Before the word « metasurface » first appeared, optical elements that were thinner than a wavelength and deflected light in direction incompatible with Snell’s law already existed. Based on three examples, we review underlying concepts their evolution past few decades.

The knowledge about discrete quantum breathers, accumulated during the last two decades, is reviewed. "Prehistory" of the problem is described and some important properties differentiating localized and extended vibrational modes are outlined. The state of art of our understanding of the principal features of the quantum discrete breathers is presented.

Scope, Context and Contribution. This paper well attests to Robert Sokal’s broad contribution to a cross-disciplinary human prehistory. For here, he and Jiangtian Chen team up with Merritt Ruhlen to add a linguistic perspective to a genetic one: specifically, to test whether the lineages of our languages might correlate, on a very ambitious worldwide scale, with those of our genes. “The implica...

This paper traces the growing role of categories and n-categories in physics, starting with groups and their role in relativity, and leading up to more sophisticated concepts which manifest themselves in Feynman diagrams, spin networks, string theory, loop quantum gravity, and topological quantum field theory. Our chronology ends around 2000, with just a taste of later developments such as open...

If demographers could ask one question of the wisest of our prehistoric ancestors, they would surely ask, "How was the growth of your population kept so slow?" The average rate of growth in the numbers of our ancestors over a million years cannot by any stretch of the imagination have exceeded one thousandth of our own world rate of growth in the last two decades, and this low long-term average...

There is a wealth of archaeological evidence, from bones excavated in prehistoric middens, piles of fruit stones and sea shells, that give us concrete indications of food consumed at various prehistoric sites around Europe. Added to this information we have pollen analysis from settlement sites and charred plant macrofossils. Wetland archaeology informs us in much more detail not just which foo...