Sunday, September 24, 2023

Pollen analysis suggests dispersal of modern humans occurred during a major Pleistocene warming spell

Pollen analysis suggests peopling of Siberia and Europe by modern humans occurred during a major Pleistocene warming spell — Map showing theorized migration routes of early Homo sapiens from Africa across

It's an Ice Age mystery that's been debated for decades among anthropologists: Exactly when and how did the flow of Homo sapiens in Eurasia happen? Did a cold snap or a warming spell drive early human movement from Africa into Europe and Asia?

A study appearing in Science Advances compares Pleistocene vegetation communities around Lake Baikal in Siberia, Russia, to the oldest archaeological traces of Homo sapiens in the region. The researchers use the "remarkable evidence" to tell a compelling story from 45,000–50,000 years ago with new detail: how the first humans migrated across Europe and Asia.

The new pollen data suggest warming temperatures supported forests that expanded into Siberia and facilitated early human migration there, at roughly the same time as more and western areas of Eurasia.

"This research addresses long-standing debates regarding the environmental conditions that early Homo sapiens faced during their migration into Europe and Asia around 40,000 to 50,000 years ago," said co-author Ted Goebel, professor of anthropology at the University of Kansas. "It provides critical insights into environmental conditions at Lake Baikal, using pollen records to reveal surprising warmth during this period."

Indeed, the pollen data suggest that the dispersal of people occurred during some of the highest temperatures in the late Pleistocene, which also would have featured higher humidity. The ancient pollen record shows coniferous forests and grasslands characterized the region, able to support foraging and hunting by humans. Goebel said the environmental data, combined with archaeological evidence, tell a new story.

"This contradicts some recent archaeological perspectives in Europe," said the KU researcher. "The key factor here is accurate dating, not just of human fossils and animal bones associated with the archaeology of these people, but also of environmental records, including from pollen. What we have presented is a robust chronology of environmental changes in Lake Baikal during this time period, complemented by a well-dated archaeological record of Homo sapiens' presence in the region."

Goebel's collaborators were lead author Koji Shichi of the Forestry and Forest Products Research Institute in Kochi, Japan; Masami Izuho of Tokyo Metropolitan University, Hachioji, Japan; and Kenji Kashiwaya of Kanazawa University, Kanazawa, Japan.

While the pollen analysis was carried out in Japan, Goebel and Izuho tied the pollen data to important evidence in the archaeological record of early human migration.

Goebel said the emergence of full-fledged Homo sapiens in the archaeological record corresponds to changes in culture and behavior. Early modern humans of this period were making stone tools on long, slender blades, working bone, antler and ivory to craft tools—including some of the first bone needles with carved eyelets for sewing and early bone and antler spear points.

"Some of us argue that as the anatomical changes were occurring, as evidenced by the fossil record, there was a simultaneous shift in behavior and cognition," Goebel said.

"These early humans were becoming more creative, innovative and adaptable. This is when we start to observe significant changes in the archaeological record, such as cave paintings. We also find mobile art, like the early carvings known as Venus figurines. In Central Europe, there's even an ivory sculpture dating back to this early period, depicting a lion-headed man. It's not just replicating nature; it's about creative expression, inventing new things, exploring new places."

At least one human bone has been found in the region that dates to the era, according to the KU researcher.

"There is one human fossil from Siberia, although not from Lake Baikal but farther west, at a place called Ust'-Ishim," Goebel said. "Morphologically, it is human, but more importantly, it's exceptionally well-preserved. It has been directly radiocarbon-dated and has yielded ancient DNA, confirming it as a representative of modern Homo sapiens, distinct from Neanderthals or Denisovans, or other pre-modern archaic humans."

Goebel said the earliest human inhabitants of the area likely would have lived in extended nuclear families or small bands, as they seem to have done in other areas of Eurasia. But because so much archaeological evidence is degraded, it's difficult to know with certainty.

"At Ust'-Ishim in Siberia, we have evidence of a fully modern human co-existing with the sites we've been discussing," he said.

"However, Ust'-Ishim was an isolated discovery, found by geologists eroding from a riverbank. We lack information about its archaeological context, whether it was part of a settlement or simply a solitary bone washed downstream. Consequently, linking that single individual to the archaeological sites in the Baikal region is tenuous—do they represent the same population? We think so, but definitely need more evidence."

