During the El Niño phase of the El Niño–Southern Oscillation, much of Southeast Asia experiences intense droughts and surging temperatures, exacerbating wildfires and creating a blanket of hazardous haze across much of the region. These patterns are predicted to worsen with climate change, further increasing the vulnerability of the region’s primate species, 94% of which are threatened with extinction. Here, we report findings from a systematic search of the literature and synthesize the current state of knowledge regarding the impacts of El Niño-driven heat, drought, fire and smoke on non-human primates in Southeast Asia. Our review shows that habitat loss and degradation driven by El Niño-induced drought and fire cause changes to diet, activity patterns, social interactions and physical condition, and lead to population crowding, reduced group sizes, increased infant mortality, displacement of individuals and local extirpation. Furthermore, prolonged exposure to smoke alters behaviour and worsens the health of primates. Two studies presented evidence for the recovery of primate populations in habitats damaged by fire if forest is allowed to regenerate. We highlight significant gaps in our understanding of the impacts of El Niño on non-human primates, particularly the need for research that considers the interconnected effects of rainfall, temperature, fire and smoke, as well as long-term effects on reproduction and mortality. Because of the unpredictable nature of El Niño, we acknowledge the difficulties of planning research in this area and emphasize the potential of long-term research sites to add to our understanding of this key conservation issue.

This paper sets out to see an aspect of the Neolithic of south-west Asia in the context of its cultural evolutionary history: essential components of the architecture of Neolithic communities – hearth and home, and intramural burial – were present as architectural components of social life tens and hundreds of thousands of years before they were accommodated within Neolithic houses. There are two bases that underpin the paper. One is the general view of cultural evolution and cultural niche construction theory that has emerged over recent decades, emphasising human ultra-sociality and capacity for altruism and cooperation; the other is the understanding of architecture as more than built structures, encompassing objects in, on and around buildings, associated meanings and values, and behaviours. We may trace the development of the architecture of social life as it fostered the intensity of social relations, effectively the roots of Neolithic social life. The process begins at least three quarters of a million years ago with the control of fire, cooking, and eating together around the hearth. The evolution of the human cultural niche continues with the emergence around half a million years ago of the idea of the base camp. That is followed about one hundred thousand years ago by the burying of the body of a member of the group below the base camp floor, binding place and belonging into social memory. The Epipalaeolithic–Neolithic transformation represents a quickening of the pace of cultural cumulation in the specific environment of the hilly flanks of the Fertile Crescent in south-west Asia, with the extension of the group’s stay for at least a season, and the growth in size of the group. The first large, co-resident communities designed and built permanent settlements, houses with hearths, communal buildings, and ritualised intramural burials, forming a new and meaningful architecture of social life embedded in social memory.

The Mexican archaeological site of Chalcatzingo is best known as a Formative centre, famed for its extensive Olmec-style iconography (c. 900–500 BC). Yet, recent investigations at Cave 19 on the western face of Cerro Delgado provide evidence of continued ritual use into the fourth–sixth centuries AD. Here, the authors examine three painted glyphic compounds, identifiable as part of the Teotihuacan writing system, associated with a fire-blackened shelf arguably used for pyrolytic rites. Interpreted as indicators of place and warrior veneration, the authors argue that the glyphs attest to the enduring significance of the local sacred landscape.

Continuous, high-resolution sedimentary records from the Great Basin are rare. By combining physical sedimentology with charcoal analysis to document changes in lake level and biomass burning, we explore the coevolution of climate and fire ecology over the past 7000 years. Elemental data from scanning X-ray fluorescence (XRF) measurements suggest persistently low lake levels during the Middle Holocene (7000–4000 cal yr BP). Two prolonged low lake stands between 4200–3800 cal yr BP and 2600–2400 cal yr BP occurred during widely documented periods of abrupt environmental change throughout the Great Basin. Significant correlations between the first principal component of the XRF record (which explains >75% of the variance) and a bristlecone pine–derived temperature reconstruction suggest warmer temperatures were a major driver of reduced precipitation–evaporation balance. Spectral analysis shows interannual and multidecadal periodicities typical of Pacific Ocean–atmosphere systems have been influential across the region after 4000 cal yr BP. Severe fire events became more commonplace as precipitation increased, highlighting the role of fuel availability on biomass burning in this semiarid region. These results suggest that while near-term warming will likely lead to increased biomass burning, prolonged periods of warmth and aridity will catalyze returns to the fire regimes of the Middle Holocene.

