anthropology

Fire transformed humanity. It allowed cooking — which expanded our diet, shrank our guts, and grew our brains. It enabled metallurgy, ceramics, glass, and ultimately civilization itself. Without it, our species would be smaller, weaker, less intelligent, and forever stuck in the Stone Age.

Papua New Guinea hosts 840 distinct languages within its borders — more than 10% of all human languages on Earth. This ranking of countries by linguistic diversity reveals which nations are home to the greatest number of languages, why that diversity emerged, and what threatens it.

Are the dead outnumbered by the living? How do 8 billion people today compare to all of human history? Demographers have actually calculated this — and the answer reveals surprising truths about our species.