years

2,000 years ago the Romans sold perfumes in glass doves that could only be opened by breaking their necks.

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Despite their great efforts, the cities of the Roman Empire they didn’t smell good and well, it makes sense: they lived in conditions of high fecal contamination and also they used feces as medicine. Of course, to Caesar what belongs to Caesar: they had bottles to store their ointments and oils that, like the best current perfumes, promised a lot. Without going any further, the two bottles you see above these lines date from the 1st century AD, are from the Roman Empire and belong to the MET collection. Because from then on they knew that the (good) smell, coming from anointing oneself after bathing in hot springs, from incense from temples or from burials, was something more: it could be a language of status, identity and power. So for those smells they needed a container at their height that would turn the task of perfuming themselves into almost a ritual. For example, a dove. Dove-shaped jars. The ointments of the Romans were, in a nutshell, something like today’s ampoules: small ceramic or glass containers where they stored oils, commercial products or substances for funeral practices. blown glass arrive In the 1st century BC and 200 years later, the Romans were true virtuosos of glass manufacturing both in quality and quantity: according to the Penn Museummanufactured up to 100 million containers a year. These curious zoomorphic specimens in the shape of a bird and the size of which fit in the palm of the hand became so popular that they constitute a subcategory in themselves within their unguentary and it is common to find it in deposits. The method of use was practically identical to a vial: you have to break that small neck to access the contents inside. In this case, literally breaking the bird’s neck. In addition to its aesthetic value, they met their goal when storing valuable ointments: it protected the contents from excessive exposure to oxygen and helped to dose the amount poured. Why is it important. Converting ointment bottles into something more sophisticated in the shape of a bird constitutes one of the first and most striking cases of packaging and user experience (imagine that unboxing of an influencer of the time). Have a glass jar and also with this type of shapes It was a status indicator.as witnessed by the art of that period, where we see men and women perfumed after a visit to the hot springs. On the other hand and leaving aside the shape, these jars are the vestiges of the imperial commercial network: spices from India, resins from Arabia and locally grown flowers were used to make perfumes and ointments. If they also go to the laboratory, they constitute a valuable source of chemical data on Roman civilization and its customs. Without going any further, a laboratory analysis allowed identify a primal patchouli in an exhibition in Carmona (Seville). Context. Among these zoomorphic glasses the dove was the star: archaeological evidence suggests that the dove was one of the first birds domesticated by humans, so people learned its habits and characteristics and used it for messaging. On the spiritual level, they introduced it into their religious rituals and mythology. Thus, the dove was the sacred animal of Venus and she was often represented in statues with a dove perched on her hand or on her head. However, this relationship is much older: already in the Bronze Age, in Sumerian Mesopotamia, consists the association between doves and the mother goddess. Storing perfume in a container in the shape of your sacred animal is a fully conscious and coherent act. Yes, but. Many of these readings of the dove-shaped glass jars are hypotheses based on what we know about the Romans, but we don’t know for sure: these perfumes could well be for everyday use or for funeral rituals. Likewise, they were not exclusive objects of the wealthiest classes: the simplest ointments were within the reach of the popular classes and their shapes were refined over time. In short, the dove could have different meanings depending on who had it and what for. In Xataka | The fall of the Roman Empire has obsessed us for centuries: some economists believe they have the answer in 400,000 coins In Xataka | Almost 2,000 years ago a Celtiberian soldier visited the most remote frontier of the Roman Empire. Then he returned to Soria with a souvenir Cover | MET

60 years ago they sank a thousand-year-old church in a reservoir in Barcelona. Only the drought has brought it back to the surface

