Ancient DNA: 25 years of agony and ecstasy
It has been 25 years since a team led by Allan Wilson extracted mitochondrial DNA from a museum specimen of the now-extinct quagga. On Science 's…
Read more
Clothes Make the (Hu)Man
In this week's issue of Science I report on a possible sighting of the oldest known woven fibers, from a cave in the Republic of Georgia (see p…
Read more
Obama says don't be stupid--conservatives object!
Have you been wondering why so many American rightwingers have gone ballistic over President Obama addressing the nation's schoolchildren and urg…
Read more
The real death panels
The California Nurses Association has published a study showing the astronomically high claim rejection rate among the state's insurance compani…
Read more
Ancient DNA Says Europe's First Farmers Came From Afar
In this week's issue of Science , I write about an ancient DNA study ( also published in the journal) which concludes that farming was brought …
Read more
Drawing a Bead on Ancient Symbolic Behavior
Why was there such a long gap between when humans started looking anatomically modern--as early as 200,000 years ago--and when they started acting be…
Read more
Evening in Cappadocia
The peak on the right is Hasan Dağ, a volcano once important to the prehistoric peoples who lived in Central Anatolia for its high-quality obsidian. …
Read more
Interlude in Istanbul
Greetings from Istanbul, on my way to visit the 9500 year old Neolithic (early farming) site of Çatalhöyük, which was the subject of my book "Th…
Read more
Lies about National Health Service rile Brits
I've just returned from two weeks in England, and I can report that the British press is full of stories about the amazing lies being told in the…
Read more
New York Times forgets the U.S. is a democracy
The Times reports today that Carolyn Maloney has decided not to challenge Kirsten Gillibrand in the Democratic primary for Hillary Clinton's fo…
Read more![Peter Rathjen: Serial sexual predator, pedophile protector, and manifestation of all that is rotten at the University of Adelaide? [Update July 20, 2020: Rathjen resigns due to "ill health"]](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhv2zZDdkMCZ682nm_jjaMKj10YQlHM_1NXSBgpRCHqJJXltcoS7wFYbh8aYMX_M8EEkiW-gBGZTxuW6icTYY5hrPEDlBalEStHCvh6wWUS6Pl30v6Jhw45a726-uLQKtPE1tuCq9MyXqRV/w680/Rathjen.jpeg)
My book about Neolithic Catalhoyuk in Turkey and the origins of civilization, the paperback edition. For more information about it, please visit MY WEB SITE
- Michael Balter
- I have been a working journalist for more than 40 years, beginning in Los Angeles as an investigative reporter and then in Paris as a travel, food, and science writer. For more than 20 years I have covered anthropology and archaeology writer for Science, Audubon, Scientific American, SAPIENS, and other publications. I have also covered sexual misconduct for The Verge, Scientific American, and others; I write about mental health, especially schizophrenia; and I engage in occasional media criticism. I returned to the USA in October 2017 after 30 years in Paris, and now live in the New York City area, where I currently teach journalism at City College of New York (I previously taught journalism at Boston University and New York University.) For more about me and what I do, copies of my articles, information about my book, and other goodies, please visit MY WEB SITE
Social Media