Anthropology

Bog mummies are 2000-year-old mummies from the Iron Age that were preserved with amazing detail by the peat bogs of Europe. Physical anthropologists draw conclusions from the eerily preserved hair, leathery skin and other features in the mummies that emerge from the bogs. In the Iron Age, from approximately 500BC to 500AD, people were often cremated, leading experts to believe that mummies preserved by the bogs were usually those who met their demise through particularly violent means or were used as sacrifices. A violent demise was thought to be the case for a mummy known as Windeby Girl,…

By 1763, the world of Cherokee Indians in the Southeastern U.S. was in tatters. The French and Indian War had wracked the sprawling Cherokee settlements that stretched from the headwaters of the Savannah River in South Carolina and Georgia to the Overhills towns in eastern Tennessee. Though 75 years would pass before the Trail of Tears would banish the remnants of the nation west to Oklahoma, the tribe watched hopelessly as much of its history rapidly faded. Researchers have long wondered why the Cherokee settled where they did, building clusters of small towns in fertile river valleys in…

Eminem should be reading up on his Elvis history if he wants to stay around. Famous musicians are more than twice as likely as the rest of the population to die an early death, and within a few years of becoming famous, reveals research in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health. The findings are based on more than 1050 North American and European musicians and singers who shot to fame between 1956 and 1999. All the musicians featured in the All Time Top 1000 albums, selected in 2000, and covering rock, punk, rap, R&B, electronica and new age genres. How long the pop stars…

Ancient cities arose not by decree from a centralized political power, as was previously widely believed, but as the outgrowth of decisions made by smaller groups or individuals, according to a new study. The research was led by Jason Ur, assistant professor of anthropology in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University, with Philip Karsgaard of the University of Edinburgh, and Joan Oates of the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research of the University of Cambridge. “The results of our work show that the existing models for the origins of ancient cities may in fact be…

In a study to be published in the September issue of Psychological Science journal, researchers investigated how thinking about God and notions of a higher power influenced positive social behavior, specifically cooperation with others and generosity to strangers. UBC PhD graduate Azim Shariff and UBC Assoc. Prof. Ara Norenzayan found that priming people with ‘God concepts’ – by activating subconscious thoughts through word games – promoted altruism. In addition, the researchers found that this effect was consistent in behaviour whether people declared themselves believers or not. The…

Boys with difficulty reading actually respond better to female teachers, according to a new Canadian study. Research shows that boys develop higher positive self-perceptions as readers when they worked with female research assistants compared to working with male research assistants. The study focused on 175 third- and fourth-grade boys who were identified as struggling readers by their teachers. The boys participated in a 10-week reading intervention to determine the effect of the reading teacher’s gender on boys’ reading performance, self-perception as readers, and view of reading as a…

Female rhesus monkeys use special vocalizations while interacting with infants, the way human adults use motherese, or “baby talk,” to engage babies’ attention, new research at the University of Chicago shows. “Motherese is a high pitched and musical form of speech, which may be biological in origin,” said Dario Maestripieri, Associate Professor in Comparative Human Development at the University. “The acoustic structure of particular monkey vocalizations called girneys may be adaptively designed to attract young infants and engage their attention, similar to how the acoustic structure of…

Opponents of gay marriage in the United States state that nuclear families have always been the standard household form. Turns out this may not be true. While gay marriage itself may not have happened in medieval times there is evidence that homosexual civil unions did and that could lend important historical insight to the debate. Allan A. Tulchin of Shippensburg University writes on the topic in the September issue of Journal of Modern History and reviews historical evidence, including documents and gravesites, suggesting that homosexual civil unions may have existed 600 years ago in…

All vertebrates use geometric cues like walls and corners to figure out how to go from place to place. Some, like rats and human children, are so influenced by these geometric cues that they often ignore more reliable features such as a distinctive object or colored wall. This surprising reliance on geometry has led researchers to suggest the existence of a geometric module in the brain. However, since both humans and laboratory animals typically grow up in environments not entirely made up of right angles and straight lines, the prevalent use of geometry could reflect nurture rather than…

When explorers like Magellan and Columbus sailed from Europe to the New World 500 years ago, they amazingly managed to navigate the open sea without terrestrial landmarks, natural boundaries or the navigational technology we have today. Historical reports suggest that some explorers and other seafaring people did so by imagining an island just over the horizon; if they kept track of where the "virtual island" was, they knew which direction to go in the open water. But new research from the University of Iowa suggests that people's ability to imagine virtual islands -- without any perceptual…