Tattoo from the preserved body of a Siberian ice mummy, from the Iron Age Pazyryk culture of the Altai Mountains. Depicting two tigers and a leopard attacking two deer, it shows the sophisticated methods of Pazyryk tattooers #InternationalSnowLeopardDay 🆓 doi.org/10.15184/aqy... 🏺 #Archaeology

There are few greater joys than being employed to read stuff like this

In a paper under review @abigaildesmond.bsky.social and I argue that self-directed tool use should be the most common form of novel (and possibly temporary) tool use, because of the immediacy of the feedback and the stability of the self as an environment. Fingers crossed it survives review! 🧪🪮🐼

What do you know about Louis Pasteur who developed the first effective rabies vaccine back in 1885? One of the most brilliant minds and scientists of all time, writes Rodney E. Rohde. Pasteur died on this day in 1995, and #WorldRabiesDay is marked on the anniversary. buff.ly/56EB92l

Yunxian 2, is that you?! 💀

First day of my lecture course on the evolution of human technology, and my students just voted to have a laptop-free class. Sometimes, all is right with the world.

Prehistoric stone tools were often hafted, but we only find the lithics not the wood/bone part of tools. So it is not always clear how stones were hafted. We tested two ways of hafting the same type of arrow tip, shooting into ballistics gel. Very mythbusters! www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Always a pleasure to see hominin graffiti. Tbilisi, Georgia.

"It was early in the morning of a sunny day, with perfect light for checking tracks," Neto de Carvalho told Live Science in an email. 🏺🧪

Are you kept awake at night, wondering whence your bags of archaeological bone fragments? Is your child ZooMS curious? Check out this mMass-ively cool AMA where we address your pressing proteomic problems. youtu.be/loAgeUuK08g?...

What can we tell about Stone Age strategies by identifying critters’ bones? Join me online tomorrow for an archaeological ZooMS AMA!

True for the individual, and true for evolution.

Super happy to be a panelist at this upcoming ZooMS webinar - join us on June 30 for a fun archaeological AMA!

Delighted to see our paper on the evolutionary history of the CCR5Δ32 deletion published this week in @cellpress.bsky.social. Work led by @ravnkirstine.bsky.social, Leonardo Cobuccio and Rasa Muktupavela, and co-supervised by me and @simorasmu.bsky.social. See 🧵 for main findings...

"He takes a pledge from me and vexes my goose-herd." "The letter you wrote to Menon about Kallikon's money has been eaten by mice." "We find that 6 jugs of the wine are missing." What To Read Next If You Liked the Complaint Tablet to Ea-Nasir www.thechatner.com/p/he-vexes-m...

A fossil Pleistocene-age hominin jawbone discovered in Taiwan has now been identified as belonging to a Denisovan, finds a new study in Science. The results provide direct molecular evidence that Denisovans occupied diverse climates and offer new insights into this hominin lineage. scim.ag/4joSUBh

Laughed out loud reading archaeologists characterized - by a physical anthropologist - as “… the senile playboys of science rooting in the rubbish heaps of antiquity.” Subtitle: If Earnest Hooton is insulting you, you must be cool. From Trigger’s “A History of Archaeological Thought”.

I could not wait any longer to share the finished illustration of bonobos. Commissioned by @mpi-animalbehav.bsky.social #SciArt #mammals #apes #primates #art

I am very happy to share this piece with you, exploring the link between inventiveness and play in nonhuman animals. It was written with care and a sincere desire to convey what science and philosophy can teach us about this fascinating topic. I hope you enjoy reading it! aeon.co/essays/how-e...

Leslie White (1942) on human tool use. Simply breathtaking.

So pumped to announce this fabulous conspiracy-in-progress 📖

Tools - as manifestations of human strategic thinking - can tell us a lot about the people that made them. My new paper (out today!) offers some interpretive frameworks for ancient bone tool analysis. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Diversos taxones vegetales en herramientas de percusión de 780 ka: Gesher Benot Ya'aqov, Israel: alimentos de distintos paisajes, estaciones y modos de trabajo. Starch-rich plant foods 780,000 y ago: Evidence from Acheulian percussive stone tools https://buff.ly/3X1ThZB

Honored to announce I’m writing a book! We understand the importance of stone tools in the Stone Age. But what about socks? Rope? Water bottles? Boats? How did we go from knocking rocks together to the Saturn V rocket? This work takes a long view perspective on how the things we make, make us.