This article analyzes three contemporary plays by trans and gender-non-conforming artists from the United States that engage with forest fires and queer ecology. These three plays – MJ Kaufman’s Sagittarius Ponderosa, Agnes Borinsky’s The Trees, and Kari Barclay’s How to Live in a House on Fire – tie wildfire to colonial histories of fire suppression and imagine a just climate transition as linked to queer and trans self-reinvention. The article describes this dramaturgical tactic as ‘burning hope’ – letting go of straight, settler desire and gesturing toward reciprocal obligation with the non-human world. Building on Kim TallBear’s call to attend to organic matter and Stephen Pyne’s study of fire history in the ‘Pyrocene’, the article imagines theatre as a prescribed burn that can re-orient audience relations to futurity. Burning hope does not abandon hope; it recognizes grief as mobilization for environmentalist solidarities.

The article discusses a passage in chapter 49 of the Hippocratic treatise On Regimen. It defends the transmitted text against a conjecture proposed by R. Joly, the author of the Corpus Medicorum Graecorum edition.

As self-appointed guardians of light who performed many of their activities between sunset and sunrise, medieval monks and nuns had a special relationship with fire, light, and darkness. While medieval monastic authors wrote copiously about light, however, modern scholars have shown comparatively little interest in this topic. Using the concept of lightscape, this essay recreates the unique Latin monastic culture of light of the tenth to thirteenth centuries, considering how religious communities used natural and artificial light as well as darkness to reinforce spiritual lessons, heighten the sensory experience of liturgical life, and signal distinctions between orders in a reform-minded age. Evidence from material culture as well as several textual genres demonstrates that monastic uses of candles, oil lamps, and lanterns reflected the commitment to a strictly regulated life which foregrounded bonds of community and encouraged constant spiritual and physical vigilance. Contemporary understandings of fire and light as heavenly matter also conditioned religious to see everyday light-sources as ready conduits for the miraculous, as well as technologies by which earthly spaces could be made to approximate heavenly ones.

Many soils in southern Switzerland have a black color, contain a large amount of soil organic matter (SOM) and seem to have some andic properties although they did not develop on volcanic parent material. We investigated three typical ‘black’ soils to determine the mechanisms of (clay) mineral formation and transformation. We measured total element pools as well as the dithionite-, pyrophosphate-and oxalate-extractable fractions (Fe, Al, Si). The clay fraction (<2 µm) was analyzed using X-ray diffraction and FTIR spectroscopy. Iron speciation in the solid phase was determined by Mössbauer spectroscopy. With increasing weathering conditions, the plagioclase (albite) content decreases, trioctahedral species in the clay fraction such as biotite, chlorite or trioctahedral vermiculite either decompose or transform into a dioctahedral mineral such as dioctahedral vermiculite or hydroxy interlayered smectite (HIS). Typical weathering products were hydroxy interlayered vermiculite (HIV), HIS, interstratified minerals and kaolinite. The oxidation of Fe(II) into Fe(III) was evident and contributes to the transformation of trioctahedral mineral species into dioctahedral ones. In one soil, a large part of the Fe (up to 41%) was found in the form of Fe oxides. In the surface horizon, the poorly crystalline mineral ferrihydrite was dominant, while in the subsoil goethite prevailed. Maghemite (or maghemite/hematite mixture) was, furthermore, found in distinct concentrations down to a depth of ∼50 cm. The formation of this mineral requires high temperatures which means that a forest fire can influence soil mineralogy down to a considerable depth. The specific climatic conditions with periods of strong humidity alternating with periods of winter droughts, sporadic fire events and the relatively large content of poorly crystalline fractions of Fe and Al contributed to the stabilization of SOM.

Light and temperature conditions trigger germination in specific temporal windows and microhabitats, thus determining the germination niche of plant species. Manihot species grow in fire-prone ecosystems and their seeds show heat tolerance. Successful establishment in disturbed environments might be related to seed attributes that allow seeds to cope with or avoid stressful environments. We studied some characteristics of the germination niche of Manihot grahamii, a pioneer woody species present in dry subtropical forests of central Argentina, to understand its successful establishment in disturbed environments. We evaluated the germination ecology of the seeds of M. grahamii with the aims to (1) characterize seed traits (viability, mass and moisture content); (2) determine whether it has dormancy and if it is physical or physiological; (3) evaluate the effect of several pre-treatments (gibberellic acid, after ripening, dry prechilling and dry prechilling + warm) on seed dormancy; and (4) assess the effect of different environmental events of high temperatures on the germination process simulating two treatments: fire intensities (with three levels of heat shock) and a gap temperature. M. grahamii seeds have large mass (0.24 g), low moisture content (8%), physiological dormancy, negative photoblastic behaviour and high heat tolerance. Dormancy was alleviated and seeds became insensitive to light when they were exposed to pre-treatments of dry prechilling + warm and high-temperature treatments. This germination strategy promotes secure germination timing into the rainy season on undisturbed habitats as well as a cue for competition-released gaps which in turn favour recruitment in open, disturbed and dry habitats, respectively. In the context of global change, with an increasing habitat fragmentation and fire frequency, M. grahamii could become more abundant and extend its geographic distributional range in central Argentina.