• Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human by Richard Wrangham
  Wrangham’s thesis is that the advent of cooking reduced our energy demands of actually chewing, we do have a smaller muscles of mastication, jaws and teeth. This shift diverted the energy we would be spending on the act of eating, along with eating more easily digestable nutrients, to developing massive brains. Something I didn’t know and learned in the reviews is that people who eat only on uncooked meat or veggies will slowly starve, sucks for those on the raw food diet.
• The Well-Dressed Ape: A Natural History of Myself by Hannah Holmes
  Holmes addresses the fact that human females are the only primates with enlarged breasts and discusses theories on why. She says that the large breasts allow more feeding time for infants, which kept the babies more compliant and less likely to cry, which would otherwise attract predators. Our relatively hairless skin also evolved as a direct function of predator pressure, early human ancestors needed greater surface area to cool off our skin with sweat as they ran from predators in the savannah.
• The Humans Who Went Extinct: Why Neanderthals died out and we survived by Clive Finlayson
  Finlayson discusses why and possibly how Neandertals were so easily replaced by modern humans. He argues that the harsh landscape of early Africa, about 100,000 years ago, when modern humans emerged forced them to learn new technologies and lifestyles that were, “more inventive and intelligent as they struggled for survival. European Neanderthals, untutored in the school of hard knocks, were no match for our ancestors when they met.”

These books seem to be entertaining, you should check them out if you haven’t already. Also, if you’re on Twitter and looking to follow some active anthropology minded folks, I’ve compiled what I believe to be a pretty comprehensive list of anthropology Twitterers. Check that out too, and follow it… If I’m missing anyone please let me know on Twitter or via this post’s comment thread.

“I think it’s too bad that a lot of scholarly work never gets read, usually because it’s just plain difficult to read,” she says in an interview with Nicole Merritt of MyShelf.com. “Being difficult is sometimes necessary, but sometimes there’s deliberate obfuscation going on … ‘If you can’t understand what I’m saying, I must be exceptionally smart’.”

David Brooks reviewed it at The New York Times, an honor not always bequeathed to anthropological texts.

The paperback is published by Hill and Wang, rather than an academic press, and the book is written in a humorous, even sarcastic tone, in accessible language that feels like a leisure read full of rich philosophical implications and shocking detail.  The focus of the work is how the laboratory became the locus of power and authority, the fountain of knowledge for social scientists and governments alike, eventually contributing to an extension of the laboratory to world settings – so that the United States, as a colonial power, utilized whole peoples for experiments on the premise that human behavior could be understood, controlled, and even engineered on a massive scale.

Lemov also describes how laboratory science, with its emphasis on objectivity and distance from the subjective – as well as the subject – is built around experiments on animals as the ideal approach to studying human behavior and, yes, even the social.  Yet this practice is built on a puzzling paradox: although humans are assumed to function behaviorally in the same manner as animals, animals as nonhumans (and, in some cases, certain humans considered less than civilized) are permissible subjects of often painful and exceedingly demoralizing experiments.  Furthermore, as Lemov demonstrates, laboratory science itself was generated by personalities, men in fact caught up in a range of personal fears and anxieties – in short, subjectivities.  Yet despite these contradictions, laboratory science built on the assumed subject-object, human-nonhuman distinction is as pervasive as ever, if not more so.

Without proposing any conspiracy theories – in fact, Lemov makes it clear that a lot of these guys were wayward do-gooders and philanthropists who couldn’t possibly know the full ramifications of their brand of science – she points to the lasting effects widespread ideas about the social self have on our lives even today, even in the marketplace, in malls, in everyday politics.

With the laboratory, Lamov writes, scientists “built a stressful world that predicted our own: a world in which stress and its effects can actually be engineered, ratcheted up, and in some sense capitalized upon” (101).

Admittedly, this sounds pretty incendiary for an anthropologist, and Lemov certainly doesn’t pretend to participate in any kind of dalliance with objectivity.  There is something very brave and honest about that.  Lemov is an anthropologist – a person with a PhD – but she clearly isn’t ashamed of her own biases, nor is she interested in putting on a veil with her thinking cap.  Perhaps more importantly, she’s talking about things that sound boring and inaccessible – science studies, subject-object distinctions, intentionalities – in a way that is likely to stimulate more dialogue and participation among a wider range of people than your standard stodgy academic article.

Not that those are unimportant.  It’s just that they, too, are part of the laboratory world.