More information: Koji Shichi, Climate amelioration, abrupt vegetation recovery, and the dispersal of Homo sapiens in Baikal Siberia, Science Advances (2023). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adi0189. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adi0189

Journal information: Science Advances

Provided by University of Kansas

Stone tools reflect three waves of migration of the earliest Homo sapiens into Europe

The deep genetic structure of Africa reveals unique ancestry of inhabitants of the Angolan Namib

by Max Planck Society

Probing the deep genetic structure of Africa — Namib desert in the southwest of Angola. Credit: Sandra Oliveira

Africa is the birthplace of modern humans and the continent with the highest level of genetic diversity. While ancient DNA studies are revealing some aspects of the genetic structure of Africa before the spread of food production, issues concerning DNA preservation have limited the insights from ancient DNA.

Hoping to find clues in modern populations, researchers from a Portuguese-Angolan TwinLab ventured into the Angolan Namib desert—a remote, multi-ethnic region where different traditions met. The work is published in the journal Science Advances.

"We were able to locate groups which were thought to have disappeared more than 50 years ago," says Jorge Rocha, a population geneticist from Centro de Investigação em Biodiversidade e Recursos Genéticos (CIBIO, University of Porto) who led the fieldwork, together with Angolan anthropologists Samuel and Teresa Aço from the Centro de Estudos do Deserto (CEDO).

Among the communities the team encountered are the Kwepe, a pastoral group who used to speak a language known as Kwadi. "Kwadi was a click-language that shared a common ancestor with the Khoe languages spoken by foragers and herders across southern Africa," explains Anne-Maria Fehn, a linguist from CIBIO who participated in the fieldwork and was able to interview what may well be the last two speakers of Kwadi.

"Khoe-Kwadi languages have been linked to a prehistoric migration of eastern African pastoralists," adds Rocha, whose research focuses on southern African population history.

In addition, the team contacted Bantu-speaking groups that are part of the dominant pastoral tradition of southwest Africa, as well as marginalized groups whose origins have been associated with a foraging tradition, distinct from that of the neighboring Kalahari peoples, and whose original language was supposedly lost.

The last two speakers of Kwadi. Credit: Jorge Rocha

Kuvale settlement in Virei, Namibe province of Angola. Credit: Sandra Oliveira

Modern DNA research can complement ancient DNA studies

The team's new study shows that the inhabitants of the Angolan Namib are quite divergent from other modern populations but also highly structured among themselves.

"In agreement with our previous studies on the maternally-inherited DNA, most genome-wide diversity segregates according to socio-economic status. A lot of our efforts were placed in understanding how much of this local variation and global excentricity was caused by genetic drift—a random process that disproportionally affects small populations—and by admixture from vanished populations," says Sandra Oliveira, a researcher at the University of Bern in Switzerland who worked with these populations during her Ph.D. and post-doc studies with Rocha and Mark Stoneking at CIBIO and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (MPI-EVA) in Leipzig, Germany

The team demonstrated that besides the high impact of genetic drift, which contributed to differences among neighboring groups of different socio-economic status, the descendants of Kwadi speakers and the marginalized communities of the Namib Desert retain a unique Pre-Bantu ancestry that is only found in populations from the Namib desert.

Mark Stoneking, who contributed to the earliest genome-wide studies on southern African foragers and participated in this study says, "Previous studies revealed that foragers from the Kalahari desert descend from an ancestral population who was the first to split from all other extant humans. Our results consistently place the newly identified ancestry within the same ancestral lineage but suggest that the Namib-related ancestry diverged from all other southern African ancestries, followed by a split of northern and southern Kalahari ancestries."

With this new information, the researchers could reconstruct the fine-scale histories of contact emerging from the migration of Khoe-Kwadi-speaking pastoralists and Bantu-speaking farmers into southern Africa. Moreover, the study demonstrates that modern DNA research targeting understudied regions of high ethnolinguistic diversity can complement ancient DNA studies in probing the deep genetic structure of the African continent.

