and trust him. A Crisis Like No Other: Understanding and Defeating Global Warming is an important contribution to the literature on climate change and, in particular, on climate communication, which is most deserving of our attention at this crucial juncture in the history of the world.

New Canary Islands Roman mediated settlement hypothesis deduced from coalescence ages of curated maternal indigenous lineages

Numerous genetic studies have contributed to reconstructing the human history of the Canary Islands population. The recent use of new ancient DNA targeted enrichment and next-generation sequencing techniques on new Canary Islands samples have greatly improved these molecular results. However, the bulk of the available data is still provided by the classic mitochondrial DNA phylogenetic and phylogeographic studies carried out on the indigenous, historical, and extant human populations of the Canary Islands. In the present study, making use of all the accumulated mitochondrial information, the existence of DNA contamination and archaeological sample misidentification in those samples is evidenced. Following a thorough review of these cases, the new phylogeographic analysis revealed the existence of a heterogeneous indigenous Canarian population, asymmetrically distributed across the various islands, which most likely descended from a unique mainland settlement. These new results and new proposed coalescent ages are compatible with a Roman-mediated arrival driven by the exploitation of the purple dye manufacture in the Canary Islands.

History at the heart of medicine

With a focus on the challenges of today and tomorrow in the critical medical humanities the role of history is often overlooked. Yet history and medicine are closely intertwined. Right now, with the surfacing of knotty problems such as changing demographics, chronic pain, loneliness and Long Covid – and the consequent necessity to change directions and policies – history seems more urgent than ever. However, historians of medicine have sometimes been reticent to play a role in medicine and policymaking. The recent and welcome development of the critical medical humanities has intervened in medicine in important ways, but often without clear engagement with the history of medicine. In this letter, we make a renewed case for coherence and collaboration between history of medicine, medicine, and medical humanities, emphasising the continuity and links between all three. The skills and focus of the historian of medicine bring crucial historical context to the table, enabling better understanding of medical collecting, new imaginative futures, profound critiques of key medical concepts, and understandings of the body through time. By emphasising what historians can do for medicine and medical humanities, we call for building historical work into how medicine, illness and health are understood now and in the future. We suggest three potential roles for historians: keepers of memories, conversation partners, and futurist thinkers.

DORA: an interactive map for the visualization and analysis of ancient human DNA and associated data.

The ability to sequence ancient genomes has revolutionized the way we study evolutionary history by providing access to the most important aspect of evolution-time. Until recently, studying human demography, ecology, biology, and history using population genomic inference relied on contemporary genomic datasets. Over the past decade, the availability of human ancient DNA (aDNA) has increased rapidly, almost doubling every year, opening the way for spatiotemporal studies of ancient human populations. However, the multidimensionality of aDNA, with genotypes having temporal, spatial and genomic coordinates, and integrating multiple sources of data, poses a challenge for developing meta-analyses pipelines. To address this challenge, we developed a publicly-available interactive tool, DORA, which integrates multiple data types, genomic and non-genomic, in a unified interface. This web-based tool enables browsing sample metadata alongside additional layers of information, such as population structure, climatic data, and unpublished samples. Users can perform analyses on genotypes of these samples, or export sample subsets for external analyses. DORA integrates analyses and visualizations in a single intuitive interface, resolving the technical issues of combining datasets from different sources and formats, and allowing researchers to focus on the scientific questions that can be addressed through analysis of aDNA datasets.

