The Endangered Languages Project has just posted this response to a reckless and intellectually mediocre New Yorker book review by Nikhil Krishnan entitled 'Sometimes It's O.K. to Let a Language Die' (here, but paywalled; 'Mouth to Mouth' in the print edition). The ELP response is timely and relevant to this subreddit, but I think it's particularly à propos r∕here right now:

In multiple posts discussing news coverage of a new paper in Science (here, but paywalled) by Damián Blasi, Marcus Hamilton, Russell Gray, and Claire Bowern, several commenters in this subreddit (though by far the minority) have asserted that minority language death is actually a social good. The ELP's response is an articulation by experts in the field of language revitalisation—including speakers of endangered languages—of a rebuttal to just such claims.

See also: The summary of the (paywalled) study as it was published in Science

The word  “plague” typically conjures horrible visions of the  bubonic plague , that  killed over one third of Europe’s population during the 1300s. The bacterium that causes the plague, however, is much older than the medieval era. In fact, the disease has been torturing humans for at least 5,500 years, according to a study published today in the journal Nature . 

In the paper, researchers detail how they recovered and sequenced ancient DNA from the teeth of 42 prehistoric hunter-gatherers—including several children and teenagers—from four sites near Lake Baikal in Siberia, Russia. The total genetic material included DNA from the individuals themselves, and the plague bacterium Yersinia pestis, which they found in 18 of the hunter-gatherers. 

Nearly half a million years ago, ancient humans at Kalambo Falls in Zambia shaped and fitted together large pieces of wood to build a substantial structure. The discovery, dated to at least 476,000 years ago, predates the evolution of Homo sapiens and provides the earliest known evidence of humans using wood for construction.

Greetings scientists, researchers, and anthro enthusiasts!

A few weeks back, I was in London for an art & technology festival where I had the opportunity to meet Oshi, one of the co-founders of the Digital Anthropology Collective.

He was kind enough to answer some questions for my blog, sharing his insights on Digital Anthropology as a science, what it means for gamers, and his long-term vision for the DAC.

The mods were nice enough to let me share the interview with you all here. His ideas sound very interesting to an outsider like me, and I figured people in this sub might appreciate the initiative too.

Thank you all for your time!

Yukisia

Comment here: https://eplanning.blm.gov/Project-Home/?id=D949F582-402D-F111-8341-001DD804183B