Radical Anthropology

London's longest running evening class, studying What it means to be human at UCL Anthropology dept. We are FREE, on Tues eves term time. Account run by Camilla Power. Radical anthropologists include Chris Knight, Ian Watts, Jerome Lewis and Morna Finnegan
#anthropology #socialanthropology #evolutionaryanthropology #archaeology

see Autumn Term events here (tba)
http://radicalanthropologygroup.org/

Vimeo collection of previous talks
https://vimeo.com/user33365184

Artist: Diego Rodriguez-Robredo

Joined: Oct 28, 2022

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Last Notes

2026-06-07 07:59:44 UTC

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Comment here on how swiftly culture enabled human expansion
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/humans-conquered-the-planet-300-times-faster-than-genetic-evolution-can-explain/

2026-06-07 07:58:50 UTC

It's culture wot did it.
'Humans spread across nearly every terrestrial habitat in a timeframe far too short to be explained by biological evolution alone'
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2523038123

2026-05-15 08:35:31 UTC

Meat and hide subsistence in Initial Upper Palaeolithic on the steppes of Mongolia:
"Although considerable attention has been given to the hunting of animals for their meat, there has been negligible consideration of the process of manufacturing leather clothing from animal hides that could be used as insulation against the cold'
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s41982-025-00236-z

2026-05-14 11:31:31 UTC

Big sleep study in relation to health and ageing:
'A sweeping analysis of sleep duration and signs of ageing in half a million adults has pinpointed a sweet spot — about six to eight hours of sleep each day — that is linked to a lower risk of early death and disease.'
(This is large-scale and does not necessarily tell you what's good for you, but it may be a good guide).
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-01506-8

2026-05-14 07:29:38 UTC

What the official story leaves out: the anti-genocide Jewish voices being written out of “the Jewish community.” They have been silenced, expelled from parties, and accused of antisemitism for opposing a genocide.
https://www.youtube.com/live/r2OV2VFQCDE?si=1QnvH1TFLuh3Aewe

2026-05-13 08:37:37 UTC

More on the subject of birth difficulty -- across mammals this time
https://www.univie.ac.at/en/news/press-room/press-releases/detail/human-childbirth-is-not-uniquely-difficult-among-mammals

2026-05-12 17:30:19 UTC

Defend Our Juries: "The British public will be astonished to learn that in the British justice system a protester can now be convicted of criminal damage for disrupting an arms factory and then be sentenced as ‘terrorists’ without having been convicted of terror charges and with this having been kept secret from the jury.”
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/may/12/palestine-action-activists-elbit-protest-terrorist-connection-ruling

2026-05-12 17:21:19 UTC

'At what point are citizens in the north entitled to say they do not want to live in a country run by Farage? That question goes far beyond the constituency traditionally defined as nationalist, and includes many people – and many in my constituency from unionist backgrounds – who are horrified at the prospect of a UK run by and for the coterie of charlatans and spivs that surround Farage.'
Matthew O’Toole, the Stormont leader of the Social Democratic and Labour party (SDLP), mobilizing for a reunification referendum.

2026-05-12 12:04:21 UTC

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'baboons and their close relatives fell into three general patterns: one in which groups were cohesive, kin-biased, and moderately rank-biased, another in which groups were more cliquish and nepotistic, and a third in which groups were divided into clusters centered on dominant males'
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2520774123

2026-05-12 12:02:06 UTC

The study breaks #baboon social life into three categories: cohesive, cliquish and multilevel
#primate #socialsystems
https://www.umass.edu/news/article/baboon-societies-arent-one-size-fits-all-study-finds

2026-05-11 17:47:41 UTC

Interesting question of whether we have been shrinking brains since the Pleistocene (ignore the idiocy about 'IQ' which is a western construct of little interest!). The issue with brain sizes could come down to constraints of maternal investment -- and that might reflect unequal distribution of high quality nutrition with the advent of class societies. But there are several takes here.
https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/human-evolution/if-humans-are-getting-smarter-why-are-our-brains-shrinking

2026-05-10 11:46:07 UTC

How to kill a language.
44% of mother tongues now endangered -- which amounts to cultural genocide as was/is applied to Indigenous children in residential school systems.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2026/may/10/what-happens-when-we-lose-a-language