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He Sau swampin the Osona region (Barcelona), has a surprise: when the drought hits, lowering the level of the reservoir enough, it reveals a superb stone bell tower that has been submerged since 1962. The tower belongs to Sant Romà de Sau, a Romanesque church from the 11th century that the Franco regime sank (normally up to 23 meters deep) to supply water to Barcelona In fact, during the pressing crisis of 2023, the drought left it completely grounded, as NASA photographed from spaceThe fact that it is more than a thousand years old and still standing even though it lives submerged is commendable, but it is also the oldest church in the world that is still standing in water. according to the Official World Record. Once upon a church (and a town) submerged in a swamp. More specifically, the church of Sant Romà de Sau is in the Lombard Romanesque style and was consecrated in the year 1061. It was originally built with a single nave oriented from east to west and with a square bell tower three-story semi-detachedprecisely the one that can be seen when there is drought. The church that It is normally submerged at a depth of 23 meters It is not exactly the original: it has been accumulating interventions, such as a reform and expansion after the damage of an earthquake or a remodeling in the 19th century, when the apse was demolished and the orientation of the temple was changed. The bell tower is the vestige of what was once there: the church of a town that was also submerged. The settlement of Sant Romà data 917. Before the water level rose and flooded everything, there they lived 300 inhabitants in the middle of the 20th century who were dedicated to agriculture, livestock and forestry. That of Sant Romà is another story of towns submerged after the execution of the hydraulic project, which led to the expropriation of homes and agricultural farms, its inhabitants had to leave their home without taking part in the matter or receiving compensation. Context. The water that reaches the Catalan capital comes mainly from the Ter and Llobregat rivers through a network of reservoirs. In the case of the Ter, specifically the reservoirs of Sau and those of Susqueda and Pastry. The metropolitan area of ​​Barcelona suffered significant demographic growth during Franco’s development, so the infrastructure was no longer adequate. The construction of the reservoir falls precisely within those years, although the original project goes back to 1931 and the works did not begin until 1942. As the professor and director of the Department of History at the University of Santiago de Compostela Daniel Lanero explains to Newtral.es, what the Franco regime did was “give continuity to the hydraulic policy that had been put into practice since the end of the 19th century.” Beatriz García, professor of contemporary history at the University of León, explains the two bases of this water resources management policy: general plan of irrigation canals and swamps of 1902 and the national hydraulic works plan approved in the Second Republic. Why is it important. That this church breaks conservation records in such complicated conditions does not mean that it is eternal: in 1999 it was already had to be restored after decades under water due to the weakness of its structure. In any case, the church of Sant Romà de Sau is a clear example of the “submerged heritage“, a category in which archeology and cultural law have been trying to regulate for decades. without much success. The sinking of Sant Romà and its church is not an isolated case but a common practice of the Franco regime: the construction of reservoirs during the dictatorship led to the displacement of tens of thousands of people from their towns in a traumatic process of forced displacement of rooted places for its population. In the Spanish state alone there are about 500 towns that were swallowed up by the water due to the construction of dams and reservoirs. In Xataka | In World War II, a town in Lithuania buried its bell to protect it from the Nazis. They did not find it until 2024 In Xataka | For 60 years, a farmer with no idea about architecture built a cathedral from scratch in Madrid. The bureaucracy has closed it Cover | joan ggk and Quico Llach

Western scientists have been debating the origin of Kamo’oalewa for years. China went looking for him

