#Ludovic Slimak

[utank]

Je n'ai pas lu votre livre mais j'entends votre propos très intéressant.

Vous pariez donc sur la disparition de ces humanités, disons "vernaculaires", capables de symbiose avec le vivant au profit d'un fait d'espèce (sapiens), qui caractériserait le rapport au biotope de "sapiens" et l'aliènerait à son registre imaginaire (imaginarium comme aquarium)?

N'est-ce pas justement sur la persistance de récits vernaculaires, que vous évoquez, contre une centralité narrative, j'oserais bourgeoise, que se joue la survie des biotopes diversifiés et des forêts?

Le changement de statut du récit intervient justement à divers moments d'une urbanisation centralisée par des voies d'échange commerciaux. Donc, en suivant cette dichotomie, ou lutte, entre ce qui serait le substrat, la forêt, et ceux qui la peuplent et la cité, le fort, la muraille, et ceux qui s'y réfugient, l'histoire et les livres qui la constituent restent toujours du même côté du mur... De l'autre, le sauvage ou la marée, le bloc, sont le lieu de l'exploration.

Bien entendu, c'est une accumulation de ces relations complexes qui fait la structure buissonnante des récits. Et si on se place du côté Amazigh, ou Sonike, ou Fang la persistance des récits et des lignages est bien réelle.

L'érosion des mémoires et habitus par l'objet, le colifichet occidental ou la transformation industrielle est bien réelle, mais avec une conscience existentielle et un "courage" bien plus ancrées... Les Sonike avaient-ils besoin d'anthropologues?

Ces derniers avaient en revanche besoin des navires, comptoirs, militaires et traducteurs pour glaner et fixer ce que tous les pré-cités allaient faire (ou tenter de le faire) disparaître... Pas d'archéologie sans carrière et dynamite.

Ce récit de science disrupte en l'explosant la version vernaculaire, protectrice sous couvert de sa violence. Qui laissait le couvert forestier grimper et faire oublier l'Eldorado. Qui laissait le monticule ou le tell intacts. Pas de dynamite, pas de nitroglycérine sans sucre.

De canne à betterave, un paradigme change ses assises, tente de faire oublier une partie "mâle", une "virilité" qui renvoyait des peuplades aux fers pour cultiver notre récit de puissance.

C'était la première étape de la domestication à marche forcée.

Marché ou crève. Brevète ou disparaît. On les "nomme" à ce moment, celui de l'enchaînement (ça sonne blockchain), niant par là leurs identités antérieures, telles des espèces inventées par un symposium savant ou puissant, laissant au créateur, au planteur de drapeau, la pérennité de sa trouvaille par son nom.

Ce dernier Sapiens, n'est-il pas déjà enterré quelque-part, son corps momifié par les conservateurs, jeté là par une bande armée venue s'en débarrasser et qu'une terre stérile n'a plus la force de décomposer?

Ceux qui viennent après sont des insectoïdes, vous l'évoquez alors pourquoi pas?

[danieleneandermancini]

SEQUENZIATO IL DNA DELL' "ULTIMO DEI NEANDERTHAL"

SEQUANZIATO IL DNA DI UNO DEGLI ULTIMI NEANDERTHAL Una nuova analisi del DNA su uno degli ultimi Uomini di Neanderthal ad aver camminato sul pianeta indica che faceva parte di un gruppo umano rimasto probabilmente isolato per gran parte della propria esistenza. Scoperto nel 2015 all'ingresso del rifugio roccioso delle Grotte...

[biglisbonnews]

Archery May Have Originated in Europe 40,000 Years Earlier Than We Thought The earliest modern humans in Europe mastered bow-and-arrow technology 54,000 years ago. https://www.inverse.com/science/origins-of-bow-and-arrow-technology

[hedgehog-moss]

Inspired by your last ask! What are the best French books you’ve read that have no English translation yet? I read Play Boy and Qui a tué mon père (really loved the latter) last year and it feels so fun to read something that other Americans can’t access yet

I'm too nervous to make any list of the Best XYZ Books because I don't want to raise your expectations too high! But okay, here's my No English Translation-themed list of books I've enjoyed in recent years. I tried to make it eclectic in terms of genre as I don't know what you prefer :)

Biographies

• Le dernier inventeur, Héloïse Guay de Bellissen: I just love prehistory and unusual narrators so I enjoyed this one; it's about the kids who discovered the cave of Lascaux, and some of the narration is written from the perspective of the cave <3 I posted a little excerpt here (in English).