2026-05-10 07:16:53 UTC

Seasonality as a key aspect of periodicity in hunter-gatherer life -- but we'd also like to mention the moon, which also has deeptime evolutionary periodicity in our species (to do with those lunar-scheduled lions).
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1090513826000760

2026-05-10 07:13:16 UTC

Interview with my wonderful Ph.D supervisor Prof Leslie Aiello
https://leakeyfoundation.org/learn/oral-history-of-human-origins-research/

2026-05-08 16:27:03 UTC

Greenlandic woman wins case against the Danish authorities for stealing her two-hour-old child.
They have now ceased 'psychometric tests' on Greenlandic individuals.
#Kalaallit
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/may/08/greenland-woman-wins-danish-authorities-keira-alexandra-kronvold-child

2026-05-08 13:21:22 UTC

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of course!

2026-05-08 12:47:24 UTC

More than one way to evolve a big smart brain!
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-01302-4

2026-05-08 12:36:15 UTC

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parallel lounging, that common bunny behaviour. Can they be friends?

2026-05-08 08:09:16 UTC

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The Reich et al 2009 study, with a much more diverse sampling of population, 'showed that upper-caste groups shared greater genetic affinity with ‘West Eurasians’ (that is, ‘Europeans, central Asians, Near Easterners, and people of the Caucasus’, as Reich put it in his 2018 book) than did low-caste and tribal groups. The researchers coined new terms for early South Asian people who, in the abstract modelling involved in the study, were classified into two groups considered ancestral to all contemporary South Asians: Ancestral South Indians (ASI) and Ancestral North Indians (ANI).'
Subsequent studies further elaborated how the ASI and ANI populations came to be formed, and how they were related to the Harappans and the Aryans.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2842210/

2026-05-08 08:07:27 UTC

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Homo sapiens arrived first in the subcontinent about 65,000-50,000 years ago, and would have found the region already inhabited by other humans (likely Denisovan,who I would call human not simply hominin). ...Genetic scientists say that, today, almost all people in South Asia carry this ‘First South Asians’ ancestry in their genomes to varying degrees, with tribal groups possessing more of it than others.
https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(25)00462-3

2026-05-08 07:57:26 UTC

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December 1946, the Adivasi political leader Jaipal Singh Munda said:
'my people … have been disgracefully treated, neglected for the last 6,000 years … It is the new-comers – most of you here are intruders as far as I am concerned – it is the new-comers who have driven away my people from the Indus Valley to the jungle fastnesses.'
Against this fraught background, intensified by the Hindutva grip this century, the palaeogeneticists are addressing the evidence on India's population history.

2026-05-08 07:50:44 UTC

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..and on the political battles over the archaeology
'Some, like Nehru, were excited about the new insights that the Indus Valley research was going to offer. Others, mostly ‘Hindutva’ (or Hindu supremacist, or Hindu nationalist) ideologues from upper-caste communities, were exasperatedly mulling over how to retrofit the Harappans in their already fully formed conclusions about the subcontinent’s history...'

2026-05-08 07:39:30 UTC

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'About the same time that Max Müller – living in England and having never visited India – was choosing to emphasise such claims of common Aryan ancestry for Europeans and Indians, his contemporary Phule – living in India and daily experiencing the effects of its caste system – chose to focus on the ‘foreign’ ancestry of the Brahmans. In Phule’s interpretation, the same blood might have run, if at all, in the veins only of Europeans and upper-caste Indians'

2026-05-08 07:20:52 UTC

Interesting essay on the new role of palaeogenetics in understanding the peopling of India, in relation to the 19th.C history of linguistics, and 20th C developments in archaeology of the Indus Valley.
Mixing and migrating of course is typical Homo sapiens. Lots to learn here on the historic work of Indian activists on the need for emancipation from the caste system.
https://aeon.co/essays/ancient-india-was-shaped-by-waves-of-migration-and-mixing
https://s3.c.im/media_attachments/files/116/537/802/336/261/836/original/a55fd74ed07a62ed.jpg

2026-05-06 14:51:25 UTC

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not off the top of my head, but it's a long time, the violent paramilitaries have descended into criminal gangs and are very discredited now. There was some imbecile police station bombing a week or two back. But it's now unusual and I don't think anyone was injured.

