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janfrel.bsky.social @janfrel.bsky.social · 16h

Whaddya know

janfrel.bsky.social @janfrel.bsky.social · 21h

The square brow and nose, deep-pitted eye sockets to me deserve an ex-arc comparison with woodcarving using flint chisels and a global comparison of wood-carved adult male head sculptures.

It’s worth interrogating what in the carvings is style and what is a consequence of tools/skill transfer.

janfrel.bsky.social @janfrel.bsky.social · 21h

Good scholarship shows some of the archaic-diaspora languages used human body as the root framework. Vestiges of that would likely have influence into early attempts to explain anatomy, etc.

This Ancient Language Has the Only Grammar Based Entirely on the Human Body

An endangered language family suggests that early humans used their bodies as a model for reality

www.scientificamerican.com

janfrel.bsky.social @janfrel.bsky.social · 21h

The first thing I see is experienced wood-carving skills on soft limestone.
We don’t yet see familiarity with stonecarving.

Similar to how newspapers in the early days of digital publishing would run their articles at 12:00am as a new “edition.” And editors would push their writers on word length.

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janfrel.bsky.social @janfrel.bsky.social · 2d

💷🤷🏻💷 - ok!

janfrel.bsky.social @janfrel.bsky.social · 4d

🌂☂️☔️

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janfrel.bsky.social @janfrel.bsky.social · 4d

Nice! @icarehb.bsky.social

Reposted

Enrico R. Crema @ercrema.bsky.social · 5d

⚠️Paper Alert!⚠️
Excited to share this paper with @roccoro.bsky.social where we examined whether ceramic technology in Saharan Africa was the result of a single or multiple episodes of innovation & diffusion
rdcu.be/eJi3g

Bayesian analyses of radiocarbon dates suggest multiple origins of ceramic technology in Early Holocene Africa

Nature Communications - Several possible points of origin have been proposed for the spread of ceramic technology in Saharan Africa between 11–10,000 years ago. Here, the authors...

rdcu.be

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janfrel.bsky.social @janfrel.bsky.social · 4d

Or maybe: how the impossibility of living on Mars will be the prompt that gets us to realize it's more realistic to design intelligent forms that can easily live on Mars and elsewhere in space using advances in fields of developmental biology/diverse intelligence? Are you following Michael Levin?

janfrel.bsky.social @janfrel.bsky.social · 4d

What about the new preprint on Bioarchiv, I think saying Bootstrap parsimony points to orig. holotype clusters with Floresiensis, and the other 4 cluster with another species, but that they are sister taxa with Erectus/Erg? Have you weighed in it? This to me = fascinating as Yunxian.

Where do the Dmanisi hominins fit on the human evolutionary tree?

Archeological excavations at the site of Dmanisi in the Republic of Georgia have yielded a rich assemblage of hominin fossil remains, as well as lithic artefacts and bones of fossil fauna. The site is...

www.biorxiv.org

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janfrel.bsky.social @janfrel.bsky.social · 5d

Deborah Barsky and I interview Eudald Carbonell about his framework, the hominization and humanization process.

Utimately, we need larger concepts through which we understand the archaeo record, that also necessarily capture the humanistic motive to learn about them. Carbonell’s offering is potent.

A conversation with the legendary evolutionary thinker and archaeologist, Eudald Carbonell.

popular-archaeology.com

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janfrel.bsky.social @janfrel.bsky.social · 5d

My interpretation is that these are the creatures who guard the underworld. Snakes protect the travelers from the scorpions etc

janfrel.bsky.social @janfrel.bsky.social · 6d

Here I talk to JP Mallory about the quest to identify the Proto Indo European homeland. It has attracted theorists like moths to a flame for centuries now.

A Scholar’s Quest To Find The Ancestral People Of The Most Influential Language On Earth – Interview

Who and where were the Proto-Indo-Europeans? Almost 450 languages spoken by 4 billion people descend from their tongue—and J.P. Mallory has been on a life-long journey to reconstruct their world. A de...

www.eurasiareview.com

janfrel.bsky.social @janfrel.bsky.social · 6d

That’s no toy! 😅

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janfrel.bsky.social @janfrel.bsky.social · 10d

Is it possible that the rate of phylogenetic change for Bayesian tip could speed up with more migration, more intense climactic-enviro flux; and more contact/admix? Antecessor-Longi are pretty close on Feng’s tree. Lot of traveling in short time. ESR says 600k-1m+

Reposted

Carl Zimmer @carlzimmer.com · 13d

Million-year-old skulls in China are adding some big wrinkles to the history of modern humans, Neanderthals, and Denisovans. BBC report: www.bbc.com/news/article... & @johnhawks.net take: www.johnhawks.net/p/the-proble...

The problem skulls from Yunxian

The relationships of fossils from deep time in China may help reveal ancestral connections for the Denisovans

www.johnhawks.net

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janfrel.bsky.social @janfrel.bsky.social · 20d

Seems we are on the verge of realizing all the fruit eating animals may be intoxicated RIGHT NOW, and this is baked into their evolutionary trajectory.

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Reposted

LBV Magazine @labrujulaverde.bsky.social · 20d

First wine, then survival: Bronze Age farmers prioritized irrigating vineyards during times of climate crisis www.labrujulaverde.com/en/2025/09/f...

First wine, then survival: Bronze Age farmers prioritized irrigating vineyards during times of climate crisis

The agricultural societies of the Bronze and Iron Ages in the Ancient Near East made strategic resource management decisions that unequivocally prioritized viticulture over olive cultivation during pe...

www.labrujulaverde.com

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janfrel.bsky.social @janfrel.bsky.social · 22d

Yep.

janfrel.bsky.social @janfrel.bsky.social · 22d

How many of these have you gone to now? Seems like 40-50.
Are you coming to ESHE?

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janfrel.bsky.social @janfrel.bsky.social · 23d

Art Deco needs ambassadors, I’m glad you’re pounding the pavement. My optimistic way of thinking about all the ugly modern buildings out there is that they are pre-clad, and some day the world will clad them in Deco, Beaux Arts, etc

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janfrel.bsky.social @janfrel.bsky.social · 28d

This paper by Lambert van Rooyen purely on the geology of the relevant parts of the Dinaledi subsystem in my view forces us to accept that the collection of Naledi fossils (all female) was intentionally placed there, and either required string or fire to navigate to that location in the cave.

Interpreting access to the Dinaledi Subsystem by Homo naledi: redefining the “Chute” as a labyrinth

A large assemblage of fossils attributed to the hominin species Homo naledi was originally discovered in the remote and difficult-to-access Dinaledi Subsystem of the Rising Star cave system, South Afr...

africarxiv.ubuntunet.net

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janfrel.bsky.social @janfrel.bsky.social · Aug 29

The aesthetics of the mask speak to me of Gael-Gaul Indo-European culture.

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janfrel.bsky.social @janfrel.bsky.social · Aug 27

I bet the agriculture shower its appreciation for the disturbed grave however, with a healthy yield

janfrel.bsky.social @janfrel.bsky.social · Aug 20

Vandals, vandalism.Visigoths, goth. Slavs, slaves, en-slav’d.
A people who unwillingly gave their name to a technology of captivity that emerged and refined through labor demand for early mining, farming, whose early arteries were Dnieper-Black Sea-E. Med-Nile. Hmm were PIE-ers Slav traders? 🫥🫨