“The subject of Tuhami’s tale is ontologically different from the subject of those tales with which we in the west are familiar. Generic differences are not simply formal differences. They are cultural constructs and reflect those most fundamental assumptions about the nature of reality, including the nature of the person and the nature of language” (pg 7).

After reading Crapanzano’s book, I found myself searching for the ontological differences and what or who the subject of his (who exactly the “his” indexes to I leave open for discussion) story is.

Throughout the book, we are described fantastic tales of struggle against demonic forces or against oneself. Typically, we (again who “we” refers to is left open—is it “westerners”, all of humanity, the theorist, the reader, etc..) think of demonic forces in terms of ontology in two possible ways. The first is that they absolutely exist, the second is that they absolutely do not exist. The dichotomy is testimony to the western abandonment of the supernatural for a reductionist approach motivated by the search for scientific objectivity. I ask myself which is true for Tuhami and which is true for Crapanazno, or rather for myself. I believe that they are indeed real for Tuhami. Demons are absolutely real and serve as objects in Tuhami’s ontology. For Crapanzano, they are “symbolic-interpretive elements” (pg75), they are explanations, and have no ontological reality, or better objectivity.

Interestingly, Crapanzano writes, “Tuhami had been speaking the truth from the start…” (pg 130). It seems that from the beginning we see an inescapable truth. The truth is we cannot escape ourselves. We are subject to our own cultural constructs, which we have very little control over. Heidegger put it best when he said that we find ourselves thrown into the world. We don’t really have control of what our world is, we simply find ourselves thrown into it, and have to make do. We find this throwness (as Heidegger put it) evident in the fact that we cannot seem to know that demons are real, as opposed to can be real, ontological objects. Instead, its very natural that we simply brush aside the notion that they are absolutely real for Tuhami, and instead fall back to theorizing and our fundamental assumptions about the nature of reality. In a sense, we stop ourselves from knowing, and compromise with understanding. We are inescapably stuck in our way of seeing, speaking, listening, interpreting, and understanding. The walls that create the constructs of our understanding are the things that make us who we are. Consequently, we cannot escape ourselves and are limited to an epistemology of self. Knowledge outside oneself seems inaccessible.

The most we can do is understand (never really know), as Crapanzano does when he writes that

“… the real was a metaphor for the true– and not identical with it. Tuhami had been speaking the truth from the very start…, but I had been listening only for the real, which I mistook for the true“ (pg 130).

Parting from Crapanzano, can we say that Tuhami had been speaking the real and the true, only the real for Tuhami was not real for Crapanzano? The real was not real, or at least real and not-real (in true Platonic fashion), for Crapanzano because it was foreign to the contextual framework he was working within. Demons are real for Tuhami and thus he has access to knowledge about them we are unable to have. For Crapanzano the only sense in which they are real is that they are symbolic-interpretive elements, and can only be understood as such.

In addition, we see that Crapanzano himself fears the notion that there are other equally successful ways of constituting reality. He writes that such a notion “is always threatening” and that “it may produce a sort of epistemological vertigo and demand a position of extreme cultural relativism” (pg 8). Crapanzano writes that his work is a reaction to anthropology’s failed attempts to deal with the matter. Yet, latter we find that Crapanzano ends up saying that even his own relativism has its limits (pg 133).

In coming full circle now, we can try to answer the questions posed earlier: what or who is the subject? Is the subject of Tuhami’s tales himself? He is. The stories Tuhami tells are stories about she-demons, but they are also stories about seduction, captivation, enslavement, identity, etc… Such themes apply directly to Tuhami. So the subject of Tuhami’s stories is ontologically different because Tuhami’s ontology is different from the west. Within his world, demons are ontologically objective, much like atoms are ontologically objective for a physcist. However, the subject of the stories told by Tuhami and the text constructed by Crapanzano is also Crapanzano himself. Crapanzano gives us a description of his reading and his notes. We gain our own insight into Crapanzano’s reactions to Tuhami’s stories, his insights, views, ideas, biases, etc… So Crapanzano is very much the subject of his own work as well. Additionally, what I consider one of the stronger points of the book, is that anyone can bring to the reading what ever they will. Ethnography, for me at least, is a way of exploring, not only the intended subject, but myself as well. Due to this, we are also given the chance to become the subject of the book, and in general ethnography itself.

In being the subject of this text (my text or Crapanzano’s), I ask can we question our own fundamental beliefs about the nature of reality, or in other words are demons real for you?