2026-05-06 14:45:12 UTC

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I'd doubt that, it's kind of happening organically.

2026-05-06 11:28:49 UTC

RE: https://mastodon.scot/@Wen/116526681592609812
Surely will live to see it!
#note1lmj…fuqa

2026-05-05 13:51:38 UTC

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how's the patient?

2026-05-05 12:44:04 UTC

The app for buying someone homeless a decent meal (in Wetherspoons)
"It’s never failed yet. Not once,...in fact, people are so quick that you have to move fast if you want to donate.”
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2026/may/05/strangers-buy-wetherspoons-meals-for-homeless-through-app

2026-05-05 11:31:19 UTC

This one's seriously interesting.
Presence or absence of #play in adulthood among #primates is predicted by the politics! It's suppressed by 'despotic' systems:
'Adult play was not predicted by female body mass or sexual dimorphism, which are phylogenetically conserved. Social style was the key factor: tolerant species were more likely to exhibit the behaviour than despotic ones...'
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/rsbl/article/22/4/20250597/481535/Despotism-trumps-phylogeny-in-explaining

2026-05-05 07:32:12 UTC

Preprint on #communication among cooperatively breeding carrion #crows.
'we charted the vocal repertoire of a crow population and mapped it to social functions and behavioral context.'
I would like to learn 'crow'
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.04.02.715916v1

2026-05-04 12:05:12 UTC

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Paper here
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0343698

2026-05-04 12:03:55 UTC

Entirely predictable
https://theconversation.com/dolls-beat-screens-for-building-childrens-social-skills-study-finds-280330

2026-05-04 08:07:02 UTC

#Anthropology needed for changing the USA.
It's always radical!
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2026/04/27/anthropology-teaches-an-essential-skill-era-big-data/

2026-05-03 11:03:40 UTC

We absolutely do need to globalise #intifada for our planet!

2026-05-03 10:26:12 UTC

Evolvable AI paper here with some major Darwinians
'threats of a new major transition in evolution'
This builds on Szathmary's 'major transitions' (with Maynard Smith) and Luc Steels' work with embodied robots.
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2527700123

2026-05-02 10:39:59 UTC

These Holocaust survivors and descendants will be outraged and fight tooth and nail against Starmer's attempt to ban Palestine marches. They certainly have NEVER felt threatened on those marches (except by zionists).
Banning protests against genocide really is going down a fascist road.
https://s3.c.im/media_attachments/files/116/504/540/279/722/388/original/cf747100f6049519.jpg

2026-05-02 08:16:43 UTC

RE: https://mastodon.social/@ramkay/116502958224399106
Of course it's a misnomer of 'month' to say 'two full moons in a month'. That's the Gregorian colonisation of time. Month should apply to the lunar cycle as it did originally and still does in many many calendars.
#note1ver…64xp

2026-05-01 13:09:37 UTC

Beltane shenanigans on Dartmoor, or should it be Walpurgisnacht!
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/may/01/ashburton-dartmoor-folk-revival-festival

2026-05-01 11:17:02 UTC

On my door on a South London Council estate (I put this up, no one else did it!)
https://s3.c.im/media_attachments/files/116/499/030/249/530/588/original/611fabf0f727ae3c.jpg

2026-05-01 10:56:38 UTC

On dogs' brains getting smaller, from 5000 years ago.
Interesting story. Would like to know where it is at with human brains, since ours may have got smaller fairly recently (within the advent of class society?)
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2026/apr/29/dogs-brains-shrink-5000-years-ago

2026-05-01 07:09:48 UTC

Happy May Day!
Happy Full Moon, rising TONIGHT!
https://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/articles/cp846n0wkk6o

2026-04-30 18:21:14 UTC

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He actually has hiccups!

2026-04-30 17:49:45 UTC

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yay, Violet never too late!

2026-04-30 17:07:31 UTC

RE: https://c.im/@RadicalAnthro/116492815837528388
Jack is a no-fences, no-cage rabbit, only bunstruction allowed (he has a warren of escape routes and still keeps me on the run).
#note1t9s…vluj

2026-04-30 16:47:20 UTC

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more like a sleep thru...but he's reviving with some evening salad!
https://s3.c.im/media_attachments/files/116/494/691/294/448/945/original/557a69964373aeae.jpg

2026-04-30 14:48:50 UTC

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We'll hand out extra nose rubs for all the birthday greetings, bunny lovers unite!

