The Man from the Future: The Visionary Life of John von Neumann is worth reading. It’s mostly science, and not too much about von Neumann’s personal life, though there is some that is there. The only negative I’d give is that because von Neumann died early the author includes some discussion about people who extended and furthered von Neumann’s legacy near the end of the book.
Survival of Late Pleistocene Hunter-Gatherer Ancestry in the Iberian Peninsula. Southern Spain was a refuge for Neanderthals, and it looks like it was for Magdelanian people as well.
Patterns of genetic differentiation and the footprints of historical migrations in the Iberian Peninsula. I forgot that most of Spain’s genetic variation was west-east instead of north-south. Pretty strange.
Do members of Homo floresiensis still inhabit the Indonesian island where their fossils helped identify a new human species fewer than 20 years ago? This piece in The Scientist is triggering a massive media frenzy, but as the British would say, it’s “rubbish.” Basically an anthropology chooses to put weight on eyewitness accounts of local people. It’s really hard to hide medium-sized mammals, especially on an island like Flores. I doubt they’re still around.
Euro Vision (part 1). Second part out very soon.
Freedom of speech depends on financial freedom.
Elon Musk can speak almost whatever on his mind. Most super riches are more or less the same. Media or public attack on them are least effective. They rarely need to apologize for their opinions.
Common people do not have such luxury. Legally you have freedom of speech. But your boss can fire you for no reason legally also. Public opinions can make your boss firing you.
————————————–
For example, Warren Buffett can say following low EQ maxim without worrying about public opinions since nobody can fire him really.
“We derive no comfort because important people, vocal people, or great numbers of people agree with us. Nor do we derive comfort if they don’t.” – Warren Buffett.
“If you look for a marriage that will last, You look for low expectations. That is the marriage gonna last. Both have low expectations.” – Warren Buffett.
Regarding people making plans, Warren Buffett said “It is like Saving up Sex for ur old age”.
“You really want your decision making to be by looking in the mirror.” – Warren Buffett.
“My partner Charlie says there is only three ways a smart person can go broke: liquor, ladies and leverage,” – Warren Buffett.
“The best boss for me is myself” – Warren Buffett.
“We are not looking to change people. We like to join with people we like and trust.” – Warren Buffett.
“‘Grit’ Is Not the Path to Success. You should avoid it” – Warren Buffett.
“If you are so smart, how come I am so rich?” – Warren Buffett.
“There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”― Warren Buffett
I bought Man from the Future for my DiL as a birthday gift last month. She is has an MS in comp sci. Her husband, my son, has a PhD in Applied Mathematics. They named their dog Jancsi which is Hungarian for Johnny — Von Neumann’s nickname, even though it is a female.
Would having living “hobbits” make certain people uncomfortable? They have tiny brains (the hobbits! The hobbits!) by our standards. Yet they would be indisputably (right?) human. As human as other Erectus, at least.
It could draw an unflattering picture of sapiens populations with smaller cranial capacity (on average) than other populations.
Or would they make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, saying, “this (the hobbit) is what a “less advanced” population looks like”?
Someone, Greg Cochran, I think, said that the Flores Erectus had little big game to hunt, but there was an open niche for a small, small-brained creature. Flores had no monkeys.
Perhaps, though, the hobbits are a lot smarter than their encephalization quotient would predict? That’d be interesting.
Maybe some enterprising anthropologist should work out an approximate size range for hobbit poo. Collect samples from the densest part of the forest and test them for quite divergent human-ish DNA.
I don’t have my hopes up, but I’m hoping for live hobbits. Hope our infectious diseases don’t kill them all right after we find them. Be curious how many chromosome pairs they have. Guessing 23, but be nice to know. Do we know approximately when the two ancestral chromosomes fused?
I think that we should bring back banishment and exile, one year, two, three and so on. When you come back you get a second chance.
Now, to kick us off, I propose that any writer or speaker who uses the words: grapple, racing to, or open up about, be banished for at least one year.
The most convincing explanation of Homo floresiensis that I have seen is that the species is Homo habilis, which is a more archaic than Homo erectus species.
Chromosome merger was before the Neanderthals and Denisovans, but after the Great Apes. https://www.bbvaopenmind.com/en/science/bioscience/the-origin-of-the-human-species-a-chromosome-fusion/
There is some indication that Denisovans have archaic Erectus admixture.
Razib, I have a couple of questions for you if you don’t mind answering: what was your favorite course as an undergraduate, and, which one did you like the least/outright dislike?
Thought this was interesting – https://www.livescience.com/stonehenge-ancient-hunting-ground
Sedimentary dna.
