Manuel Will

Blinded by the Light (of Modernity): Does the Concept of Modern Human Behavior Obscure Diversity in Hominin Cultural Evolution? - Biological Theory Biological Theory - The remarkably durable construct of “modern human behavior” (MHB) is used by paleoanthropologists to summarize the features of behavior and underlying cognitive...

"Archaeology is anthropology or it is nothing", it was said. Arguably this focus on the ethnographic present is having a strongly negative impact on our understanding of the deep past. Some very useful thoughts on this topic in new paper by Kuhn and Stiner (link.springer.com/article/10.1...)

Grüner Text auf weißem Hintergrund: Hochschulen zeigen Haltung: Wissenschaftsfreiheit schützen

Für Offenheit, Vielfalt und den freien Austausch von Ideen 🌍📚: Die Universität Tübingen beteiligt sich gemeinsam mit vielen weiteren Hochschulen an der Kampagne #HochschulenZeigenHaltung. 👉 uni-tuebingen.de/universitaet... #UniTübingen

A table showing profit margins of major publishers. A snippet of text related to this table is below. 1. The four-fold drain 1.1 Money Currently, academic publishing is dominated by profit-oriented, multinational companies for whom scientific knowledge is a commodity to be sold back to the academic community who created it. The dominant four are Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley and Taylor & Francis, which collectively generated over US$7.1 billion in revenue from journal publishing in 2024 alone, and over US$12 billion in profits between 2019 and 2024 (Table 1A). Their profit margins have always been over 30% in the last five years, and for the largest publisher (Elsevier) always over 37%. Against many comparators, across many sectors, scientific publishing is one of the most consistently profitable industries (Table S1). These financial arrangements make a substantial difference to science budgets. In 2024, 46% of Elsevier revenues and 53% of Taylor & Francis revenues were generated in North America, meaning that North American researchers were charged over US$2.27 billion by just two for-profit publishers. The Canadian research councils and the US National Science Foundation were allocated US$9.3 billion in that year.

A figure detailing the drain on researcher time. 1. The four-fold drain 1.2 Time The number of papers published each year is growing faster than the scientific workforce, with the number of papers per researcher almost doubling between 1996 and 2022 (Figure 1A). This reflects the fact that publishers’ commercial desire to publish (sell) more material has aligned well with the competitive prestige culture in which publications help secure jobs, grants, promotions, and awards. To the extent that this growth is driven by a pressure for profit, rather than scholarly imperatives, it distorts the way researchers spend their time. The publishing system depends on unpaid reviewer labour, estimated to be over 130 million unpaid hours annually in 2020 alone (9). Researchers have complained about the demands of peer-review for decades, but the scale of the problem is now worse, with editors reporting widespread difficulties recruiting reviewers. The growth in publications involves not only the authors’ time, but that of academic editors and reviewers who are dealing with so many review demands. Even more seriously, the imperative to produce ever more articles reshapes the nature of scientific inquiry. Evidence across multiple fields shows that more papers result in ‘ossification’, not new ideas (10). It may seem paradoxical that more papers can slow progress until one considers how it affects researchers’ time. While rewards remain tied to volume, prestige, and impact of publications, researchers will be nudged away from riskier, local, interdisciplinary, and long-term work. The result is a treadmill of constant activity with limited progress whereas core scholarly practices – such as reading, reflecting and engaging with others’ contributions – is de-prioritized. What looks like productivity often masks intellectual exhaustion built on a demoralizing, narrowing scientific vision.

A table of profit margins across industries. The section of text related to this table is below: 1. The four-fold drain 1.1 Money Currently, academic publishing is dominated by profit-oriented, multinational companies for whom scientific knowledge is a commodity to be sold back to the academic community who created it. The dominant four are Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley and Taylor & Francis, which collectively generated over US$7.1 billion in revenue from journal publishing in 2024 alone, and over US$12 billion in profits between 2019 and 2024 (Table 1A). Their profit margins have always been over 30% in the last five years, and for the largest publisher (Elsevier) always over 37%. Against many comparators, across many sectors, scientific publishing is one of the most consistently profitable industries (Table S1). These financial arrangements make a substantial difference to science budgets. In 2024, 46% of Elsevier revenues and 53% of Taylor & Francis revenues were generated in North America, meaning that North American researchers were charged over US$2.27 billion by just two for-profit publishers. The Canadian research councils and the US National Science Foundation were allocated US$9.3 billion in that year.