• Ces femmes du Grand Siècle, Juliette Benzoni: Just a fun collection of portraits of notable noblewomen during the reign of Louis XIV, I really liked it. For people who like the 17th century. I think it was Emil Cioran who said his favourite historical periods were the Stone Age and the 17th century but tragically the age of salons led to the Reign of Terror and Prehistory led to History.

• La Comtesse Greffulhe, Laure Hillerin: I've mentioned this one before, it's about the fascinating Belle Époque French socialite who was (among other things) the inspiration for Proust's Duchess of Guermantes. I initially picked it up because I will read anything that's even vaguely about Proust but it was also a nice aperçu of the Belle Époque which I didn't know much about.

• Nous les filles, Marie Rouanet: I've also recommended this one before but it's such a sweet little viennoiserie of a book. The author talks about her 1950s childhood in a town in the South of France in the most detailed, colourful, earnest way—she mentions everything, describes all the daft little games children invent like she wants ageless aliens to grasp the concept of human childhood, it's great.

I'll add Trésors d'enfance by Christian SIgnol and La Maison by Madeleine Chapsal which are slightly less great but also sweet short nostalgic books about childhood that I enjoyed.

Fantasy

• Mers mortes, Aurélie Wellenstein: I read this one last year and I found the characters a bit underwhelming / underexplored but I always enjoy SFF books that do interesting things with oceans (like Solaris with its sentient ocean-planet), so I liked the atmosphere here, with the characters trying to navigate a ghost ship in ghost seas...

• Janua Vera, Jean-Philippe Jaworski: Not much to say about it other than they're short stories set in a mediaeval fantasy world and no part of this description is usually my cup of tea, but I really enjoyed this read!

Essays / literary criticism / philosophy

• Eloge du temps perdu, Frank Lanot: I thought this was going to be about idleness, as the title suggests, and I love books about idleness. But it's actually a collection of short essays about (French) literature and some of them made me appreciate new things about authors and books I thought I knew by heart, so I enjoyed it

• Le Pont flottant des rêves, Corinne Atlan: Poetic musings about translation <3 that's all

• Sisyphe est une femme, Geneviève Brisac: Reflections about the works of female writers (Natalia Ginzburg, Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Townsend Warner, etc) that systematically made me want to go read the author in question, even when I'd already read & disliked said author. That's how you know it's good literary criticism

Let's add L'Esprit de solitude by Jacqueline Kelen which as the title suggests, ponders the notion of solitude, and Le Roman du monde by Henri Peña-Ruiz which was so lovely to read in terms of literary style I don't even care what it was about (it's philosophy of foundational myths & stories) (probably difficult to read if you're not fully fluent in French though)

Did not fit in the above categories:

• Entre deux mondes by Olivier Norek—it's been translated in half a dozen languages, I was surprised to find no English translation! It's a crime novel and a pretty bleak read on account of the setting (the Calais migrant camp) but I'd recommend it

• Saga, Tonino Benacquista: Also seems to have been translated in a whole bunch of languages but not English? :( I read it ages ago but I remember it as a really fun read. It's a group of loser screenwriters who get hired to write a TV series, their budget is 15 francs and a stale croissant and it's going to air at 4am so they can do whatever they want seeing as no one will watch it. So they start writing this intentionally ridiculous unhinged show, and of course it acquires Devoted Fans

Books that I didn't think existed in English translation but they do! but you can still read them in French if you want

• Scrabble: A Chadian Childhood, Michaël Ferrier: What it says on the tin! It's a short and well-written account of the author's childhood in Chad just before the civil war. I read it a few days ago and it was a good read, but then again I just love bittersweet stories of childhood

