Okay. This is angering me. First of all, “MAN”!? We’re not in the nineteenth century FFS. There’s a better word and it is “Humans”. And secondly - who the f£&k thought HUMANS only learned to control fire 50,000 years ago???!!! www.theguardian.com/science/2025...

It was a wonderful day and so deserved. Very proud!

Episode 3 of our Ng'ipalajem video series with Justus Erus Edung, talking about the biggest discovery of his career, Kenyanthropus! Sehemu 3 ya video Ng'ipalajem na Justus Erus Edung anazungumza uguduzi mkuu wa maisha ya kazi yake, Kenyanthropus!

Fabulous news that @martamlahr.bsky.social has been elected a Fellow of the British Academy 🍾🍾🍾

Episode 2 of our Ng'ipalajem video series showing this summer's research! Today, I show some antelope teeth I'm using to understand paleoenvironments Sehemu 2 wa Ng'ipalajem video inaonyesha utafiti wa kiangazi hiki! Leo naonyesha meno wa nyumbu na swala ambayo natumia kwa kuelewa mazingira ya kale

The joy of sorting LSA lithics from Turkana under the guidance of @robfoley.bsky.social Follow us on Instagram for more www.instagram.com/palaeotrails...

It's a bit late for #FossilFriday but I have to show this lovely young adult Palaeoloxodon (giant elephant) jaw from the new Middle Pleistocene site I'm working at in Turkana, Kenya!

New blog posting, inspired by @robfoley.bsky.social 's witty critique of UK universities The Great University Subsidy Scandal 21percent.org?p=2278 Many of us routinely invite the examiner to lunch or dinner at our homes with other students & postdocs at our expense

In a follow-up to our study on accent mimicry last year, we've found that natives are the best at detecting accent mimicry. People from other English speaking countries were, however, worse at mimicry detection than were native listeners. @robfoley.bsky.social www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

What does the Ng'ipalajem team do? Ng’ipalajem, meaning Ancestors in Turkana, is an ERC-funded project. Led by @martamlahr.bsky.social, the project investigates how the emergence of Homo sapiens is deeply intertwined with Africa’s long-term environmental and ecological history. #humanevolution

Breaking the barriers! Important new paper by Daniel Green and others discovering 18 million years of proteins of East African mammals! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Talking yesterday evening with @jonathanrgoodman.bsky.social at the launch of his new book Invisible Rivals (yalebooks.co.uk/book/9780300... )

Race, ethnicity don’t match genetic ancestry, according to a large U.S. study www.science.org/content/arti...

Are we hardwired to fall for autocrats? It’s human nature to trust strongmen, but we’ve also evolved the tools to resist them www.theguardian.com/books/2025/m...

Many congratulations, Rob! So deserved!

Nearly 50 years since David 'Analytical Archaeology’ Clarke died tragically young. A sunny day seemed the right time to pay a much overdue visit to where he is buried in Great Chesterford. Still much missed - not just for what he would have contributed but as a brilliant, witty and cheerful person.

Amazing work with a fabulous team 🤩

Our new paper on 3D GM has all the models and script available for others to apply our method. We use it to demonstrate interregional variability of Nubian Levallois cores but it has broader potential for lithic studies #openscience #archaeology #3DGM @icarehb.bsky.social @jmcascalheira.bsky.social

Excellent thread - the revolution in our understanding of cellular biology, critical for modern medicine, and now tragically impacted by US cuts to NIH funding

Congratulations to @martamlahr.bsky.social on her News and Views in Nature on Ignacio de la Torre and colleagues' discovery of early bone tools at Olduvai. The site that keeps on giving! www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Thanks so much to Jean Black @yalebooks.bsky.social @yalepress.bsky.social and @robfoley.bsky.social – would not have been possible without you @darwincollegecam.bsky.social @cambridgeuni.bsky.social @sangerinstitute.bsky.social @engagewcs.bsky.social

This morning, some of our researchers took part in a McDonald Institute knapping workshop focused on microlithic technologies with brilliant guidance from expert John Lord! Thanks to @robfoley.bsky.social for organising this opportunity and to @kingscollege.bsky.social for kindly hosting us

In an article for @uk.theconversation.com, @rjmilne.bsky.social and I argue that while the UK's plan to foster innovation through AI is ambitious, it will rely on public trust for success. Yet anyone can claim to be trustworthy: how do we tell who actually is? theconversation.com/government-n...

Very nice post from Daniel Nettle, honouring Margo Wilson "..a particularly successful example of how you can bring evolutionary understanding to social science topics and be genuinely constructive" www.danielnettle.eu/2025/01/26/m...