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If everything goes according to schedule, the Chinese Tianwen-2 mission will be about to arrive at Kamo’oalewa, the co-orbital object on Earth to which it is heading to discern once and for all whether it is an asteroid or a lunar fragment. Actually this It is not the only coorbital on our planet. There are other objects that take exactly the same time as us to go around the Sun, so they can be said to be our traveling companions. However. z Kamo’oalewa has been one of the best characterized since it was discovered in 2016. Since then, European and American scientists have been striving to find out its origin, leaving the balance more tilted on some occasions towards the lunar fragment and on others towards the asteroid. But it is clear that to have a definitive answer we need to analyze samples of its surface. In order to obtain them, China jumped to the rescue. A mission to answer once and for all. The Tianwen-2 mission was launched in May 2025 bound for Kamo’oalewa. In the next few days it should reach the satellite, to start taking samples next month. The samples will later make the return journey and land on our planet in 2027 so that scientists at the Chinese Academy of Sciences can investigate them. Then we will finally know where our traveling companion comes from. Two hypotheses, many changes of opinion. Kamo’oalewa was first observed in April 2016, thanks to the Pan-STARRS telescope at the Haleakala Observatory in Hawaii. That same year, a team of European scientists made his first characterization. Thanks to them we had very specific information about this object. For example, its orbit was calculated and its thermal inertia was analyzed. That is, the speed with which its surface responds to changes in temperature. After that characterization, further investigations were carried out at the Arizona Planetary Science Institute. From those analyzes two hypotheses emerged for its origin: it could be an asteroid that escaped from the asteroid belt or a fragment of the Moon that jumped from there due to a large impact. This last hypothesis arose from spectroscopic observations made with the Large Binocular Telescope (LBT) and the Lowell Discovery Telescope (LDT). The spectra indicated that this object is very rich in silicates, like the lunar samples collected on the Apollo missions. In addition, there was a reddish band that seemed to correspond to the spectrum of lunar soil that has received many impacts from micrometeorites and solar wind. The first hypothesis returns. This same year, a team of European scientists has carried out a new study in which the probabilities of both hypotheses are analyzed. Clearly, the asteroid option wins over the lunar fragment option. China to the rescue China to the rescue. As Tianwen-2 approaches Kamo’oalewa, Chinese scientists have begun to make their own characterizations from a distance. For example, a study was recently published in which they compared the spectrum they measured in Arizona with that of a chondrite bombarded by laser. The chondrites They are rocky asteroids that have impacted the Earth in the form of meteorites. Laser bombardment mimics the effects of several million years of impacts. When analyzing the spectrum of this manipulated chondrite, they saw a reddish band very similar to that of Kamo’oalewa. Therefore, it is possible that it is an asteroid rich in silicates. There doesn’t have to be just them. on the moon. Specifically, they believe that it may be from the Flora family, coming from the asteroid belt. The hypothesis that is winning. Currently the asteroid hypothesis wins, although there will be no clear answer until the Tianwen-2 samples reach Earth. After many debates by scientists from Europe and the United States, the answer will be brought by a Chinese ship. This, once again, shows us how important it is to work as a team to answer the big questions of the Universe. Image | 中国新闻社 In Xataka | There is a silent race to take over the Moon’s waves: dozens of companies have claimed part of its spectrum

A Chinese company has been building AI for years to predict who is going to criticize the government before they do so

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In ‘Minority Report‘, Tom Cruise was the head of the pre-crime police, a department capable of arresting criminals before they could commit the crime in question, all thanks to the powers of mutants or precogs. Well, according to the New York Timesthere is a Chinese company that is trying to build a similar system, but their target will be future political dissidents and instead of mutants with powers they will use AI. what’s happening. The leak reported in the New York Times contains internal documents from the Chinese company Geedge Networks and has been published by a group of researchers at Vanderbilt University. In it they detail how the company is building an AI system capable of predicting which citizens will become political dissidents in the future. Geedge is investigating how to use LLM to synthesize large packets of data (including browsing histories, locations, online activity and contacts) and then infer citizens’ behavior, detecting whether they will present a “political risk” in the future. Like the police precrime, but for political dissidents. What is Geedge?. In September 2025 we learned that a Chinese company was exporting the surveillance system known as “Great Firewall of China” to other countries. It was Geedge Networks. The company, which has one of the creators of the Chinese firewall as a key investor, has already sold its solution to countries such as Kazakhstan, Pakistan, Ethiopia and Myanmar. What this great firewall does is analyze the traffic of entire countries, even capturing personal data such as passwords and emails. Why is it important. According to the leak, the system is in the research phase, but it is still a disturbing approach. It is no longer just about using AI to monitor what people do, the next thing is to anticipate what they could do and even think. We see every day that AI models have biases and make many errors, using them as predictors to repress dissent poses a terrifying scenario. Tech authoritarianism as a service. As we said, Geedge is already exporting its solutions to other countries so it is selling technological authoritarianism as a service. The worst thing is that we do not find this only in China, but it is a global trend: the United States too you are delegating critical security functions to private and disreputable corporations like Palantir, and The United Kingdom also wants to follow in their footsteps. The bottleneck. There is good news (if you can call it that) and that is that Geedge has encountered a problem in developing this system: they do not have the power to manage such a volume of data. According to the New York Times, since they cannot access the most powerful chips due to the US blockade, since 2024 they have been forced to use AI models and less powerful chips. In order for the system to be able to manage the enormous amount of data they already collect, they need computing capacity that they currently do not have, always according to US sources. Image | Xataka with Gemini In Xataka | We have been hearing for years that China scans the faces of millions of citizens every day. It’s already happening in Europe