A study in Scientific Reports of remains from the Maszycka Cave from 18,000 years ago finds evidence of cannibalism among these Magdalenian groups. https://go.nature.com/4hwUqAQ 🧪 🏺

A paper in Nature reports that the loggerhead turtle can learn and remember the magnetic signature of an area and does a ‘turtle dance’ when in a location that they associate with food. https://go.nature.com/4jSQEDo 🐢 🧪

On the shoulders (and above the mailboxes) of giants.

Does a scientific understanding of our world conflict with the marvelous wonder we experience in it? In a word: No. “The possession of knowledge does not kill the sense of wonder and mystery. There is always more mystery.” - Anaïs Nin

Both 10/10 contents AND 10/10 cover.

What an astonishing thing a book is. It’s a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you’re inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. CARL SAGAN

A marble rendering of AL 288-1, better known as Lucy the Australopith. Very possibly our collective 10^5 great-grandmother. “Santa Lucia,” by Gabriel Vinas.

The Earth’s magnetic North Pole is on the move, and at pace. Please pass this on to any mole rats, robins, eels, whales, butterflies, sea turtles, lobsters or other creatures that use magnetic fields to navigate (thankfully dung beetle navigation by the stars remains unaffected) 🧪🧭🐋🦞🦋🐢🪶🪲

Sound on for the Carnyx! This is what Romans would have heard going into battle against the Celts, who fought naked with severed enemy heads hanging from their saddles.

c. 12,000-year-old engraving of human figures, maybe pregnant women. Early Mesolithic period, Denmark.

Archaeologists -by definition- only find things that survive. Usually that means durable materials; stone, bone, ceramics, glass and the like. This 3,500-year-old Egyptian axe shows how the stone head -often the only surviving component- once articulated with a wooden haft and leather bindings.

At almost 2,000 years old, this child’s wooden toy sword for ‘playing soldiers’ is a remarkable survival from Roman times! Dimensions: 29 cm (L) x 4.7 cm (W) From Vindolanda, a fort on the Roman Empire’s northern frontier. 📷 by me #RomanFortThursday #Archaeology

Sometimes archaeological sites yield truly exceptional finds. For example, this 3,000-year-old ball of yarn, bobbin, and woven fabric. Made from nettle or flax in the Bronze Age; Must Farm, Cambridgeshire, England.

Ursula K. LeGuin on technology

Resonant words for a winter Sunday: “When action grows unprofitable, gather information; when information grows unprofitable, sleep.” Ursula K. LeGuin, The Left Hand of Darkness

Don't forget to submit the abstract for the next #SAfA2025 before 31st of January !

One of my favorite rock art panels from Tassili n’Ajjer, SE Algeria; “The Great God of Sefar.” 8,000ish bp.

A wintry start to 2025 prompts a chilling blog post as my first of the year. From Scott of the Antarctic to the art of disarticulation, I dive into the history and science of wild orcas building waves to attack ice-bound seals. But is it tool use? 🧪🏺🦭 twig.technology/blog/killer-whale-wave-washing

#FossilFriday The beautifully preserved Jebel Irhoud 1 basal H. sapiens skull from Morocco, dated about 300,000 years old

2025 fashion icons/street style goals: The Lepinski Vir statuettes, c 9,000 bp from modern Serbia. Via Wikipedia, an “Impressive…embodiment of the female principle of the fishlike beings.” “Canonical, symmetrical, and rigid.” “Mysterious and lonely,” complete with “eyebags.” “Essential.”

Interested in science communication? Want to more effectively spread the good news about Very Old Stuff? Apply for this awesome (expenses-covered) fellowship at Harvard!

An avowed artifact gal, this might be my very favorite one: an almost thousand-year-old rabbit net woven from human hair. statemuseum.arizona.edu/online-exhib...