Michael Haslam
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twigtechnology.bsky.social
Michael Haslam
@twigtechnology.bsky.social
5.1K followers 530 following 650 posts
Australian archaeologist, PhD, obsessed with tool-using animals. Steward at Skara Brae, Orkney | http://twig.technology | writing Intelligence Hallucinated with @abigaildesmond.bsky.social for Harvard Uni Press (2027)

🐒🦦🐙🐦‍⬛🐝🕷️🦧🐴🐠🪲🦜🐿️🐋🦀
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twigtechnology.bsky.social
Quick check on the Neolithic Tomb of the Eagles today, in 60 mph winds. Extremely proud that this important ancient site is now fully community owned.

#Orkney 🧪🏺💀
The entrance to a sandstone tomb built around 5000 years ago, overlooking the Atlantic Ocean.
November 28, 2025 at 6:21 PM
twigtechnology.bsky.social
Gigantopithecus is a tool-using star in the new #PrehistoricPlanet Ice Age series. This extinct, largest-ever ape makes a dipping tool for ants, and beats down berries from a tree with a long stick. The species is known mostly from teeth, so we have no idea if it did these things, but maybe… 🧪🏺🦧 🐜
Screenshot from Prehistoric Planet Ice Age episode 4, of a large male ape in a forest, trimming a twig with both hands. Continuing from the first screenshot, now the ape, an extinct relative of orangutans, uses his twig tool to gather ants from a nearby branch. Finally the gigantopithecus draws his ant - covered tool through his lips to snack on the ants it has collected. In a separate scene from Prehistoric Planet Ice Age episode 4, the giant ape walks upright towards a tree with overhanging berries. In his right hand he carries a long stick, as he looks up.
November 27, 2025 at 1:34 PM
twigtechnology.bsky.social
Most people don’t know that part of a Steward’s job at Skara Brae is keeping away the #Orkney Neolithic demons.

I’ve just performed the salting ritual on our visitor centre (the site uses environmental and monument friendly artificial salt) 🧂😈🏺🧪
Photo of the entrance to the visitor centre at Skara Brae in Orkney. There’s a paved road leading away from sandstone buildings, with flagged steps leading down to the doors. Salt is scattered in patches across the ground, and a small white bucket of salt with a blue scoop is close by.
November 25, 2025 at 10:14 AM
twigtechnology.bsky.social
Seals singing in a sea cave

#Orkney 🦭🎧
November 21, 2025 at 5:54 PM
twigtechnology.bsky.social
FYI here’s the figurine, and an artistic reconstruction
A small pale coloured clay figurine, cracked and ancient, is paired in this image with an artist’s reconstruction of its original form. The figurine shows a crouched woman with her head tilted to her left, while a large goose beak and head peer over her shoulder. Its wings extend down her sides.
November 17, 2025 at 10:47 PM
twigtechnology.bsky.social
On the left, Alan Turing’s 1950 paper introducing the imitation game, where he says that using public polling as a guide to whether machines are intelligent is absurd.

On the right, yesterday’s NYT opinion piece using public polling as a guide to whether machines are intelligent.

🧪🤖
The introduction to Turing’s paper titled ‘Computing Machinery and intelligence’: I PROPOSE to consider the question, 'Can machines think ?' This should begin with definitions of the meaning of the terms "machine' and "think'.The definitions might be framed so as to reflect so far as possible the normal use of the words, but this attitude is dangerous. If the meaning of the words 'machine' and 'think' are to be found by examining how they are commonly used it is difficult to escape the conclusion that the meaning and the answer to the question, 'Can machines think ?' is to be sought in a statistical survey such as a Gallup poll. But this is absurd. Instead of attempting such a definition I shall replace the question by another, which is closely related to it and is expressed in relatively unambiguous words. Introduction to an opinion piece published in the New York Times on 8 November 2025, by Barbara Gail Montero, titled ‘A.I. Is on Its Way to Something Even More Remarkable Than Intelligence’: Not long ago, A.I. became intelligent. Some may dismiss this claim, but the number of people who doubt A.I.'s acumen is dwindling. According to a 2024 YouGov poll, a clear majority of U.S. adults say that computers are already more intelligent than people or will become so in the near future.
November 9, 2025 at 12:09 PM
twigtechnology.bsky.social
Watching @realgdt.bsky.social’s excellent new Frankenstein film reminded me of a specific passage from the book.