We were already using fire 800,000 years earlier than we thought

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He dominion of fire isWithout a doubt, the greatest turning point in the technological and evolutionary history of our lineage. It gave us warmth, it scared away predators and, by allowing us to cook food, it triggered the development of our brains and also our own lives. Until now, the scientific consensus placed the strongest evidence of its early use at around one million years, although this is no longer the case. A new study. a new study published in PLOS ONE takes us to Wonderwerk Cave, in the northern Cape province of South Africa. This site was already “old acquaintance” for paleoanthropologists, since in 2012 a team demonstrated the existence of fire on site in layer 10 of the cave, dated to approximately one million years. And this is important because from here the consensus was created about when humans discovered fire. But the story didn’t end there. The new study has descended one more step in time, specifically to layer 11 of the same cave and there they have found burned bones with an age that ranges between 1.07 and 1.79 million years. And it is vital. The location of the remains is vital, since they were found 30 meters deep inside the cavern. This completely rules out that the fire marks are the product of a random forest fire or a lightning strike, but rather that someone had to carry those flames there after learning to control the fire. A new debate. The evidence that suggests that our past knew how to make fire is much later, since in sites such as Gesher Benot Ya’aqov In Israel, total control of technology is already shown. What this new finding raises is whether these Homo erectus early people did not know how to light a fire from scratch. What is proposed is that instead they were “thieves” of nature, since they took advantage of natural fires caused by lightning or volcanoes, collected the embers and transported them inside the cave to keep them alive as long as possible. A technique that, although it seems simple, entails great cognitive and social complexity. The technology. If the fire in layer 11 had not been confirmed until now, it is because it is incredibly difficult to distinguish a bone burned almost two million years ago from a fossilized bone that has undergone chemical alterations. And it is no wonder, since with the passage of millennia, diagenetic processes such as fluoridation or the accumulation of manganese can darken the fossils, giving them a false appearance of having been carbonized. But now we have very important tools, such as luminescence techniques combined with Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, which allow us to reveal chemical secrets at the molecular level. A new paradigm. The experts who have given their opinion on this study through the Science Media Center Spain such as Joaquín Panera or researchers specialized in fire such as Aitor Burguet-Coca agree in describing the methodological protocol as “innovative”, highlighting that it opens the door to reevaluate huge collections of fossils in other sites, such as Koobi Fora in Kenya, where there are ambiguous signs of fire 1.5 million years ago. In Xataka | We had always believed that evolution had been arrested for thousands of years. The redheads were telling us the opposite

We’ve spent years unraveling a signal from space that shouldn’t exist. And finally we have a “Rosetta stone” to decipher it

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It was the year 2018 when a team of Australian scientists detected a strange radio signal in the plane of the Milky Way. The radio pulse was too slow for any known astronomical object. It seemed more like some kind of anomaly or error in the telescopes than a new discovery. However, in 2025 another similar signal was located. And then another and another. Currently, there are at least 12 of these signals recorded, which have been named long-period radio transients (LPTs). Each of them includes a new feature that makes it impossible to find a common thread. Or at least it had been that way until now, since a new group of Australian researchers has located a sign that brings together several of the pieces of the puzzle. It has been so useful that it has been colloquially dubbed a space Rosetta stone. All the pieces together. The signal located in 2018 (although it was published in 2022) occurred every 18.18 minutes. With this periodicity, a star in the Milky Way increased its brightness for 30-60 seconds, and then decreased it again. Later a similar phenomenon was located, in which it was possible to see further. A binary system consisting of a white dwarf and a red dwarf was identified. The interaction between the two produced the emission of radio waves. However, when another LPT was detected, the emissions were not radio waves, but X-rays. How was a single phenomenon going to be defined if each one was different from the previous one? The key, finally, has been another LPT, initially located by the ASKAP telescope, of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO). With it, and with the collaboration of other telescopes, a binary system composed of a white dwarf and a red dwarf has been identified, whose interaction gives rise to a periodic change in brightness, accompanied by the emission of radio waves and X-rays. All in one. With all the pieces, it has now been possible to reconstruct the event. Four telescopes to reconstruct history. The new LPT has been named ASKAP J1745-5051. It is not possible to know exactly how far away it is, although estimates place it between 1,300 and 30,000 light years away. Observations made with the ASKAP radio telescope made it possible to locate a periodic emission of radio waves every 81 minutes, which corresponded to a possible LPT. In order to check if the rest of the conditions that had been observed individually were met, it was observed with three other telescopes. On the one hand, space telescopes Swift and Einstein Probewith which X-ray emissions were detected. On the other hand, with the Southern Astrophysical Research Telescope (SOAR). With this, a binary system composed of a white dwarf and a red dwarf that orbit each other with a period of 81 minutes was identified. Everything fits. The full story. The conclusion when putting all the pieces together is the following. On each orbit, the white dwarf, which has a large mass concentrated in very little space, gravitationally attracts the red dwarf and extracts material from it. This is channeled by the magnetic field of the white dwarf itself until it reaches its surface, where it collides, producing a temperature increase of millions of degrees Celsius. Furthermore, this very violent interaction causes the release of energy in the form of X-rays. On the other hand, the gas accelerated by the colliding magnetic fields of both stars is what appears to produce the radio signals. A Rosetta Stone. The principal investigator of this new study It’s called Kovi Rose. We might think that this has had to do with the fact that the discovery is referred to as a space Rosetta stone. And maybe it has had a little influence, but the reality is that there are more reasons. The original Rosetta stone It was a fragment of Egyptian rock in which there was a text written in three different languages: ancient Greek, hieroglyphics and demotic writing. Because archaeologists of the time knew how to speak Greek, they were able to use it as a basis for understanding hieroglyphs. One language allowed them to reconstruct another. In this case, the new discovery is also in three languages: radio waves, detected by ASKAP, X-rays, with which Swift and Einstein Probe work, and visible light from SOAR. Three languages, three pieces that, when read together, can help to understand the whole much better. With this Rosetta stone, the authors of the study hope to be able to unravel many of these mysterious signals from the Universe. Image | Hans Hillewaert (Wikimedia Commons)/Magnific In Xataka | We believed that the pyramids of Giza did not hide any more secrets. we believed wrong

