If you’ve ever felt on the sidelines of a conversation, embarrassed that you couldn’t stand it, good nonfiction books will help. Collections of interesting scientific data from today’s selection can expand your horizons so much that every dialogue with you will turn into an open lesson in a natural history club.
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“The Non-Western History of Science: Discoveries We Didn’t Know About” by James Poskett
Today China leads the main countries in rice production, but it was not always like this. In the 1960s, the country was hit by a food crisis, as a result of which more than 15 million people died of hunger. Scientists searched in vain for a way to increase the yield of the main cereal crop: rice plants were self-pollinating and left no room for genetic crossing.
The situation changed thanks to the chance discovery of agronomist Yuan Longping: a rice variety with a genetic mutation. The plant’s male reproductive organs were non-functioning, meaning it could not self-pollinate; but there were females, which allowed it to be crossed with another. The successful experiment allowed the development of the world’s first hybrid variety of rice and increased the productivity of the cereal in countries where it was a staple food.
Longping is one of the few non-European scientists whose name is inscribed in the world history of science. For a long time there was a myth that the key discoveries of modern science belonged exclusively to Europe. However, James Poskett’s book changes this idea. The author talks about scientists from different parts of the world, from Asia and Africa to America and the Pacific region, to show how his ideas influenced the development of world science.
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“The fight for lunch: 50 other tales from the grotto”, Stanislav Drobyshevsky
Australopithecines rarely got meat. The dense forests that surrounded our ancestors hid not only food, but also deadly traps. In addition to the need to find, reach and defeat prey, they had to fight for it with other primates and avoid the threat of ending up in the teeth of a more skilled predator. Therefore, each lunch became another stage in the fight for survival.
A fascinating book by Stanislav Drobyshevsky, associate professor of the Department of Anthropology, Faculty of Biology, Moscow State University, transports the reader millions of years ago, into the past. With the help of paleontology and related sciences, modern scientists can understand not only the climatic conditions and characteristics of the territories where our ancestors lived, but also what they ate and what trouble they got into.
Bone fragments and other finds may reveal that the mother always led the cubs by the hand, that one Australopithecus in particular suffered from migraines, and that a great flood killed an entire family overnight. Stanislav Drobyshevsky not only describes the events of bygone times, but also gives the reader the opportunity to see them with his own eyes.
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The World Before Us: A New Look at the Origins of Man, Tom Higham
We seem to waste our biology lessons at school. Everything we knew about evolution was called into question at the end of the 20th century and was reinforced by the discovery in the Denisova Cave in Altai. In 2008, archaeologists found a small bone here, which turned out to be a fragment of the phalanx of the little finger of a child who lived about 120,000 years ago. The fragment, only 2.4 cm long, allowed a sensational discovery: two different types of human ancestors, the Neanderthal and the Denisovan, had descendants.
This forced the scientific world to take a new look at evolution. Until recently, it was believed that several species of the genus Homo developed sequentially, one after another, with each new species replacing the previous one. However, the discovery of a Neanderthal-Denisovan hybrid showed that the real picture is much more complex. Different types of archaic people lived in parallel, had intercultural relationships and even descendants.
Tom Higham, archaeologist and radiocarbon dating expert, describes humanity’s journey through ancient times to the present day. He undertakes to answer a series of difficult questions. Who really are our ancestors and what happened to them? Was the ancient world very different from the modern one? To what extent did the different ancestral groups come into contact with each other? And what cultural and genetic heritage did modern man inherit from them?
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“Pop Gapon and Japanese rifles”, Andrey Aksenov
The Russian Empire is reputed to be a very moral power, where everyone went to church and only allowed close relationships with their spouses. Of course, at the beginning of the 20th century things were different. Men’s affairs were rarely condemned anymore, and they turned a blind eye to the loss of a girl’s innocence before marriage: it was difficult to get a divorce, and talking about his wife’s debauchery was not beneficial for them. But during Lent, the peasants were quite categorical about sex. If someone failed to cope with withdrawal and became a father in December, the child was subject to a widespread superstition: when he grew up he would become a thief or a sick person.
This is just one of 15 interesting facts about the lives of people and events of the 20th century, collected by scientific popularizer Andrei Aksenov in the book “Pop Gapon and Japanese Rifles”. All stories, like the episodes of the author’s podcast “The Decline of the Empire”, are sketches from the time of Nicholas II. The most interesting thing is that Andrei Aksenov goes beyond the facts of the history textbook and strives to show living people and their destinies.
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“The History of Piracy: From the Vikings to the Present” by Peter Lehr
The average person’s knowledge of piracy is mainly based on the book “Treasure Island” and movies about pirates of the Caribbean. However, these ideas are very different from reality: maritime crimes continue to threaten safety at sea and lack any romantic flair. For example, in November 2005, pirates attacked a cruise ship off the coast of Somalia. The ship came under aggressive attack and escaped capture only thanks to the coordinated actions of the crew.
The number of pirate attacks has increased in the last 50 years. Why can’t we put an end to this if we now have the most powerful naval forces? Peter Lehr, a professor at the Center for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at the University of St Andrews, suggests looking at piracy from a different angle.
To understand its causes and develop effective strategies to combat it, study the motivations of people who choose this dangerous path and look for connections between the actions of modern sea robbers and their predecessors. At the same time, he interestingly talks about the peculiarities of the pirate trade.
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