Jovana Maksić

High-precision tracking of human foragers reveals adaptive social information use in the wild Foraging complexity and competitive social challenges are considered key drivers of human cognition. Yet, the decision-making mechanisms that underlie social foraging in the real world remain unknown....

"Analyzing video footage and location data from headcams and GPS devices, respectively, the authors found that social information, specifically where other participants were fishing, influenced foraging behaviors, especially for women" www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

No worries :)

Is it possible to join online?

Such an inspiring talk, thank you again!

Humanity's oldest geometries, engraved on ostrich eggs At several archaeological sites in southern Africa, hundreds of highly unusual fragments of ostrich eggs have been found. Dating back more than 60,000 years, the shells were engraved by groups of Homo...

While everyone is excited by early European precursors of 'writing', let's not forget the African geometrics, here Howiesons Poort oes, but also Blombos haematite, almost twice as old

phys.org/news/2026-02...

Humans 40,000 y ago developed a system of conventional signs | PNAS As humans, we store and share information. This allows us to distribute knowledge necessary for survival and to coordinate large groups. Our homini...

Very interesting attempt to trace back the early evolution of a “system of conventional signs” (proto-writing system) 🧪✍️
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Human newborns form musical predictions based on rhythmic but not melodic structure by Roberta Bianco, Brigitta Tóth, Felix Bigand, Trinh Nguyen, István Sziller, Gábor P. Háden, István Winkler, Giacomo Novembre The ability to anticipate rhythmic and melodic structures in music is considered a fundamental human trait, present across all cultures and predating linguistic comprehension in human development. Yet, it remains unclear the extent to which this ability is already developed at birth. Here, we used temporal response functions to assess rhythmic and melodic neural encoding in newborns (N = 49) exposed to classical monophonic musical pieces (real condition) and control stimuli with shuffled tones and inter-onset intervals (shuffled condition). We computationally quantified context-based rhythmic and melodic expectations and dissociated these high-level processes from low-level acoustic tracking, such as local changes in timing and pitch. We observed encoding of probabilistic rhythmic expectations only in response to real but not shuffled music. This proves newborns’ ability to rely on rhythmic statistical regularities to generate musical expectations. We found no evidence for the tracking of melodic information, demonstrating a downweighting of this dimension compared to the rhythmic one. This study provides neurophysiological evidence that the capacity to track statistical regularities in music is present at birth and driven by rhythm. Melodic tracking, in contrast, may receive more weight through development with exposure to signals relevant to communication, such as speech and music.

Human newborns form musical predictions based on rhythmic but not melodic structure @PLOSBiology.org

The ‘Rosetta Stone’ of palaeoneurology: A detailed study of the link between the brain and the endocast on 75 volunteers Imaging data from 75 volunteers were used to determine the sulci on the brain and then read on the internal surface of the cranium, the endocast, the impressions actually linked to the sulci visible ...

Detailed characterisation of the link between brain and enbocast (study led by A. Balzeau); presenting a good challenge for the interpretation of fossil endocasts, and offering useful recommendations for future studies
🧪💀🧠
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Should add that one of the study authors (@annemiekemilks.bsky.social) wrote a fantastic commentary on this very issue and you can read it here:

www.researchgate.net/publication/...

Lithic technological change, hominin history and climatic background from the late Middle Pleistocene to middle Late Pleistocene (ca. 300–50 ka) in China.
Source: doi.org/10.1038/s414... #FossilFriday

What Can Shamans Teach Us About Religion? | Many Minds with Manvir Singh Podcast Episode · On Humans · 01/21/2026 · Bonus · 1h 20m

What can shamanism teach us about religion -- and the human mind?

What a pleasure to share this excellent conversation to the listeners of On Humans! The hard work was done by @manymindspod.bsky.social and @manvir.bsky.social 🙏

Spotify: open.spotify.com/show/4nhm3fG...
Apple 👇

Early hominins from Morocco basal to the Homo sapiens lineage - Nature New hominin fossils from the Grotte à Hominidés at Thomas Quarry I (ThI-GH) in Casablanca, Morocco, dated to around 773 thousand years ago are similar in age to Homo antecessor, yet are morphologicall...

"The ThI-GH hominins...provide strong evidence for an African lineage ancestral to our species. These fossils offer clues about the last common ancestor shared with Neanderthals and Denisovans."

Humans Made Poisoned Arrowheads Thousands of Years Earlier Than Previously Thought The use of poison on arrows marked a revolution in human hunting technology—new evidence suggests it happened tens of thousands of years earlier than previously known

This is such a cool finding--the oldest direct evidence of poisoned arrows. Poisoned hunting weapons were a game-changing innovation for our ancestors. Absolutely incredible that researchers found traces of plant toxins on these tiny arrowheads from 60,000 ago 🤯🏹 🧪

A graph comparing the number of neurons in the telencephalon of reptiles, birds, and two estimates for T. rex. Even the lowest of these estimates suggests the telencephalic neuron count of T. rex to be similar to that of a pygmy falcon or blackbird - several times more than the largest telencephalic neuron count of extant reptiles.