Migration and Hindi Cinema: A Study

Migration and Hindi Cinema: A Study

The place of legal obligations in the system of social obligations

The emergence and gradual development of human society, as well as the need to regulate relations between individuals within such a society, lead to the emergence of the first elementary rules of behavior. Undoubtedly, such rules arise spontaneously in the process of living together, have an oral form of expression and are supported by early traditions and customs. Gradually, the dynamic development of society causes complications and branching of ties between its members, giving impetus to the appearance of more regulated and established rules of behavior, namely, a system of social norms. The system of social norms is created and developed throughout the history of mankind, adapting to the emergence of new needs and interests of society. That is why this system is characterized by objectivity, as it expresses the laws of the development of society, its specificity, fixing stable and repeated social connections. At the same time, it is worth taking into account the subjective factor in the formation of social norms, since they cannot arise without the participation of public consciousness. The subjective nature of social norms is determined by the possibility of individuals and social groups to realize the needs of society in establishing value guidelines for behavior and to establish them in various rules or prescriptions, having formed a certain level of legal consciousness that would correspond to the level of development of society. So, on the one hand, social norms are created by people and have a conscious-volitional character, and on the other hand, they are determined by the action of objective laws that do not depend on a person. Thus, social norms can be defined as rules of behavior of a general nature existing in society, determined by objective laws, which express the will of a certain part of the population or the entire society and are provided by various means of social influence. At the nascent stage of the system of social norms, most of it consisted of social obligations and sanctions for their non-compliance, which were determined by the system of society at that time. Social duties arise together with the appearance in human society of the germs of morality and a person's awareness of his responsibility to his family and tribe. Accordingly, with the development of humanity and the diversification of social interactions, the institution of duty was modified, acquiring new features and giving impetus to the emergence of moral, religious, and later legal duties. A legal obligation arises and develops in a close relationship with other types of social obligations, in particular - moral, religious, corporate, so we consider it expedient to compare and compare them.

Global musical diversity is largely independent of linguistic and genetic histories

Music is a universal yet diverse cultural trait transmitted between generations. The extent to which global musical diversity traces cultural and demographic history, however, is unresolved. Using a global musical dataset of 5242 songs from 719 societies, we identify five axes of musical diversity and show that music contains geographical and historical structures analogous to linguistic and genetic diversity. After creating a matched dataset of musical, genetic, and linguistic data spanning 121 societies containing 981 songs, 1296 individual genetic profiles, and 121 languages, we show that global musical similarities are only weakly and inconsistently related to linguistic or genetic histories, with some regional exceptions such as within Southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. Our results suggest that global musical traditions are largely distinct from some non-musical aspects of human history.

Introduction: Border Politics and Refugee Narratives in Contemporary Literature

Refugeehood—whether triggered by religious intolerance, ethnic strife, political repression, war, or environmental factors—has been a constant throughout human history, but it was not until the twentieth century that refugees were endowed with legal status on an international level [...]

Oxidative Stress: An Intersection Between Radiation and Sulfur Mustard Lung Injury.

Nuclear and chemical weapons of mass destruction share both a tragic and beneficial legacy in mankind's history and health. The horrific health effects of ionizing radiation and mustard gas exposures unleashed during disasters, wars, and conflicts have been harnessed to treat human health maladies. Both agents of destruction have been transformed into therapies to treat a wide range of cancers. The discovery of therapeutic uses of radiation and sulfur mustard was largely due to observations by clinicians treating victims of radiation and sulfur mustard gas exposures. Clinicians identified vulnerability of leukocytes to these agents and repurposed their use in the treatment of leukemias and lymphomas. Given the overlap in therapeutic modalities, it goes to reason that there may be common mechanisms to target as protective strategies against their damaging effects. This commentary will highlight oxidative stress as a common mechanism shared by both radiation and sulfur mustard gas exposures and discuss potential therapies targeting oxidative stress as medical countermeasures against the devastating lung diseases wrought by these agents.

A stochastic approach for co-evolution process of virus and human immune system

Infectious diseases have long been a shaping force in human history, necessitating a comprehensive understanding of their dynamics. This study introduces a co-evolution model that integrates both epidemiological and evolutionary dynamics. Utilizing a system of differential equations, the model represents the interactions among susceptible, infected, and recovered populations for both ancestral and evolved viral strains. Methodologically rigorous, the model’s existence and uniqueness have been verified, and it accommodates both deterministic and stochastic cases. A myriad of graphical techniques have been employed to elucidate the model’s dynamics. Beyond its theoretical contributions, this model serves as a critical instrument for public health strategy, particularly predicting future outbreaks in scenarios where viral mutations compromise existing interventions.

