Jørgen Holm
@jholm.bsky.social
Danish palaeolithic archaeologist, retired (and tired). Interests: The Middle Palaeolithic, especially Neanderthals. Late Palaeolithic: The Hamburgian -, Federmesser-, Bromme and Ahrensburgian Cultures. Excavations: Jels and Slotseng in Denmark.
What the Inside of an 850,000-Year-Old Skull Can Tell You open.substack.com/pub/anthropo...
What the Inside of an 850,000-Year-Old Skull Can Tell You
Three parietal fragments from Gran Dolina just gave Homo antecessor its first adult cranial profile, and the layers inside its skull look surprisingly familiar
open.substack.com
The World Once Had Tens of Thousands of Languages. Almost All of Them Are Gone. open.substack.com/pub/anthropo...
The World Once Had Tens of Thousands of Languages. Almost All of Them Are Gone.
A new model suggests linguistic diversity peaked not in the deep Paleolithic, but during the age of empires — and that the languages we speak today are survivors of a bottleneck, not a representative
open.substack.com
What 4,500 Years of Greenland’s Garbage Reveals About Bacteria, Not Plagues open.substack.com/pub/anthropo...
What 4,500 Years of Greenland’s Garbage Reveals About Bacteria, Not Plagues
A genomic survey of Inuit and Norse waste heaps found centuries-old pathogens and antibiotic resistance genes still detectable in the permafrost. The researchers also found they’re not going anywhere.
open.substack.com
A 10,000-Year Radiocarbon Record Shows the High Pyrenees Were Never Empty open.substack.com/pub/anthropo...
A 10,000-Year Radiocarbon Record Shows the High Pyrenees Were Never Empty
A new open-access database of 124 dated samples from Catalonia’s Aigüestortes National Park overturns the old assumption that high-altitude landscapes were marginal, seasonal, or uninhabited
open.substack.com
Three Bodies on a Floodplain: What a 100,000-Year-Old Site in Ethiopia Is Telling Us About Early Homo sapiens open.substack.com/pub/anthropo...
Three Bodies on a Floodplain: What a 100,000-Year-Old Site in Ethiopia Is Telling Us About Early Homo sapiens
A rare open-air site in the Afar Rift preserves stone tools, animal bones, and three partial human skeletons — each with a different story about how they ended up in the ground.
open.substack.com
A Child Buried at the Edge of Britain, 11,000 Years Ago open.substack.com/pub/anthropo...
A Child Buried at the Edge of Britain, 11,000 Years Ago
A cave in Cumbria holds the oldest human remains ever found in northern Britain — and the bones belong to a girl who died before she turned four.
open.substack.com
Why Humans Are Right-Handed: Walking Upright May Have Started It, and Brain Growth Finished the Job open.substack.com/pub/anthropo...
Why Humans Are Right-Handed: Walking Upright May Have Started It, and Brain Growth Finished the Job
A new phylogenetic analysis across 41 primate species traces the deep evolutionary origins of the most lopsided behavioral bias in the animal kingdom
open.substack.com
Kambiz Kamrani: Rhinoceros Teeth as Neanderthal Tools: Evidence from Experiment and the Fossil Record open.substack.com/pub/anthropo...
Rhinoceros Teeth as Neanderthal Tools: Evidence from Experiment and the Fossil Record
A new study combines controlled archaeological experiments with microscopic analysis to argue that Neanderthals used rhinoceros teeth as hammers and anvils during stone tool production.
open.substack.com
The Kabua 1 Skull: What a Long-Neglected Kenyan Fossil Says About Late Pleistocene Human Diversity open.substack.com/pub/anthropo...
The Kabua 1 Skull: What a Long-Neglected Kenyan Fossil Says About Late Pleistocene Human Diversity
Dated to at least 64,000 years old, the Kabua 1 cranium is mostly Homo sapiens and partly something harder to place.
open.substack.com
The Wood They Burned: Firewood, Driftwood, and Camp Selection 780,000 Years Ago open.substack.com/pub/anthropo...
The Wood They Burned: Firewood, Driftwood, and Camp Selection 780,000 Years Ago
A new anthracological study from Gesher Benot Ya’aqov finds that early hominins chose their campsites partly around access to fuel.
open.substack.com
Scan Before You Sample: Micro-CT Imaging, Ancient DNA, and the Ethics of the Petrous Bone open.substack.com/pub/anthropo...
Scan Before You Sample: Micro-CT Imaging, Ancient DNA, and the Ethics of the Petrous Bone
A new study from Argentina finds that CT scanning doesn’t damage ancient DNA, making the case for digital preservation before destructive analysis.
open.substack.com
A 1.8-Million-Year-Old Elephant Butchery Site in Tanzania Rewrites the Timeline of Human Megafaunal Exploitation open.substack.com/pub/anthropo...
A 1.8-Million-Year-Old Elephant Butchery Site in Tanzania Rewrites the Timeline of Human Megafaunal Exploitation
New spatial and taphonomic evidence from Olduvai Gorge suggests our ancestors were processing giant elephants far earlier — and more systematically — than the fossil record had indicated.
open.substack.com
One Kind of Stone: What 60 Butchered Bison Reveal About Middle Pleistocene Planning open.substack.com/pub/anthropo...
One Kind of Stone: What 60 Butchered Bison Reveal About Middle Pleistocene Planning
The site where hominins don’t behave the way they’re supposed to
open.substack.com
The Bow Didn't Spread Gradually. It Arrived. open.substack.com/pub/anthropo...
The Bow Didn't Spread Gradually. It Arrived.
New radiocarbon evidence rewrites the timeline of one of prehistory's most consequential weapon transitions — and reveals that how a technology spreads depends as much on ecology as on invention.
open.substack.com
What Elephant Teeth Tell Us About Neanderthal Hunters open.substack.com/pub/anthropo...
What Elephant Teeth Tell Us About Neanderthal Hunters
Strontium isotopes in 125,000-year-old molars reveal the surprisingly distant origins of the giant prey Neanderthals hunted at a German lakeside site
open.substack.com
A look at the Neanderthal deep cave structures from Bruniquel open.substack.com/pub/johnhawk...
A look at the Neanderthal deep cave structures from Bruniquel
Ten years after describing the site, new work details ancient access to the cave.
open.substack.com
