Beyond bones & stones
I have just returned from a presentation lead by UC Berkeley paleoanthropologist Tim White. I must say, even as the paper came out, I had reservations about it all. I was once taught by my physical anthropologist to always accept new finds in paleoanthropology with a skeptical eye. Suffice to say, after hearing what White... Continue Reading →
There's news buzzing about the fossilized remains of a human-like child, from 3.3-million-year-ago. The remains have been unearthed in Ethiopia's Dikika region and are believed to be of a female Australopithecus afarensis bones are from the same species as an adult skeleton found in 1974 which was nicknamed "Lucy." As of now, these remains are... Continue Reading →
Dienekes informs us of a French-Syrian archaeological mission discovery of decorated human skulls dating back to 9,500 years ago near Damascus, Syria. The find was located at a burial site near a prehistoric (actually Neolithic site of Tell Aswad, at Jaidet al-Khass village. The five skulls were found earlier this month in a pit resting... Continue Reading →
The New York Times is running an article announcing, "Writing on Stone May Be Oldest in the Americas," as is the National Geographic News' "Oldest Writing in New World Discovered, Scientists Say." Both articles are writing in reference to a brand new paper in the latest Science. The lead author, Maria del Carmen Rodríguez Martínez,... Continue Reading →
I was surprised to catch this article, from Ars Technica, in my RSS reader. Chris Lee, the author, reviews a very basic level of theory of altruistic behavior in humans. He uses a recently published paper in Nature, "Parochial altruism in humans" to support his opinion of the "inadequacies of current models to explain the... Continue Reading →
The New York Times, BBC News, and Nature News have all published little articles reviewing an upcoming publication that shows Gibraltar may have been the last refuge of the Neanderthals. The paper is titled, "Late survival of Neanderthals at the southernmost extreme of Europe," and the abstract, "The late survival of archaic hominin populations and... Continue Reading →
I've always been interested in where words come from, such as door. To me, the word door seems like a word created from nothing -- and maybe it is, I never took a class in linguistic anthropology nor do I fully understand the origins of words. I do, however, continue to observe how some words... Continue Reading →
Every society has outsiders. Among people whose economic systems are based on reciprocity, outsiders are often those who don't reciprocate, or who try to take all the glory. In most societies, there are outsiders who don't buy into the general religious or moral framework, or who display symbols (piercings in some circles, for example) that... Continue Reading →
