Dr. Abigail Desmond
@abigaildesmond.bsky.social
Archaeologist. Technologist. Harvard researcher. https://heb.fas.harvard.edu/people/abigail-desmond
Archaeologists are often the first people to hold artifacts after their makers. In this case, there are around 47,000 years between me and the human beings who expertly carved these tools. Made by Homo sapiens just leaving Africa, the time between us collapses as I hold their technology in my hand.
15,000 years ago, in one of the the earliest settled communities in the world, a child collected fine clay from the slow-moving river by her home. She then committed an act familiar to all inveterate play-doh enthusiasts; rolling and and pinching the squishy clay into tiny round balls.
This gigantic net, made of human hair (!) was used to corral and catch rabbits by the Hokoham people around 1250 AD. At 165 feet long, we have a physical manifestation of advanced materials engineering, technical skill, and countless hours’ craft. And a new meaning to putting yourself in your work.
Tool using dolphins from Western Australia on the cover of #PhilTransB. This time for epigenetic tests that were better than random at telling tool users from non tool users in the same habitat. Interesting ties to cultural transmission of this activity 🧪🐬 royalsocietypublishing.org/rstb/article...
A culturally transmitted foraging technique in Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins can be predicted by DNA-methylation levels
Abstract. Cultural repertoires can influence access to resources and fitness across species, impacting individuals' environmental niches and social network
royalsocietypublishing.org
Royal Society Publishing@royalsocietypublishing.org · 2w agoNew issue of #PhilTransB: Ecological #epigenetics at the intersection of behaviour and life history variation in non-model animals. Read #OA: buff.ly/6v4pqCo
A beautiful illustration of one of the very first humans (genus Homo). Perhaps the face of our collective (exponential) great grandma.
Dragons of Wales@dragonsofwales.bsky.social · 2w agoA portrait of Homo rudolfensis: an extinct species of archaic human from about 2 million years ago. The classification and validity of rudolfensis remains a matter of debate, with some arguing it may actually have been an Australopithecine, or even synonymous with H.habilis. No AI used, obviously.
Friends, countrymen, lend me your algos! My public Instagram is a go, please join me over there for Stone Age insights, musings, and pretty pictures. www.instagram.com/dr_abigail_d...
James K. Polk in a feather boa? Chester A. Arthur in silk hot pants? Or; why must men dress in drab black suits to appear serious? It was a real pleasure to attend @sexandstatus.bsky.social’s book talk about the history of the suit - an embodied history of masculinity and democracy. And silk velvet.
youtube.com/watch?v=tFFv... I’m launching a YouTube channel! Stayed tuned for cool content about our shared human past.
Origins with Bridget Alex Trailer
YouTube video by Origins with Bridget Alex
youtube.com
"Deep in Admiration" was a talk given at the conference Anthropocene: Arts of Living on a Dangerous Planet at UC Santa Cruz in May 2014. The text appears as the foreword to the collection Late in the Day: Poems 2010-2014 (published by PM Press).
I’m seeing a lot less AI in students’ writing this year. They’re using their own voices, thinking creatively, putting in the work. It’s more heartening than I can describe.
Why don’t all animals use tools? Does tool use = intelligence? From twigtechnology@bsky.social and my new paper: “Instead of asking what rare and essential gifts allow only certain animals to use tools, we ask: why don’t they all?” static1.squarespace.com/static/5f620...
🧪🏺 WOWWWW New dates in SE Asia for rock paintings - major implications: - nature of early aesthetics, innovations - relationship to oldest known Australian settlement? - and (IMO) impacts claims that cave art in Europe >50 Ka is necessarily work of #Neanderthals www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Rock art from at least 67,800 years ago in Sulawesi - Nature
A hand stencil painted on a cave wall on a small island off the coast of Sulawesi more than 67,800 years ago suggests a very early occupation of Wallacea.
nature.com
New paper (pre-print) out w/ @twigtechnology.bsky.social : Why don’t all animals use tools? If you’re into critters, game theory, cyborgs, tech, and/or the glories of the natural world, do give it a whirl 🐛🐇🛠️🧰
Michael Haslam@twigtechnology.bsky.social · 7mo agoWith all this talk of cow tools now's a good time to mention my new paper with @abigaildesmond.bsky.social titled 'Why don't all animals use tools?' 🧪🛠️🐮 It's in press at the journal Animal Behaviour & Cognition. You can get a pdf of the accepted version from the research page of my site 🧵 1/
apt closing from my last SAPIENS story “What archaeology asks of everyone is an openness to alternate worlds. An understanding that your society, with its ways of working, worshipping, learning, loving—even knowing a dog—is just one permutation of endless human and beyond human possibilities.”
Tattoo from the preserved body of a Siberian ice mummy, from the Iron Age Pazyryk culture of the Altai Mountains. Depicting two tigers and a leopard attacking two deer, it shows the sophisticated methods of Pazyryk tattooers #InternationalSnowLeopardDay 🆓 doi.org/10.15184/aqy... 🏺 #Archaeology
There are few greater joys than being employed to read stuff like this
In a paper under review @abigaildesmond.bsky.social and I argue that self-directed tool use should be the most common form of novel (and possibly temporary) tool use, because of the immediacy of the feedback and the stability of the self as an environment. Fingers crossed it survives review! 🧪🪮🐼
Catherine Sheard@sheardcat.bsky.social · 10mo agoTool use in giant pandas?! 👀😮🐼 www.cell.com/current-biol...
What do you know about Louis Pasteur who developed the first effective rabies vaccine back in 1885? One of the most brilliant minds and scientists of all time, writes Rodney E. Rohde. Pasteur died on this day in 1995, and #WorldRabiesDay is marked on the anniversary. buff.ly/56EB92l
Louis Pasteur’s scientific discoveries in the 19th century revolutionized medicine and continue to save the lives of millions today
On World Rabies Day – which is also the anniversary of French microbiologist Louis Pasteur’s death – a virologist reflects on the achievements of this visionary scientist.
theconversation.com
First day of my lecture course on the evolution of human technology, and my students just voted to have a laptop-free class. Sometimes, all is right with the world.
Prehistoric stone tools were often hafted, but we only find the lithics not the wood/bone part of tools. So it is not always clear how stones were hafted. We tested two ways of hafting the same type of arrow tip, shooting into ballistics gel. Very mythbusters! www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Experimental evidence for the efficacy of transversal hafting of backed segments as arrowheads
Backed segments in quartz from the Howiesons Poort industry of Southern Africa (65–60 ka) have been interpreted as tips of arrows. Nevertheless, sever…
sciencedirect.com
Always a pleasure to see hominin graffiti. Tbilisi, Georgia.
"It was early in the morning of a sunny day, with perfect light for checking tracks," Neto de Carvalho told Live Science in an email. 🏺🧪
78,000-year-old footprints from Neanderthal man, child and toddler discovered on beach in Portugal
A Neanderthal trackway discovered in Portugal shows how an adult male and two children hunted for food 78,000 years ago.
livescience.com