2026-04-30 14:31:10 UTC

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Meant to be a pawty! But he's a bit comatose after those extras
https://s3.c.im/media_attachments/files/116/494/136/370/838/738/original/01c38e19d2d9920b.jpg

2026-04-30 12:08:32 UTC

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carrotinis 🥕 🥂 all round for #rabbitsofmastodon ! Let's have a party 🎉🎂🎈

2026-04-30 08:55:04 UTC

Jack is officially
FOURTEEN TODAY!*
Jack, you're fantastic! Breakfast in bed (why not?), cards and we spread out his haul.
He is still waiting for some extra treats!
They're late, they're late for a very important date!
(*Calculated as 98 years by human timeline. Next goal the centenary telegram)
#RadicalAnthropologyRabbits
#RabbitsofMastodon
https://s3.c.im/media_attachments/files/116/492/788/701/100/237/original/7690553dd749a719.jpg
https://s3.c.im/media_attachments/files/116/492/797/391/804/610/original/7aca25e3eadd46dc.jpg

2026-04-29 12:11:35 UTC

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whoa! Serious!

2026-04-29 08:59:46 UTC

Yay, I don't know if you can find your way through New Scientist paywall but this is a former student of ours Paula Sheppard saying it right!
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2516629-the-real-reasons-birth-rates-are-declining-worldwide/?utm_id=97758_v0_s00_e0_tv0#Echobox=1777305930

2026-04-29 08:48:33 UTC

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Any left-handers here who would contest 'near Universal's?

2026-04-29 08:47:46 UTC

Interesting on the evolution of lateralization -- extreme proportion of right-handedness -- in genus Homo
https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3003771

2026-04-28 11:28:27 UTC

It makes perfect sense that 'social pressure' is the major driver of sharing and generosity for hunter-gatherers such as the egalitarian Hadza, so-called 'vigilant sharing'.
'insulting people who have too much', as Duncan Stibbard Hawkes puts it, is a hugely successful policy which needs to be put into operation.
https://news.web.baylor.edu/news/story/2026/hunter-gatherer-egalitarianism-more-complicated-we-thought

2026-04-28 08:24:12 UTC

Yeah, the 'Neanderthals were just dumb' theory is very stupid!
https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/neanderthals/neanderthals-brains-werent-to-blame-for-their-demise-new-study-suggests

2026-04-27 13:15:29 UTC

Makes us give a big sigh, this one.
We are pretty confident there's a hallmark of 'time-resistant syntax' running through ritual art media, like letters through a stick of rock.
We can make precise predictions drawing on hunter-gatherer parameters. We can trace the constraints applying both to African Palaeolithic rock art and xtian Renaissance religious paintings viz. Sacred blood/animist 'lamb of God'/menstrual wounds of crucifixion...
We can explain why the very oldest stories of humankind involve the motif of 'snake guarding girls at waterhole' (we talked about this on St George's Day).
We can decode folk and fairytales, Classical Greek Plays, Shakespeare! Hollywood movies are governed by same syntactic principles -- if they aren't, they don't work!
This is another example of cultural evolution theory being very abstruse and abstract. We have precise and testable predictions on this. I should mention our Slovak colleague Helena Tuzinska, also a radical anthropologist (wonderful work with folktale and church iconography) and our late colleagues Isabel Cardigos, Max Pearson and Lionel Sims too.
Cultural evolution people, don't wait till we all die off! We don't seem to be able to transmit our brilliant theories too well!
#anthropology #archaeology #myth #ritual #art #evolution
https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:46e3r3fp37dl3alwheajaez7/post/3mkhodkedqk2x

2026-04-26 11:59:39 UTC

Well primatology needs to look at itself. Shocking levels of racism here.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/ajpa.24687

2026-04-26 08:24:35 UTC

@npub1awu…drv0 paper on her recent work on human evolution in Greece.
https://rai.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1467-9655.70138?domain=p2p_domain&token=MFTJXZAPYIFSGGKF3GB8

