Anthropology
It is ignored here.There is even disdain for ithttp://www.science20.com/evolutionary_economics/return_karl_popper_socia...
It has limits, but these are due to the difficulty of the problem, not the incompetence of the researchers. Many fantastic statistical tests.
Hayek on macroeconomics
Keynes vs Hayek video (and Friedman)
Overly politicized
Phych is to economics what chemistry is to biology. ... "political economics"
Images illustrating economic laws
The 84 members of the Donner Party, trapped by a Sierra Nevada snowstorm on their way to California, did not resort to cannibalism, according to a new analysis of bones found at their Alder Creek campsite.
Instead of each other, anthropologists say the Donner Party probably ate cattle, deer, horse and dog and did their best to maintain a civilized lifestyle in an otherwise harsh setting.
Details of the analysis will appear in the July issue of American Antiquity.
The Donner Party has long been infamous for reportedly resorting to cannibalism after becoming trapped in the Sierra Nevada…
Anthropologists writing in the Journal of Social Archaeology say they have found evidence indicating that Mayan citizens recorded their family history by burying it within their homes.
Maya in the Classic period (A.D. 250-900) regularly "terminated" their homes, razing the walls, burning the floors and placing artifacts and (sometimes) human remains on top before burning them again.
Evidence suggests these rituals occurred every 40 or 50 years and likely marked important dates in the Maya calendar. After termination, the family built a new home on the old foundation, using broken and whole…
The Animal That Amplifies Itself
Amplify: to make a thing bigger or more powerful.
The characteristic that most distinguishes humans from our animal cousins is not the use of tools. Nor is it the use of language. Many animals use twigs or stones as tools. Many animals have the ability to communicate alarm, distress, food sources and other matters.
The only thing, I suggest, that clearly separates humans from all other living things is that we are the only species which can amplify its behaviors. Whatever biological faculty we wish to use we have a machine to amplify…
As old autism people like me, that came out kind of ok and missed Rain Man Era Politics met each other online to compare notes on our different kind of human thought process that has never been in a book before was highlighted. Our default thoughts are NOT your normal thoughts and until we figure out our sublevel autism thoughts your normal thought we now are able to use don't work. In a nut shell, We think with your daydreams and our optic and brain generated vision is interchanged. When our OPTIC vision is off we think with your Daydreams (loose term) and once we figure out those…
Researchers have long been puzzled by large societies in whichstrangers routinely engage in voluntary acts of kindness and respect even though there is often an individual cost involved.
Evolutionary forces associated with kinship and reciprocity can explain such cooperative behavior among other primates, but the same isn't true for large societies of strangers.
A new study published today in Science suggests that the cooperative nature of each society may be explained in part by religious beliefs and the growth of market transactions. The study also found the extent to which a society uses…
New archaeological evidence recovered at Cova Gran de Santa Linya (Southeastern PrePyrenees, Catalunya, Spain) suggests that 'modern humans' first appeared on the Iberian Peninsula during the Middle/Upper Palaeolithic transition, according to researchers from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.
The research, published in the Journal of Human Evolution, also supports the hypothesis that there was neither interaction nor coexistence between humans and Neanderthals during the period.
Cova Gran is a large shelter covering a total surface area of 2,500 meters squared,discovered in 2002,…
In order to learn how modern societies can adapt to the changes caused by global warming, scientists are working in the Arctic regions of St. James Bay, Quebec, northern Finland and Kamchatka to understand how humans living 4,000 to 6,000 years ago reacted to climate changes.
Their findings will tell governments, scientists and NGOs how relationships between human beings and their environments may change in decades to come as a result of global warming.
"The circumpolar north is widely seen as an observatory for changing relations between human societies and their environment," says…
The Smithsonian Magazine (one of the highest quality science magazines out there) has some great pictures of various hominins by sculptor John Gurche.
Go take a look at the past 4 million years of human evolution, from Australopithecus afarensis to Homo heidelbergensis, Neanderthals, and Hobbits.
Hat tip to John Hawks.
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Social Scientist have contended for much of the last century that we cannot approach the study of human behavior with the same tools that we would use to study the natural world. This is hogwash. And I think Karl Popper, the great 20th century philosopher, would agree with me. Humans are animals, they are made up of chemicals and cells, their behavior is determined by a complex interaction of chemical processes and their lives are a network of cause and effect relations with other animals (some of which we’d call human). If we are ever going to get a solid grasp on our…