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“Extraordinary ideas and abilities probably existed in most ancient populations. Today, in our very large population with huge economic and social incentives for innovation and discovery, those abilities can change the world.” johnhawks.net/p/how-capable-…

Great post on the historic context of evolution in education in Quebec

Oh no. No no no. No.

I welcome the way that evidence of ancient interbreeding invites us to expand our thinking about humanity. For the Harbin skull, finding connections with Denisovans helps place it and other fossils within our network. johnhawks.net/p/the-humanity…

“A recent preprint linked the anatomy of the one-million-year-old Yunxian 2 Homo erectus cranium to the much later Harbin skull. Maybe the Dragon people had an autochthonous tendril stretching beyond the Denisovan branch.” johnhawks.net/p/the-humanity…

“It’s well understood among museum professionals that people like to look at bodies. ‘We did a mummy exhibit in San Diego and attendance tripled,’ Trish Biers, a former associate curator at the San Diego Museum of Us, told me.” newyorker.com/magazine/2025/…

Reading the retrospection on the criticism of the original Walking With Dinosaurs from its chief palaeontology consultant, Mike Benton (2003) makes you realise palaeo-sphere is a flat circle, with the show being dragged and loathed by vocal members of the community. Buckle up🧵

Liam Elward Paleoart 🇵🇸 The harder version of this answer is that I think museums have got their messaging wrong if they want to keep everything secret. The public love the discovery of new things. We're supposed to share the whole process of science, not just the end product.

I have two students at this moment looking for simple linear measurements on a hominin skeleton that was published in Science Magazine a while ago, and the measurement table has no measurements! I told them I’m sorry they had to find out this way about researchers who hide data.

Great to see the preprint on wooden artifacts from Gantangqing, China, come out in Science Magazine . I reviewed these with other great sites with wooden artifacts last year! johnhawks.net/p/four-stone-a…

“Paleoanthropology is not a discipline in which novel ways of viewing the world gain early acceptance”—William Kimbel

“It is a tragedy for science if we ignore these places, and it’s a tragedy for the people in those places if they feel they can’t become scientists. We’re poorer for it.” observer.co.uk/news/science-t…

Brilliant day yesterday working through the amazing fossils of other animals (besides the hominins) from Malapa. Wits University has one of the best comparative collections of skeletons of African mammals.

We haven’t talked much about the Lefika la Noka tufa site, a truly unusual site I rediscovered in 2008 just before discovering Malapa. Its unusual because it’s a tufa site made of millions of plant fossils dating back hundreds of thousands of years. A literal time capsule of the

My Scopes Trial retrospective continues: “Looking back at the 1920s, this era unquestionably offered a weird landscape of ideas about how humans evolved. Yet this look at the past offers some lessons that resonate in today’s world.” johnhawks.net/p/human-origin…

What are the relative impact of diet vs physical activity on the global obesity crisis? New paper out pnas uses the DLW Database with 4000+ participants across 34 populations to investigate Obesity & Energy Expenditure Across the Economic Spectrum. Open access link below!🧵1/

We need to focus on diet if we want to end the obesity crisis. And we need to focus on the obesogenic foods (UPF maybe?) while, hopefully, maintaining the availability of healthy calories. These aren't new ideas, but hopefully this paper helps clarify & amplify those efforts 9/

nature.com/articles/d4414…

Wall art in Dayton, Tennessee