Diving with Sea Lions in San Diego 🦭 Turn on the sound to hear their vocalisations! Not a bad start to a Wednesday. I could get used to this... #animal

Did Neanderthals speak? We don't know. But DNA evidence shows our ancestors experienced speedier evolution in the vocal tract. This is highly suggestive of a more important role for speech amongst Homo sapiens. By the way, the methods are insane 🤯 pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32132541/ 🏺 #paleosky

Okay. It's over. What an incredible weekend! Thank you to all the wonderful folks who made this possible! BONUS: I managed to record short live episodes with three speakers... Stay tuned 👀 @anthropogeny.org @salkinstitute.bsky.social

Meet your dinosaur-era ancestor 🏺 news.berkeley.edu/2021/02/24/o...

Reading this, I'm not surprised that many of the aDNA pioneers have simply dropped using latin names.

Forgive me for one LinkedIn style post... But this did feel good! ★★★★★ Grateful to those 100 people who, against all odds, actually discovered how rate a show on Spotify! (I still struggle to find it at times...) 🙏 open.spotify.com/show/4nhm3fG...

"Startups are exploring using [period blood] to test for a wide range of health conditions .. including endometriosis"

This looks like an excellent introduction.

Were Neanderthals killed by... scurvy? 🏺 #paleosky www.mdpi.com/2571-550X/6/...

I posted this article already, but only highlighting the negative trend. Here is a more hopeful point: change is possible! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The backdrop to human evolution: an increasingly erratic climate. 🏺 #paleosky www.youtube.com/watch?v=jK9P...

I'll be here in person! Hit me up if you're coming, too. The lineup is incredible -- do check out the webcast if not in sunny San Diego ☀️ carta.anthropogeny.org/events/ancie... @anthropogeny.org #paleosky 🏺

"It is a profound gift to know that when a chimpanzee stares into a person’s eyes, they too could be reflecting on their beliefs about humans." Brian Hare in @science.org www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

4. Veneto Region, Italy. A 16th century female skeleton from a mass grave of plague victims was discovered with a brick forced between her jaws. Vampires were believed by some to cause plague so the brick was meant to stop the spread. (Image: Archaeology-World.com). More at: tinyurl.com/socmedarch36

Certainly made me think

Rome wasn't built in a day — nor without immigrants. 🏺

Forget the Hard Problem. Here comes the "Lobster Problem of Consciousness" 🧠 onhumans.substack.com/p/can-the-br... with @matthewcobb.bsky.social

No. The spark of humanity was not a sudden climactic shift from forest to savanna. Yet we should miss the forest from the trees! The general pattern is still there. 1/👇 🏺 #paleosky

Chatting with Joel Mokyr soon. What should I ask? #econsky

The best thing about race realism is that its nonsense. Imagine a world where it would be true... I don't want to. 🙏 @killgrove.bsky.social 🏺 #paleosky

"History no longer feels like something unfolding behind us but something rushing toward us, urgent and impossible to ignore." ~ @kaiserkuo.bsky.social substack.com/home/post/p-...

Hearsay from Beijing: Joel Mokyr is being surrounded by hundreds of Chinese students wanting his autograph. Lovely image -- also a good reality check to those who say the Nobel committee but a nostalgic bunch of eurocentric Whigs. #econsky

👀 For those who agree that Shrödinger's biological wisdom went beyond cats. Thanks to @djnicholson.bsky.social !

“When AI systems lack adequate exposure to a language, they have blind spots in their comprehension of human experience.” For example, "Hindi is spoken by around 7.5 per cent of the world’s population" but "accounts for 0.02% of Common Crawl training data".

Interesting, but title seems misleading.

Signed! "Unlike museums, arts, cultural and heritage organisations .. science and discovery centres have historically been excluded from these [funding] schemes." www.sciencecentres.org.uk/openletter20...

Haha, look at that!! "A new study has observed that chimpanzees regularly eat fermented fruit together, suggesting that alcohol consumption is more deeply rooted in human evolution than previously thought." www.dw.com/en/chimps-re...

Steve Jobs loved this original @sciam.bsky.social graphic and cited it constantly in interviews, calling computers "bicycles of the mind" for how they let us operate with max efficiency. Turns out, though, bikes are so efficient because they make us more like... fish? Check it out 🧪

"Humans didn’t just diverge from other apes in form ... They diverged in speed.” www.anthropology.net/p/the-face-t... by @anthropology.net

Can the brain understand itself? 🧠 In a new episode, @matthewcobb.bsky.social explores the glories and the limits of neuroscience. Expect colorful characters--and a telling lesson about the lobster's stomach 🦞 👀 Full convo in audio; highlights in writing. onhumans.substack.com/p/can-the-br...