The HEIRS meeting at ICArEHB last week was as enjoyable as it was impressive. A wealth of early career talent (and the occasional older ones!). The development of scientific and quantitative techniques is really transforming human evolutionary studies. Congratulations and thanks to the organisers.

🏺🦣 Very pleased to share the latest chapter from my PhD (with Gonzalo Linares-Matás), “Setbacks in the use of a handaxe: lithic investment in the Early Acheulean” doi.org/10.1007/s125... /1

Are you studying technological complexity in #archaeology? If so, here is an open call for a Special Issue on 'Technological Complexity & Archaeological Interpretation in the Deep Past' which I am co-editing in JAMT! More information here or contact me! link.springer.com/collections/... - Pls share!

I'm reading it now. It's a must read. Illuminating.

Also true in palaeontology. In the UK, there is a risk averse approach to funding fieldwork by funding panels: as a result, field-based palaeontological work is in steep decline (along with taxonomy and systematics). Where will we end up if no-one is generating primary data anymore?

“SNPs inferred to be under positive selection in forests are enriched for pathogen-related genes, consistent with the higher infectious disease burden in these habitats.” Did early hominins have relaxed selective pressure for disease and a lower disease burden? www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

The tree gradually going. Sad to see it disappearing limb by limb, but the skill (and machinery) of the team is impressive.

For more than 30 years I have looked out of the window over the desk in my office and seen this magnificent tree in all its seasonal variety. Sadly it is too sick (and dangerous!) to survive, and this week will be cut down. Like losing an old friend.

Journalists really don’t have to go along with the agenda of social media - and definitely not with the interventions of billionaires. This talk from the end of 2024 feels particularly relevant today. www.commonwealthroundtable.co.uk/general/medi...

Excellent paper on chimp genetic diversity

Congratulations!

Results indicate an important, previously underappreciated and comparatively unusual role of biotic interactions in Homo macroevolution, and speciation Diversity-dependent speciation and extinction in hominins 🏺🧪 Laura van Holstein, Robert Foley @robfoley.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41...

“Handy’s legacy is his defence of the company as an evolving community of people rather than a machine or set of contracts… the organisation of the future [needs] to be flexible, decentralised and built on trust rather than formal hierarchy” Wasn’t that what universities used to be…

How cool is this! The Washington Geological Survey's Augmented-Reality Sandbox lets you dive into geology by shaping landscapes and exploring geological processes hands-on.

Nashtifan, a village in Iran, is renowned for its 1,000-year-old windmills, among the oldest in the world, used for centuries to harness wind power and grind grain.

For your academic friends who, exhausted by the system, are trying to figure out what happened to universities 🤣 amzn.eu/d/3xC5O59

Excellent essay by David Spiegelhalter in Nature on the uncertainty surrounding probability. Definitely food for thought for those of us who live and die by P-values, or have the Reverend Bayes oversee our research. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Throwing out old folders I came across one full of overhead projector sheets. Brought back many memories. Not great quality but does the business, and lectures could be prepared in a fraction of the time when you’re not looking for the perfect image of a baby chimpanzee for powerpoint

Pleased (and surprised!) to announce the publication of my new book ‘Notes from Ivory Flats: Reflections on the Changing Landscape of Academic Life’.

It’s always inspiring to listen to Sydney Brenner. If you can find them, read his Loose Ends in Current Biology

Just back from a fabulous workshop in Dongzhi County in China on the Hualongdong hominin and its site. This is a 300,000 year old fossil (well, several actually!) that adds to the richness and complexity of Asian hominins in the Middle Pleistocene. (Photo of the cast in Hualongdong Museum)

King’s College Cambridge has just announced a Research Fellowship on the topic of Symbiosis and/or Coevolution for early career researchers. www.kings.cam.ac.uk/about/work-a...

Discovery of fossilized footprints reveals the moment two ancient human species crossed paths

Really looking forward to our next EvoAnth webinar - tomorrow at 1pm (UK)! Join us: liverpool-ac-uk.zoom.us/meeting/regi... 🏺

I was deeply disappointed by the lack of nature/science/climate/enviro on many major end-of-year book lists—so I decided to make my own! Introducing: ✨🎁📚 The 2024 Holiday Gift Guide to Nature & Science Books ✨🎁📚 Please share: Let's make this go viral in time for Black Friday / holiday shopping!

Very sad news. A towering figure over decades and one of the true archaeology intellectuals. We we colleagues at Cambridge Arch & Anth for many years and he managed to uniquely combine friendliness, kindness and geneality with imperial style. End of an era stretching back to the 1960s.