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SALTATION. “The emergence of language was a defining moment in the evolution of modern humans. It was an innovation that changed radically the character of human society.” https://lnkd.in/d_bJcG9t View in LinkedIn

THE WHY. “My own brain is to me the most unaccountable of machinery — always buzzing, humming, soaring roaring diving, and then buried in mud. And why? What’s this passion for?” (Virginia Woolf). https://lnkd.in/d58kyzRB View in LinkedIn

FRAGMENT FROM NATURE for this and next weekend deals with the challenging topic of the evolution of language. One paper creates a linguistic computer model that reveals grammatical clues; the other looks at comparative anatomy and genetics. Leaving no fossil clues, reconstructing this is difficult. Linguistic deficits in patients, comparative anatomy, and genetic studies provide clues to the evolution of language. View in LinkedIn

The splendid Spanish tortilla. View in LinkedIn

THE UNIVERSE AS A LABORATORY. “Luminous (optically selected) quasars at high redshift, thus offer the most direct constraint on the evolution of the first SMBHs and serve a unique laboratory to study the earliest phases of galaxy formation and evolution as well as the properties of the early Universe.” (SMBH = supermassive black hole). https://lnkd.in/dHcpNrnR View in LinkedIn

INTERWOVEN FUNCTIONALITY. “Teasing out the relative contributions of these various behavioral domains (including language) to prefrontal elaboration during evolution will likely be very difficult, in part because they almost surely all contributed as part of a complex adaptive system involving many aspects of human behavior.” https://lnkd.in/dvz_XvBp View in LinkedIn

UNKNOWN ORIGINS, “How these BHs formed in a relatively short time scale, already 12 Gyr ago in the early Universe (≲ 700–800 Myr; is still an open question.” (BH = black hole). https://lnkd.in/dHcpNrnR View in LinkedIn

A genius we are still just starting to appreciate, MC Escher. Modern physics and some of his studies of infinity are converging very closely. View in LinkedIn

DIVINATION 450 BC. “Monstrous omens appear four times in Herodotus: a concubine of the king of Sardis gives birth to a lion (1.84), a donkey is born with male and female genitalia (7.57), a horse gives birth to a hare (7.57) and fish come back to life whilst being cooked (9.120).” https://lnkd.in/dKzNaDGj View in LinkedIn