2026-04-25 13:21:14 UTC

Extraordinary and heartbreaking.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/apr/25/first-footage-endangered-sumatran-orangutan-using-canopy-bridge-cross-road-hope-species-aoe

2026-04-24 12:57:03 UTC

Jack was too interested to taste test his 1st vine leaf of the new season to do a #bunnybuttfriday photoshoot!
Because it's his 14th birthday next week, this could actually be his 15th vine season!
Long live Jack!
#RadicalAnthropologyRabbits
#rabbitsofmastodon
https://s3.c.im/media_attachments/files/116/459/780/455/618/478/original/daa71b3d71f4ec1f.jpg

2026-04-24 11:08:07 UTC

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Start with the amazing accounts of Piro Kigimawlo from Peter Gow's 'An Amazonian myth and its history' (2001)
Ch6 The girl's initiation ritual 'the most elaborate and grandest of Piro ritual performances' (p.163), culminating with the Female Jaguar Song
'I am a female Jaguar
I am a female Jaguar
You are afraid
You are afraid...'
This is properly gendered perspectivism
https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/An_Amazonian_Myth_and_Its_History.html?id=gkWPCcgRXKcC&source=kp_book_description&redir_esc=y

2026-04-24 08:16:34 UTC

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Hunter-gatherers are hugely aware of the significance of first menstruation. It stands as an organising principle in cosmology, and the ceremony around it is more memorable for the girls themselves than any form of so-called marriage.
This study claims 'onset of menarche, largely independent of timing and socio-environmental factors, preceded a significant spike in internalizing symptoms, while altering the rate of ongoing structural brain development'.
Independent of socio- environmental factors? And yet hunting and Indigenous peoples very deliberately furnish special space and time for a #menarcheal girl to collect her powerful 'thoughts'. This is intergenerational guidance and protection which, if proper care and attention is given, imply her thoughts become wrapped up in the health and welfare of the entire community. Easily, menstrual observance is equivalent of -- and probably foundational of -- shamanic/ healing observances.
Key refs below 👇

2026-04-24 08:14:07 UTC

Preprint on effects of #menarche on mental health and the adolescent brain:
'These findings suggest that menarche is not only a reproductive milestone but a neuroendocrine driver of adolescent brain and mental health trajectories. This normative and easily identifiable marker could define a critical window for mental health screenings with greater precision than current age-based guidelines.'
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.04.13.718198v2

2026-04-23 13:47:42 UTC

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well exactly.
It's a topic we are very expert in.
Chris Knight 1973 'Levi-Strauss and the Dragon'
https://www.jstor.org/stable/2801763
Ian Watts 2017 fine chapter on the common ancestry of Rain Serpents in southern Africa and Australia
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/316877570_Rain_Serpents_in_Northern_Australia_and_Southern_Africa_a_Common_Ancestry_proof
In Australia the Rainbow Serpent is NOT slain and does NOT let the girls go!

2026-04-23 08:26:10 UTC

Uccello's painting of 'St George and the Dragon' tells the REAL story. A patriarchal warmonger on his rearing white charger attacks the magnificent green dragon going for a peaceful walk with their girl. Blood is shed, the maiden wears a red tunic and there is a waning sliver of moon in the sky. This is patriarchy imaged destroying female coalitionary solidarity. See how the dragon's womb-like cave has beautifully laid out herb gardens in front of it. And the girl's lead or girdle is an umbilical, menstrual connection. The gleaming curve of the matrilineal dragon's splendid teeth rhymes with the high risen moon.
A spiralling dark cloud of chaos rides in behind the so-called 'saint': Rain? Fertility? Pollution? Burning oil wells? Of course that dragon was ferocious guarding the girl from patriarchal oppression and 'world historic defeat'!
A picture of the world being made safe for marriage, freed from menstrual solidarity 🩸.
#dragon #StGeorge
https://s3.c.im/media_attachments/files/116/453/032/322/880/066/original/5c1554fa3796a0a3.jpg

2026-04-22 18:19:08 UTC

'Where centralised societies excel at extraction, African fractal systems allow for circulation, reciprocity and return,'
https://aeon.co/essays/lessons-from-the-fairness-of-african-fractal-societies