More information: Sandra Oliveira et al, Genome wide variation in the Angolan Namib desert reveals unique Pre-Bantu ancestry, Science Advances (2023). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adh3822. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adh3822

Journal information: Science Advances

Provided by Max Planck Society Human ancestry has been shaped by mixing and matching alleles, show two recent studies

New asphalt binder alternative is less toxic, more sustainable than conventional blend

by Theresa Grant, Arizona State University

Asphalt is primarily known for use in roadways, but it's also used to pave playgrounds, bicycle paths, running tracks and tennis and basketball courts—all platforms for activities where breathing toxic fumes can be dangerous. Outdoor use on driveways, rooftops and parking lots, especially in the Arizona sun, also can lead to toxic fume exposure.

A team from Arizona State University, led by Associate Professor Ellie Fini in the School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment (SSEBE), has developed AirDuo, a new, patent-pending asphalt binder that not only diminishes toxic fumes of the overall asphalt-surfaced area, but also increases sustainability.

But perhaps most importantly for Fini, it reduces health hazards for those exposed to asphalt-surfaced areas, especially for those performing the installation.

AirDuo's first local trial was initiated in late August as a patch in ASU's Gammage Auditorium parking lot. ASU Facility Maintenance helped get the research out of the lab and into the parking lot, facilitating the lab-to-market transition. On the morning of the install, the Parking and Transit Services team completed the patchwork in a few hours.

Attendees of a theater production at Gammage the same night gave the patch a workout as they arrived and departed, and Castro reported to Fini the next day that the patch had "held up great."

Fini envisions the new low-carbon, bio-based binder will ultimately be used for all asphalt paving products, not just patches.

The U.S. Department of Labor's Occupational Safety and Health Administration notes that about a half-million workers annually are exposed to fumes from asphalt, with health effects that include headache, skin rash, fatigue, throat and eye irritation, cough and skin cancer.

Asphalt binder is the glue that holds together the stones, sand, gravel and other aggregates in asphalt pavements. The AirDuo binding mixture is composed of low-carbon, bio-based materials that are an alternative to more toxic petroleum products, also known as bitumen. Moreover, AirDuo acts as a toxicity filter for the overall product.

After the traditional blend of aggregates and binder is laid on the roadways, the stress from heat, sun, weather and traffic causes the release of breakdown products—molecules that vaporize—some of which are odorous, highly toxic or both.

"We breathe 11,000 liters of air per day," Fini said. "But our nose isn't smart enough to know when the air may be dangerous for our health. That new-car smell people like? That may not be good for your lungs. We run away from a smelly trash can, but the pleasant smell or fumes from certain materials can be far more toxic."

Fini and Judith Klein-Seetharaman, a professor in both ASU's College of Health Solutions and School of Molecular Sciences, collaborated to review literature about the health effects of various asphalt mixtures and mapped the effects on a network of biomarkers. Citing specific contaminants present in asphalt, the team discovered that all are not created equal and that different formulas have different levels of toxicity—the majority of which have not been studied comprehensively.

According to Klein-Seetharaman, there have not been sufficient studies of the long-term effects of asphalt-related toxins on the body.

"To give justice to the complexity of the problem, we need a systems-level view of the interactions between asphalt fume components and their biological targets," Klein-Seetharaman said. "There are thousands of molecules present in asphalt, as well as thousands of biomolecular targets inside the human body that can bind to these molecules and respond to their presence with downstream biological effects, some of which can lead to adverse health outcomes."

Fini has conducted ongoing research to investigate alternative asphalt binders, including a study published in ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering on how iron-rich biochar absorbs volatile organic compounds from asphalt surfaces, and a second study published in Advanced Sustainable Systems on how it is both an eco-friendly and cost-effective alternative to bitumen components.

"When we use algae to make AirDuo, as we did from last year's November harvest from ASU's Center for Algae Technology and Innovation (AzCATI), it can be carbon negative," said Fini, who collaborated on the algal components of the project with Peter Lammers, a research professor in SSEBE; Taylor Weiss, a Polytechnic School assistant professor; and Shuguang Deng, a professor in the School for Engineering of Matter, Transport and Energy (SEMTE).

