Rapa Nui’s famous stone statues watched over a population that grew sweet potatoes on a modest scale and reached a peak of only around 3,900 individuals, too few to have triggered a previously hypothesized ecological disaster, a new study contends.
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Archaeology
A new study challenges the idea that Rapa Nui islanders caused an ‘ecocide’
Rapa Niu islanders farmed and fished enough to feed only a few thousand people, too few to decimate society before Europeans arrived, researchers contend.
By Bruce Bower
A man is attended to after fainting in the heat outside the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, D.C. on June 20. Heat wave temperatures across the Midwest and Northeast are hovering around 38° Celsius (100° Fahrenheit) in many places.
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Millions of Americans suffer from pain conditions each year, which are often experienced differently in men and women. A new study looks at what’s happening on the cellular level.
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In a new book, an archaeologist describes how the end of the Bronze Age led to hard times or worse for some societies, while Phoenician sea traders (illustrated) profited from chaos.
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AI computer models can scan medical images like this chest X-ray and glean details about a person’s cardiovascular and metabolic health.
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In polycystic ovarian syndrome, cysts form from follicles holding unreleased eggs (right ovary in this illustration compared with a healthy ovary, left). PCOS affects hundreds of millions of people worldwide, but effective treatments remain elusive.
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At the ancient Maya site of Chichén Itzá, represented here by a pyramid known as El Castillo or the Temple of Kukulcan, researchers have identified ritual child sacrifice victims placed in an underground chamber as young boys, including many closely related pairs and twins.
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Long COVID affects millions of Americans of almost all ages, but there has been no standard definition for the condition until now.
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Cancer is on the rise in the United States in Generation X (people born between 1965 and 1980) compared with their parents’ generations, a new study shows. That could be bad news for younger generations, like the boy in this multigenerational family.
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A doe and her young fawn cross a road in Rocky Mountain National Park in May 2022. Chronic wasting disease has spread widely across the United States since it was first discovered in the park’s elk herd in 1981.
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This fossilized kneecap (left) and two partial molars belonged to an unusually small great ape that lived 11.6 million years ago in what’s now Europe, scientists say.
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The Corral Fire in San Joaquin County, Calif., began on June 1 and was spurred by strong winds and dry grass. The fire was fully contained on June 6.
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