Anthropology

There are calls in some quarters that we need to be more like people in the past; war, pestilence, disease, early death, it's all good as long as we use no pesticides. And clear cutting forests is what ancient man did too. During the Neolithic Age, 10,000 B.C., early man changed from being hunter-gatherers to farmers - ancient scientists told that the food supply was running low and listening to calls for mitigation and rationing instead invented domesticated livestock and agriculture. As a result, we got larger, permanent settlements with a variety of domesticated animals and plant life. and…

Medieval clerics did not like the prospect of giving up sex - heck, every man getting getting married dreads the part about giving up sex  - so even when they had to do so by Papal decree there was resistance to it. You think changing from a Latin to local language Mass was controversial? Genitalia are a lot more personal.  Priests, of course, used to be married but that changed hundreds of years later after the foundation of Christianity. The justifications were that a priest should imitate Christ, who was celibate (unmarried), and still later there was an argument and decree that…

Modern lifestyles are quite different from those of our hunter-gatherer ancestors. That seems obvious. People looking to apply blame for the obesity rise focus on their own agendas, be it lobbying against GMOs, high fructose corn syrup or video games. Or contend it is because we don't spend our days picking berries. But what does science say?  There's no way to know but anthropologists are at least taking a shot at it. A new analysis, of modern hunter-gatherers anyway, found that there is no difference between their energy expenditure and Westerners, casting doubt on 'we don spend all…

A contaminated river and a polluted sky are proof that environmentalism isn't just for the rich any more, say sociologists. Obviously it never was, in many countries.  In the developed world, people in the country actually care more about the environment than rich urbanites, but in the developing world the practical takes precedence over policy.  The poor can't afford to protect the environment. A new survey says that may be true in the country but in the city it is another matter. People living in China's cities who say they've been exposed to environmental harm are more likely to…

Neanderthals - Cave Men, in colloquial terms (as if Cro-Magnon emerged in a medieval castle; they all lived in caves if they could) - don't get a lot of respect for being smart.  But they probably had a few things going for them, since they survived until around 20,000 B.C. Maybe even medicine. 50,000-year-old Neanderthal teeth from the El Sidrón site in northern Spain show that they were not just meat-eaters, nor were they eating plants just as foragers.  They may even have understood natural medicine. Researchers from Spain, the UK and Australia combined pyrolysis gas-…

 Australopithecus sediba, a short, gangly hominid that lived in South Africa 2 million years ago, had a diet unlike virtually all other known human ancestors - trees and bushes.A new study indicates that A. sediba ate harder foods than other early hominids like  Paranthropus boisei, dubbed "Nutcracker Man" because of its massive jaws and teeth, which  focused more on grasses and sedges.The A. sediba diet was analyzed by zapping fossilized teeth with a laser which freed telltale carbon from the enamel of teeth and allowed scientists to pinpoint the types of plants that were…

Conservatives give more money to charity, studies show. This makes some sense; liberals believe in sharing wealth already and advocate policies reflecting that while conservatives advocate smaller government and greater individual initiative. But why do people in those political groups give to one cause over another? According to a new analysis in the International Journal of Research in Marketing: Special Issue on Consumer Identities, the values of their political affiliation are more important than the charity itself. The work is based on three studies, two of which comprised nationally…

Around election season, in whatever country you are in (assuming you have elections) you can tell True Believers in their earnest politics truly wish the other side could be labeled as having defective brains and genetics and therefore be cured - or at least sterilized.  It's not to be; genes explain some of the variation in people and may even have a slight effect on political attitudes and economic decisions, such as preferences toward environmental policy and financial risk taking, but most associations with specific genetic variants are too small to matter much, according to a new…

Things would seem to be good in China.  They are the only world economy not in a financial demilitarized zone, things are booming.   Yet more money is not making people there happier. They're actually less happy today than shortly after the Tiananmen Square protest in Beijing was crushed by the military, says economist Richard Easterlin, researcher in "happiness economics" and namesake of the Easterlin Paradox. The problem is the same as in any growing country.  When everyone is miserable, everyone is somewhat happy. When gains in prosperity are unequal, those left behind have…

A 1.5 metric ton block of engraved limestone at the Abri Castanet in southern France is the earliest evidence of wall art - approximately 37,000 years old and evidence of the role art played in the daily lives of Early Aurignacian humans. The research team has been excavating at Abri Castanet for the past 15 years. Abri Castanet and its sister site Abri Blanchard are among the oldest sites in Eurasia bearing artifacts of human symbolism. Hundreds of personal ornaments have been discovered, including pierced animal teeth, pierced shells, ivory and soapstone beads, engravings, and…