The Transition of English Literature from the Nineteenth Century to the Twentieth Century: A Case Study of Bernard Shaw & H. G. Wells

The sincerity of literature as an expression of life is normal, as long as it expresses the human soul which is affected by external life. This is something that humans cannot escape from or stand in isolation of, but the responses differ according to different human natures, and the way each person receives and interacts with influences, but they all in the end echo the external life. European life in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was the scene of violent intellectual movements, all of which tended to solve the social problems that had worsened at that time in human history, owing to the reaction of industrial progress in economy and society. It was natural for literature to enter the battle and be one of its effective weapons because writers could not be isolated in their ivory towers, far from the conflicting classes and the rapidly transforming situations, as if they did so, their readers would abandon them, in search of those who would talk about their pain and share their problems. Therefore, most of the literary productions of this time — all types of plays, novels, poetry, and essays — take social problems as their theme, and try in their own way to point out the means of treatment. Perhaps the most distinguished examples of this trend were Bernard Shaw, and H. G. Wells, whose production mainly depends on such topics. And if there are other writers and critics, we are just content with these two as they are sufficiently indicative in terms of providing an understanding of prospects and mechanism of the literature of that era.

Watching Photographs: Inhabiting a Queer Feminist Perspective to Contest Reproductions of the ‘Refugee Crisis’

ABSTRACT Journalists have claimed that the 2015 European ‘refugee crisis’ is one of the most photographed crises in human history. It is important to understand what kind of messages these photographs convey, how they reproduce the hegemonic narrative, and how they become commodities. In this paper, we critique the visual economy of the ‘refugee crisis’ from a queer feminist perspective through the lens of reproduction. We show how the reproduction of images of ‘refugees’ is structured by, and naturalises reproductive heteronormativity, amongst other institutions, which we argue is essential to the functioning of bordered nation-states: the figure of the refugee is reproduced as presumptively heterosexual, and as reproductive. We focus on watching photographic images because, as we have seen over the past six years, through the use and control of photography, states seek to generate consent to the necropolitical management of ‘crisis’, to the undeclared war against refugees. We argue that by watching photographs, as opposed to merely looking at them, we can inhabit a queer feminist perspective that seeks to abolish state-imposed divisions between ‘refugees’, ‘migrants’, and ‘citizens’.

Bathymetric LiDAR and Semi‐Automated Feature Extraction Assist Underwater Archaeological Surveys

ABSTRACTCritical data concerning key developments in global human history now lie submerged on continental shelves where investigations confront significant challenges. Whereas underwater excavations and surveys are expensive and weather dependent and require specialized training and equipment, remote sensing methods can improve chances for success offshore. A refinement in one method, a semi‐automated analysis protocol that can help to identify Pleistocene and Holocene era archaeological deposits in bathymetric LiDAR datasets, is presented here. This method employs contour mapping to identify potential archaeological features in shallow water environments in Apalachee Bay, Florida. This method successfully re‐identified multiple previously recorded archaeological sites in the study region and detected at least four previously undocumented archaeological sites. These results suggest that this procedure can expand on methods to identify and record submerged archaeological deposits in sediment‐starved, shallow‐water environments.

New technology, psychiatry, and the law: Panic, prudence, possibility

Throughout human history, all new technology has been met with surprise, anxiety, panic, and – eventually – prudent adoption of certain aspects of specific technological advances. This pattern is evident in the histories of most technologies, ranging from steam power in the nineteenth century, to television in the twentieth century, and – now – ‘artificial intelligence’ (AI) in the twenty-first century. Each generation believes that the technological advances of its era are quantitatively and qualitatively different to those of previous generations, but the underlying phenomenon is the same: the shock of the new, followed by more gradual adjustment to (and of) new technology. These concerns are apparent today in relation to AI, which reflects interesting but incremental advances on existing technologies, rather than stand-alone developments. The usual concerns with all technologies (e.g., that they will replace certain aspects of human function) are, perhaps, more concerning in fields such as mental capacity law, which often applies to people with impaired decision-making capacity who might be especially vulnerable to technologies which appear capable of encroaching disproportionately on decision-making or other areas of core human function. This paper approaches this topic from an historical standpoint, noting both previous technological panics in the past and the possibilities offered by AI today, provided it is approached in a proportionate, prudent, and person-centered way, underpinned by appropriate ethical guidance and active ethical awareness in clinical and legal practice.