Beyond bones & stones
If you have been following this blog along with others, like GNXP, you can tell that the field of ancient DNA and population genetics is chaotic. It seems like every week we are adding more layers of genetic data in attempt to uncover the relentless and complex pattern on how we peopled the Earth. A... Continue Reading →
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... Continue Reading →
In World as Laboratory, Rebecca Lemov, an anthropologist, writes for a larger audience. "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... Continue Reading →
In a classic cultural anthropological text titled Tuhami: Portrait of a Moroccan, by Professor Vincent Crapanzano embarks on a fascinating tale of she demons, and an attempt to discover new ways of writing ethnography. My initial reaction to his work was mere fascination by Tuhami’s story, but the more you peal away at Crapanazano’s fantastic... Continue Reading →
Nature has put up a little teaser book review of Amos Nur & Dawn Burgess' new book, "Apocalypse: Earthquakes, Archaeology and the Wrath of God." The book investigates the possibility that earthquakes are a cause for the collapse of many ancient civilizations. Nur is a geophysics professor, and my understanding is that he advised Dawn... Continue Reading →
Christine Kenneally, author of The First Word: The Search for the Origins of Language, is actually no stranger to me. She has linked up Anthropology.net before, and ever seen then I've subscribed to her site's RSS feeds. When I caught news that the New York Times is running a book review of her new title,... Continue Reading →
Peter Andrews, a research scientist at the Natural History Museum in London and a professor in the department of anthropology at University College London, has reviewed the book, "A New Human: The Startling Discovery and Strange Story of the "Hobbits" of Flores, Indonesia," by Mike Morwood and Penny van Oosterzee. Mike Morwood, if you don't... Continue Reading →
Considering the scope of anthropology is broader and more inclusive than other sciences, it rarely focuses on the impact of one person on the course of humanity throughout all time and place. In doing so, certain key figures throughout the course of human evolution and development and the process of people, are neglected. One such... Continue Reading →
