Anthropology
laelaps | December 30, 2009A restoration of the skull of "Pithecanthropus" erectus by Manonvrier."Pithecanthropus" erectus, described by the Dutch anatomist Eugene Dubois, was an immediate sensation. Known from a skullcap, a femur, and a tooth discovered on the island of Java, it was the first fossil that could be regarded as an "intermediate type" between humans and apes (even if there was some debate about whether all the parts Dubois had found really went together). In later years "Java Man" would become more popularly represented by sculpted busts of our prehistoric relative, but one of the earliest full…
emjohnson | December 30, 2009
Welcome to the newest installment of the four field anthropology blog carnival Four Stone Hearth. As the carnival enters into a new decade there were many wonderful voices clamoring for attention.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Cultural
Savage Minds offers a few thoughts on the Na'vi from the James Cameron blockbuster Avatar.
USC Anthropologist Nancy Lutkehaus discusses her impressions after working as an adviser on the set of Avatar.
Sheril at The Intersection reflects on the Science of Avatar Part 1 and Part 2.
Mark at…
gregladen | December 29, 2009This is Chart 1 from Race, Evolutoin and Behavior by J. Philippe Rushton, originally published in the Unabridged Edition of same.
laelaps | December 22, 2009One of Charles R. Knight's wonderful paintings of woolly mammoths walking through the snow of ancient Europe. On display at the Field Museum in Chicago.
When did the last woolly mammoths die?
There is no easy answer to the question. In its heyday the woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius) was distributed across much of the northern hemisphere, from southern Spain to the eastern United States, and the entire species did not simply lay down and die at one particular moment. Some populations (such as the "dwarf" mammoths of Wrangel Island) survived until about 4,000 years ago, but most of the…
emjohnson | December 16, 2009
The blogosphere's best (and only) anthropology blog carnival has just been posted at Anthropology in Practice. Krystal has collected together some fascinating posts that are sure to titillate the intellect and get those cultural juices flowing.
emjohnson | December 8, 2009
Maana (Now), Directed by Félix Pharand D.As part of the United Nations COP15 Climate Change Conference is the Indigenous Voices on Climate Change Film Festival. Included in the festival is this humorous story of one Inuk teenager who is disturbed by how the climate crisis is affecting his community and sets out to do something about it.
milhayser | December 3, 2009
When it comes to human nature, everyone's an expert—so let's argue about it, shall we? On Cognitive Daily, Dave Munger reviews an investigation into the truly fairer sex which suggests that "men are more tolerant of their friends' failings than women." Not convinced? Then counter your intuition on The Frontal Cortex, where Jonah Lehrer writes "nothing destroys a luxury brand like a sale." Consider the possibility of pulling yourself up by the bootstraps on Laelaps, where Brain Switek discusses Louis Leakey's "fuzzy" postulation that "the invention of stone tools allowed humans to domesticate…
gregladen | November 30, 2009"Get her drunk then get her done."
So reads one of the decals on the F-150 pickup truck parked in my new neighbor's driveway. Of all the objectionable aphorisms on that particular truck, that's the mildest one. I wonder what my daughter will think of that when she notices it some time over the next few days, which she surely will.
There is a mud fight going on over at Ed Brayton's blog regarding his use of the word "shrew" in reference to Sarah Palin. The Kliqueons (rhymes with "Klingons") have called Ed out for being sexist. He says they should lay off and it is not OK to call him a…
laelaps | November 17, 2009During the past six million years or so several species of humans have simultaneously inhabited Earth at any one time, but today only one species, ours, remains. How did this come to be? This is the question behind part 3 of the NOVA documentary series "Becoming Human" (see my reviews for parts 1 and 2), and the show does not get off to a strong start.
Though I might be a little more merciful on the producers of this documentary than Greg, he was right to point out that the opening segment of the show is worn old tripe about how our species has fulfilled a kind of evolutionary destiny set in…
emjohnson | November 17, 2009See thro' this air, this ocean, and this earth
All matter quick, and bursting into birth:
Above, how high progressive life may go!
Around, how wide! how deep extend below!
Vast chain of being! which from God began;
Natures ethereal, human, angel, man,
Beast, bird, fish, insect, who no eye can see,
No glass can reach; from infinite to thee;
From thee to nothing.--On superior powers
Were we to press, inferior might on ours;
Or in the full creation leave a void,
Where, one step broken, the great scale's destroyed:
From Nature's chain whatever link you like,
Tenth, or ten thousandth, breaks the…
gregladen | November 13, 2009... has a what!?!?
