Happy #FossilFriday! 
Did you know that the oldest known stone tools date back around 3.3 million years? Found in Kenya, these tools predate early humans and suggest that our ancient relatives were crafting tools long before we thought! 
#HumanOrigins #Archaeology #paleoanthropology
@janisf our scientific theory of #humanorigins is that culture was born of #sexstrike
This is a poem, a song.
If you like thinking and learning about human prehistory, you'll like this interview with geneticist David Reich. Two hours on what research tells us about human origins, how modern humans relate to Neanderthals and Denisovans, ancient DNA, ancient epidemics, admixture, how genetics informs archaeology, and the spread of the Yamnaya from the steppes.
Did humans drive Neanderthals to extinction? New research sheds light on this age-old debate, examining the roles of competition, climate change, and interbreeding. The answer might reshape our understanding of coexistence with our ancient cousins. #Neanderthals #HumanOrigins #Evolution
https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/did-we-kill-the-neanderthals-new-research-may-finally-answer-an-age-old-question
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Everybody welcome, just turn up!
TONIGHT, Last Quarter Moon 
Jan 21, 18:30 (London UTC)
LIVE @UCLanthropology and on ZOOM
Camilla Power on
'Neanderthals, Homo sapiens and the human revolution'
Camilla Power will be comparing the evidence for the emergence of language, art and symbolism between the lineages of Neanderthals in Eurasia and Homo sapiens in Africa. Some similarities and some differences are suggested by archaeological, fossil, demographic + palaeogenomic data. Did both populations engage in the human symbolic revolution, and was this fundamental to interchange between them?
#humanorigins #Neanderthals #modernhumans #symbolicculture #anthropology #archaeology #fossils
LIVE in the Daryll Forde Room, 2nd Floor of the UCL Anthropology Dept, 14 Taviton St, London WC1H 0BW. Please come on time before doors close.
ZOOM ID 384 186 2174 passcode Wawilak
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TONIGHT!!
Our Spring Term of Radical #Anthropology starts
6:30pm London time.
Everybody welcome, just turn up! LIVE or ZOOM
Tues Jan 14 gregorian
18:30 (London)
with #ChrisKnight and #JeromeLewis
LIVE @UCLanthropology + on ZOOM
'When Eve Laughed: The origins of language'
"Why, out of 220 primate species, are we the only one which talks? Laughter, too, is unique to our species. Although different from language, collective, contagious laughter may have set the scene for words + grammar to evolve by establishing the necessary bonds of trust. In addition to the latest archaeological research, this talk will draw on hunter-gatherer studies to show how men learn to communicate with birds and beasts and how women use laughter as a levelling device."
#humanorigins #language #ritual #symbolicculture
LIVE in the Daryll Forde Room, 2nd Floor of the UCL Anthropology Dept, 14 Taviton St, London WC1H 0BW
ZOOM ID 384 186 2174 passcode Wawilak
An earlier review of 2022 studies on #Neanderthal #family life. Social structure according to #genetics looks like #patrilocal with #females moving out of groups.
We are close to 
per cent certain that #Homosapiens did the exact opposite -- daughters stayed with their mums, and sons-in-law came into the group to do #brideservice. We are so sure here because it's what #African #huntergatherers do. As a result, our lineage flourishes (thanks to grandmothers), Neanderthals dwindled (lack of grandmothers?) and numerous Neanderthal women could have moved into the incoming African origin groups.
#humanorigins #anthropology #Pleistocene #kinship
https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822%2822%2901755-9
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TONIGHT!
Everybody welcome, just turn up!
LIVE or ZOOM
Tues Dec 3
18:30 (London UK)
with #ChrisKnight and #JeromeLewis
LIVE @UCLanthropology
And on ZOOM
'Modern metaphors from political resistance movements applied to human evolution'
LIVE in the Daryll Forde Room, 2nd Floor of the UCL Anthropology Dept, 14 Taviton St, London WC1H 0BW
ZOOM ID 384 186 2174 passcode Wawilak
Jerome Lewis and Chris Knight will be discussing the final chapter of their book on the topic of importing modern industrial political action as models for human evolutionary strategies. How can such ideas address an Indigenous voice to make them relevant?
#strikeaction #directaction #picketline #humanorigins #symbolicculture #red #ritual #solidarity
They are speaking LIVE in the Daryll Forde, 2nd Floor, UCL Anthropology Dept. Get there in good time by 6:30 pm before doors close.or join on ZOOM ID 384 186 2174 passcode Wawilak.
On the occasion of the death of world famous #Neolithic #archaeologist and Tory peer #ColinRenfrew we have a few things to say.
Looking down at us from the #Cambridge high table, he made some severe misjudgements. His #sapientparadox was an attempt to argue that while #Homosapiens bodies evolved in #Africa, somehow we didn't get smart till we hit #Europe.
Also highly questionable was his attitude to the #cognition of #huntergatherers who, so he said, 'lacked fully developed mind'. According to him, they needed to borrow language from farmers.
We had some big political and social institutional differences with Renfrew. Our own Chris Knight goes through the whole context in a review below
#archaeology #Renfrew #racism #Indigenous #Palaeolithic #humanorigins
JRAI 2002, 8: 807-8
A devastating review by Chris Knight of the Runciman collection 'The Origin of Human Social Institutions'
In 'Before The Dawn of Everything', archaeologist #IanWatts questions Graeber and Wengrow's premise that searching for original human society 'can only be a matter of myth-making'. He argues, for Graeber and Wengrow, a ‘single human “us” can only be inferred from ~30,000 years ago'. The actual stretch of time when we became all-singing, all-dancing, language-speaking symbolic culture-bearing humans -- in Africa-- is abandoned as unknowable.
