American Scientist

Few things in life are absolute. The way that you interpret events, others’ actions, and your own experiences is based on all of your life history up to that point. And your interpretation can be colored by the immediate circumstances or context.

Take mirrors, for instance. You probably see them every day. As optical devices, they’re simple—they just reflect light. But in them, in some cases we see the world as switched with left for right, and in other cases we simply see what stretches out behind us. As Michael C. Corballis explains in “What Mirrors Do,” much of our impression of what we see in the mirror comes from our brains, not from the mirrors themselves—and it is influenced by the physical circumstances in which we see the reflection.

But context can mean more than a person’s physical surroundings. In studies of early human history, fully documenting a fossil’s geological context—the strata of material in which it was found—is a vital step. In this issue’s Spotlight section, we discuss the first substantial fossil found to represent an early class of hominins called Denisovans. Because the fossil was not collected by an archaeologist and was stored for some time, the geological setting of its discovery is unrecorded, which effects its standing in an archaeological context.

Interpreting evidence of earlier human lives through cave art also requires context, and not just in terms of strata. The art must be considered in the context of modern indigenous cultures, says Bruno David in “Contextualizing Cave Art.” Research into the oral histories of the societies where the art is located has led to insights into the content of the art itself. But as David also points out, cave sites should no longer be considered “natural” locations once humans have created art in them, because from that point on, human activity becomes part of the architecture. “Once people enter the scene, they become active agents in constructing their landscapes rather than being passive pawns on an environmental stage,” he explains, and cave art needs to be studied in that context.

Indeed, prehistoric cave paintings can themselves provide invaluable context for contemporary scholars. As Howard Wainer and Michael Friendly recount in “Visual Answers to Scientific Questions” (Perspective), lack of access to firsthand accounts of the bodily structures of woolly mammoths led to some wholly inaccurate early reconstructions of their fossil skeletons.

Like cave art, oral stories are valuable forms of firsthand recording. In Hawaiʻi, such handed-down accounts were written out in Native Hawaiian language, and ecologists are now realizing the value of those accounts not just for that archipelago, but for locations throughout the world that are experiencing climate change. As Sam ʻOhukaniʻōhiʻa Gon III and Kāwika B. Winter describe in “A Hawaiian Renaissance that Could Save the World,” early Native Hawaiians had a population of at least several hundreds of thousands, who for at least a millennium had a system of intensive land management that supported the population while maintaining a small ecological footprint. Hawaiian accounts of these systems from before Western contact could inform current land management and resource use.

Science is about seeing as much of the picture as possible, but when pieces are missing, as they so commonly are, skilled interpretation becomes necessary to fill the gaps. These insights can be crucial to advancing a field, yet it’s important to recognize where evidence ends and conjecture begins. Researchers often note that they’re happy to be proved wrong because that means new pieces of the scientific puzzle have been discovered. In that context, we hope you enjoy exploring the new concepts in this issue.—Fenella Saunders (@FenellaSaunders)