A rewritten repost for your amusement
I don't know how many times I've heard the phrase "Every culture has a story about a flood..." This is very annoying because a) it is not true (I can think of several cultures that do not) and b) it is very Euro-centric, as are most phrases that start with "Every culture has a..."
So, I decided to enter the phrase "Every culture has a" into Google and see how many other stupid ideas I could find.
The list is not very long because this exercise, while interesting in principle, can get a bit old. But here is what I found before I…
milhayser | November 11, 2009
Humans believe a lot of things, for a lot of reasons. Confronted by a student who had learned lions' manes are an expression of their testosterone level--and not just a bit of claw-catching fluff--Greg Laden observes that when someone finds you wrong on one count, they will assume you are wrong about everything. He calls this "a known feature of student thinking in early development," a true-or-false mentality which sooner or later must reconcile itself with the complexity of our universe. Elsewhere, Razib Khan theorizes on Gene Expression that organized religion arose to meet the needs of…
emjohnson | November 9, 2009Reciprocity is an intrinsic feature of human beings as well as most species of ape. Chimpanzees and bonobos regularly engage in granting gifts of food and expect a return on their generosity (those who don't reciprocate are less likely to receive such gifts in the future) (de Waal and Brosnan 2006). This "tit-for-tat" basis of exchange exists in all human societies and becomes ritualized based on the cultural norms that are present. One of the most well known descriptions of reciprocity among indigenous societies is that of the Kula among the Trobriand Islanders near Papua New Guinea that…
razib | November 7, 2009I recently finished reading The Faith Instinct: How Religion Evolved and Why It Endures, a new book by Nicholas Wade, a science writer for The New York Times. Before giving it the "full treatment" I thought it behooved me to revisit some of the scientific literature which Wade relies upon to give form to his argument. One of the pillars of The Faith Instinct is group selection, and one of the scholars who Wade specifically cites is the economist Samuel Bowles. Bowles was an author on a paper I reviewed earlier this week, on the empirical assessment of the extent of heritability of wealth…
emjohnson | November 6, 2009If you're interested in anthropology on the net (or you write on the topic yourself) you're not going to want to miss this monthly carnival. Go check out this months edition at Anthropology.net. Consider submitting a post to next months carnival by clicking here. Please thank the blog hosts for a terrific edition and feel free to discuss your favorite posts in the comments section there, here, or at The Primate Diaries fan page on Facebook.
edyong | November 5, 2009Telling the difference between a German and French speaker isn't difficult. But you may be more surprised to know that you could have a good stab at distinguishing between German and French babies based on their cries. The bawls of French newborns tend to have a rising melody, with higher frequencies becoming more prominent as the cry progresses. German newborns tend to cry with a falling melody.
These differences are apparent just three days out of the womb. This suggests that they pick up elements of their parents' language before they're even born, and certainly before they start to…
gregladen | November 4, 2009When I was first reading about Anthropology as a budding Archaeologist, Claude Levi Strauss was old. When I went to graduate school, I was shocked to see Claude Levi Strauss walking around at conferences, being old and revered. Every decade or so since then Claude Levi Strauss would show up in one place or another. And now, at the age of 100, he has died.
If you want to read one of the finest books ever written from the perspective of socio-cultural anthropology try Tristes Tropiques. It will blow you away.
There is a very good obit here at the NYT.
This is truly the end of an era,…
emjohnson | November 4, 2009In the latest TED Talk, anthropologist Stefana Broadbent suggests that the technologies of social media--such as blogs, facebook, and twitter--are actually promoting greater intimacy between people rather than sucking time away from social involvement as is often supposed. In this unnatural environment we've constructed, with regulated time schedules, overseers--er, I mean, bosses--and artificial friendliness mandated as professional behavior, we long to reach out and connect with a community we identify with. In the short talk below, she suggests that this technology allows us to escape,…
laelaps | October 26, 2009Last week I reviewed part 1 of the upcoming NOVA miniseries, "Becoming Human." It was a fair introduction to early human origins even if it was marred by persistent references to an illusory onward-and-upward march of human progress. Where the first episode primarily concerned itself with australopithecines, however, Homo erectus is the star of part 2.
The first part of this episode recapitulates what was covered in the last installment. Viewers are brought back to the African rift valley, the place where the "huge evolutionary step" between apes and humans took place. This is a bit of a…