2026-04-21 07:34:27 UTC

Listen to Bob Vylan on DDN News here...'the shocking story of how the British Dept of Education has been captured by Israeli forces'.
Carrying on years of British tradition by playing punk music ...why have the Dept of Education gone to war against us?!'
Bob Vylan crew have never been charged. One Radical Anthropologist HAS been charged as a terrorist (unlawfully).
https://youtu.be/gKboWQHtgr0?si=QN_ud0esvB-5zYWV

2026-04-21 07:18:34 UTC

Women on every continent leading environmental campaigns.
https://news.mongabay.com/2026/04/meet-the-2026-goldman-environmental-prize-winners/

2026-04-20 19:31:45 UTC

"joy is resistance, community is resistance, and you know what, dancing is resistance"
Definitely vote for that!
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/apr/20/greens-zack-polanski-rave-club-night-appearance-leeds

2026-04-20 18:45:19 UTC

Ancient mtDNA study of at least 7 Neanderthals at Stajnia Cave, Poland, ca.100 KA. Connections to Iberia, France and Caucasus
https://phys.org/news/2026-04-genetic-evidence-stajnia-cave-reveals.html

2026-04-20 12:34:00 UTC

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"The responsibility of reaching out to these survivors … is something the federal government should be taking on,” said Heather George, the executive director of the Woodland Cultural Centre, an #Indigenous-owned education facility in southern Ontario that has worked to raise awareness about the looming date of 19 September 2027"
Only survivors themselves may reclaim data, so as each person dies, the testimony is lost. It's appalling and unjustifiable.

2026-04-20 12:30:23 UTC

The racist #Canadian government intends to destroy the evidence taken in testimonial from #Residential School survivors. Shameful, all these documents should be preserved as vital remembrance of cultural #genocide.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/apr/20/canadas-residential-school-abuse-survivors-face-fresh-battle-to-stop-testimony-being-destroyed

2026-04-20 11:02:43 UTC

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This looks really interesting too on childhood collaborative reasoning as key to each other's perspectives
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/rstb/article/381/1948/20240447/481361/Collaborative-reasoning-and-problem-solving-in

2026-04-20 08:11:35 UTC

The most interesting paper of the Royal society collective intelligence issue.
'Scaffolding minds: Human collective intelligence through space, body and material symbols'
https://t.co/mYDNWUiYok
https://s3.c.im/media_attachments/files/116/436/005/875/467/738/original/d8b85f25aab01d4f.jpg

2026-04-19 08:15:39 UTC

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Here they are giving them to their mates (children in hospital get a Livestream to see what happens)
Whose brilliant idea was this?
https://youtube.com/shorts/hghlxtakY6c?si=ptSOPhp6N6OXuYFt

2026-04-19 08:12:31 UTC

Awww...children paint pebbles for gentoo penguins, who are soooo excited
https://youtube.com/shorts/Z855hCJM5pw?feature=shared

2026-04-18 08:33:14 UTC

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More here
https://www.cnrs.fr/en/press/first-absolute-dating-palaeolithic-paintings-dordogne

2026-04-18 08:22:55 UTC

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That last nonPalaeolithic date suggests contamination tho
Paper here
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2524751123

2026-04-18 08:21:16 UTC

On new dating for some Font-de-Gaume cave painting
'Radiocarbon dating revealed the bison was created between 13,162 and 13,461 years ago, according to a statement. Two areas of the mask dated to between 14,246 and 15,981 years ago, while the third dated to between 8,590 and 8,993 years ago.'
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/these-mesmerizing-cave-paintings-were-discovered-in-1901-now-archaeologists-finally-know-when-some-of-them-were-created-180988355/

2026-04-17 12:41:01 UTC

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And a moonless sky this week
https://www.astronomy.com/the-sky-this-week/the-sky-this-week-from-april-17-to-24-2026/

2026-04-17 12:16:45 UTC

Happy New Moon 🌑
https://s3.c.im/media_attachments/files/116/419/993/572/187/726/original/e2115bcf4c4e445c.png

2026-04-16 08:03:49 UTC

This will be a great review from Groucutt but the Human Symbolic Revolution is the 'hill we die on'! Nothing to do with European Upper Palaeolithic, decidedly African dating 160 KA. The European human revolution definitely needs taking down.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277379126001903