Anti-mosquito repellents have been effective for 40 years. Now mosquitoes are learning to appreciate them

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Summer is practically upon us and this means that mosquitoes are also beginning to be the order of the day. Here one of the great allies we have to spend a good night is the repellent that keeps mosquitoes away from our skin, but the problem is that now these little insects seem to have unlocked a new and disturbing achievement: relating repellent to the best place to bite. A new problem. A recent study published in the magazine Journal of Experimental Biology points out that the classic repellent made up of the synthetic molecule N,N-Diethyl-meta-toluamide It has stopped repelling mosquitoes and started attracting them. In this study, the researchers focused on the Aedes aegyptithe infamous mosquito yellow feverdengue and Zika. From here, what they did was design a highly controlled laboratory environment with meshes, heat sources that simulated human warm blood or sugar rewards. But they combined all these ideal conditions with the presence of the smell of repellent. The result. From several cycles of exposure to these environmental conditions, they could see that mosquitoes had the ability to learn and create an association between the repellent and the presence of a good place to bite. This means that if a mosquito dares to cross the barrier left by the repellent and manages to bite, or feed on sugar in this case, its brain is reprogrammed and the repellent goes from being a “danger” signal to a “there is food here” signal. In fact, the data showed that, after this conditioning, more than 60% of mosquitoes They went back to searching for the smell of the repellent, ignoring its original repulsive nature. It takes years. Although the jump to “attraction” is novel, the reality is that entomologists have been keeping the fly behind their ears for some time. Without going any further, in 2013 a study already showed that mosquitoes developed tolerance to repellents. In this case, it was found that three hours after a first exposure to DEET, the insects ignored the repellent. And now we know a little more about what exactly happens neurobiologically. You have to use it well. These results have occurred in a very controlled environment and forcing scenarios that are very specific with guaranteed rewards. But in the real world we find greater chaos and a mosquito that smells the repellent and cannot bite, because the concentration is high, it does not receive the “reward” of blood, so that learning is not consolidated. That is why researchers point to the need for the repellent to be applied within the time frame and in adequate concentration. But this does not mean that we do not have to redesign public health strategies adapting them to this plasticity that mosquitoes have, since we are not just talking about an annoying bite, but we are talking about the fact that the mosquito is a transmitter of very important diseases such as malaria or Zika. Images | Erik Karits In Xataka | Mosquitoes attack me in summer and I tried these TikTok tricks to get rid of them

Predicting Alzheimer’s 10 years in advance is now a scientific reality. The challenge now is to prevent healthcare from collapsing