The costs of inaction are plain: wasted public funds, lost researcher time, compromised scientific integrity and eroded public trust. Today, the system rewards commercial publishers first, and science second. Without bold action from the funders we risk continuing to pour resources into a system that prioritizes profit over the advancement of scientific knowledge.

We wrote the Strain on scientific publishing to highlight the problems of time & trust. With a fantastic group of co-authors, we present The Drain of Scientific Publishing:

a 🧵 1/n

Drain: arxiv.org/abs/2511.04820
Strain: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...
Oligopoly: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...

I wonder if anyone ever got rejected from MDPI

Latest paper: Boxgrove is a key European site dating to 480,000 years ago. At GTP17, hominins knapped handaxes and then butchered an adult female horse. A fragment of the horse's scapula appeared to have evidence of impact from a wooden spear.....
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Early Oldowan technology thrived during Pliocene environmental change in the Turkana Basin, Kenya - Nature Communications Here, the authors present archaeology of the Namorotukunan site in Kenya’s Turkana Basin that demonstrates adaptive shifts in hominin tool-making behaviour spanning 300,000 years and increasing enviro...

@robertosaezm.bsky.social

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Just finished my 100th review for a journal article - not sure if I should celebrate this anniversary or not 👀 #academia #reviewernumber2

Evolutionäre Anthropologie: Gemeinsame Berufungen beschlossen, neuer Studiengang geplant Universität Leipzig, Max-Planck-Gesellschaft und -Institut für evolutionäre Anthropologie schließen Vereinbarung über gemeinsame Berufungen

Die @unileipzig.bsky.social, @maxplanck.de & @mpi-eva-leipzig.bsky.social bauen ihre Zusammenarbeit in Forschung & Lehre aus: 5 gemeinsame Professuren & geplanter Master-Studiengang f. evolutionäre Anthropologie an der Fakultät f. #Lebenswissenschaften der Uni Leipzig. www.eva.mpg.de/de/presse/ak...

Fossiler Schädel: Homo sapiens viel älter als angenommen? Bisher waren Forschende sich weitgehend einig: Der Homo sapiens hat sich einst in Afrika entwickelt und von dort aus verbreitet. Eine neue Studie über die Rekonstruktion eines fossilen Schädels aus Ch...

Immer schön, mit tollen Gesprächspartnern komplexen Inhalten auf den Grund zu gehen. Danke @manuelwill.bsky.social und Ph. Gunz @mpi-eva-leipzig.bsky.social dafür #Evolution #Anthropologie #Archäologie 

www.br.de/nachrichten/...

Fossiler Schädel: Homo sapiens viel älter als angenommen? Bisher waren Forschende sich weitgehend einig: Der Homo sapiens hat sich einst in Afrika entwickelt und von dort aus verbreitet. Eine neue Studie über die Rekonstruktion eines fossilen Schädels aus Ch...

Fossiler Schädel: Homo sapiens viel älter als angenommen? | via BR24
br.de/nachrichten/... @br24.de
#Evolution #Anthropology

The #ESHE2025 meeting in Paris starts tomorrow (please use this hashtag for sharing). If you are interested in the program, you find it here mcusercontent.com/9347aa3598d5... - Members have received an email for accessing the live stream! We hope you all enjoy the conference in person or online. /MW

You've heard of the human "cognitive revolution" around 40 kya—a moment when our species suddenly became "behaviorally modern." Have you also heard that this story is wrong?

From the archive, our episode w/ @elliescerri.bsky.social & @manuelwill.bsky.social!

Listen: disi.org/revisiting-t...

The evolution of hominin bipedalism in two steps - Nature The human pelvis exhibits distinct spatiotemporal ossification patterns and an ilium cartilage growth plate that is shifted perpendicularly compared with those of other mammals and non-human primates—...