It's out! 🥁 In this five-episode series, we dive deep into the mysteries of the human brain. 🧠 So how special is the human brain? How did it evolve? And can we ever really understand it? Grateful to all the amazing guests, incl. @matthewcobb.bsky.social, for their ideas. Enjoy! 👏

🧠 Dopamine. Serotonin. Endorphins. How do these mythic molecules really work? Do we even know? In this episode, Judy Grisel uses drugs and addiction as a window into the chemistry that flavours every moment of our lived experience. What a tour!✨

What does the story of India reveal about the big questions of world history? I got to talk about this at the British Academy. What an honour! Recording out now. This was at the book launch of B. Gupta's "Economic History of India", hosted by the always-inspiring @cagewarwick.bsky.social. 1/3

Farming changed everything. But why did humans start doing something so... weird? @andreamatranga.bsky.social might have the answer! This was one of my all-time favourite episodes. Here it is as an encore, wrapping up this summer's climate trilogy. Listen: open.spotify.com/episode/0kK8... Read:

Climate. Colonialism. Hot topics. But do they relate? Yes, according to Tirthankar Roy. And not just for climate justice. Author of the Origins of Colonialism, Roy argues that we cannot understand the rise of British Empire without understanding the monsoon climate. Is he right? Listen now!

Climate changed. Africa dried up. Jungles gave way to savanna. A certain ape ventured onto the grasslands. Humanity was born. So goes a popular theory in human evolution. Is it true? 👀 Check the new episode with Yale's Jessica Thompson! onhumans.substack.com/p/how-climat...

I really enjoyed this five-episode series. Among other things, I appreciate the summary essay of each episode. It should be standard for every podcast.👏

From the archive. “For much of the 20th century, the Ainu narrative created by outsiders revolved around their demise. But something else caught the attention of Japanese colonists and others traveling to Mosir: the Ainu’s relationship with bears.” Read more: www.sapiens.org/archaeology/...

Sex cells are binary. But humans are not sex cells. To understand humans we must move beyond a male-female binary. Or so argues Augustin Fuentes, author of the new book, Sex is a Spectrum. Is he right? Tune in to our chat! 🎧 onhumans.substack.com/p/an-essenti... @anthrofuentes.bsky.social

It’s official a Pope has been chosen! They haven’t released the name yet so we only know this one thing…It isn’t Trump… he would have proclaimed his deity before the smoke left the chimney! 🤡💥

Okay. It’s over. We’ve covered it all: the origin of life, human evolution, the spread of Homo sapiens. Now, an epic epilogue — The Holocene Story! 🙏Grateful to Johannes Krause, Dean Falk, @chrisbstringer.bsky.social & @timcoulson.bsky.social. What a journey! 🎧 65 min 📖 15 min bit.ly/42RumtX

How did Homo sapiens become the first global species of humans? 🌎 Join Johannes Krause and I as we explore the epic migrations of humanity! Listen. Read. All for free at: 👉 onhumans.substack.com/p/a-human-li... #Archaeology #Anthropology #HumanEvolution

The new series of @pnas.org articles on the history of inequality require some careful reading. The identical data set leads some to agree and others to disagree with Dawn of Everything... What's going on? Here are some initial thoughts.

What a graph! Striking. A new piece in the puzzle called the origins of inequality.

Things are about to get personal... In episode three of the series, Chris Stringer guides us through the story of humanity itself open.substack.com/pub/onhumans...

Wow! I just finished a long and important conversation on sex biology with @anthrofuentes.bsky.social We touched upon so much! Hermaphrodite worms. Sex changing fish. Intersex humans. And of course, difficult topics around how to discuss such sensitive issues in public. Stay tuned!

What are the chances! Just today, I published a piece where @chrisbstringer.bsky.social promised that ongoing proteomic work will soon help us solve the mystery of Denisovans. Then this comes out. Decades after his Out of Africa work, Stringer is still ahead of the curve. A source of inspiration! ✨

How did humans evolve? 🧠 And why are we the only once left? 🌍 Join Chris Stringer from @nhm-london.bsky.social and myself on this epic quest to understand our shared origins. 🎧 Listen or read at: onhumans.substack.com/p/origins-of... @chrisbstringer.bsky.social #science #evolution

Hubble photos help me whenever thinking about humanity starts feeling solipsistic ✨

Great episode on botanic age, the first pre-Homo inventions (sleeping nests and baby slings) speech and rhythm.