"The use of algae in the AirDuo binder provides a critically important environmental benefit," Lammers said. "As algal photosynthesis removes carbon dioxide from the air, the AirDuo manufacturing process retains that carbon in an improved asphalt product relative to petroleum-derived binders."

"We plan to scale up the process by growing algae on wastewater, thus providing an additional ecosystem service," he said of future plans for substituting algae for petroleum products in other roadway projects.

Other bio-based materials the team has used include biochar from fire-reduction efforts in California and northern Arizona. Process sustainability depends on the feedstock sourcing and, in the case of AirDuo, the use of biomass waste from forest residue, according to Fini.

"This promotes resource conservation and waste valorization, as well as enhances public health and safety—all while providing a more sustainable pavement material."

SSEBE Professor Mahour Parast oversaw sourcing and supply chain to enable scale-up for AirDuo. DPE Materials, the team's partner based in Yuma, brought 10 40-pound bags of AP1 (AirDuo Paving) for the patch at Gammage.

"AirDuo represents a complete sustainability package," Fini explained. "We are using biomass as our feedstock—it has already pulled CO2 from the air prior to harvesting. The AP1 helps create a sustainable built environment and provides reduced health risks to both asphalt workers and those using asphalt-surfaced areas."

Fini's lab studies showed a nearly 70% reduction in emission when AirDuo was used. While not a one-to-one translation to the field, according to Fini, it clearly illustrates toxic fume reduction. The mix also had notably less smell than any other mix made in the plant.

The research on bitumen asphalt binder alternatives began with a 2019 grant from the National Science Foundation on algae-derived products. A grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture with a focus on emission reduction and environmental health supported the research and also helped with the lab-to-market transition.

"Our next steps are larger projects on the ASU campus, and then perhaps in Flagstaff and Tucson. Our team invites other states and institutions to join the AP1 (AirDuo Paving) campaign and test it on their sites, too," Fini said.

But Fini and her team are delighted ASU is leading the effort.

"It is an Arizona-born technology inspired by Arizona's sun and heat," Fini said. "Arizona is ideal for growing our feedstock algae, and also a great testbed for AirDuo. With 320 days of sun in the Valley, the smell of asphalt-surfaced areas never stops.

"You can verify this the next time you get out of your car in an open parking lot in summer."

More information: Masoumeh Mousavi et al, Iron-Rich Biochar to Adsorb Volatile Organic Compounds Emitted from Asphalt-Surfaced Areas, ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering (2023). DOI: 10.1021/acssuschemeng.2c06292

Farideh Pahlavan et al, Bio‐Carbon as a Means of Carbon Management in Roads, Advanced Sustainable Systems (2023). DOI: 10.1002/adsu.202300054

Journal information: ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering

Provided by Arizona State University

Improving asphalt road pavement with nano-engineered particles

Self-driving cars will be part of the future, but researchers fear we are leaving the disabled behind

by University of Warwick

Taxi — Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

Self-driving cars will be part of the future, but researchers fear people with disabilities are being left behind in the development of the technology.

Over the past two decades, transportation has become more accessible, but people with disabilities still face significant barriers to accessing these services. While self-driving cars (also known as autonomous vehicles) have the potential to dramatically improve the lives of those with disabilities, helping them to travel independently, experts fear their views are being neglected in the development of the new technology.

To address this, researchers from Warwick Manufacturing Group (WMG) at The University of Warwick and leading disability charities have considered the impact of self-driving taxis on people with disabilities, an area that has seen limited improvement over recent years. Their findings will be presented at 26th IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Transportation Systems held in Bilboa, Spain, Sept. 24–28.

They found that the absence of a driver was strongly correlated with feelings and perceptions of increased travel freedom, indicating that autonomous taxis could provide greater accessibility for those with disabilities—without the limitations or biases associated with their current experiences with traditional taxis and drivers.

The team also considered current issues people who have disabilities face with transport—particularly in booking taxi journeys. Participants expressed concerns about driver attitudes and behavior as negative experiences with traditional taxis.

Lead author Shravani Sharma, Ph.D. Researcher, WMG, University of Warwick, said, "Our research highlights the current issues those with disabilities face when booking taxis—with many reporting that their trips have been canceled due to their use of a wheelchair. Drivers might feel the extra time wheelchairs add to journeys would reduce their earnings. While there are laws in place preventing black cab drivers canceling journeys for those with wheelchairs—there are no such laws for other companies.

