Curio Cabinet

Be careful calling someone a Neanderthal as an insult—you might actually be complimenting them. A team of Spanish archaeologists have announced the discovery of a fingerprint that suggests that Neanderthals were more artistically inclined than previously thought. At around 43,000 years old, the fingerprint in question was left by a Neanderthal on an unassuming granite pebble. The rock was originally discovered in 2022 at the San Lázaro rock shelter near Segovia, and at first, it wasn't clear just what the small, red dot on it was. After consulting geologists, the team found that the red color on the rock came from a pigment made of iron oxide and clay, while police forensics experts confirmed that the mark itself came from the tip of someone's finger. Although it doesn't look like much at a glance, the fingerprinted rock caught the team's attention for a number of reasons. Firstly, there was nothing else in the site that also had the red pigment on it, suggesting it was placed there deliberately after being sourced from another location. Secondly, the rock vaguely resembles a human face, and the dot just so happens to be where the nose should be. Thus, the archaeologists believe that whoever marked the rock did so to complete the face. It may sound far-fetched that a Neanderthal could make such a deliberate artistic statement, but more and more evidence suggests that they were capable of more artistic and symbolic expression that they used to be given credit for. As much as it may hurt the pride of their successors, (Homo sapiens, also known as human beings) the Neanderthals may have beaten us to the punch when it comes to developing culture. Regardless of whether or not the red dot was an intentional creation, it is now officially the oldest human fingerprint ever found. How about a round of applause for the Paleolithic Picasso?

 
[Image description: A painting of a Neanderthal family by a cave, with a man holding a spear out front.] Credit & copyright: Neanderthal Flintworkers, Le Moustier Cavern, Dordogne, France, Charles Robert Knight (1874–1953). American Museum of Natural History, Public Domain.

What happens when you take the "mutually" out of "mutually assured destruction?” The answer, surprisingly, is a problem. The newly announced missile defense system dubbed the "Golden Dome" is drawing comparisons to President Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). While SDI was similar to the Golden Dome in many ways, the circumstances of its conception gave rise to a distinctly different set of issues.
 
As far as most Americans in the 1980s were concerned, the Cold War was a conflict without end. The U.S. and the Soviet Union were engaged in a morbid and seemingly inescapable mandate—that of mutually assured destruction (MAD). Both sides were armed with thousands of nuclear weapons ready to strike, set to launch in kind should either party decide to use them. In 1983, President Reagan proposed a way for the U.S. to finally gain the elusive upper hand. The plan was called the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), and would have used satellites in space equipped with laser weaponry to shoot down any intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM) launched by the Soviet Union.
 
Critics judged the plan to be infeasible and unrealistic, calling it "Star Wars" after the movie franchise of the same name. Indeed, the technology to make such a defense system didn’t exist yet. Even today, laser weaponry is mostly experimental in nature. Reagan’s plan also had the potential to be a foreign policy disaster. Whereas MAD had made the use of nuclear weapons forbidden by default, by announcing the SDI, the U.S. was announcing that it was essentially ready to take the "mutually" out of MAD. Thus, the very existence of the plan was seen as a sign of aggression, though the infeasible nature of the technology soon eased those concerns. There were also fears that successfully rendering nuclear weapons useless for one side would simply encourage an arms race of another kind. Ultimately, the SDI was scrapped by the 1990s as the end of the Cold War reduced the incentive to develop them. We did end up getting more Star Wars movies though, so that's something.

 
[Image description: A blue sky with a single, white cloud.] Credit & copyright: Dinkum, Wikimedia Commons. Creative Commons Zero, Public Domain Dedication.

Jumping jackalopes! Of all the hoaxes that anyone ever tried to pull off, the myth of the jackalope might be the most harmless. In fact, it proved surprisingly helpful. More than just a jackrabbit with a pair of antlers, the jackalope is the continuation of a surprisingly old myth and has even played a part in the development of a life-saving medical advancement.
 
On the surface, the jackalope is a fairly simple mythical beast. Most accounts describe it as looking like a black-tailed jackrabbit with a pair of antlers like a deer. Jackrabbits, despite their name, are actually hares, not rabbits. They have long, wide ears that stretch out from their heads and longer, leaner looking bodies than their rabbit cousins. None of them have antlers, though, and none of them have the same kinds of legends attached to them that jackalopes do.
 
Jackalopes aren’t exactly grand mythical beasts. They don’t guard treasure, as dragons do. They aren’t immortal, like phoenixes. They don’t lure humans to their deaths, like sirens, or perplex them with riddles, like sphynxes. Mostly, jackalopes just like to bother people for fun. Some claim that jackalopes will harmonize with cowboys singing by a campfire, and will only mate during lightning storms. It might be bad luck to hunt jackalopes, but some stories posit that the beasts can be easily tricked. Someone wishing to trap a jackalope can supposedly lure one by setting out a bowl of whiskey. Once a jackalope is drunk, it will be filled with bravado and believe that it can catch bullets with its teeth. But jackalopes are also able to catch hunters unawares thanks to their extraordinary vocal talents. Aside from their singing abilities, jackalopes can supposedly throw voices and mimic different sounds, even the ringtone of a hunter's phone.
 
Jackalopes are far from the only rabbit or hare tricksters in folklore, nor are they the only ones to have horns. In fact, stories of horned rabbits date back centuries. Europeans even officially recognized the supposed Lepus cornutus as a real species of horned hare, though it never really existed. The jackalope, however, is a purely American invention, cooked up by brothers Douglas and Ralph Herrick in 1932. According to their story, first revealed in Ralph's obituary in 2003, the brothers taxidermed a jackrabbit and attached horns to it themselves. They sold the taxidermed piece to a local bar for $10, and eventually started producing them en masse. While the Herrick brothers might have given rise to the popularity of the modern jackrabbit myth, the preexisting accounts of horned rabbits and hares might have been inspired by something less playful. Rabbits and hares around the world are vulnerable to a virus called Shope papillomavirus, named after Richard Shope, who discovered it in—coincidentally—1932. The virus is similar to the human papillomavirus (HPV), but unlike HPV, which causes cancer, Shope papillomavirus causes keratinized growths that can resemble horns to grow out of the skin. These growths can eventually get large enough to hinder the animal's health, and if it grows around the mouth, it can affect their ability to eat.
 
One animal's tragedy, it seems, can be another's treasure. The Shope papillomavirus was the first virus found to lead to cancer in a mammal, and this discovery led to advancements in human cancer research. In the 1970s, German virologist Harald zur Hausen proved that HPV was the main culprit for cervical cancer. Later, in the 1980s, Isabelle Giri published the complete genomic sequence of the Shope papillomavirus, which turned out to be similar to HPV. All these findings, of course, eventually led to the development of the HPV vaccine, which immunizes people against most strains of HPV responsible for causing cancer. Those are some leaps and bounds that even a jackalope would struggle to make.

 
[Image description: An illustration showing a squirrel, two rabbits, and a jackalope inside an oval. The jackalope sits in the center.] Credit & copyright: National Gallery of Art, Joris Hoefnagel, (Flemish, 1542 - 1600). Gift of Mrs. Lessing J. Rosenwald. Pubic Domain.