New paper out! 🧪
On reconstructing dinosaur cognition through contemporary cognitive science - a primer on the function of neurons and cognition, the role of extant animals, thermobiology, tools, arms races, foraging, and model-based cognition.
anatomypubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

A brief natural history of misinformation Abstract. The idea that organisms benefit by acquiring information through social connections is a cornerstone of our understanding of social evolution and

"misinformation is widespread in biological systems spanning levels of organization, and [...] is probably an inevitable property that inherits from fundamental constraints on biological communication systems, rather than a pathology"
royalsocietypublishing.org/rsif/article...

Cognitive Technologies and Their Histories Cognitive technologies are socially acquired and culturally evolved systems whose primary function is cognitive. There is a tremendous untapped opportunity for a broad range of disciplines across the...

At last, the final publication in 'Cognitive Technologies and their Histories': the editorial introduction to the issue in TopiCS, by myself and @helenamiton.bsky.social. 4.5 years since our initial @cogscisociety.bsky.social panel. Free access! onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Super proud of this fabulous team for challenging old comparative frameworks and rethinking what makes language language.
Read more in the thread below 👇 or here 📖😊: www.cell.com/trends/cogni...

Culture is critical in driving orangutan diet development past individual potentials - Nature Human Behaviour Howard-Spink et al. develop an empirically based model of orangutan diet development, which suggests that social learning is vital for orangutans to acquire varied diets.

Our New Paper is out in Nature Human Behaviour: 🚨 Culture is critical in driving orangutan diet development past individual potentials! 🦧 www.nature.com/articles/s41.... See 🧵

A Voyage Into the Art of Finding One’s Way at Sea

The project about how indigenous navigators find their way across the Pacific Ocean, in which our researcher @pfvelasco.bsky.social participates, is in the New York Times.

www.nytimes.com/2025/11/18/s...

How do humans keep inventing tools and technologies that no single person could create alone?

Our new preprint, led by
@anilyaman.bsky.social & @ts-brain.bsky.social
shows that semantic knowledge guides innovation and drives cultural evolution. 🧠📘 arxiv.org/abs/2510.12837

Miyagawa Shuntei's 1898 painting, "Playing Go (Japanese Chess)"

How to quantify the impact of AI on long-run cultural evolution? Published today, I give it a go!

400+ years of strategic dynamics in the game of Go (Baduk/Weiqi), from feudalism to AlphaGo!

Integrating and interpreting brain maps | doi.org/10.1016/j.ti...

Imaging and recording technologies make it possible to map multiple biological features of the brain. How can these features be conceptually integrated into a coherent understanding of brain structure and function? ⤵️

“[This]finding challenges the notion of a strictly human-specific Arcuate Fasciculus morphology and suggests that language-related neural specialisation in humans likely evolved through gradual evolutionary strengthening of a pre-existing connection, rather than arising de novo” 🧪🧠 👇

How are humans able to make sense of time? Not with special biology but with “time tools”—ideas, practices, and artifacts that render time more concrete.

My new paper explores this vast, varied toolkit—one that makes use of knots, nuts, hands, flowers, mountains, shadows, and much more.

(link 👇)

Dimensions of corvid consciousness - Animal Cognition Corvids have long been a target of public fascination and of scientific attention, particularly in the study of animal minds. Using Birch et al.’s (2020) 5-dimensional framework for animal consciousne...

Ever wondered what life is like for a crow or magpie? Check out our new paper on corvid consciousness

doi.org/10.1007/s100...

Social tolerance and role model diversity increase tool use learning opportunities across chimpanzee ontogeny - Communications Biology Social attention patterns suggest that wild chimpanzees learn from their mothers but also from many other tolerant group members across protracted development. This likely enables chimpanzees to learn...

New Paper Alert: Why do chimpanzees have large tool kits? with @taichimpproject.bsky.social
www.nature.com/articles/s42...
We found that like humans, chimpanzees seek social learning opportunities throughout their first decade of life, particularly for tool use.

Cumulative culture was long treated as the defining difference between human and non-human culture. In this lovely new article, Eli (also my PhD student) reviews new research suggesting that cultural open-endedness is a better candidate for what makes us special.

Kanzi, staring into the camera. He looks calm and almost as if he’s giving a slight smile.

I’m heartbroken to hear that Kanzi has passed away. I will forever be grateful for the time I spent with this smart, rambunctious, sweet bonobo. There will never be another Kanzi. Sending love to all who loved him.
❤️🧪

📷: ACCI

👨‍🎤COSMOS strikes back🌠! This time in Tokyo 🇯🇵 with a fantastic new program designed to teach computational modeling of social phenomena. As always, it's free to attend & we will offer travel stipends to ensure diverse attendance. For details visit 👉 cosmossummerschool.github.io/application/ pls share🙏

YouTube video by Cultural Evolution Society Transmissions Episode 1 with Dr Cristina Moya

We are please to release Transmissions Ep 1, featuring Dr Cristina Moya @hyperadapthyrax.bsky.social in conversation with Feryl Badiani @ferylbadiani.bsky.social

Cristina and Feryl chat about Cristina's work in Peru and discuss CE in human and non-human societies:

youtu.be/2otT0PkhPkw?...