“earthquakes might be detected in the archaeological record, by analysing geological formations, faults, structural movement, human remains, the collapse of pillars and walls, and inscriptions. Nur wonders if earthquakes played a part in the collapse of ancient civilizations. Might they explain the enigmatic and quick disappearance of so many Bronze Age civilizations in the eastern Mediterranean during a mere 50 years around 1200 BC.

Most archaeologists today say that earthquakes have had little to do with historical demises. They prefer to attribute the collapse of civilizations to human agency: war, invasion, social oppression, environmental abuse and so on. The conventional explanation of the Bronze Age collapse involves maritime invasion by the mysterious Sea Peoples, whose identities have long eluded scholars…”

Nur and Burgess bring up many recent examples of how earthquakes decimated civilizations, cities, etc. They cite the destruction of the Portuguese capital of Lisbon in 1755, a 1812 earthquake that preceeded the collapse of Simón Bolívar’s Venezuelan republic, and the Great Kanto earthquake of 1923 that decimate the majority of Tokyo.

The Nature article favorably reviews the book, and primes us that it may, “deliberately irritate many archaeologists.”

When I caught news that the New York Times is running a book review of her new title, I was intrigued. The book seems more expansive than just a run down on current lingustic studies. It integrates anthropology, genetics, neuroscience, and much more. Here’s some excerpts that should spark some interest,

“…In the last decade or so, language evolution has eased toward the front burner, attracting the attention of linguists, neuroscientists, psychologists and geneticists. Their search is the subject of “The First Word,” Christine Kenneally’s lucid survey of this expanding field, dedicated to solving what she calls “the hardest problem in science today.”

…One nut to crack is the nature of language itself, and here Ms. Kenneally introduces the unignorable presence in virtually every linguistic debate, Noam Chomsky. Mr. Chomsky and his many adherents regard language as a uniquely human endowment, centered in a specific area of the brain…. Animals, in this view, do not have language, nor do they think. The reasons that humans speak, or how language might have made its way to the human brain, do not matter. It may simply be that in a linguistic version of the big bang, a language mutation suddenly appeared, and that was that.

This view now faces many rivals… language evolved to meet the need for communication. Ms. Kenneally ushers onto the stage researchers who have discovered that many animal species possess language like skills previously unimagined and, without benefit of syntax or words, have a complicated inner life. They believe that the study of animal language and gestures could shed light on a possible protolanguage stage in human development.

The idea that language is restricted to a specific area of the brain has been more or less discarded. Brain researchers now believe that language tasks are assigned throughout the brain. Moreover, some linguists now believe that language is a two-way street. It’s not something emanating from the brain of a communicating human. It actually changes the processes of the brain.”

The New York Times favorably reviews her book, but I must disclaim that she is a freelancer who frequents the publication so it maybe a bit biased. Much more objective reviews, such as the two on Amazon.com currently, also favorable review it. I for one will try and get my hands on the book soon, I’ve queued it up on my wishlist.

Related Anthropology.net content, EHL Linguists try to identify a time where there was only one language.

A New Human: The Startling Discovery and Strange Story of the “Hobbits” of Flores, Indonesia

Mike Morwood, if you don’t know or remember, is one of the original members of the team that found the Homo floresiensis specimens in Liang Bua back in 2003. Andrews’ writes how the book is a,

“…fascinating account of how the large-scale, multidisciplinary excavation was set up and run shows just how such an investigation should be conducted. They cover everything: the preliminary groundwork to find out who has to be approached to get permissions, with all the politics and administrative matters that are an unavoidable adjunct to such forms of scientific inquiry; the actual business of excavation and the dating of the deposit; and finally, the process of publishing a description of the fossils and their context. Anyone thinking of undertaking such a project would do well to consult this book.”

Pretty strong endorsement if you ask me.

Andrews goes on to document the significance of the Homo floresiensis remains, which if you are a follower of paleoanthropology and human evolutionary studies… you should be well aware of its importance. He then turns to gingerly document the controversies that happened between the team that excavated the fossils and

“Teuku Jacob, an Indonesian anthropologist who was not a member of the team, precipitously removed the skull, lower jaw and femur of the Flores woman, along with another lower jaw found at Liang Bua, from the lab where they were being kept. He then restricted access to the specimens and dismissed them as the remains of modern humans with the pathological condition known as microcephaly… Jacob essentially hijacked the remains, claiming falsely that Morwood had agreed to their transfer. The authors also complain that when Jacob finally returned the fossils, the bones had been mishandled and irreparably damaged.”

