The Journal of Experimental Biology has published an interesting paper about some unique features in sprinters: longer toes and shorter ankle joints. The only one flaw is that their sample size is limited, they only compared 12 collegiate sprinters with 12 non-athletes of the same height. Regardless, from a physical anthropological point of view, this [...]
November 3, 2009
Claude Lévi-Strauss Has Died
Claude Lévi-Strauss died two days ago. He was 100 years old.
I shouldn’t have to write about his impact to the field of anthropology, in summary it was profound. He authored many texts. He set forth structuralism, a mode of thought by which we can compare relationships between social systems. His contributions to studying cultures and [...]
November 1, 2009
Robin McKie Of The Observer Reviews 3 Books On Human Evolution
Ciarán Brewster, a.k.a. adhominin, just tweeted about three book reviews. The reviews, written by Robin McKie of The Observer, cover recent books on cooking and human evolution which were written by some pretty big names in anthropology:
Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human by Richard Wrangham
Wrangham’s thesis is that the advent of cooking reduced [...]
October 1, 2009
Science Publishes 11 Papers On Ardipithecus ramidus
There’s more than 11 citations here, but the others are associated news and media covered by Science. They’ve even dedicated a special issue to it. Very impressive thorough volume of information. Now you have a some understanding why it took so long to publish… Anyways get to reading.
News Focus
Gibbons, A. (2009). A New Kind of [...]
October 1, 2009
The 4.4-Million-Year-Old Ardipithecus ramidus
I want to be the first to break news to you that Science has published White’s contentious 4.4-million-year-old Ardipithecus ramidus! I caught news of the release on the internet. The link is not live yet, but when it is I’ll fill you in.
Owen Lovejoy is one of the authors of the paper, and he says [...]
September 23, 2009
Free Out of Africa: Modern Human Origins Special Feature In PNAS
The latest issue of the Proceedings from the National Academy of Science journal hosts a Out of Africa: Modern Human Origins special feature for free online. I recommend you check it out.
Here’s a line up of the content:
Editorial by Richard G. Klein, “Darwin and the recent African origin of modern humans.”
Perspective by Ian Tattersall, “Human [...]
September 10, 2009
Ancient Leishmaniasis From Coyo Oriente Cemetery In Chile
I recently completed a medical parasitology course as part of my medical education. One of the diseases we discussed was leishmaniasis. Leishmaniasis is a zoonotic disease that is transferred to humans from reservoir hosts via the sand fly vector. The sand fly injects the promastigote form of the parasite, and the parasite invades white blood [...]
August 29, 2009
KIAA0319 – A New Candidate Gene For Language
The current issue of the Journal of Neurodevelopmental Disorders has published an open access paper announcing the discovery of a new candidate gene linked to language, KIAA0319. The paper is titled, “Convergent genetic linkage and associations to language, speech and reading measures in families of probands with Specific Language Impairment.”
The gene sits on short arm [...]
August 25, 2009
Science Suffers From The Idiots At Scientific American
Scientific American recently published a spineless attack on the state of access to paleoanthropological specimens. They titled it, “Fossils for All: Science Suffers by Hoarding,” and John Hawks lend it credibility with a nod in his post. Aside from being spineless, it reeks of ignorance and is tactless. In this post I’ll be discussing why [...]
August 2, 2009
Redheads Can’t Handle The Pain
Kambiz here. I’m about to start my second term of medical school, which is both exciting and nerve racking. In my summer readings, I came across a medical and anthropological tidbit today that caught my attention: redheads have a lower tolerance for pain. I didn’t know that. Did you?
Skin pigmentation is one of my favorite topics. We know from [...]
