Anthropology.net

What’s happening to the Hadza, their forced displacement for the most absurd reason ever, is for the lack of a better term really messed up. I personally can’t help but think that it is inhumane to be selling their lands, homes, and lifestyles to Arabs who want to go safari where they used to live. And for the Tanzanian government to be such a massive sellout to their own people is a disgrace. Makes me wonder if they have any morals?

In reaction, some of us have blogged about it and also been trying to contact international agencies to help do something. We do not want to see the Hadza lose their land.

One of the best things we can do, I can think of at this time, is good ole arm waving and hollerin’ to bring attention to the matter. Since Christopher O’Brien’s excellent and emphatic post really transfered a personal attachment to this issue, I’ve submitted it to Digg to get more people alerted. I urge you to help start saving the Hadza and their culture by raising awareness to this violation and at least help digg up Chris’ post — it is the least we can do as anthropologists, in my humble opinion.

In this post, I will share with you two things. The first is what I consider a rather comprehensive series of skulls showing human evolution with a chimpanzee skull on the left end, and a modern human skull on the right. The intervening skulls belong to various fossil hominids, all arrayed in chronological order:

This image should be showing you how human evolution played out on the form of the primate skull. We retained forward facing eyes. The most glaring change I note is that from an ancestral ape you can see how our brains have been getting bigger and bigger and our teeth smaller and smaller.

I have some slight problems with this image, though. The biggest problem, and a common misconception I see in regards to understanding human evolution, is the whole we descended from chimpanzees train of thought. This image compounds it. The lineage of primates that have become the chimpanzees have been evolving independently of the human lineage. And because the non-human primate fossil record is rather spotty — it is hard to see these types of trends and transitions that we see in the above image happen along in chimpanzees.

Working on that note, this composition implies that our ancestral form was a chimp and once the chimp and human lines diverged then humans went through many natural selection events while chimps just remained stagnant as chimps. That’s wrong. Chimps and humans share a common ape ancestor.

Aside from using this image to clarify trends and misunderstandings in human evolution, the second thing I wanted to do with this post was warm you up to some good news in regards to my involvement on a physical anthropology project. That’s all I can say for now. I’ll be trickling posts like these to wet your appetite.

This morning, I was contacted by Lindsay, a promotions assistant to one of my favorite TV shows, NOVA, about the premiere of a new episode of Bone Diggers. She asked me to help spread the word about this upcoming show that may interest any osteology buffs out there.  

The show is the last of the series and is airing Tuesday, June 19th, 2007 at 8pm ET on PBS. It will document the search for the remains of one of the world’s most bizarre prehistoric creatures—a giant predatory marsupial lion called Thylacoleo. 

While I know this ain’t exactly anthropology (it’s more general paleontology)  it seems like it will give people a taste of what any sort of dig is like, and that’s why I’m sharing this with you. Furthermore, Lindsay tells me that they will also discuss the threat of fossil poachers which also plagues paleoanthropology and archaeology digs as a whole. The one direct anthropological topic that the show will discuss is what finally if human hunters were responsible in overwhelming giant Ice Age creatures.

Anyways, you should definately check out this last episode of Bone Diggers, and also become a regular viewer of NOVA if you aren’t already. Why? Because, NOVA is an example of quality television, and I always learn something when I watch it.