Alison George

The books, TV, games and more that New Scientist staff have enjoyed this week

Forget the tropes about how violence or maybe volcanic eruptions killed off our ancient cousins, The Last Neanderthal by Ludovic Slimak offers a very different take on how they died out

When a vast library of texts amassed by Mesopotamian King Ashurbanipal was burned to the ground about 2700 years ago, the clay tablets were preserved by the heat. Selena Wisnom's new book reveals more

How our ancestors invented clothing and transformed it into fashion

Research is revealing the complex relationship between sleep and the gut microbiome, raising the prospect that eating better during the day might help you get a better night’s rest

What the evidence says about the consequences of cosmetic tweakments

Discoveries from the genomes of the last Neanderthals are rewriting the story of how our own species came to replace them

As a six-year investigation into the Thwaites glacier in Antarctica wraps up, the scientists involved are pessimistic for the future of this glacier and the consequences for sea level rise

Analysis of DNA from a Neanderthal fossil found in a French cave indicates that it belonged to a group that was isolated for more than 50,000 years

The books, TV, games and more that New Scientist staff have enjoyed this week

The skull of Shanidar Z was found in the Shanidar cave in the Kurdistan region of Iraq, and has been painstakingly put back together

Your brain burns through the same amount of energy whether you’re daydreaming or taking an exam. So why do we experience mental fatigue?

Climate change and biodiversity loss may seem like insurmountable problems, but data scientist Hannah Ritchie is cautiously optimistic we can solve them

A reconstruction of 66 million years of climate history indicates global temperature may be even more sensitive to carbon dioxide levels than current models estimate

Scientific progress has made all sorts of families possible. But as a thought-provoking new exhibition at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, UK, shows, it hasn’t been a pain-free shift

From diet, to stress, sleep and your social life, there are plenty of ways to keep the microbiome working and boost health at any age

From creating cave art to burying their dead, how we see Neanderthals reveals as much about us as it does about them, argues Ludovic Slimak in a fascinating new book. We may have our closest extinct relatives all wrong - again

Following his discovery of the ancient hominin Homo naledi, Lee Berger was determined to enter the cave where the fossils were discovered, but a dreadful journey lay ahead

From vitamin D to turmeric extracts and probiotics, nutritional supplements are a booming industry. But what is the evidence behind the claimed benefits?

New discoveries suggest that Homo naledi, an ancient and primitive hominin, may have displayed complex behaviour despite its small brain