This is such a a good article.

#AgustinFuentes
#EssentialReading

"To say that we’re binary is philosophy. It’s not biology. It’s declaring oneself essentialist: there are [men and women], two types of humans. But our biology doesn’t validate that position. Yes, there are binary things in our biology, but to say that human beings come in two different types is false. And we can prove it."

https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2025-08-02/agustin-fuentes-bioanthropologist-saying-that-human-beings-are-binary-is-a-failure-its-not-biology-its-philosophy.html

Agustín Fuentes, bioanthropologist: ‘Saying that human beings are binary is a failure; it’s not biology, it’s philosophy’

The Princeton professor, author of ‘Sex is a Spectrum: The Biological Limits of the Binary,’ reflects on human diversity and the ideological impositions that simplify the variety of genes, gonads and genitals

EL PAÍS English
3. And a third paper led by #AgustinFuentes on the implications of such cultural complexity in a very small-brained hominin.
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.06.01.543135v1

#LeeBerger #JohnHawks #AgustinFuentes et al have released preprints (not peer-reviewed) with startling evidence of #cultural behaviours in #Dinaledi (chamber in Rising Star) Cave system. The assumption is these are the work of the very small-brained #Homonaledi since there are many remains of this species in the cave system, dating from 241-335 ka (the time of the emergence of modern humans in Africa)

1. Apparent #engravings on the cave walls
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.06.01.543133v1