Anthropology

Baron Manfred von Richthofen, the Red Baron, with other members of his unit. Credit: Germany Army. By Ingrid Sharp, University of Leeds The idea of a war hero is still strong in the UK and in the other Allied countries. War memorials are a central feature of the regular commemoration services, Churchill is regularly rolled out in biographical and fictional form, and there are soon to be a total of 888,246 ceramic poppies for 888,246 war heroes adorning the Tower of London. But in Germany the concept of the hero is far more problematic. After two catastrophic military defeats and the horrors…

The Slave Trade painted by a French abolitionist artist. By Daina Ramey Berry, University of Texas People think they know everything about slavery in the United States, but they don’t. They think the majority of African slaves came to the American colonies, but they didn’t. They talk about 400 hundred years of slavery, but it wasn’t. They claim all Southerners owned slaves, but they didn’t. Some argue it was a long time ago, but it wasn’t. Slavery has been in the news a lot lately. Perhaps it’s because of the increase in human trafficking on American soil or the headlines about income…

Ancient Greeks used onions as a performance-enhancing drug. Roman gladiators ate ashes and vegetables. If common-sense does not tell us that there was no ancient civilization with futuristic technology building pyramids, anthropology certainly can. Historic sources claimed referred to gladiators  as "hordearii" ("barley eaters") because they had an inferior diet, heavy in beans and grains, the hallmark of poor status. Even 2,000 years ago people made fun of vegetarians, it seems. Though the diet was accurate, it was not all special, according to a new paper. A new study by Medical…

It is often believed that masculine men and more feminine women were prized in ancient societies and that modern culture is beyond gender simplifications, but a team of psychologists, anthropologists and biologists that surveyed 12 populations around the world, from the primitive to the highly developed, find that isn't so. It's not an evolutionary preference passed down through genes, it is a modern convention of urban societies. Only in more developed lands are highly feminine women and highly masculine men most attractive. Look at how Huffington Post gushed over the audition of…

Credit: EPA By Rob MacKenzie, University of Birmingham To exaggerate is human, and scientists are human. Exaggeration and the complementary art of simplification are the basic rhetorical tools of human intercourse. So yes, scientists do exaggerate. So do politicians, perhaps even when, as the UK’s former environment secretary Owen Paterson did, they claim that climate change forecasts are “widely exaggerated”. A more pertinent question is: does the way in which scientists and politicians speak publicly lead to wild exaggeration? When both are engaged in advocacy, there is little difference;…

Violent rhetoric appeals to disaffected young men because it gives them a challenge to express aggression as 'proof' of manhood. Credit: Sillouetted children playing as soldiers/Shutterstock By David Plummer, Griffith University Recent coverage of counter-terrorism raids in Australia featured hard-core gyms, anabolic steroids, nightclub bouncers, gangs and weapons. Footage from the Middle East regularly depicts truckloads of young bearded warriors bristling with ordnance. Is this a view of masculinity that merely happens to be violent? Or does masculinity actively underwrite and sustain…

"Keeping up with the Joneses" is a colloquialism for developing world desire to have the same or better status in society than peers. If someone gets a new car, you get a new car. In some people, status is so important they suffer psychological distress if they lack status. But it isn't just for the middle class in Western nations, say anthropologists at U.C. Santa Barbara, who found that the same need exists among the Tsimane, an egalitarian society of forager-farmers in the Bolivian Amazon.  Myriad studies have shown that low social status can have negative effects on health, both in…

was the title of a history book I had as a boy.  Good things, in their way — without them, I wouldn’t be able to sit here talking to you all and meeting some very interesting people online.  But some decidedly unpleasant customers do all too often hitch a ride. One of these is the Human Immunodeficiency Virus, and recent research has shown that not only has it used triple-T to make its way around the world (as we all know), but most likely it arose in its present form as a result of the worldwide development of railways.  Followers of Real Clear Science will have been…

Evidence shows children are getting less unsupervised time outdoors. Credit: Brian Yap (葉)/Flickr, CC BY-NC By Shelby Gull Laird and Laura McFarland-Piazza Earlier this year, an American mother was arrested for allowing her nine year old daughter to play unsupervised in a park while she finished her shift at work. Even though this story got a lot of press, it is not a standalone event. Recently, there has been a rash of cases reported where parents have been arrested for allowing children to play in the park alone, walk to the park alone, and even just play unsupervised right outside their…

In 1908 the famously plump Venus of Willendorf, thought to be a symbol of fecundity, was discovered during an excavation near the Austrian town of Melk. It has been dated to 30,000 years ago and is one of the world’s earliest examples of figurative art. Now, a team of archaeologists have dated a number of stone tools excavated recently from the same site to 43,500 years ago. Results show they were part of the Aurignacian culture, which is generally accepted as indicative of modern human presence. It is agreed that modern humans dispersed into Europe, and began to replace Neanderthals, at…