The naming of various substances now known as elements precedes the atomic theory of matter, as names were given locally by various cultures to various minerals, metals, compounds, alloys, mixtures, a ...
The lightest of the chemical elements are hydrogen and helium, both created by Big Bang nucleosynthesis during the first 20 minutes of the universe in a ratio of around 3:1 by mass (or 12:1 by number ...
Uranium deposits are usually sourced from radioactive granites, where certain minerals such as monazite are leached during hydrothermal activity or during circulation of groundwater. The uranium is br ...
Fractional crystallization: separates ore and non-ore minerals according to their crystallization temperature. As early crystallizing minerals form, they incorporate certain elements, some of which ar ...
The nominal methane clathrate hydrate composition is (CH4)4(H2O)23, or 1 mole of methane for every 5.75 moles of water, corresponding to 13.4% methane by weight, although the actual composition is dep ...
Research conducted by the World Pensions Council (WPC) suggests that large US and Canadian pension funds and Asian and MENA area SWF investors have become particularly active in the fields of natural ...
In the 19th century, natural gas was usually obtained as a by-product of producing oil, since the small, light gas carbon chains came out of solution as the extracted fluids underwent pressure reducti ...
Petroleum and natural gas are formed by the anaerobic decomposition of remains of organisms including phytoplankton and zooplankton that settled to the sea (or lake) bottom in large quantities under a ...
Further information: Oil depletionMain article: Fossil fuelNatural resources such as coal, petroleum (crude oil) and natural gas take thousands of years to form naturally and cannot be replaced as fas ...
Land use practices vary considerably across the world. The United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization Water Development Division explains that "Land use concerns the products and/or benefits ob ...
There are various methods of categorizing natural resources, these include source of origin, stage of development, and by their renewability. These classifications are described below. On the basis of ...
The Neolithic Era Main article: NeolithicThe process of sedentarization is first thought to have occurred around 12,000 BCE in the Levant region of southwest Asia though other regions around the world ...
Identifying the exact origin of agriculture remains problematic because the transition from hunter-gatherer societies began thousands of years before the invention of writing.Anthropological and archa ...
H. neanderthalensis, alternatively designated as Homo sapiens neanderthalensis, lived in Europe and Asia from 400,000 to about 30,000 years ago. Evidence from sequencing mitochondrial DNA indicated th ...
Human evolutionary genetics studies how one human genome differs from the other, the evolutionary past that gave rise to it, and its current effects. Differences between genomes have anthropological, ...
