Anthropology

Neanderthals from Spain may have consumed more vegetables than previously thought, according to a dietary reconstruction. Obviously, Neanderthal diet reconstruction remains difficult because they didn't farm. They may have eaten whatever they could find which skews results somewhat. And current methods of dietary analysis use isotopes and focus on the role of meat in the diet, which may be overemphasized. For instance, some evidence suggests that plants may have contributed to their diet. To better understand contributions to the Neanderthal diet, the authors of this study used analytical…

That the ancestors of Americans Indians would have had to cross the Bering Straight, most likely via the land bridge that existed during the last ice age is a FACT.  Indian Country Today has been running a series which looks critically at the history of the "Bering Straight Theory". ( Bering Strait Theory, Pt. 1: How Dogma Trumped Science )   ( Bering Strait Theory, Pt. 2: Racism, Eugenics and When Natives Came to America ).    There is much of value in those writings.  However, some of their readers don't get the point.  Many of the readers, judging by…

A group of archaeologists, mathematicians, chemists and physicists, has shed new light on the use of mollusc shells as personal adornments by Bronze Age people.  The research team used amino acid racemisation analysis, light microscopy, scanning electron microscopy and Raman spectroscopy to identify the raw materials used to make beads in a complex necklace discovered at an Early Bronze Age burial site at Great Cornard in Suffolk, UK. They discovered that Bronze Age craftspeople used species like dog whelk and tusk shells, both of which were likely to have been sourced and worked…

Many people are familiar with the trophy wife stereotype - a wealthy successful man marries an attractive new spouse and she gets money.  The presumption is that women only care about money while men only care about appearance. But it's selective observation, according to a sociologist, and they should know. In reality, for every Anna Nicole Smith, there are hundreds of examples where that isn't the case. The stereotype  reinforces sexist stereotypes and trivializes women's careers. Ironically, it is most often perpetuated by women  University of Notre Dame Sociologist…

Fermentation Came First Evidence mounts almost daily that beer started humans on the path to civilization even before the invention of agriculture some twelve thousand years ago. A paper in Evolutionary Anthropology says that, based on tests of artifacts, cereal grains were collected (sometimes from areas as far as sixty miles away) “for the purposes of brewing beer” to be used in feasts, which then “led to domestication...” That is, brewing led to the collecting of seeds for cultivation. And, feasts in prehistoric times were given for much the same reasons as they are today: to mark…

Expectant mothers, a paper by social science scholars suggests that having an ultrasound to find out your child's gender may be giving subtle sociology clues about your views on proper gender roles and social psychology. If you choose to learn about your baby's sex before birth, it may be because you are not open to new experiences and it may speak to a lack of belief in equal roles for men and women in society, according to a statistical regression analysis. You may be locked into traditional gender expectations by buying clothes and toys that match the gender of your baby. Mothers who…

For some time now in Britain, our “great and good” have been belabouring the more conservative part of our population [1] with accusations of Islamophobia and Homophobia.  The implication of those two epithets is that they are some kind of medical or — by extension — moral pathology.  I will attempt in this short blog to raise the subject of what I consider to be some errors of our “great and good.” Firstly, Islamophobia.  I am not going to talk about Islam — here I intend to strictly follow Steven J. Gould and treat religion and science as “separate magisteria”.  But this…

People exercise quite a lot, society has access to diverse fresh fruits and vegetables and yet most economic, educational, and racial or ethnic groups have seen their obesity levels rise at similar rates since the mid-1980s, so there is no demographic correlation to obesity. Yet the social sciences draw maps to city parks and farmer's markets and claim more of those would keep people from getting fat, or tout that economic redistribution would lead to less fast food. Cars, fast food, iPads, city living, even women in the work force - if it is something in culture, someone has implicated…

The Deadliest Catch details the work travails of Bering Sea crab fishermen, but African wives of fishermen may be having adventures of their own. The authors of a recent paper estimated that up to 60% of men and 50% of women report extra-marital partnerships in their lifetime - and they believe those numbers are under-reported, especially among women, due to cultural constraints. In reality, range estimates are so broad as to be almost meaningless but even if it's 20% it's a lot. Because it's Africa, estimates become even fuzzier. Presumably, extramarital affairs in America would involve…

An article in the feminist, scientific, peer-reviewed journal Psychology of Women Quarterly says that when women in developing countries own land, they are less likely to experience violence. Psychologists Shelly Grabe, Rose Grace Grose and Anjali Dutt analyzed anecdotes Grabe cataloged by speaking with 492 women in Nicaragua and Tanzania in 2007 and 2009 respectively.  Grabe wanted to show that the power dynamic between men and women changes when women own land and that gender-based violence against women drops with property ownership.   "Women in both countries connected owning…