Ethnicity, heritage, ancestry… These are all terms that I have had the pleasure of convoluting and deconstructing thanks to my cultural anthropology classes. But really when you get to the biology of it all, it is not as complicated.
If you didn’t quite jump on National Geographic’s Genographic Project train and have been curious about [...]
This post will come off as a cheezy late night TV advertisement but I write for those out there lucky enough to have a anthropology buff in the family or circle of friends, because then you know how hard it is to find a gift for them. Other than books, there’s really not much out [...]
About two months ago, I wrote a comprehensive review paper on the state of the Neandertal genome project for one of my classes. I didn’t get a chance to put it up on Anthropology.net before I left for my trip. So to summarize, I reviewed many topics related to the project, one of which the [...]
The first two ‘mummies’ that made TIME magazine’s collection photos of 15 ‘Mummies From Around the World‘ make me raise an eyebrow and wonder, who considers Lucy and Dikika a.k.a. Selam, a mummy? These two are fossilized remains of Australopithecus afarensis.
Even if you hold a fairly loose definition of mummy, it is, in my opinion, [...]
One week ago I blogged about ancient gum. And now, thanks to Blaine Bettinger of the Genetic Genealogist, I’ve got some more gummy anthropology news for y’all to chew on… This time with a genetic twist.
In the Summer of 2007 issue of the Journal of Field Archaeology, Steven LeBlanc et al. write on recovering mitochondrial [...]
Another quickie, I’ve read the Chororapithecus abyssinicus paper and wrote up a blog post again over at Primatology.net since we’re dealing with primate evolution. Even so, this paper has some applications to anthropology, especially since it raises some questions about mistakes in molecular clock calibrations.
If you wanna learn about how enamel-dentin junction is important to [...]
David of Gene Expression broke the news of a new study of skulls from a Yorkshire village, which ‘deepens’ a
“long-standing mystery over the way men’s skulls changed from long to round during medieval Europe.”
Why men? I’ve never heard of the claim that male bones are more sensitive to environmental change during their development than [...]
Following yesterday’s introduction to Suwa et al.’s new Miocene ape, here is a high(er) resolution photo of three of the 10 million year old teeth compared to a modern female gorilla’s teeth.
In this view, you see lower dentition of C. abyssinicus, speficially the canine, the first molar, M1, and M3, or the last molar. I’m [...]
Since Anthropology.net has been getting all the lovin’ recently, I figure I’d post an introduction to the controversy surrounding a new paleoanthropological find from Suwa et al. and their new gorilla like Miocene great ape over at our sister blog, Primatology.net.
Please, jump on over there and chime in what you think of this study.
A neat little study from the University of South Carolina touches on both linguistic anthropology and neuroscience, specifically the importance of pronouns in keeping the brain from becoming overloaded.
From Science Daily,
“The brain responds to proper names by creating a representation of the person in the mind, drawing from various parts of the brain to construct [...]
