Bram Hessels

Informal hominins, from Denisovan to superarchaic In a new research article, I review the ways that paleoanthropologists name ancient groups outside the Linnaean system.

Paleoanthropology can be confusing with names. Why would scientists use “Denisovan” instead of coming up with a species name? Or “modern human” instead of Homo sapiens? And why didn’t some names ever catch on, like the Heidelbergers or the chumanzees?

www.johnhawks.net/p/informal-h...

Reign of the Beast: The Atheist World of W. D. Saull and his Museum of Evolution In the 1830s, decades before Darwin published the Origin of Species, a museum of evolution flourished in London. Reign of the Beast pieces together the extraordinary story of this lost working-man's i...

So excited to see that Adrian Desmond's important new study of atheist and evolutionist W. D. Saull is out. Free to download the pdf.
www.openbookpublishers.com/books/10.116...

Species names are overvalued. If you have detailed information concerning variation, change, divergence & interbreeding in populations, species names do not add any information. Species names are merely a more superficial description of these complex processes.

Major expansion in the human niche preceded out of Africa dispersal - Nature Analysis of species distribution models in a pan-African database comprising chronometrically dated archaeological sites over the past 120,000 years shows major expansion in the human niche from 70 ka...

1/5 Why do all non-Africans descended from a group that left Africa 50k ago? In @nature.com we model 120k years of human niche dynamics. From 70ka, a big expansion of the human niche in Africa likely equipped later OOA dispersals with a unique ecological flexibilty.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The Oxford Handbook of Cultural Evolution has a cover.
global.oup.com/academic/pro...

THE SECRET OF OUR SUCCESS How culture is driving human evolution, domesticating our species, and making us smart

O.k, I am obsessed with this book. It changes everything about how we look at human evolution, human psychology, culture, history, religion . . .
secretofoursuccess.fas.harvard.edu

Fascinating latest model of Homo sapiens evolution within Africa.

Interesting finding that cultural innovation was accelerated by both population size increases, but also recombination across partially isolated regions (e.g. Morocco and sub-Saharan Africa)

Loss of dance and infant-directed song among the Northern Aché Singh and Hill report no evidence of dance or infant-directed song among the Northern Aché of Paraguay, based on 122 months of fieldwork. Their findings challenge claims of these behaviors’ universali...

Are dance & infant-directed song human universals? Like many people, I've long thought so.

But in a new paper in Current Biology, Kim Hill & I report that the Northern Aché (Paraguay) lacked both behaviors, likely losing them after cultural collapse.

Open-access link: www.cell.com/current-biol...

All humans descend from two ancient populations that split ~1.5M yrs ago, rejoined ~300k yrs ago. One had a brutal bottleneck—and then became almost all of us. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Humans aren’t the only animals with complex culture − but researchers point to one feature that makes ours unique Animals can learn from each other, maintaining their cultures for long periods of time. What sets people apart may be the uniquely open-ended ways we invent new ideas and share and build on them.

Humans aren’t the only animals with complex culture − but researchers point to one feature that makes ours unique
theconversation.com/humans-arent...

Population connectivity shapes the distribution and complexity of chimpanzee cumulative culture Although cumulative culture is a hallmark of hominin evolution, its origins can be traced back to our common ancestor with chimpanzees. Here, we investigated the evolutionary origins of chimpanzee cum...

Population connectivity shapes the distribution and complexity of chimpanzee cumulative culture www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Reminder of this #culturalevolution starter pack

go.bsky.app/6mZJyQq

Perhaps the oldest known human portrait, made from mammoth ivory, about 27,000 years old. Dolni Vestonice, Czechia.

Disbelief: The Origins of Atheism in a Religious Species: Gervais Ph.D, Will M.: 9781633889248: Amazon.com: Books Disbelief: The Origins of Atheism in a Religious Species [Gervais Ph.D, Will M.] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Disbelief: The Origins of Atheism in a Religious Species

Hi all 👋

I’m a cultural & evolutionary scientist obsessed with 2 ideas:

1) humans are the only species with religion
2) within our religious species, atheism comes naturally

I wrote a book on that, here’s a short 🧵 with some fun book tidbits. Enjoy & share!

💙📚
🧪

www.amazon.com/Disbelief-Or...

Cover image of Sense and Nonsense: Evolutionary Perspectives on Human Behaviour (third edition) - it is a dark red cover that includes part of a Franz Marc painting of a group of monkeys moving through green objects in front of red mountains.

📢 Excited to announce that the new edition of my co-authored book on human behaviour and evolution will be published next month (Dec 2024):

'Sense & Nonsense: Evolutionary Perspectives on Human Behaviour (3rd Ed)'

global.oup.com/academic/pro...

🧪🏺 #evolution #psychscisky #evobio #philsci #histsci

Halfway through ch 4. It is a joy to read. Crystal-clear language.

I already bought it (?) And it is a joy to read.