The latest archaeological findings and their interpretation suggest pan-African habitual performance of collective ritual, with a uniform signature of red cosmetic usage, from ~160,000 years ago around the end of speciation, grounding symbolic culture’s first shared imaginaries. While #TheDawnofEverything was clearly intended to be collectively empowering, it marginalises evolutionary theory, the archaeology of our speciation and African hunter-gatherer ethnography. Thereby, it resembles the decried ‘sapient paradox’! That is the fairly racist (!) idea that we got human bodies in Africa but had to reach Europe to show intelligence (or interesting archaeology!)
#archaeology #humanorigins #Africa #MiddleStoneAge #sapientparadox
https://www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/doi/10.3828/hgr.2022.3
What makes us human? The line between Homo sapiens and our ancestors is more blurred than we once thought. Fossils show that traits we consider “human” like tool use, culture, and communication were present in other hominins, even in primates. The truth is, humanity is not defined by a single moment or trait but by gradual changes over time. Our shared evolutionary journey is truly complex. #HumanEvolution #Anthropology #Hominins #HumanOrigins
https://www.shiningscience.com/2024/07/what-is-human-why-split-from-our.html
This is a nice recent interview with Chris Stringer, one of the world's experts on #humanorigins #fossils and main originator of 'Out of Africa'.
He tells the story of how he's had to change his mind, and how that's a hallmark of a scientist. (Mainly about Neanderthal interbreeding here, but Out of Africa absolutely still stands for Homo sapiens).
We will be welcoming Chris to talk LIVE @UCL and on ZOOM the evening of Tues Nov 19.
#humanevolution #palaeoanthropology #OutofAfrica #RadicalAnthropologytalks
https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(24)00663-8
How good are we at throwing? So good, the best of us can become too precise for the human eye (no slouch itself) to track. https://www.cbssports.com/mlb/news/mlbs-rob-manfred-addresses-future-of-robot-umpires-says-abs-could-be-introduced-as-challenge-system/ #throwing #humanity #humanorigins
Also see: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/01/110124073910.htm
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Our first class of the Autumn Term open to all!
THIS EVENING 6:30 London
Tues Sept 24, 18:30 (London UK)
with #ChrisKnight
LIVE @UCLanthropology and on ZOOM
'Did matriarchy ever exist?'
Everybody welcome FREE, LIVE and online!
Just turn up!
Chris Knight, founder of Radical Anthropology Group and author of 'Blood Relations: Menstruation and the origins of culture' will be speaking LIVE in the Daryll Forde Room, 2nd Floor of the UCL Anthropology Dept, 14 Taviton St, London WC1H 0BW
You can also join us on ZOOM (ID 384 186 2174 passcode Wawilak)
FREE community #fediscience please BOOST!
TONIGHT
'Gender and Ritual Power among African hunter-gatherers'
Radical Anthro summer talks start up next
Tues April 16, 18:30 (BST)
with #CamillaPower
LIVE @UCLanthropology and on ZOOM
Everybody welcome FREE, LIVE and online!
Camilla Power, former Senior Lecturer at UEL, Research Fellow at UCL, will be speaking LIVE in the Daryll Forde Room, 2nd Floor of the UCL Anthropology Dept, 14 Taviton St, London WC1H 0BW (the entrance may still be through the Archaeology Institute in Gordon Sq). You can also join us on ZOOM (ID 384 186 2174 passcode Wawilak)
Still time to sign in on Eventbrite for tonight! 
Oct 24, 18:30 London time with
Radical Anthropologists
Camilla Power and Ian Watts
'On the Human Revolution'
They are speaking LIVE @UCLanthropology (Daryll Forde Seminar Room on the 2nd Floor)
and on ZOOM. Everybody welcome!
Sign into Eventbrite for ZOOM ID (sent out on the morning/pm of the date)
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/radical-anthropology-talks-tickets-707087105567
#humanevolution #culturalevolution #symbolicculture #pigments #ritual #anthropology #humanorigins #femalecosmeticcoalitions #Africa #MiddleStoneAge
Image shows the cover of 'The Human Revolution', edited by the late Paul Mellars and Chris Stringer in 1989.
Humans were born into language. Linguists are searching for the world's oldest language, but it's difficult to determine if they're looking for the oldest spoken, written, or still-in-use language. Hebrew and Aramaic have written records dating back 3,000 years, but all languages may be descendants of a single "mother" language. Then this mother language should have come from everywhere or nowhere? #OldestLanguage #LinguisticsHistory #HumanOrigins
"World’s oldest Homo sapiens footprint identified on South Africa’s Cape south coast
(...) The 153,000 year old track was found in the Garden Route National Park, west of the coastal town of Knysna on the Cape south coast. The two previously dated South African sites, Nahoon and Langebaan, have yielded ages of about 124,000 years and 117,000 years respectively."
New Video is out today! Learn all about the #Homonaledi child, #Leti! https://dsh.re/21fb5 #Paleoanthropology #Anthropology #HumanOrigins #Origins #Evolution #HumanEvolution
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