On apes, ancestors, and our longest day
Some wonderbringers for me this week:
Can apes play pretend? What scientists learned from having imaginary ‘tea parties’ with Kanzi the bonobo: Kanzi could tell a researcher which cup still held the pretend juice and which had been "poured" back into the pitcher. It's the first time imagination has been demonstrated in a nonhuman animal under controlled conditions, hinting that the machinery of make-believe may reach back six to nine million years to the ancestor we share with the great apes.
Did humans observe the solstice at this site centuries before Stonehenge?:
Days before this year's solstice, archaeologists announced what may be the earliest known solar alignment on the Stonehenge landscape: two long-rotted wooden posts on a hillside near Bulford, a few miles east of the stones, set out around 2950 B.C.E. — roughly 500 years before the standing stones were raised around 2500 B.C.E.
How becoming a dad changes men’s brains; Scanning first-time fathers before and after their child's birth, researchers see a change in grey matter in the circuitry we use to think about what another person is feeling, wanting, and intending. Neuroscientists believe it is the brain refining itself for the close attention a new, wordless person demands.
Wondermaker of the Week — Justin and Ruby Reynolds, the father and daughter who found a sea monster skeleton: On a fossil hunt along the English coast of Somerset, Justin Reynolds and his eleven-year-old daughter Ruby picked up a strange chunk of bone. They recognised it as possibly belonging to an Ichthyotitan severnensis, aka “the giant fish lizard of the Severn", a Late Triassic sea reptile. Ruby became a published scientist before she'd left school, and her dad got to be the one to share in the 202 million-year-old discovery.
And a lovely message from Wonderbringers reader Dennis: “The summer solstice is one of the few days that comes with a built-in permission structure. More light means more biological signal, more natural energy and a stronger case than usual for doing things differently. It doesn’t ask you to overhaul your life. It allows you to show up for one day with a little more intention.”
With wonder,
