Anthropology
Hank |
Not a lot is truly known about the cultural world of early mankind but one thing is settled; when food insecurity dropped and it became more affordable, in terms of time or money, culture flourished and expansion began.
Domestication of animals and farming took humans out of foraging and secured our place as the dominant species. Becoming a farmer meant reliable food, then domestication of the ox made it possible for a farmer to feed dozens, and the heavy plow and then later science boosted those to a point where in the developed world, we now only need 2 people to feed 98.
How we got there…
Pessimistic scenarios of the future are popular and always have been. By 700 BC, the Greek philosopher Hesiod lamented in Works and Days that the Golden Age for mankind had passed. Paleolithic patterns of thinking lead us to remember these negative messages. Recognizing danger was once necessary for survival, but now we create exaggerated anxiety over things our ancestors would have ignored. In a survey, more than 70% of respondents said they thought the world was getting worse, and only 5% stated that is was getting better. People are concerned about terrorism, war, immigrants, and the…
There is a belief that Airbnb listings cause increased crime in residential neighborhoods - or at least annoying late-night parties which increase risk of crimes. However, a new paper suggests that while Airbnb listings can be linked to a reduction in the local social dynamics that prevent crime, it isn't the tourists committing the crimes. And it takes years, which means Airbnb listings may be a symptom rather than the cause.
To better understand the relationship between Airbnb listings and crime, the authors did a statistical analysis of listings and data on different types of crime (using…
(Inside Science) -- Tens of thousands of years ago in what is now Europe, people held their hands against cave walls and blew a spray of paint, leaving bare rock where their hands had rested. Many of these stencils show all five fingers, but in some, fingers appear to be shortened or missing.
Researchers have proposed grisly explanations for these absent digits: Perhaps the artists lost fingers to frostbite or disease, or perhaps they endured amputations for ritual purposes or punishment. But other experts have long argued that it's more likely they weren't missing any fingers at all.…
When I was a child growing up in Kolkata, I would hear stories about the European colonisation of Bengal – the precolonial name of India’s West Bengal. These were selective narratives from a particularly male perspective, and presented colonisers as transforming social benefactors installed to provide a civilising influence. The rich histories of Indian philosophy that were once associated with religion, education and health were replaced by the colonial philosophy of conversion, modernising and improvement.
But it was not just European men; women too played a pivotal role in normalising…
An analysis of ancient fish bones from 30 archaeological sites in Israel and Sinai which date from the Late Bronze Age (1550-1130 BC) until the end of the Byzantine period (640 AD) finds that Judeans commonly ate non-kosher - lacking scales or fins - fish.
This finding sheds new light on the origin of Old Testament dietary laws that are still observed by many Jews today - and how well people adhered. Some things become part of culture because they are common. If people in Tennessee banned eating sharks it wouldn't be a huge loss. The ban on finless and scaleless fish deviated from…
What sets human communication apart from lower animals is its compositionality, which means that units of meaning can be combined and new meanings can be constructed. The words "blue" and "car" have their own meanings but combined there is a new content, i.e., a car that is blue.
This kind of ability doesn't actually occur in the animal world. Nor does language. Language is a system of communication specific to humans. Other species can have complex communication. Monkeys have a number of calls and extensive gesture communication but they don't have language because that is based on meaning…
In the Cueva de la Dehesilla of Cádiz on the Iberian Peninsula, two human skulls and a juvenile goat were discovered in a funerary structure dating to the Middle Neolithic period, 4800-4000 B.C.
The archaeological structures and materials from a funerary ritual tell a tale of human and animal sacrifice, ancestral cults and propitiatory rituals, or they could be divine prayers in commemorative festivities.
The two adult human skulls are an older male and a younger female. The female skull shows a depression in the frontal bone, which probably comes from an incomplete trepanation, as…
Why are some humans cruel to people who don’t even pose a threat to them – sometimes even their own children? Where does this behaviour come from and what purpose does it serve? Ruth, 45, London.
Humans are the glory and the scum of the universe, concluded the French philosopher, Blaise Pascal, in 1658. Little has changed. We love and we loathe; we help and we harm; we reach out a hand and we stick in the knife.
We understand if someone lashes out in retaliation or self-defence. But when someone harms the harmless, we ask: “How could you?”
Humans typically do things to get pleasure or avoid…
Hank |
While it is said that around six percent of voting Americans decide elections - the truly undecided - it is more the case that getting out the vote among your own party matters most. That is why political parties will drive their own to polling places while telling the other side the date of the election has been changed.
Dirty tricks are the exceptions. To win, you have to mobilize the base and get them to vote for your side. That has always meant using media. In 2008, it meant a new kind; social media. Historians will note that Republican Senator John McCain lost in large part because he…