“Earlier research had suggested that before Stonehenge was built, the surrounding landscape included a closed-canopy forest. “There has been a long-running debate as to whether the monumental archaeology of Stonehenge was created in an uninhabited forested landscape or whether it was constructed in an already partly open area of pre-existing significance to late Mesolithic hunter-gatherers,” the researchers wrote in the study.
Now, the new research shows that the area was historically an open woodland where large herbivores such as aurochs, an extinct cattle species, once grazed. Given the site’s high use over time, it’s likely that there was continuity between the Mesolithic hunter-gatherers and the Neolithic, or New Stone Age monument builders, the researchers said. “
It’ll be interesting if this generalizes to other sites in Northern or Central Europe. Circling back to the Indo-European/steppe and EEF question, one sub-question has always been “Who cleared the forests and transformed the landscape?”. But possibly paleo-reconstruction with sedADNA will show that many sites were more open for longer and actually there was less need to clear specific sites.
(From the paper: “The traditional view proposed by British ecologist Sir Arthur Tansley, states that by the Late Mesolithic [mid-Holocene], the UK was covered by poly-climax forest, which was only rarely broken by deliberate forest burning and clearance. Such forest clearance has been postulated by Innes et al. in the North Yorkshire Moors, but so far there has been little direct evidence from Salisbury Plain. Alternatively, Sir Cyril Fox was one of the first to suggest that much of the prehistoric chalkland landscape in southern Britain may not have been heavily forested. More recently, ecologists and palaeoecologists have developed this idea by suggesting that Late Mesolithic vegetation was more spatially variable and partially kept open by large ungulate grazing”. Maybe some grazers had already transformed the environment to some extent.)
Also, this thing on Trypillian ancient dna from Verteba Cave got published – https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-11117-8
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.05.04.490594v1 – “Population Genomics of Stone Age Eurasia” – New preprint. Allentoft and Willerslev.
“The transitions from foraging to farming and later to pastoralism in Stone Age Eurasia (c. 11-3 thousand years before present, BP) represent some of the most dramatic lifestyle changes in human evolution. We sequenced 317 genomes of primarily Mesolithic and Neolithic individuals from across Eurasia combined with radiocarbon dates, stable isotope data, and pollen records. Genome imputation and co-analysis with previously published shotgun sequencing data resulted in >1600 complete ancient genome sequences offering fine-grained resolution into the Stone Age populations. We observe that: 1) Hunter-gatherer groups were more genetically diverse than previously known, and deeply divergent between western and eastern Eurasia. 2) We identify hitherto genetically undescribed hunter-gatherers from the Middle Don region that contributed ancestry to the later Yamnaya steppe pastoralists; 3) The genetic impact of the Neolithic transition was highly distinct, east and west of a boundary zone extending from the Black Sea to the Baltic. Large-scale shifts in genetic ancestry occurred to the west of this “Great Divide”, including an almost complete replacement of hunter-gatherers in Denmark, while no substantial ancestry shifts took place during the same period to the east. This difference is also reflected in genetic relatedness within the populations, decreasing substantially in the west but not in the east where it remained high until c. 4,000 BP; 4) The second major genetic transformation around 5,000 BP happened at a much faster pace with Steppe-related ancestry reaching most parts of Europe within 1,000-years. Local Neolithic farmers admixed with incoming pastoralists in eastern, western, and southern Europe whereas Scandinavia experienced another near-complete population replacement. Similar dramatic turnover-patterns are evident in western Siberia; 5) Extensive regional differences in the ancestry components involved in these early events remain visible to this day, even within countries. Neolithic farmer ancestry is highest in southern and eastern England while Steppe-related ancestry is highest in the Celtic populations of Scotland, Wales, and Cornwall (this research has been conducted using the UK Biobank resource); 6) Shifts in diet, lifestyle and environment introduced new selection pressures involving at least 21 genomic regions. Most such variants were not universally selected across populations but were only advantageous in particular ancestral backgrounds. Contrary to previous claims, we find that selection on the FADS regions, associated with fatty acid metabolism, began before the Neolithisation of Europe. Similarly, the lactase persistence allele started increasing in frequency before the expansion of Steppe-related groups into Europe and has continued to increase up to the present. Along the genetic cline separating Mesolithic hunter-gatherers from Neolithic farmers, we find significant correlations with trait associations related to skin disorders, diet and lifestyle and mental health status, suggesting marked phenotypic differences between these groups with very different lifestyles. This work provides new insights into major transformations in recent human evolution, elucidating the complex interplay between selection and admixture that shaped patterns of genetic variation in modern populations.”
(Lactase was selection since EEF after all?)