2024-12-26
5 分钟The Economist. Hello, this is Alok Jha,
host of Babbage, our weekly podcast on science and technology.
Welcome to Editor's Picks.
We've chosen an unmissable article from the latest edition of The Economist.
Please do have a listen.
Givers of educational gifts rejoice.
Despite the eye-rolls you may receive on Christmas morning,
you are part of a long and valuable tradition.
In cultures around the world,
toys have been used to teach children what they need to know about the society they live in.
When the toys teach the right skills, the children are prepared and thrive.
When they do not, calamity beckons.
And how?
New work led by Matilde Maier,
a PhD student at Aarhus University in Denmark, and Felix Rieder, her supervisor,
reveals that giving the wrong toys probably played an important part in dooming the Norse settlers who came to Greenland from Iceland in 985.
Greenland was mostly covered in ice when the Norse made the journey,
save for a thin strip of fertile land along the coastline where they could farm.
The settlers flourished for a few hundred years, but as the world entered a cold period,
known as the Little Ice Age, in 1300, records show that they started to struggle.