If Jacob really do this, then I don’t understand why he did. It seems so unethical and immature to jeopardize a critical hominin fossil. As Andrews explains, Morwood and team went thru all the proper channels and got permits to do the excavation. It’s not like they were digging illegally.

What has happened, the bickering between these two camps, has not only seriously damaged the fossils but also the reputation of paleoanthropology. As an someone with an outsider’s perspective on this whole situation, I see how the academic rigor and standards of the discipline are not shared in all places and cultures. People really do have egos larger than the problems and questions about human evolution they are trying to answer. While Andrews claims this book is a,

“well-written, entertaining book is both scholarly and accessible to the general public. Morwood and Oosterzee make the case that the Flores hominins occupy a unique position in human evolution,”

I see this book as another jab at Jacob. Jacob deserves to be reprimanded but there also needs to be some professionalism here. I hope that followers of this blog and future students in paleoanthropology can agree that this type of back and forth finger pointing does not help out our discipline. I really don’t know how Jacob and others who do this to the field should be dealt with but I don’t think it should be taken to this level. So I ask you, should we really be taking the time to write in our books and papers about how some colleagues did us wrong? Feel free to chime in what you think about all this and how to avoid this in the future.

He is one of the most prolific persons known. Genetically, his genes have been traced in people from Poland to Korea. The way he has spread his seed is stereotypically known to be through rape and pillage of his conquered nations and cultures. This understanding of Genghis Khan has demonized him and his people, the Mongols. Being Persian, and born in Iran, I have not heard positive things about the Great Khan. From my grandfather, I was taught that Genghis irrationally invaded the Persian empire in the 1200’s and burned the entire nation to the ground, killing all women, children, men, dogs, and cats in some cities. My understanding of Genghis was supplemented in throughout my education of world history, where I was taught he ransacked all the way up to Europe, and the Great Wall was created to fend off his predecessors attacks.

The ultimate impact of my education of the Mongols was clearly not positive. However what lingered in my mind is how could an empire span all of known Eurasia for almost two centuries and have one positive thing remain throughout the historical record? I have subsequently been very curious to understand the other side of the Mongolian story, but very little text on the subject matter has been accessible to me.

This is where the book, Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World by Jack Weatherford comes in. Weatherford is an anthropologist who specializes in the process of modernization. His past works have focused on the issues of monetization on culture and the impacts of other lesser known or popular cultures on the modern human life. The book is takes a revisionist tone, and tries to justify and clarify the bad rap on Genghis and his Mongolian nation.

Of course, I won’t give away all of it but you can most likely derive that everything I, and most likely everyone else, was taught about the Mongols is wrong. The Mongols invented a lot of unprecedented and civilized institutions such as the first postal service. Never before, in known history, was there such an organized system for communication across such a vast nation. Genghis devised a system that offered stationary postal offices where people could send and receive messages from.

Furthermore, Genghis Khan fully modified and integrated a paper money system that was not entirely successful in the originating culture, China. Suddenly, with the course of a hundred years ago money became more abstract and symbolic as it was represented in paper bills over gold and metal coins.

The book goes into a lot of other outstanding achievements of the Mongols, and I really respect the book for that. It keeps the violent nature of the Mongols relative and justifies that nearly all the invasions of Mongols were provoked and rational. It further clarifies that Mongols were not blood thirsty; in fact the opposite was true. Bloodshed was looked upon with a lot of disgust in Mongolian culture and subsequently,

“the Mongols did not torture, mutilate, or maim,”

and where the Europeans and Muslims operated on a form of punishment that included

“a variety of bloody forms of torture, such as stretching on the rack, being crushed by a great wheel, being impaled on spikes, or various forms of burning, in other countries, Mongols limited it to beating with a cane.”

However, not all the book says is entirely true. While Genghis and the Mongols are misunderstood, under appreciated, they were responsible for millions of deaths and the selling and/or subjugation of people into a life of slavery. And the ultimate goal, for the Mongols, was to use the conquered lands for profit.

All in the entire book is excellent, despite having a fan-boy pro-Mongolian tone. It is written very well, and is a quick read. I finished it within a week of reading about an hour a night. It is very carries a vary enjoyable prose. I recommend it because it is educational and helps understand the plasticity of culture. With this book, not only do I have a better understanding of the biggest empire known to man… which hasn’t been respectively taught throughout my education; but a more thorough knowledge about how institutions such as money and postal services have originated from.