Humankind’s Musical Past

Our love of music and dance’s history

I started writing science essays like these about 30 years ago for a major New Zealand newspaper and never actually had problems of getting them also accepted by newspapers in several other countries, including the ‘Kaleva’ in Finland – with the exception of one essay: this one. Why did the Finnish editor not like this article?

Something for Mothers – especially on Father’s Day

A lot of animals deserve a Father’s day

Paternal love, in my view, gets far too little attention vis-à-vis its opposite: maternal love. Who knows about the waterbugs in which the males burden themselves with the eggs their females have attached to their backs and then left them? And what could be more misleading than the term “midwife toad” for an amphibium in which the male wraps the eggs around its hind legs and makes sure the tadpoles get into the water in time for hatching?

Dog Genetics and Japanese Origins

Dog has always been “man’s best friend”

I’d say all of us have an interest to know where our ancestors hailed from and the Japanese are anything but an exception in this matter. Blood tests, ear-wax analyses, morphometrics, linguistic comparisons – prior to the advent of molecular genetics all these methods have been used to prove or disprove relationships between people and to determine which migratory route or routes prehistoric human beings might have taken.