• On the Line, Joseph Ponthus: A short diary-like account of the author's assembly line work in a fish factory. I liked the contrast between the robotic aspect of the job and the poetic nature of the text; how the author used free verse / repetition / scansion to give a very immediate sense of the monotony and rhythm of his work (I don't know if it's good in English)

• The End of Eddy, Edouard Louis: The memoir of a gay man growing up in a poor industrial town in Northern France—pretty brutal but really good

• And There Was Light, Jacques Lusseyran: Yet another memoir sorry, I love people's lives! Jacques Lusseyran lost his sight as a child, and was in the Resistance during WWII despite being blind. It's a great story, both for the historical aspects and for the descriptions of how the author experiences his blindness

• The Adversary: A True Story of Monstrous Deception, Emmanuel Carrère: an account of the Jean-Claude Romand case—a French man who murdered his whole family to avoid being discovered as a fraud, after spending his entire adult life pretending to be a doctor working at the WHO and fooling everyone he knew. Just morbidly fascinating, if you like true crime stuff

[myrmica]

despite my best efforts i still feel awfully agitated when i have a day where i don't get anything done (on my own creative projects. other types of work don't really register as accomplishing anything, doesn't matter if i was busy doing other stuff or feeling under the weather or resting etc) and it's very related to the "if i don't feel passionate about something i may as well not be alive rn" thing. not being focused towards something inspires such a feeling of dread. it isn't about productivity the way it appears on the surface i have untangled the root causes but not yet bested them

[grabsomeironmeat]

Ludovic Slimak

[prehistoric-past]

Paleoanthropologist Ludovic Slimak breaks down Neanderthals in movies

[yo-sostenible]

El análisis genómico de un individuo de esta especie, apodado ‘Thorin’ y descubierto en las cuevas del valle del Ródano en Francia, sugiere que su población, aunque coexistió y vivió a unos diez días de camino de otras, se ignoraban. El arqueólogo y antropólogo Slimak Ludovic, descubridor de Thorin. / Universidad Toulouse III  Por Eva Rodríguez Hasta ahora los estudios científicos sobre los neandertales apuntaban a que, en el momento de la extinción de la especie, solo existiría una población genéticamente homogénea. Sin embargo, un nuevo estudio publicado hoy en la revista Cell Genomics, apunta que habría al menos dos poblaciones presentes en ese momento. Lo han descubierto a partir del análisis del genoma de ‘Thorin’, un neandertal fosilizado hallado en un sistema de cuevas en el valle del Ródano (Francia). Este individuo representa un linaje antiguo y no descrito previamente que divergió de otros neandertales conocidos actualmente hace unos 100.000 años y permaneció genéticamente aislado durante más de 50.000 años. “En la época de ‘Thorin’ nos encontramos con un clima glacial en inmensas estepas herbáceas, y un vasto corredor migratorio en el continente europeo. Estos 50 milenios de aislamiento entre poblaciones son fascinantes y no se parecen a nada de lo que conocemos por la historia, la arqueología o la antropología cultural en las poblaciones de sapiens. Probablemente estamos tocando aquí las particularidades etológicas del neandertal, unas maneras increíblemente diferentes de ser humano y de pensar el mundo”, dice a SINC el arqueólogo y antropólogo Slimak Ludovic, coautor del trabajo, descubridor de Thorin e investigador en Centro Nacional para la Investigación Científica de la Universidad Toulouse III (Francia).   El análisis genómico indica que este individuo vivió hace entre 42.000 y 50.000 años en una comunidad pequeña y aislada, sin intercambiar genes con otras poblaciones neandertales. Por lo tanto, dos poblaciones de neandertales, que viven a unos diez días de camino la una de la otra, coexistieron mientras se ignoraban por completo. “Esto sería inimaginable para un sapiens y revela que los neandertales deben haber concebido biológicamente nuestro mundo de manera muy diferente a nosotros”, asegura el científico. Los restos fosilizados de ‘Thorin’ se descubrieron en 2015 en la Grotte Mandrin, un sistema de cuevas que también albergó a los primeros Homo sapiens, aunque no al mismo tiempo. Ludovic ha sido director del proyecto Grotte Mandrin y ha dirigido durante 30 años misiones arqueológicas desde el círculo polar ártico hasta el cuerno de África. “Es muy posible que hubiera otras poblaciones estrechamente relacionadas con Thorin durante parte de ese periodo de tiempo de las que hoy no tenemos datos”, declara a SINC el coautor Martin Sikora, investigador de la Universidad de Copenhague (Dinamarca). Para el científico, la zona más interesante para estudiar y resolver estas cuestiones estaría en el suroeste de Europa, es decir, el sur de Francia y la península ibérica. “Sería fascinante comprobar si la población de ‘Thorin’ formaba parte de una metapoblación más amplia de otros neandertales de supervivencia tardía en esa región”, apunta Sikora. Restos fósiles analizados. / Ludovik Slimak Un neandertal tardío con un genoma muy particular Debido a la ubicación de ‘Thorin’ dentro del sedimento de la cueva, los arqueólogos del equipo sospecharon que vivió hace unos 40 a 45.000 años, lo que lo convierte en un neandertal tardío. Para determinar su edad y sus relaciones con otros neandertales, extrajeron ADN de sus dientes y mandíbula y compararon la secuencia completa de su genoma con el de otros neandertales secuenciados anteriormente. Sorprendentemente, el de este neandertal era mucho más antiguo que la estimación de edad arqueológica y muy distinto del de otros tardíos. De hecho, se parecía mucho más a los genomas de aquellos que vivieron hace más de 100.000 años...