"Self-driving taxis could provide those with disabilities more freedom and reduce fear of discrimination. So, it's crucial we listen to their opinions in developing the technology

"We worked with charities including CASBA (Citizen Advocacy South Birmingham Area), which supports people with learning difficulties, Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB) and Cerebral Palsy Midlands to name a few, providing a wide range of voices and expertise. This represented many different visible and non-visible disabilities—including blindness, mobility problems, hearing loss, cerebral palsy and ADHD among others. The perspectives of more than 39,000 different organization members were included.

"Alongside the current problems those with disabilities face when booking taxis, we highlighted their concerns for future, self-driving taxis. The main concern was the availability of human assistance to meet specific user needs throughout the journey."

Examples of concerns for future, self-driving taxis:

The challenges faced by individuals in wheelchairs when attempting to enter a car without assistance are multifaceted. Tasks include placing their wheelchair inside the car, securing themselves within it, disassembling and carefully navigating the wheelchair upon departure.
For those with visual impairments, the struggle lies in identifying their vehicle within a crowded setting, such as a bustling railway station.
The loss of social interactions and the light-hearted atmosphere during journeys. Many individuals with disabilities unfortunately contend with feelings of loneliness and isolation, making everyday conversations a vital source of companionship and comfort throughout their journey.

Shravani added, "It is also important that manufacturers consider the wide range of disabilities and the intricate needs for passengers—remembering that not all disabilities are visible."

Dr. Roger Woodman, Head of Human Factors, at the University of Warwick, said, "Self-driving vehicles will open up driving to people that have never been on their own in a vehicle before. It has the potential to transform their lives—with reduced reliance on others to help them get from A to B.

"Driving is a very complex task to complete, so self-driving cars could enable someone with a disability, for example, cerebral palsy or tremors, to simply press a button and go."

Ginny Cullen, CEO of CASBA, added, "CASBA exists to ensure people with learning disabilities speak up for themselves, express their views, make their choices, and are valued as citizens. We were therefore delighted to have had the opportunity to be included in this research on new autonomous vehicles to ensure driving is accessible to all."

More information: Shravani Sharma et al, Exploring the Impact of Autonomous Taxis on People with Disabilities: www.researchgate.net/publicati … le_with_Disabilities

Provided by University of Warwick Self-driving taxis could be a setback for those with different needs – unless companies embrace accessible design now

Fast fashion's waste problem could be solved by recycled textiles but brands need to help boost production

by Quynh Do Nhu and Mark Stevenson, The Conversation

Earlier this year, fast fashion retailer Zara released its first womenswear collection made of recycled poly-cotton textile waste. The collection is available for sale in 11 countries, helping clothing made of blended textile waste reach the mass market.

The collection came about after Zara's parent company Inditex invested in textile recycler Circ. This follows a €100 million (£87 million) deal between Inditex and Finnish textile recycler Infinited Fiber Company for 30% of its recycled output. Zara's fast fashion rival H&M has also entered a five-year contract with Swedish textile recycler Renewcell to acquire 9,072 tons of recycled fiber—equivalent to 50 million T-shirts.

There is a growing appetite among some fashion retailers to turn old clothes into high-quality fibers, and then into new clothes. But even though well-known brands are developing lines using recycled textiles, this movement has not yet reached the scale needed to have a truly global impact.

Before this recent growth in interest in textile recycling, fast fashion's efforts to tackle throwaway attitudes towards affordable clothing often simply added to the global textile waste mountain—especially in developing countries, say campaigners like Greenpeace.

For example, a skirt deposited at a London chain store under a take-back scheme was reportedly found in a landfill in Bamako, Mali. This is not an isolated incident, it's a sector-wide problem that sees old clothes being collected but not disposed of properly. An estimated 15 million used clothing items are shipped to Ghana each week from around the world and many end up in the country's landfills. This is often referred to as waste colonialism.

The fast fashion industry needs greater access to recycled textiles to address this problem. But this means having the means to track "thrown-away" garments to collect those suitable for recycling. The industry also needs facilities that are big enough to turn this waste into new materials for clothing at the scale needed to meet mass market demand.

