Made a short film of our latest #BantuFirst season in DRC. We had a great team from @ResearchUGent and @Unikinrdc doing some pretty exciting #archaeology survey and excavations. Sound on & check it out! (whole thing w/YouTube link) #africanarchaeology #FieldworkFriday #research

Absolutely not.

Ran across a hair-raising line by sixteenth-century writer John Foxe—“Not to understand what was done before we were born, is to live always as children”—and I think the complete lack of curiosity most people have towards the past is one reason everyone is now twelve.

Another great collaboration with Koen Bostoen, @petecout, @cschlebu and colleagues is online this week! "The coevolution of languages, peoples and environments in Central Africa’s Kwilu-Kasai region since ∼1000 BCE: A dialogue with Jan Vansina"

Now, with much more data, we see the region as an important center of diversification and likely expansion of early Bantu-speakers. Some of Vansina's other ideas have stood up, while others need revision-check it out to see! @JessamyDoman @BostoenKoen @CesarFortesLima @cschlebu

We've put together another great interdisciplinary paper on our work in DRC. This time we have entered into a 'conversation' with Jan Vansina's early work on the Kwilu-Kasai, with new arch, ling, genetic, and palaeoenv data @ Quaternary Env and Humans https://t.co/lPcgmNmLcd

We are very excited to have Dr. Étienne Zangato join us tomorrow (14:00 CET) for a talk on his research across Cameroon and Central African Republic. If you are in Ghent, please stop by for a truely interesting lecture - if not, send me a message for the Zoom link!

New evidence reveals dispersal of pearl millet from West Africa to South Asia by 2500 BCE https://t.co/HLAE7DEbow

This is another reminder that not everything in West Africa comes from outside... and not everything is a result of populations moving from the Sahara southwards at the end of the AHP. Feel free to reach out if you are interested in reading! #archaeology #africanarchaeology

This interdisciplinary appraoch revealed that - contrary to earlier hypotheses - Niger-Congo speaking groups originated in southern West Africa prior to the African Humid Period. Instead of coming south during this period, these were local WA groups that expanded north and east.

I'm really happy to have this new chapter published in the Oxford Handbook of Archaeology and Language! Together with @BostoenKoen and @cschlebu, we track the history of Niger-Congo speaking peoples over ~20ky using archaeology, Language and genetics. https://t.co/HUlHAdE23x

my policy has become no quarter, scorched earth: not only forbidden, but i tell them if they ever plan to use AI for any human intellectual work in the future, they need to admit to themselves they are a mentally self-enfeebled person, morally weak, and a disappointment to god

Are you a recent PhD graduate? Are you interested in a PostDoc in Oxford working on material analysis in archaeology? Get in touch about the opportunity below. https://t.co/yVCxRl2JKI

This is really sad news. Sapiens was a fantastic medium to share, promote and diversify anthropological research and insights and the platform where many people (like me) learnt and developed skills in science communication. Times are tough, but Sapiens’ niche is now left empty☹️

The CongUbangi team has had a great time so far at #safa2025 in Faro! All of the presentations in yesterday's Central Africa session were excellent. #archaeology

This is the culmination of years of work by my colleagues, @JessamyDoman, @BostoenKoen, and @IgorMatonda and myself. Thank you to all who helped along the way and, of course, our publishers @routledgebooks! #africanarchaeology #archaeology

❗️It's finally out❗️ Our book 'An Archaeology of the Bantu Expansion' is now available. If you are interested in any aspect of the Central African past over the past 40k years, including palaeoenv, archaeo, history, language, and genetics-check it out! https://t.co/PRsTdv6jeF

Full article: Introduction: is the human past a history of colonialism?

Please stop assuming that too many em dashes means AI written. Some of us are producing grammatically incoherent work the honest way!

Before the ‘Out of Africa’ migration that led humans into Eurasia and beyond, new research shows that humans expanded their niche to include African forests and deserts. Authors argue these adaptations were key to the dispersal's long-term success https://t.co/olMuwD56bc

It’s a hefty 206-page research paper, and the findings are concerning. "LLM users consistently underperformed at neural, linguistic, and behavioral levels" This study finds LLM dependence weakens the writer’s own neural and linguistic fingerprints. 🤔🤔 Relying only on EEG,