[scientificinquirer-blog]

Conversations with Ludovic Slimak: Exploring the Intelligence and Misconceptions of Neanderthal's Unique World.

The Naked Neanderthal (Pegasus Books) by Ludovic Slimak is a captivating scientific journey that delves into the enigma of our ancient cousins, the Neanderthals. For over a century, Neanderthals were considered inferior to Homo sapiens. However, recent discoveries have shifted our understanding. Slimak argues that Neanderthals possessed a distinctive form of intelligence, which in some ways…

[culturevsnews-blog]

Le dernier Néandertalien de Ludovic SLIMAK

Achat. : https://amzn.to/3ppg9o6 Après vingt-cinq années de recherches archéologiques dans une petite grotte du sud de la France, Ludovic Slimak se trouve confronté aux vestiges d’un corps. Chronique : Ludovic Slimak nous propose une passionnante aventure scientifique avec son livre “Le dernier Néandertalien”. Le lecteur est plongé dans les coulisses d’une découverte majeure qui pourrait bien…

[xtruss]

Science | Archaeology: Humans and Neanderthals Could Have Lived Together Even Earlier Than We Thought

A provocative new study suggests that Homo sapiens moved into Europe in three waves.

— BY Laura Baisas | May 4, 2023 | Popular Science | NOVA — PBS

Grotte Mandrin (The Rock in the Center) in Mediterranean France records some of the earliest migrations of Homo Sapiens in Europe. Ludovic Slimak, CC-BY 4.0

A broken molar and some sophisticated stone pointed tools suggest that Europe’s first known humans may have been living on the continent 54,000 years ago. The findings are detailed in a study published May 3 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE and suggests that the first modern humans spread across the European continent during three waves in the Paleolithic Era.

Homo sapiens arose in Africa over 300,000 years ago and anatomically modern humans are thought to have emerged about 195,000 years ago. Previously, it was believed that modern humans moved into Europe from Africa roughly 42,000 years ago, leaving the archaeological record of Paleolithic Europe withs many open questions about how modern humans arrived in the region and how they interacted with the resident Neanderthal populations. The 2022 discovery of a tooth in France’s Grotte Mandrin cave in the Rhône Valley suggested that modern humans were there about 54,000 years ago, about 10,000 years earlier than scientists previously believed.

“Until 2022, it was believed that Homo sapiens had reached Europe between the 42nd and 45th millennium. The study shows that this first Sapiens migration would actually be the last of three major migratory waves to the continent, profoundly rewriting what was thought to be known about the origin of Sapiens in Europe,” study co-author Ludovic Slimak, an archeologist at and University of Toulouse in France, said in a statement.