This is particularly important as these firms prepare for an EU crackdown on the region's own waste mountain. Following the EU strategy for Sustainable and Circular textiles 2022, the European Commission is drafting new legislation over the next five years to make the fashion industry pay for the cost of processing discarded clothing.

Under the new EU rules, companies will be expected to collect waste equivalent to a certain percentage of their production. While the exact amount has not yet been confirmed yet, European commissioner for the environment Virginijus Sinkevičius has said it will "definitely" be more than 5% of production. Companies may have to pay a fee (reportedly equivalent to €0.12 per T-shirt) towards local authorities' waste collection work.

But fast fashion brands must ensure that this doesn't just dump the problem of textile waste into other countries' landfills. Instead, developing lines out of recycled textiles could give these old clothes a new lease of life.

A Fashion Pact signed by more than 160 brands (a third of the sector by volume) commits companies to ensure that, by 2025, 25% of the raw materials such as textiles that they use have a low impact on the environment—recycled fiber is considered a low-impact material. Some brands have set more ambitious targets, including Adidas, which has committed to using 100% recycled plastics by 2024, and Zara-owner Inditex, which pledged to source 40% of its fibers from recycling processes by 2030.

These impending deadlines, plus the EU legislation, should motivate brands to use more recycled fibers. While the supply of such material is currently limited, an influx of recycling start-ups are finding ways to turn old clothes into new fibers that replicate the look and feel of virgin materials.

Start-ups like Spinnova, Renewcell and Infinited Fiber have developed chemical recycling technologies to create new fibers from cotton-rich clothing. And while cheap low-cost blended materials like poly-cotton are difficult to separate and recycle, firms like Worn Again, Envrnu, and Circ are tackling this problem, too.

Worn Again plans to build a new recycling demo plant in Switzerland, paving the way for 40 licensed plants by 2040, which would be capable of processing 1.8 million tons of textile waste per year.

Taking textile recycling from hype to reality

Up to 26% of Europe's textile waste could be recycled by 2030, according to some estimates, according to a 2022 McKinsey report. This would generate €3.5-€4.5 billion in economic output for the EU, create 15,000 new jobs, and save 3.6 million tons of CO². But only 1% of textiles are currently being recycled globally into new clothes—the recycling technology needed for this shift is still in its infancy.

Part of the challenge in scaling up textile recycling to this degree is the lack of information available about what happens to clothes that are thrown away. Sharing data on the volume, locations and compositions of waste generated in the supply chain and collected post-consumption would help evaluate the full potential of textile recycling. Companies like Reverse Resources already provide online databases of information on textile waste—in this case for a global network of 70 recyclers, 44 waste handlers and 1,287 manufacturers in 24 countries.

Increasing textile recycling will require a collaborative approach, as will the development of the technology needed to create high-quality recycled textiles. Brands, investors, suppliers, recyclers, technology providers and local governments must come together to find ways to grow the textile recycling industry. The recent New Cotton Project that involves 12 brands (including H&M group and Adidas), manufacturers, suppliers and research institutes is a first step towards increasing textile recycling.

More money is also needed from all of these groups. To reach the recycling rate of 18%-26% by 2030, it will take billions in infrastructure investment for collecting, sorting and processing textile waste.

Textile recycling is no longer for a few "sustainable" fashion firms—it is quickly becoming a reality that no fast fashion firm can ignore. Shoppers must demand that the brands they love show their commitment to textile recycling beyond marketing campaigns and low-volume fashion collections.

Provided by The Conversation

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Clothing manufacturers aim to get fashionable with greener practices

30 years of the web down under: How Australians made the early internet their own

by Kieran Hegarty, The Conversation

The internet is growing old. While the roots of the internet date back to the 1960s, the popular internet—the one that 99% of Australians now use—is a child of the 1990s.

In the space of a decade, the internet moved from a tool used by a handful of researchers to something most Australians used—to talk to friends and family, find out tomorrow's weather, follow a game, organize a protest, or read the news.

The popular internet grows up

This year marks 30 years since the release of Mosaic, the first browser that integrated text and graphics, helping to popularize the web: the global information network we know today.

