Robert Hackett

Warriors among the Kwara’ae, a collection of tribal communities indigenous to the Solomon Islands, sacrificed pigs before battle. The tradition granted the combatants, so the belief went, aid from heroic ancestral spirits—like the mighty A’orama, a fierce fighter in Kwara’ae folklore. For every man who prepared to shed blood, a hog met its end.1Any non-superstitious […]

Nils Aall Barricelli showed that organisms evolved by symbiosis and cooperation.

This maverick forerunner of artificial life and animation remains largely unknown.