News JOHN BADER
VIA SPAJOURNALISM.COM/
I,Science Highly Commended by the Student Publication Association in national awards It’s like the Oscars, but for student publications – I,Science was a frontrunner for the “Best Science Publication or Section” category at the Student Publication National Conference. I,Science was nominated for the “Best Science Publication or Section” award by the Student Publication Association in late March. The awards ceremony, which was part of a three-day conference organised by the association, took place on April 9th, and I,Science placed runner-up for the category. I,Science was highly commended by
the judges particularly for the latest issue of its magazine, which was published in January earlier this year. Both the theme and its “super slick” design were highlighted during the awards ceremony. The award went to Concrete, the official student newspaper of the University of East Anglia. The newspaper was awarded for its “great original reporting”, as well as its coverage of the university’s research and other local stories in Norwich. The ceremony was part of a national conference that is organised and held
The rise of complex civilisations was catalysed not only by farming, but farming a specific type of crops It’s funny to think that current complex societal hierarchies and civilisations once depended on what type of food they produced and stored. According to multiple data sets, this is most likely to be the case with cereal produce being the secret ingredient to the rise of civilisation. The conventional hypothesis relating the rise of civilisations to farming has been around for ages. The hypothesis is based on the “productivity-and-surplus” explanation for the emergence of hierarchies and civilisations. The explanation highlights the importance of surplus in produce in driving the development of a civilisation. The more
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food produced, the more likely a civilisation would develop. However, this view has been contested by a number of researchers claiming that it is not about the amount of food, rather about its appropriability, its capacity to be stored or hoarded. The comparison is carried out between regions where cereal, like maize and wheat, is the main produce, as opposed to roots and tubers, like potatoes and yams. Cereal crops have higher appropriability than roots and tubers, since they can be stored for longer periods. Thus, creating an “elite” layer of the society that has the capacity to store the produce and tax it later on.
annually by the Student Publication Association. This year, the conference was the first to be held after a hiatus of three years. It was held in Sheffield between April 8th and 10th, and it featured notable speakers from the industry, as well as workshops and other networking events. “We’d like to thank the SPA, Imperial College London, our editors and contributors, our sponsors and supporters, and above all, you, our loyal readers!” ■
The new hypothesis posits that regions with cereal as the main produce have developed into complex civilisations with hierarchical societies beyond basic chiefdom. "Using these novel data, we were able to show that complex hierarchies, like complex chiefdoms and states, arose in areas in which cereal crops, which are easy to tax and to expropriate, were de-facto the only available crops," explains economist Luigi Pascali from Pompeu Fabra University in Spain. The hypothesis is backed by multiple examples of regions where this pattern applies. One of which is the ‘Fertile Crescent’, a region spanning over modern-time Lebanon, Syria and Iraq. This region was highly dependent on cereal crops and is said to be the cradle of human civilization. Well, turns out, we actually are what we eat! ■