2026-04-15 13:46:03 UTC

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These are the acoustics of clicks like vowel sounds
'Sperm whale coda vocalizations are thus highly complex and represent one of the closest parallels to human phonology of any analysed animal communication system.'
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article/293/2069/20252994/481340/The-phonology-of-sperm-whale-coda-vowels

2026-04-15 13:44:52 UTC

Sperm whale phonology resembles human speech
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/apr/15/sperm-whales-alphabet-vocalizations-similar-humans

2026-04-15 07:13:19 UTC

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https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/cambridge-archaeological-journal/article/kinship-trouble-what-when-where-why-and-howand-so-what/C5628BB6C4987736CFBAE7A952B1DA90

2026-04-15 07:03:24 UTC

There's kinship...and fictional kinship.
#archaeology #genetics #anthropology #kin
https://phys.org/news/2026-04-ancient-graves-dna-uncover-family.html

2026-04-14 17:18:35 UTC

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Let's keep in mind, this is way older than Upper Palaeolithic rock art.

2026-04-14 16:37:21 UTC

OMG 49000-yr-old mix of #ochre and antelope #milk for paint at #Sibudu
#ritual #bodypaint
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0131273
https://s3.c.im/media_attachments/files/116/404/034/377/997/025/original/1b4aef8496732dbc.jpg

2026-04-14 11:53:50 UTC

Science on the wildlife trade driving animal-to-human pathogen transmission
#zoonosis
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adw5518?utm_source=sfmc&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=ScienceAdviser&utm_content=distillation&et_cid=5928263

2026-04-14 11:51:47 UTC

Here's the Dayak Daily with a nice piece on the history of Bornean #hunting #dogs.
https://dayakdaily.com/where-did-the-ancient-niah-dogs-come-from-tracing-sarawaks-mysterious-four-legged-ancestors/

2026-04-13 07:51:14 UTC

'Recently, three studies reported genetic evidence for matrilocality and genetic matriline connections across broad geographical and temporal scales. Here, we draw on these three studies to explore past social organisation forms in light of new evidence, and reconsider preconceptions that continue to endure over time.'
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/evolutionary-human-sciences/article/exploring-matrilocality-in-history-insights-from-ancient-dna/0BB706D43BA41891626D6C02A96FC66D

2026-04-12 11:30:20 UTC

#SundayBunday
https://t.co/hsUOhQjrcC

2026-04-12 08:17:50 UTC

At last, our lost film recording on
'How to resist alpha males'
The introductory session from last autumn with
Chris Knight and Camilla Power
begins with a little RAG flyer on
'London's longest running evening class'
but it's a KEY talk! Enjoy!
#anthropology #evolution #gender #revolution
https://vimeo.com/1182287815?share=copy&fl=sv&fe=ci

2026-04-11 17:07:25 UTC

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Great action!
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/apr/11/met-police-make-arrests-at-london-palestine-action-protest

2026-04-11 13:09:10 UTC

Police being 'unlawful' as usual!
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/apr/11/met-police-make-arrests-at-london-palestine-action-protest

2026-04-11 09:59:03 UTC

Should be good: the evolution of human infants' helplessness
https://academic.oup.com/cdpers/article/20/1/55/8414009?login=false

2026-04-10 08:35:06 UTC

On birds, feeders and the warmer months. Help our feathered friends, but do the right thing!
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c2lwvz1pl1no

2026-04-09 08:30:31 UTC

Analysing how much meat in the diet by sex as marker of social inequality over past 10,000 years. Starts off not too unequal in early Neolithic, then it gets worse and worse!
'This diachronic analysis highlights the complex interactions between diet, social structures, and gender and provides a robust framework for comparative studies of health inequalities in archaeology
https://academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/article/5/4/pgag033/8586686?login=false

2026-04-08 12:47:01 UTC

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Oh look, the best they could do, washing their hands. Sickening xtian moral hypocrisy.
https://www.examiner.org.hk/2026/04/03/vatican-condemns-slavery-counters-partial-narrative-in-un-resolution/news/international/#:~:text=In%20his%20address%2C%20Archbishop%20Caccia,'%E2%80%9D