John Hawks

@djfreg1 In the Levant, the connection with Acheulo-Yabrudian is very important, particularly because the Quina production is a kind of core maintenance and planning that probably is much like Levallois in working memory and spatial cognition.

@johnhawks A very good paper on Levantine proto-Levallois emergence in the context of Neanderthal Mousterian development (as inferred or suggested by [proposed] Reich model). frontiersin.org/journals/earth…

A new preprint from the geneticist David Reich focuses on the interactions of Neanderthal and African ancestral humans 250,000 years ago. Many parts I wholly agree with, but the key idea about Levallois technology is out of step with today's data. johnhawks.net/p/did-levalloi…

@djfreg1 Yeah, starting from the basic approach of MRE makes a lot of these findings unremarkable.

That Late Neanderthals were a hybrid population group seems supported by uniparental marker replacement, but proto-Levallois seems to be (much) older in Eurasia than Africa - so why not also consider an Into-(North) Africa dispersal from Eurasia? Either way, this looks more and more like MRE than just recent OoA.

@Schepers_CJ There are some great archaeological questions in this that might have counterintuitive answers, about the role of technology in tracing contacts versus facilitating contacts, and how much data are needed for this kind of inference.

Thanks for that review. I think it's a good thing to include experts in all relevant fields as co-authors. There are many archaeologists available and some with solid knowledge of lithic technology. We are nice. :)

@digkabri Love that group, have a great time!

Next up: lecturing on the Late Bronze Age Collapse at an aerospace conference!

@shmoogli Yes, it's a kind of alternative history to think that other humans did without culture what we do with culture our entire lives

Early Neanderthals walked into this cave, went three football fields into the earth, created 15-foot-wide bubbles of rock, lit and tended small fires upon them. Then they left. A unique find with implications for how we underestimate many past peoples. johnhawks.net/p/a-look-at-th…

@siegnant The planning is indeed intrinsic to the events

That's clearly not what Neanderthals did in an usual day. They managed to do it on purpose, after planning. And probably doing wherever they were doing was special for them and their community.

@Speculad It's impossible for me to look at those tiny spots of fire and not see some kind of care was taken in their placement. These places held a kind of power, at least in the imagination.

@johnhawks Would love to hear your thoughts on the purpose John. There is a fascinating book by Lynne Kelly who proposes stone circles were knowledge spaces. Could that be a possibility with Bruniquel?

@djfreg1 Looksmaxxing

@johnhawks Does this mean they are going to start depicting Neanderthal males as handsome intelligent dudes?

I'm pretty excited about a new study of the African influence on Neanderthal X chromosomes. It's because a pattern of dispersal of early modern people based on matrilineal kin networks makes a lot of sense. johnhawks.net/p/matrilineal-…

@rodoks42 Yes clearly Neanderthals and Denisovans mixed repeatedly and without apparent problems where they met.

@johnhawks So it looks like the biggest argument against the Neanderthals being a H. sapiens subspecies just took a big blow (lack of the genetic incompatibility that would suggest speciation). And Denisovan lineages, by extension

@Zeke_Darwin Thanks!

@johnhawks Just wanted to say that I really appreciate these articles.

@SamAndrews1017 The early Neanderthal sample from Sima de los Huesos has a Denisovan-related mtDNA and this supports the replacement of mtDNA in Neanderthals as opposed to the African-modern lineage. But many possibilities for additional significant events.

@johnhawks It could be that sapiens have Eurasian/neanderthal related mtdna not the other way around.

May be time to just accept that art is going to go much further back. We’ve really only just gotten started with dates on some of the oldest panels, old ways of thinking about styles as a way of dating have proven not to generalize. @johnhawks/note/p-185328245?r=715ri&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">substack.com/@johnhawks/not…

Was it a hominin? is a much less relevant question than 20 years ago. “But in the period between 8 million and 5 million years ago, the genetic evidence suggests the ancestral populations were mixing with each other, occasionally exchanging DNA.” johnhawks.net/p/how-sahelant…

@djfreg1 This is where David Begun’s mind is, as I understand it

The disclosure of the (hidden) Sahelanthropus tchadensis femur, etc. just prior to the publishing of Anadoluvius turkae remains discovered in 2015 seems odd. Why hide evidence of Sahelanthropus bipedalism for 20 years even if the femur may not have been (directly) related to Toumai, which it still may not be? In any case, postcranial remains of Anadoluvius would be interesting as background Eurasian hominoid/hominine diversity would support Eurasian hominin origins.

I’ve been trying to understand this fossil for more than twenty years. The femur and ulna are the first real clues about its locomotion, but specialists who have studied the bones all disagree about what they say. I took a deep dive to sort it out. johnhawks.net/p/how-sahelant…

@Robertrob82942 Always more to find

@johnhawks Yes, a confusing fossil (s) indeed John. I’ve a Bones Clone replica in my study. I’ve read and listened to so many conflicting reports on the fossils, it’s very perplexing as to the status of this “hominin” (if it is indeed a hominin). Biped or not ?? Definitely confuses me

Really happy to see this collaborative work led by my student @aykenau published now in @PNASNews