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Alzheimer’s is a devastating disease that is undoubtedly a true ghost, since it only It becomes visible when the damage is already irreparable and that, despite trying to stop it, it is becoming difficult to control it. And historically, the medical diagnosis comes when memory begins to fail, but by then the brain has been suffering in silence for years, even decades. Now science focuses on the need for early diagnosis so that treatments can work. A new analysis. One of the ways to detect this disease before it begins to show the classic symptoms such as memory loss is through a blood test. This is the milestone that has been collected in The Lancet magazine recently thanks to research from the University of California, and that could generate a large population screening that is not free of controversy. What they did. The researchers followed 1,350 people aged between 56 and 69, without any type of dementia, for more than 35 years. And here the key was to look for specific proteins circulating in the blood that increased in the earliest phases of Alzheimer’s, as occurs with others marked in other diseases such as PSA in prostate cancer. And they found two biomarkers. The first of them is Aβ42/40, which is an early indicator that warns of the accumulation of hateful beta-amyloid plaques in the brain. But they also found the protein p-tau217, which is considered today the most precise marker for the pathology. The results. The 6% of participants who tested positive for these biomarkers showed a four-fold increased risk of developing verbal memory problems and a decline in their cognitive speed a decade later. But science has been trying to refine this tool for years, looking for markers such as GFAP, which rises about ten years before symptoms appear. See the invisible. The blood test does not walk alone in this diagnostic revolution, since on the same day, The Lancet published a second study based on nearly 800 participants from the US and Canada that tests a new and sophisticated neuroimaging technology: the MK6240 PET plotter. Until now, visualizing the tau protein, which is one of those responsible for Alzheimer’s by accumulating in neurons, was a great challenge. But this new tracer promises to be much more sensitive, detecting twice as many positive cases in healthy people with amyloid accumulation compared to the standard used today. You have to wait. Before throwing the bells in the air, it should be noted that experts point out that this test not ready to be used as general population screening. The reason lies in mathematics, since the prevalence of asymptomatic Alzheimer’s in healthy middle-aged people remains low in absolute terms, so applying this test to everyone would generate a very high volume of false positives. That is, an increase in this protein that is not actually related to early Alzheimer’s. But logically, the fear, anxiety and the resulting cascade of confirmatory tests would collapse the health services that are already stressed, and furthermore, the drugs we have, despite the fact that they stop the effects of the disease in its earliest phases, are not yet definitive. That is why we must remain on the right path, but there is still a long way to go to get this disease under control. Images | Robina Weermeijer Testalize.me In Xataka | Alzheimer’s no longer seems irreversible: science allows brains with advanced damage to recover for the first time in animals

2,000 years ago, a lame and bald slave began speaking in the taverns of Rome. His “two-handle theory” has marked modern psychology

