Reading

The hunting and gathering activities of early humans required a high-calorie diet consisting of a variety of macronutrients—protein, carbohydrates, and fat. While hunting big-game animals—like deer, horses and animals in the bovine family—provided a large supply of calories all at once, much of these calories came in the form of protein. However, human and Neanderthal bodies have a limit on the amount of protein intake that the liver can handle.

https://phys.org/news/2025-07-evidence-neanderthals-fat-years-early.html

Rare wooden tools from Stone Age China reveal plant-based lifestyle of ancient lakeside humans

https://phys.org/news/2025-07-rare-wooden-tools-stone-age.html

Ancient wooden tools found at a site in Gantangqing in southwestern China are approximately 300,000 years old, new dating has shown. Discovered during excavations carried out in 2014–15 and 2018–19, the tools have now been dated by a team of archaeologists, geologists, chronologists (including me) and paleontologists.

https://phys.org/news/2025-07-rare-wooden-tools-stone-age.html

(no subject)

( You're about to view content that a community administrator has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

When rainforests died, the planet caught fire: New clues from Earth’s greatest extinction

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/07/250702214202.htm

When Siberian volcanoes kicked off the Great Dying, the real climate villain turned out to be the rainforests themselves: once they collapsed, Earth’s biggest carbon sponge vanished, CO₂ rocketed, and a five-million-year heatwave followed. Fossils from China and clever climate models now link that botanical wipe-out to runaway warming, hinting that losing today’s tropical forests could lock us in a furnace we can’t easily cool.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/07/250702214202.htm

How a Deadly Circus Fire on the 'Day the Clowns Cried' Traumatized a Community—and Led to Lasting Sa

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-a-deadly-circus-fire-on-the-day-the-clowns-cried-traumatized-a-community-and-led-to-lasting-safety-reforms-180986888/

On July 6, 1944, a blaze broke out at a Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey show in Hartford, Connecticut. At least 167 people died, and hundreds were injured

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-a-deadly-circus-fire-on-the-day-the-clowns-cried-traumatized-a-community-and-led-to-lasting-safety-reforms-180986888/

The surprising history (and politics) of emoji, with Keith Houston

simplecast.com

1096. This week, we look at the world of emoji with Keith Houston, author of "Face with Tears of Joy." He discusses the long history of emoji, from ancient origins to early computer character sets, and the formal process of proposing new emoji to the Unicode Consortium. We also look at how emoji can be blends of multiple characters and tell us more about cultural, generational, and political attitudes.

Keith Houston - Shadycharacters.co.uk

Keith's book - "Face with Tears of Joy"

🔗 Share your familect recording in a WhatsApp chat.

🔗 Watch my LinkedIn Learning writing courses.

🔗 Subscribe to the newsletter.

🔗 Take our advertising survey.

🔗 Get the edited transcript.

🔗 Get Grammar Girl books.

🔗 Join Grammarpalooza. Get ad-free and bonus episodes at Apple Podcasts or Subtext. Learn more about the difference.

| HOST: Mignon Fogarty

| VOICEMAIL: 833-214-GIRL (833-214-4475).

| Grammar Girl is part of the Quick and Dirty Tips podcast network.

Audio Engineer: Dan Feierabend
Director of Podcast: Holly Hutchings
Advertising Operations Specialist: Morgan Christianson
Marketing and Video: Nat Hoopes

| Theme music by Catherine Rannus.

| Grammar Girl Social Media: YouTube. TikTok. Facebook.Threads. Instagram. LinkedIn. Mastodon. Bluesky.

simplecast.com

Regional disparities exist in US media coverage of archaeology research, finds study

https://phys.org/news/2025-07-regional-disparities-media-coverage-archaeology.html

What archaeological discoveries are considered newsworthy by U.S. media outlets and audiences? A new analysis of "pop-science" reporting reveals topical and regional disparities, including an apparent underrepresentation of Chinese archaeology and preference for findings relevant to white Christian histories.

https://phys.org/news/2025-07-regional-disparities-media-coverage-archaeology.html

New France had child slaves, and they were Indigenous, studies reveal

https://phys.org/news/2025-07-france-child-slaves-indigenous-reveal.html

Between 1632 and 1760, records show that 734 Indigenous children were enslaved in France's North American colony, historian Dominique Deslandres reveals in two recent studies.

https://phys.org/news/2025-07-france-child-slaves-indigenous-reveal.html

Ancient Egyptian genome reveals North African roots and Fertile Crescent ancestry

https://phys.org/news/2025-07-ancient-egyptian-genome-reveals-north.html

Researchers from the Francis Crick Institute and Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU) have extracted and sequenced the oldest Egyptian DNA to date from an individual who lived around 4,500 to 4,800 years ago, the age of the first pyramids, in research published in Nature.