Google is now 25, Wikipedia turned 21 last year, and Facebook will soon be 20. These anniversaries were marked with events, feature articles and birthday cakes.

But a local milestone passed with little fanfare: 30 years ago, the first Australian websites started to appear.

The web made the internet intelligible to people without specialist technical knowledge. Hyperlinks made it easy to navigate from page to page and site to site, while the underlying HTML code was relatively easy for newcomers to learn.

Australia gets connected

In late 1992, the first Australian web server was installed. The Bioinformatics Hypermedia Server was set up by David Green at the Australian National University in Canberra, who launched his LIFE website that October. LIFE later claimed to be "Australia's first information service on the World Wide Web."

Not that many Australians would have seen it at the time. In the early 1990s, the Australian internet was a university-led research network.

The Australian Academic and Research Network (AARNet) connected to the rest of the world in 1989, through a connection between the University of Hawaii and the University of Melbourne. Within a year, most Australian universities and many research facilities were connected.

The World Wide Web was invented by English computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee and launched in 1991. At the time, it was just one of many communication protocols for creating, sharing and accessing information.

Researchers connected to AARNet were experimenting with tools like Gopher and Internet Relay Chat alongside the web.

Even as a research network, the internet was deeply social. Robert Elz, one of the computer scientists who connected Australia to the internet in 1989, became well-known for his online commentaries on cricket matches. Science fiction fans set up mailing lists.

These uses hinted at what was to come, as everyday Australians got online.

The birth of the public internet

Throughout 1994, AARNet enabled private companies to buy network capacity and connect users outside research contexts. Ownership of the Australian internet was transferred to Telstra in 1995, as private consumers and small businesses began to move online.

With the release of web browsers like Mosaic and Netscape, and the increase in dial-up connections, the number of Australian websites grew rapidly.

At the start of 1995, there were a couple of hundred. When the Australian internet went public just six months later, they numbered in the thousands. By the end of the decade there were hundreds of thousands.

Everyday Australians get connected

As everyday Australians went online, students, activists, artists and fans began to create a diverse array of sites that took advantage of the web's possibilities.

The "cyberfeminist zine" geekgirl, created by Rosie X. Cross from her home in inner-west Sydney, combined a "Do It Yourself" punk ethos with the global distribution the web made possible. It was part of a diverse and flourishing feminist culture online.

Australia was home to the first fully online doctorate, Simon Pockley's 1995 Ph.D. thesis Flight of Ducks.

Art students presented poetry as animated gifs, labeling them "cyberpoetry." Aspiring science fiction writers published multimedia stories on the web.

The Australian internet goes mainstream

Political parties, government and media also moved online.

The Age Online was the first major newspaper website in Australia. Launched in February 1995, the site beat Australia's own national broadcaster by six months and the New York Times by a year.

Though The Age was first, ABC Online and ninemsn—linked to the Hotmail email service—were the most popular.

During the 1998 federal election, ABC Online saw over two million hits per week. Political parties, candidates and interest groups were quick to establish a web presence, kicking off the era of online political campaigning.

The web also became big business. By the end of the decade, Australia had its own internet entrepreneurs, including a future prime minister. Established media companies dominated web traffic.

"Internet fever" was sweeping Australian businesses, leading to an "internet stocks frenzy." The internet had gone mainstream and the "dot com bubble" was rapidly inflating.

Looking back on the decade the popular internet was born

The public, open, commercial internet is now a few decades old. Given current concerns about the state of the internet—from the power of large digital platforms to the proliferation of disinformation—it might be tempting to look at the 1990s as a "golden age" for the internet.

However, we must resist looking back with rose-colored glasses. What is needed is critical scrutiny of the conditions that underpinned internet use and attention to how a diversity of people incorporated technology in their lives and helped transformed it in the process. This will help us understand how we got the internet we have and how we might achieve the internet we want.

Understanding online history can be particularly difficult because many sites have long-since disappeared. However, archiving efforts like those of the Internet Archive and the National Library of Australia make it possible to look back and see how much things have changed, what concerns are familiar, and remember the everyday people who helped transform the internet from a niche academic network to a mass medium.