The newly analyzed stone tools from this study have further upended that timeline. They suggest that the three waves of migration occurred between 54,000 and 42,000 years ago. The team of researchers compared records of stone tool technology across western Eurasia to document the order of early human activity across the continents. It focused on tens of thousands of stone tools from Ksar Akil in Lebanon and France’s Grotte Mandrin (where the tooth was found) and analyzed their precise technical connections with the earliest modern technologies in the continent.

The technology of the tools went through three similar phases in each region, Slimak said, so they may have spread from the Near East to Europe during these three distinct waves of migration. The study suggests Neanderthals only began to fade into extinction in the third wave–about 45,000 to 42,000 years ago.

The team also looked at a group of stone artifacts that were previously found in the eastern Mediterranean region called the Levant, or what includes today’s Israel, Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. Slimak compared the tools from Grotte Mandrin to the ones from Ksar Akil in Lebanon, noting similarities between them. The artifacts from a group of stone tools known as the Châtelperronian resemble the modern human artifacts seen in the Early Upper Paleolithic of the Levant. The Châtelperronian items date to about 45,000 years ago and scientists had often thought Châtelperronians were Neanderthals.

“Châtelperronian culture, one of the first modern traditions in western Europe and since then attributed to Neanderthals, should in fact signal the second wave of Homo sapiens migration in Europe, impacting deeply our understanding of the cultural organization of the last Neanderthals,” said Slimak.

The moving of these technologies allow for a provocative new reinterpretation of human arrival into Europe and how it is related to the Levant region. Future studies of these phases of human migration will help paint a clearer picture of the sequence of events when Homo sapiens spread, and gradually replaced Neanderthals.

[gaetaniu]

Una nuova ricerca suggerisce che gli esseri umani moderni vivevano già in Europa, negli stessi territori dei Neanderthal, 10.000 anni prima di quanto si pensasse

Una nuova ricerca suggerisce che gli esseri umani moderni vivevano già in Europa, negli stessi territori dei Neanderthal, 10.000 anni prima di quanto si pensasse

Archeologi e paleoantropologi guidati da Ludovic Slimak nella grotta di Mandrin. Appollaiato a circa 100 metri sulle pendici delle Prealpi nel sud della Francia, un umile rifugio di roccia si affaccia sulla valle del fiume Rodano. È un punto strategico del paesaggio, perché qui il Rodano scorre in una strettoia tra due catene montuose. Per millenni, gli abitanti del riparo roccioso avrebbero…

[malummedya]

Neandertallerin soyunu modern insanların ataları mı kuruttu?

Neandertallerin soyunu modern insanların ataları mı kuruttu?

Fotoğraf: BBC Yeni fosiller, Neandertallerin soyunun Afrika’dan gelen modern insanlar tarafından kurutulduğuna dair görüşün sorgulanmasına neden oldu. Science Advances dergisinde yayımlanan bir araştırmaya göre, Toulouse Üniversitesi’nden Profesör Ludovic Slimak başkanlığındaki bir ekip, Rhone Vadisi’nde Grotte Mandrin adındaki mağarada bir çocuk dişi ve taştan yapılmış aletler buldu. Profesör…

[mondonews]

Discovery pushes back the age of early humans in Europe by nearly 10,000 years

Discovery pushes back the age of early humans in Europe by nearly 10,000 years

The earliest evidence of modern humans in Europe has been unearthed in a cave in southern France, showing they lived there at the same time as Neanderthals — something long suspected but never established before now. “It’s a real group, making an attempt at a real colonization of Western Europe,” said Ludovic Slimak, a paleoanthropologist with the French scientific research agency CNRS at the…

[histoire]

Ludovic Slimak : Néandertal nu Comprendre la créature humaine (2022)

Ludovic Slimak : Néandertal nu Comprendre la créature humaine (2022)

Depuis plus de 30 ans, Ludovic Slimak, directeur de recherche au CNRS, est un chasseur de néandertaliens. Il vient de publier le 5 janvier un ouvrage retraçant son parcours de chercheur sur les traces de Néandertal. Et si nous nous étions fourvoyés sur ce que fut l’homme de Néandertal ? Dans un véritable récit de voyage, Ludovic Slimak retrace son parcours de chercheur et nous entraîne dans une…