https://phys.org/news/2025-07-ancient-egyptian-genome-reveals-north.html

Small tools, big animals: 430,000-year-old butchery investigated in new study

https://phys.org/news/2025-07-small-tools-big-animals-year.html

An international research team has published a new study on one of the oldest known sites for the processing of animal meat by humans in the southern Balkans. At Marathousa 1, an archaeological site in the Greek Megalopolis Basin, researchers not only found numerous stone tools that provide clues to human behavior but also remains of the extinct straight-tusked elephant Palaeoloxodon antiquus.

https://phys.org/news/2025-07-small-tools-big-animals-year.html

What did ancient Rome smell like? Honestly, often pretty rank

https://phys.org/news/2025-07-ancient-rome-honestly-pretty.html

The roar of the arena crowd, the bustle of the Roman forum, the grand temples, the Roman army in red with glistening shields and armor—when people imagine ancient Rome, they often think of its sights and sounds. We know less, however, about the scents of ancient Rome.

https://phys.org/news/2025-07-ancient-rome-honestly-pretty.html

Ancient DNA provides a new means to explore ancient diets

https://phys.org/news/2025-06-ancient-dna-explore-diets.html

A multidisciplinary team of researchers, including archaeologists, have analyzed the DNA of fish remains from Roman fish fermentation vats, creating a method to identify animal remains when they are damaged beyond recognition.

https://phys.org/news/2025-06-ancient-dna-explore-diets.html

Ancient Andean burial mounds reveal early hunter-gatherer roots of monumental architecture

https://phys.org/news/2025-07-ancient-andean-burial-mounds-reveal.html

Archaeologists have long thought that monumental architecture—large, human-built structures that emphasize visibility—were products of societies with power structures, including social hierarchy, inequality and controlled labor forces. But this notion is being questioned as researchers uncover evidence that hunter-gatherer groups also built such structures.

https://phys.org/news/2025-07-ancient-andean-burial-mounds-reveal.html

Hymn to Babylon, missing for a millennium, has been discovered

https://phys.org/news/2025-07-hymn-babylon-millennium.html

In the course of a collaboration with the University of Baghdad, LMU's Enrique Jiménez has rediscovered a text that had been lost for a thousand years. A paper on this discovery is published in the journal Iraq.

https://phys.org/news/2025-07-hymn-babylon-millennium.html

Limescale deposits reveal how ancient Arles adapted its aqueducts

https://phys.org/news/2025-07-limescale-deposits-reveal-ancient-arles.html

Researchers from Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU), the University of Oxford, and the University of Innsbruck have deciphered the complex history of the ancient aqueduct system of Arles in Provence. This was made possible by aqueduct carbonates—limescale—that had deposited in the aqueducts, basins, and lead pipes, as well as lumps of aqueduct carbonate that had been used as building aggregate in the roof of the Baths of Constantine. The researchers published their findings in Geoarchaeology on June 28, 2025.

https://phys.org/news/2025-07-limescale-deposits-reveal-ancient-arles.html

(no subject)

( You're about to view content that a community administrator has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

These Daring Revolutionary-Era Artists Promoted the Patriot Cause From the Heart of Enemy Territory

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/these-daring-revolutionary-era-artists-promoted-the-patriot-cause-from-the-heart-of-enemy-territory-180986876/

A new book explores how painters, sculptors and writers, especially women and people of color, used their craft to advocate for American independence while living in George III's capital city

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/these-daring-revolutionary-era-artists-promoted-the-patriot-cause-from-the-heart-of-enemy-territory-180986876/

Is ‘sick’...good? What we think of posh language and class. Misunderseed

simplecast.com

1095. Is “sick” really “good”? This week, we explore how words flip their meanings and why language changes over time. Then, we look at the 1950s idea of "U and Non-U English" and what it tells us about social climbing.

The "sick" segment was written by Natalie Schilling, a professor emerita of linguistics at Georgetown University in Washington, DC, and who runs a forensic linguistics consulting firm. You can find her on LinkedIn.

The "posh" segment was by Karen Lunde, a former Quick & Dirty Tips editor and digital pioneer who's been spinning words into gold since before cat videos ruled the internet. She created one of the first online writing workshops, and she's published thousands of articles on the art of writing. These days, she leads personal narrative writing retreats and helps writers find their voice. Visit her at ChanterelleStoryStudio.com.

🔗 Share your familect recording in a WhatsApp chat.

🔗 Watch my LinkedIn Learning writing courses.

🔗 Subscribe to the newsletter.

🔗 Take our advertising survey.

🔗 Get the edited transcript.

🔗 Get Grammar Girl books.

🔗 Join Grammarpalooza. Get ad-free and bonus episodes at Apple Podcasts or Subtext. Learn more about the difference.

| HOST: Mignon Fogarty

| VOICEMAIL: 833-214-GIRL (833-214-4475).

| Grammar Girl is part of the Quick and Dirty Tips podcast network.

Audio Engineer: Dan Feierabend
Director of Podcast: Holly Hutchings
Advertising Operations Specialist: Morgan Christianson
Marketing and Video: Nat Hoopes

| Theme music by Catherine Rannus.

| Grammar Girl Social Media: YouTube. TikTok. Facebook.Threads. Instagram. LinkedIn. Mastodon. Bluesky.

simplecast.com