Optimism

The most optimistic thing I've read recently is from an article in The Current about trepanning (i.e., cutting holes in skulls) done by pre-Columbian healers in Andean South America. Danielle Kurin, UCSB bioarcheologist, tells an interviewer:

We shouldn’t look at a state of collapse as the beginning of a ‘dark age,’ but rather view it as an era that breeds resilience and foments stunning innovation within the population.

The collapse Kurin refers to is the fall of the Wari empire in what today is Peru. Hat tip to RealClearScience for the link to The Current, a publication of the University of California at Santa Barbara.