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We are in the first third of the second century after Christ and what we see is a boy from Nicomedia obsessively writing down everything that a weak, bald and half-lame old man says. Arrian does not know it, but those notes that will see the light in 135, will never be forgotten. Some call it “perennial wisdom” and, in fact, much of its ideas helped generate, 2,000 years later, things like modern psychotherapy. It’s still surprising, really. After all, in many parts of the Enchiridion, they spend their time talking about vessels. Vessels? For example. In section 43, you can read that “Everything has two handles, one by which it can be carried and one by which it cannot be carried. If your brother acts unjustly, do not take the matter by the handle of injustice (because by that it cannot be carried), but by the other: which is your brother, who were raised together.” A philosophy always on the verge of ridicule. I speak of Epictetus’s vessel, because, in these times of ‘pop stoicism’, most of the times when the theory of the two handles is cited it is done wrong. The core of Epictetus’ ideathe old and lame philosopher at the beginning of the article, is not resigning, it is not denying injustice, nor shrugging one’s shoulders in the face of it. The essential thing is to ‘reframe the relationship with her’ in order to manage it. Epictetus demonstrates the old saying that there is nothing more practical than a good theory and what he is telling us is that “if the handle we use doesn’t work, why do we insist on continuing to use it?” What is stoicism? In principle, Stoicism is intellectual archaeology. It is true that the Stoic school was a tremendously fertile current of thought in three areas: ethics, logic and physics (that is, in natural science). But it is also true that Stoic physics has been surpassed by modern science and its advanced logical ideas (after being ignored for a long time) are fully integrated into modern propositional logic. The only “rescuable” thing is his ethics. That is, a practical philosophy that tries to transform the emotions, impulses and passions of the human being and turn them into a tool to find inner calm. And it has been tried, but things went wrong. For the Stoics, human flourishing (‘eudaimonia’, the good life) consisted of achieve that ‘apatheia’that peace of mind. Its main tool is a basic distinction: the things we can control, on the one hand, and those we cannot, on the other. The Stoic interest, as Epictetus points out in his theory of the two handles, is in the first ones, those that can be controlled. Then came to ‘broicism’ (the hijacking of stoicism by an “ultra-processed pseudo-philosophy full of patterns of aggression, self-isolation and self-improvement). But there are always things to learn… In the 1950s, American psychologists such as Albert Ellis led the development of cognitive therapies following some very similar ideas to the Stoics. And, in recent years, the role of Hellenic philosophies has been explored as “preventive psychological medicines”. That is, as a set of ideas that would help to have a healthy psychological life, all of this makes sense. Epictetus shows it. …especially in this world. A few years ago, the Complutense professor Ignacio Pajón Leyra held that the Hellenistic era in which Stoicism developed is very similar to our own. They are similar in social instability, in major political changes; They are similar in that traditional religion began to decline and the first great globalization occurred; They are similar in that community projects began to lose strength and the individual gained more and more social and political weight. As we said thenit is possible that Pajón Leyra is right and human beings use philosophies, beliefs and doctrines as a way to make sense of the world. And, in that sense, “similar worlds” require “similar philosophies.” But then, what’s really interesting about this boom in Stoicism is what it’s saying about us. Image | Xataka In Xataka | What is Stoicism, the Greek philosophy from 2,000 years ago that has become fashionable again today

We knew that living near the sea made us “gain” years of life. What we didn’t know is that it was literally

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We have known for a long time that getting closer to nature has benefits for our health. Beyond avoiding pollution in our cities, getting closer to the natural environments around us can improve our psychological well-being, perhaps even encouraging us to lead a more active life. Little by little, we are also observing that something similar happens if we change the mountain for the sea. More sea, more life. A study has observed a correlation between residing in coastal areas and greater longevity. The analysis provide evidence of the link between bodies of water and the health and well-being of people. Of course, the relationship between “blue spaces” and health is a little more complex than it might seem. 50 kilometers. The study observed that the benefits of living near the ocean improved the quality of life of people residing within a strip of about 50 kilometers of the coast. Inland, however, they observed a very different trend: people who lived near bodies of water of a certain size (about 10 km² in surface area) tended to have shorter life expectancies. “Globally, coastal residents are expected to live a year or more longer than the median age of 79, and those who lived in more urban areas near inland rivers and lakes were more likely to die around age 78. Coastal residents likely lived longer due to a variety of interconnected factors,” highlighted in a press release Jianyong “Jamie” Wu, member of the team responsible for the study. 66,000 census areas. The study was carried out in the United States, where the team analyzed 66,263 census areas, studying life expectancy and its relationship not only with the proximity of bodies of water, but also with socioeconomic and demographic factors to control the results. Details of the study can be found in an article published in the magazine Environmental Research. Searching for the cause. The team points out different factors that could mediate this relationship, such as milder temperatures, better air quality, more opportunities for recreational activities, better transportation, less vulnerability to droughts, or income. These factors could explain why residing near the coast is associated with a longer life expectancy, in contrast to people who live near inland waters. “Pollution, poverty, lack of opportunities to be physically active and a greater risk of flooding are the main triggers for these differences,” Yanni Cao indicatedco-author of the study. Correlation or cause? Fits remember that the existence of a correlation does not always imply the existence of a direct (or even indirect) causal relationship. For example, if income is the determining factor, this causal relationship could take different forms. A possible route would start from the fact that the coastal areas they would be more expensiveso they would attract people with more income, income being a factor that we know affects our life expectancy. Another possible way would be that coastal areas generate higher incomes by offering more job opportunities, and these incomes would again be the determining factor in longevity. In both cases the mediating factor is the same, but the causal relationship is not. In Xataka | Why it is hotter in cities than in the countryside: the urban heat island effect In Xataka | Perhaps aging better does not depend only on the body: science is also beginning to study the effect of art and culture Image | Emiliano Arano This article was originally published in August 2025

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