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The changing abundance of prey animals may have forced early humans to invent new tools RAUL MARTIN/MSF/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY A drop in the number of huge animals 200,000 years ago may have forced ancient humans to abandon heavy-duty stone tools in favour of lightweight toolkits to hunt smaller animals. That’s according to a new study that supports the idea that switching to smaller prey may have boosted our ancestors’ intelligence. For over a million years, several early human species used similar kinds of heavy stone tools, such as axes, cleavers, scrapers and stone balls. Evidence suggests such tools were used for killing and butchering massive plant-eating prey, or megaherbivores, including now-extinct relatives of elephants, hippopotamuses and rhinos. Then, between 400,000 and 200,000 years ago, smaller, more sophisticated tools began to appear alongside heavy tools. Our species, Homo sapiens, emerged in the middle of this period. Around 200,000 years ago, heavy tools curiously disappeared from the archaeological record in the Levant. Meanwhile, there was an increase in the number of small, lightweight stone toolkits, including blades …
Spotify Follow ZDNET: Add us as a preferred source on Google. ZDNET’s key takeaways Spotify launched a new Prompted Playlist feature on Thursday, which allows users to describe the type of playlist they’d like to hear, including emotions, pop culture references, feelings, and more, using natural language. The playlist generation also takes into account your listening history and current music trends to move away from automation and toward collaboration, according to Spotify. Also: I didn’t need this, but I used AI to 3D print a tiny figurine of myself – here’s how The feature was originally launched in beta in New Zealand in December 2025 and is now rolling out to Premium listeners in beta across the US and Canada by the end of January. To learn how to access it and how it worked for me, keep reading below. My experience Prompted Playlists is not to be confused with Spotify’s existing AI playlist; it’s meant to go a step beyond that, as it not only creates the playlist for you but keeps it updated and takes …
For years, Spotify’s recommendation engine has felt like a mind reader. It quietly tracks what you play, skip, save, and replay, then serves up Discover Weekly, Release Radar, and an endless stream of algorithmically generated playlists designed to know your taste better than you know it yourself. With its new feature, Prompted Playlist, Spotify is experimenting with a different idea: What if users didn’t just receive recommendations, but actively shaped them? Prompted Playlist, now launching for Spotify users in the U.S., is a new way to create playlists using personalized prompts, allowing listeners to guide Spotify’s algorithm with greater intent and context. Instead of starting with a blank playlist or relying entirely on automated suggestions, users can describe what they want and let Spotify build from there. It’s a subtle shift, but one built around the idea of less passive consumption and more collaboration. How Spotify’s Prompted Playlist works At its core, Prompted Playlist lets users generate playlists by entering a written prompt — anything from a mood or activity to a more imaginative musical …
