This year’s Bristol Radical History Festival focused on the persistent threats of racism, xenophobia and, of course, our radical collective resistance to it across Ireland and Britain, reports LYNNE WALSH
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Any old iron
New evidence suggests that hunter-gatherer societies smelted iron much earlier than believed, write ROX MIDDLETON, LIAM SHAW and JOEL HELLEWELL
An aerial view of the wall of the great enclosure of Great Zimbabwe
A maverick’s self-inflicted snake bites could unlock breakthrough treatments – but they also reveal deeper tensions between noble scientific curiosity and cold corporate callousness, write ROX MIDDLETON, LIAM SHAW and MIRIAM GAUNTLETT
The FBU is demanding 52 weeks of full pay for women firefighters, highlighting the unique health risks they face — and the continuing need to recruit and retain more women if policies like this are still not in place, writes SEONA HART
Israel continues to operate with impunity in what seems to be a brutal and protracted experiment, while much of the world looks on, says RAMZY BAROUD
A new report by Amnesty International pulls no punches in highlighting the Labour government’s human rights violations of those on benefits, says Dr DYLAN MURPHY
With Reform UK surging and Labour determined not to offer anything different from the status quo, a clear opportunity opens for the left, argues CLAUDIA WEBBE
A recent Immigration Summit heard from Lord Alf Dubs, who fled the Nazis to Britain as a child. JAYDEE SEAFORTH reports on his message that we need to increase public empathy with desperate people seeking asylum
THE recent publication of The Dawn of Everything, written by archaeologist David Wengrow and the late anthropologist David Graeber, has prompted debate about the history of human societies.
Graeber and Wengrow argue that popular ideas about what happened in “prehistory” are wrong. It is often assumed that human history has been a linear progression: from small egalitarian bands of hunter-gatherers to farming, to ever-larger societies and eventually “real” civilisation.
The political implication of this view is that, while some sort of small-scale communism was possible in these “pre-political” egalitarian bands, the increasing size of societies led inexorably to inequality and hierarchies.
This political implication, set out memorably by Rousseau, is incorporated into many political views, ranging from the “Enlightenment Now” defence of modernity offered by Steven Pinker to (some) Marxist conceptions of the history of the world before capitalism.
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A maverick’s self-inflicted snake bites could unlock breakthrough treatments – but they also reveal deeper tensions between noble scientific curiosity and cold corporate callousness, write ROX MIDDLETON, LIAM SHAW and MIRIAM GAUNTLETT
Science has always been mixed up with money and power, but as a decorative facade for megayachts, it risks leaving reality behind altogether, write ROX MIDDLETON, LIAM SHAW and MIRIAM GAUNTLETT
A small Japanese trial has reported some positive results for stem cell therapy to treat spinal-cord injuries
Man-made canals like Panama and Suez face unprecedented challenges from extreme weather patterns and geopolitical tensions that reveal the fragility of our global trade networks, write ROX MIDDLETON, LIAM SHAW and MIRIAM GAUNTLETT