1) I am delighted to present this terrific tour de force research conducted by my post-doc Dr. Gayani Senevirathne @gayani.bsky.social and published today in Nature -
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Costs of Early Stone Toolmaking cannot Establish the Presence of Know-how Copying - Human Nature Compared to other apes, humans show a distinctive capacity for the cultural learning and transmission of know-how: we extract know-how from other individuals and artifacts in ways that regularly give ...

'we find that, based on current evidence pertaining to these costs, the case for inferring know-how copying abilities in Oldowan or even Early Acheulean stone toolmakers is weak..this points to a later date for the establishment of this crucial human skill' link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Ökologische Anpassung: Aufbruch nach Eurasien Vor 50.000 Jahren gelangten erstmals Menschen aus Afrika nach Eurasien. Wie haben sie das geschafft? Womöglich durch ökologische Anpassung.

For my German-speaking followers: A 20-minute Podcast episode in which I discuss the results of our recent paper in Nature within the wider context of the global dispersal of our species in the Pleistocene! detektor.fm/wissen/forsc... #archaeology #evolution #podcast #scicom

Job Alerts!🚨 We are looking to fill three Independent Junior Research Group Leader positions in the 'HUMAN ORIGINS' Cluster of Excellence at the University of Tübingen
Application deadline: Sept. 10, Starting Jan. 1, 2026

1. Genotype-Phenotype interactions:
uni-tuebingen.de/universitaet...

ZOOGESTURES has a web presence now! 🐒🦥🐻‍❄️

zoogestures.uni-koeln.de

with @nakedprimate.bsky.social @mesh-research-hub.bsky.social

🏺🗃️📕

ZEIT Wissen3 stellt heute die Initiative PD Prekär vor. Mehr dazu gab es vor kurzem im Wiarda-Blog. Sehr erhellendes Gespräch u.a. zu den Absurditäten der Titulaturlehre als Grundbedingung dafür, den Titel ‚Privatdozent*in‘ behalten zu dürfen. www.jmwiarda.de/blog/2025/07....

Where do the Dmanisi hominins fit on the human evolutionary tree?
dx.doi.org/10.1101/2025...

Looking forward to see you there and here about new results! Which session(s) are you in!?

And it's a wrap! After 7 weeks of fieldwork filled with discoveries and new encounters, the team has returned to Bordeaux.

See you soon at SAfA 2025 in Portugal!

Exactly my problem with recent humans as well!

Sure, and your opinion is absolutely valid. This is not an in-field consensus though and browsing through recent papers, modern human is still everywhere. Also, I think we need to be careful distinguishing between a valid academic discussion (what even means "modern"?!) and scientific communication.

Happy to share my perspective! I do think that some in my field don't like the term (in general "modern/modernity" has some issues - with some people discussing this all the way to Bruno Latour) but there is no consensus to not use it.

From my point of view, from inside the field, I still use modern humans (though I don't like 'archaic' humans!) and I think science writers etc. can and should still use it. "Sapiens" really looks odd! Who said or told you that you shouldn't?

"Der Traum verliert an Anziehungskraft"

DHV-Präsident Lambert Koch über Wissenschaftlerkarrieren, Tenure Track, die Rolle der Habilitation – und warum verbindliche Befristungsquoten an Hochschulen für ihn keine Lösung sind, sondern neue Probleme schaffen könnten.

www.jmwiarda.de/blog/2025/07...

Fantastic, congrats! Will get a copy for myself :)

Contested Deep Pasts @ Sidestone Press This book offers the first in-depth analysis of French-Anglophone research conflicts in Palaeolithic archaeology. By carefully examining a range of case studies and discursive contexts, the author sho...

www.sidestone.com/books/contes...

Perhaps this PhD of mine will finally become a book reality after all 😱

🏺🗃️📕

Zahlen zur DFG-Förderung 2024 3,9 Milliarden € Fördervolumen 31.000 laufende Projekte 16.400 Gutachter*innen 21.500 Förderentscheidungen

Jetzt online: Der neue DFG-Jahresbericht. Er bildet statistische Kennzahlen zum #Förderhandeln 2024 ab, inkl. Rückschau auf die vorherigen 4 Jahre. 1/2

Zum Download 📑https://www.dfg.de/resource/blob/359464/69bb27de4890eef0491daeb3d05f9522/dfg-jb2024-data.pdf

Had a similar thought and would like to here a genetics perspective on this!