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The decades out-of-date genetics taught in most U.S. schools stokes misconceptions about race and human diversity. A biological anthropologist calls for change.

Throughout the mountains of the American West, carvings hidden on the trunks of aspen trees tell the stories of the sheepherders who made them as they passed through with their flocks. Most of the men who etched these arborglyphs into the living trees were Basques who, starting with the Gold Rush of the 1840s, had immigrated from the Basque Country that straddles the Pyrenees Mountains.

Five hundred years ago, in a mountain-rimmed ocean fjord in southeast Alaska, Tlingit hunters armed with bone-tipped harpoons eased their canoes through chunks of floating ice, stalking seals near Sít Tlein (Hubbard) glacier. They must have glanced nervously up at the glacier’s looming, fractured face, aware that cascades of ice could thunder down and imperil the boats – and their lives. As they drew near, they would have asked the seals to give themselves as food for the people and talked to the spirit of Sít Tlein to release the animals from his care.

Tlingit elders in the Alaska Native village of Yakutat today describe their ancestors’ daring pursuit of harbor seals, or “tsaa,” and the people’s respect for the spirits of the mountains, glaciers, ocean and animals of their subarctic world.

Extensive social networks between different hunter–gatherer groups in the Congo Basin existed long before agriculture arrived in the region. This continent-wide exchange preserved a cultural diversity that evolved thousands of years ago, as researchers from the University of Zurich have shown based on musical instruments, specialized vocabulary and genetic information.

Central Africa has been occupied by hunter–gatherer populations for hundreds of thousands of years, according to recent research based on genetic, archaeological and paleoenvironmental data. However, contemporary hunter–gatherers living in the Congo Basin speak languages that they have acquired from their agricultural neighbors, the Bantu, in recent times.

This raises the question as to which elements of ancient cultural diversity in Central Africa stem from long-term evolution and regional cultural exchange predating agriculture, and which aspects are influenced by interactions with farming communities.

The last pandemic was bad, but COVID-19 is only one of many infectious diseases that emerged since the turn of this century.

Since 2000, the world has experienced 15 novel Ebola epidemics, the global spread of a 1918-like influenza strain and major outbreaks of three new and unusually deadly coronavirus infections: SARS, MERS and, of course, COVID-19. Every year, researchers discover two or three entirely new pathogens: the viruses, bacteria and microparasites that sicken and kill people.

While some of these discoveries reflect better detection methods, genetic studies confirm that most of these pathogens are indeed new to the human species. Even more troubling, these diseases are appearing at an increasing rate.

Despite the novelty of these particular infections, the primary factors that led to their emergence are quite ancient. Working in the field of anthropology, I have found that these are primarily human factors: the ways we feed ourselves, the ways we live together, and the ways we treat one another. In a forthcoming book, “Emerging Infections: Three Epidemiological Transitions from Prehistory to the Present,” my colleagues and I examine how these same elements have influenced disease dynamics for thousands of years. Twenty-first century technologies have served only to magnify ancient challenges.

Indigenous people entered North America at least four times between 12,000 and 24,000 years ago, bringing their languages with them, a new linguistic model indicates. The model correlates with archaeological, climatological and genetic data, supporting the idea that populations in early North America were dynamic and diverse.

Nearly half of the world's language families are found in the Americas. Although many of them are now thought extinct, historical linguistics analysis can survey and compare living languages and trace them back in time to better understand the groups that first populated the continent.

In a study published March 30 in the American Journal of Biological Anthropology, Johanna Nichols, a historical linguist at the University of California Berkeley, analyzed structural features of 60 languages from across the U.S. and Canada, which revealed they come from two main language groups that entered North America in at least four distinct waves.

Frequent disturbances to human societies boost the ability of populations to resist and recover from subsequent downturns, a Nature paper indicates. The study, which analyzes 30,000 years of human history, has implications for future population growth and resilience and for contemporary resilience-building initiatives.

For millennia, solar eclipses have inspired awe, wonder and fear. After all, it's not often that twilight descends in the middle of the day. And just as we plan for and anticipate their occurrence — like the total solar eclipse that will be visible to millions of North Americans on April 8 — ancient cultures across the world, from the Mayans to the ancient Greeks, developed their own mythologies and traditions around eclipses.

So what did these people think when they saw the sun darkening during the day?

On a surface level, people from ancient cultures knew exactly what they were looking at. "Anybody who pays attention to the sky would be well aware that the moon is blocking the sun," Anthony Aveni, a professor of anthropology and astronomy at Colgate University in New York, told Live Science. But the significance of that event would have been very different to ancient peoples. "Cultures other than our own, both present and past, had a very different take on the natural world," Aveni added.