Laura Spinney

China bolsters controversial claim to Pacific languages with new museum Nationalist narrative holds that Austronesian language and culture originated in China, not Taiwan

China bolsters controversial claim to Pacific languages with new museum | Science | AAAS www.science.org/content/arti...

Gene therapy appears to slow Huntington’s disease progression A global clinical trial for a new Huntington’s disease treatment has posted positive results today, announced by trial sponsor uniQure and UCL scientists.

“This result changes everything. On the basis of these results it seems likely AMT-130 will be the first licensed treatment to slow Huntington’s disease, which is truly world-changing stuff.”

www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2025/se...

My review of Peter Turchin's latest book.

rdcu.be/eHxjD

Meet the 2025 Ig Nobel Prize winners The annual award ceremony features miniature operas, scientific demos, and the 24/7 lectures.

Extremely proud and a bit jealous that my excellent colleagues @fieldmatt.bsky.social and Inge Kersbergen have won this year's Ig Nobel Peace prize for showing that being a bit tipsy makes you better at speaking Dutch.

arstechnica.com/science/2025...

PROTO by Laura Spinney Read by Emma Spurgin-Hussey | Audiobook Review | AudioFile Magazine AudioFile Audiobook Review: The topic of this audiobook--the evolution of language--requires a wide range of skills. Actor Emma Spurgin-Hussey's rich, expressive voice demonstrat

PROTO and Emma Spurgin Hussey won a prize 🤗
shorturl.at/e05Zm

My discovery of the weekend, thanks to film-maker Hana Vojáčková, the extraordinary Spartakiads - vast, synchronised sports events popular in eastern Europe in the Communist years.

Her short film on the subject: vimeo.com/614731350

Our new magazine @equatormag.bsky.social is officially out in the world.

Sign up for preview emails, donate, and get tickets to our launch event: www.equator.org.

Les aventuriers de la langue perdue Le français, l'ukrainien, l'anglais, le grec et une multitude de langues parlées aujourd'hui auraient une racine commune. Archéologues, linguistes et généticiens recherchent les origines de cette lang...

lactualite.com/societe/les-...

224. Make Your Messages Epic: The Evolution of Words and the Stories They Carry Why modern communication still relies on ancient words and narratives.

Fun discussion on the power of language and the stories that shape humanity with Matt Abrahams on his podcast Think Fast Talk Smart.

#Language #Storytelling #ThinkFastTalkSmart #WordsMatter #SharedHumanity

shorturl.at/EHK8G

‘Pregnant, homeless, what now?’ The search for a safe place to abandon a baby The long read: Each year, women make the desperate decision to abandon their babies. Specially designed ‘baby windows’ can help – but some argue they make matters worse

www.theguardian.com/news/2025/au...

Hallo liebe Leser von DER URKNALL UNSERER SPRACHE! Die deutschsprachige Ausgabe von PROTO ist für das Wissensbuch des Jahres in der Kategorie "Überblick" nominiert. Noch bis zum 14. August könnt ihr hier abstimmen: www.konradin-service.de/umfrage/inde...

The Origin of Language by Madeleine Beekman review – the suprising history of speech It takes a village to raise a child – and that’s why we started speaking, argues an evolutionary biologist

Did language evolve to organise childcare?

shorturl.at/6Knvr

Archaeologists are unearthing the most powerful women who ever lived Astonishing new archaeological finds and ancient DNA analysis leave no doubt that throughout prehistory women were rulers, warriors, hunters and shamans

In prehistory, women ruled, fought, hunted and mediated with other worlds.

www.newscientist.com/article/2488...

YouTube video by BlomCast [45] Laura Spinney — The First Human Language and How We Think

Talking inflection points in (pre)history with the insatiably curious @BlomPhilipp youtu.be/SfGd3EKaMMs

Love this. How to say 92 in different European languages. Note the outliers France and especially Denmark. With thanks to brilliantmaps.com and reddit. #linguistics

At moderate doses, it might have fuelled the spread of languages too. Could that have contributed to the complexification, I wonder? @vaclavhrncir.bsky.social and @kirrallina.bsky.social

YouTube video by CapeTalk Proto: With Laura Spinney

With the suave John Maytham in Cape Town m.youtube.com/watch?v=qhJA...

Ancient DNA solves mystery of Hungarian, Finnish language origins — Harvard Gazette Parent emerged over 4,000 years ago in Siberia, farther east than many thought, then rapidly spread west, study finds.

Uralic languages illuminated #ancientdna

shorturl.at/JCw4g

This research is fabulous, but I think you should be a bit wary when anyone says they have "finally" solved the problem.

Should grant applicants judge competitors’ proposals? Unorthodox approach gets two real-world tests Distributed peer review enlists more researchers in the process, but some may lack expertise

Coppola tried this to unearth new script-writing talent- he called it Zoetrope - all he got was regression to the mean.

Should grant applicants judge competitors’ proposals? Unorthodox approach gets two real-world tests | Science | AAAS www.science.org/content/arti...

The spatiotemporal distribution of human pathogens in ancient Eurasia - Nature Screening shotgun-sequencing data from ancient humans covering 37,000 years of Eurasian history uncovers the widespread presence of ancient bacterial, viral and parasite DNA and zoonotic pathogens coi...

🏺

Previously a preprint now a paper led by the Copenhagen group- ancient DA extracted from 1313 ancient humans shows the dynamics of different infectious diseases across Eurasia over the last 37,000 years.

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

Artwork for the podcast A Language I Love Is...

New ALILI alert! 🚨

Episode 37 is a trip into prehistory, as @laurainparis.bsky.social, author of the super new book 'Proto', joins me to share her expertise and enthusiasm for Proto-Indo-European! Listen here:

Acast: shows.acast.com/a-language-i...
Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/0xbQ...

www.nature.com/immersive/d4...

Ancient DNA reveals the prehistory of the Uralic and Yeniseian peoples - Nature Genome-wide sequencing of 180 ancient individuals shows a continuous gradient of ancestry in Early-to-Mid-Holocene hunter-gatherers from the Baltic to the Transbaikal region and distinct contemporaneo...

Palaeogenetics: this time applied to Uraluc and Yenisean languages.

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

The big idea: should we give babies the right to vote? Strange as it may seem, it’s hard to refute the arguments for truly universal suffrage

Should babies vote?

www.theguardian.com/books/2025/j...

Sleepless on (nearly) the shortest night, thinking about the Amesbury Archer who could also have worshipped at Stonehenge - built by others before him - around 2,300BCE. His people may have brought the first #indoeuropean language to Britain.

Gandalf is a total prankster, so my headcanon is that when he brought a dragon firework to Bilbo's birthday, it was to prank Bilbo by triggering his traumatic memories of Smaug.
Maybe he later brought similarly traumatic fireworks to Frodo, Sam, and Pippin's birthday parties.
#lordoftherings

These two books go well together.
@laurainparis.bsky.social

The 5 main tributaries of the great Indus River, which are at the origin of the name Punjab / Panjab - from Persian panj (five) and āb (water) - because named by the Mughals - and going further back to Proto-Indo-European *pénkʷe and *h₂ep- #linguistics #protoindoeuropean

Dead Language Society | Colin Gorrie | Substack A guided tour through the history of English and its relatives. Click to read Dead Language Society, by Colin Gorrie, a Substack publication with thousands of subscribers.

Dead Language Society
www.deadlanguagesociety.com?utm_source=n...