Mary Shelley wanted somewhere extremely remote and depressing for Victor Frankenstein to create the companion for his ‘monster’. So she sent him to…Orkney

📚🧬⚡️
A passage from Mary Shelley’s 1818 book Frankenstein: Having parted from my friend, I determined to visit some remote spot of Scotland, and finish my work in solitude. I did not doubt but that the monster followed me, and would discover himself to me when I should have finished, that he might receive his companion. With this resolution I traversed the northern highlands, and fixed on one of the remotest of the Orkneys as the scene of my labours. It was a place fitted for such a work, being hardly more than a rock, whose high sides were continually beaten upon by the waves. The soil was barren, scarcely affording pasture for a few miserable cows, and oatmeal for its inhabitants, which consisted of five persons, whose gaunt and scraggy limbs gave tokens of their miserable fare. Vegetables and bread, when they indulged in such luxuries, and even fresh water, was to be procured from the main land, which was about five miles distant.
November 9, 2025 at 8:38 AM
twigtechnology.bsky.social
Update: the Buckquoy Pictish site and surrounding coast looking their best this afternoon 🏺
A photo of a sky approaching sunset with a sandstone shoreline and a small peninsula in the mid-distance. Water off to the right is the North Atlantic Ocean. A hand drawn arrow points at the peninsula, which is the where the Buckquoy archaeological site was excavated.
November 7, 2025 at 4:23 PM
twigtechnology.bsky.social
What spooky #Orkney site is this?

It’s the view inside House 7 at Skara Brae, the one we keep locked. The only two skeletons found at this ancient village were under the wall to the left. Look closely to see Neolithic carvings in the stone, made over 4500 years ago….if you dare

#Halloween 🏺💀
A black and white photo of stone furniture inside a stone house. The floor is clay. A small doorway is visible in the upper right, but the image is dominated by the upper edge of a sandstone slab in the centre. The slab has a series of lines carved into it, not a language, but clearly meaningful to the Neolithic people that made them.
October 31, 2025 at 8:18 PM
twigtechnology.bsky.social
Brilliant new study (preprint) led by @noraslania.bsky.social on how wild eastern chimpanzees observe each other.

'Peering'—or close-range attentive observation—happens in all kinds of contexts and esp. for young chimps, opening the door to new cultural traits 🧪👀

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
October 31, 2025 at 12:16 PM
twigtechnology.bsky.social
20 years ago today I was teaching a tutorial at UQ when I heard my friend and mentor Dr Tom Loy had died. He was 63.

Tom was a pioneer in biomolecular archaeology, finding blood and other organic materials on ancient tools. But he never rebuilt an entire DNA strand, as #JurassicPark noted

🏺🧪🧬🦖🦕
October 19, 2025 at 8:09 AM
twigtechnology.bsky.social
Aurora/dragon over my #Orkney house tonight 🧪🔭
An aurora of mostly green hues with some red in the night sky. Stars are visible through it. The shape is kind of like two giant wings if you use a lot of imagination.
October 18, 2025 at 9:30 PM
twigtechnology.bsky.social
Feels like it’s been a while since I put my workplace here. This is Skara Brae right now 🏺🧪🌊
Grass of various lengths around and over a 5000 year old stone village. The houses are beside a rocky coast, and the North Atlantic is off to the far right, with ominous rain clouds.
October 14, 2025 at 2:36 PM
twigtechnology.bsky.social
Kudos to the editors @funecology.bsky.social for their suitably October cover 🕸️🎃🐠

This toothy alien is a Threadfin dragonfish (Echiostoma barbatum), a deep-sea hunter from the actual twilight zone
Cover of the October 2025 issue of the journal Functional Ecology. The image shows a dark, eel-like head rearing up and opening its mouth to show unevenly sized and very pointy white teeth. Its eye is light coloured and blank and a lure dangles from its chin. It’s a dragonfish auditioning for the next Alien film.
October 10, 2025 at 8:27 AM
twigtechnology.bsky.social
For #StandingStoneSunday the magnificent Sueno’s Stone. Likely named for the Dane Sweyn Forkbeard, but dating to the late 800s Pictish Fortriu kingdom.

It’s over 6 metres tall, with scenes of battle and beheading. The base has sword cuts from warriors pledging to their king 🏺🧪👑

📷 29 September 2025
A very tall stone carved on all sides, inside a protective glass box. The stone is in a grassy park with trees and houses nearby. Detail of the base of the standing stone. On the thin face are carved mermen and people with swords. On the broad face at the base are a series of gashes in the stone, left by ancient warriors as part of an oath-taking ceremony.
October 5, 2025 at 10:15 AM
twigtechnology.bsky.social
Jane Goodall was also the first to bring attention to wild tool-using vultures, which she spotted randomly one day while out driving. These birds use stones to break into ostrich eggs.

Be observant like Jane and who knows what you’ll see! 🧪🥚
A two page spread of national geographic magazine with a story by Jane Goodall and her husband reporting on egg-breaking, tool-using Egyptian vultures.
October 1, 2025 at 6:50 PM
twigtechnology.bsky.social
My new favourite place from late medieval/Middle Ages Scotland. The Chapter House at Elgin Cathedral, rebuilt in the 1400s 🏺

📷 29 September 2025
A tall stone column in the centre of a spacious octagonal room, supporting a vaulted stone ceiling with radiating supports. Intricate glass windows are on each wall, with slightly different designs. A low bench with blue cushioning runs around the lower part of the walls. The same room as the previous photo, looking straight up at the vaulted ceiling from beside the central column. The impression is like looking at a stone star, or spiderweb.
September 30, 2025 at 7:11 AM
twigtechnology.bsky.social
Night sky in the Cairngorms, Scotland

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 🔭🪐

(📷 yesterday)
A long exposure phone camera photo of a dark sky crossed by the Milky Way and dusted with stars. The top of some pine trees are at the bottom of the image. It’s quite blurry if you zoom in.
September 27, 2025 at 11:12 AM
twigtechnology.bsky.social
This is the way it was 🏺
Promotional poster for the 1966 film One Million Years BC, in honour of the finding announced today that the Homo sapiens lineage may have been around for that long. The poster features Raquel Welch, some dinosaurs, and the tag line ‘This is the way it was’
September 25, 2025 at 6:58 PM
twigtechnology.bsky.social
Coos in the mist 🐄

Sunday sunrise in Birsay, #Orkney
Colour photo of a sunrise over a low hill on the left. It illuminates grasslands and a loch on the right, with banks of mist in the distance. Closer there is a barbed wire fence and five cows (or coos as we call them up here) standing peacefully in their paddock.
September 14, 2025 at 8:36 AM
twigtechnology.bsky.social
Half the paintings in this image are by amateur human artists, and half by chimpanzees. Can you tell which ape made which? And why you think so?

Intriguing new study led by Larissa Mendoza Straffon on intentionality in art 🧪🏺🎨

[see reply below for answers]

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
A grid of 20 abstract paintings in primary colours and black, 10 of which were done by amateur human artists and 10 by captive chimpanzees. Each painting has lines, dots or splodges, sometimes overlapping and many, sometimes sparse. Being abstract, they do not depict any particular thing. I will put which ape made which paintings in a reply, to avoid giving the game away here.
September 4, 2025 at 11:13 AM
twigtechnology.bsky.social
Paid my respects today to the Stone of Setter, inhabitant of Eday in Orkney’s northern isles for the last 4000 years or so. At 4.5 metres tall, over 2m wide, it’s a gentle giant 🏺🧪

#StandingStoneSunday

📷 31 August 2025
An ancient sandstone standing stone in a field of grass. The stone is widest just above its base, and lichens crowd its upper half. There’s a small loch in the distance on the left and a blue sky with sun overhead.
August 31, 2025 at 4:08 PM
twigtechnology.bsky.social
The authors looked at primate tool use with three different definitions of ‘tool’, and also tested excluding one-off reports or (possibly biased) captive studies. All results showed that with or without tools you get the same co-evolution. I think they summed it up fairly well in the conclusion ⬇️
Conclusion to a study of primate brain and thumb evolution. It reads: “Our results highlight the important role of the ability to manipulate food items or other objects in brain size evolution and emphasise the neocortical contribution to these behaviours. The results we present here go some way to explaining the uniquely hominin condition of having long thumbs. However, in isolation, no feature, including thumb length, should be considered as evidence for tool-use or tool-making behaviours. A more complete picture might emerge with the increasing availability of more data for other, particularly earlier, hominins. Uncovering links between cognition and additional morphological features associated with dexterity may allow us to untangle the nuanced picture regarding the suites of traits associated with hominin tool use and their origins.”
August 27, 2025 at 5:24 PM
twigtechnology.bsky.social
It’s Krakatoa Day, when the gigantic volcanic eruption of 27 August, 1883 created the loudest sound in human history (probably).

For more see Simon Winchester’s book Krakatoa. And for an eclectic look at the world of sounds you should read A Book of Noises by @casparhenderson.bsky.social 👂🎧🌋🔈🧪
Photo of a barren volcano erupting ash clouds, with the sea in the background. Taken in August 2018, this is Anak Krakatau, literally the Child of Krakatoa, which formed in 1927 from the remains of the original Krakatoa eruption. It also violently exploded in December 2018. Photo by James Reynolds (EarthUncutTV).
August 27, 2025 at 9:06 AM
twigtechnology.bsky.social
Mine made it all the way up to Orkney already!
My hand holding the book Hemlock and Silver by T. Kingfisher. The cover and page edges have an elegant, mostly floral pattern against a black background.
August 21, 2025 at 6:34 PM