Beyond bones & stones
In an article recently published in the journal Evolutionary Studies in Imaginative Culture, Richard Coss, a professor emeritus of psychology, questions why there isn't Neanderthal art in the archaeological record. He seems to skip the obvious, i.e. that is it hasn't been found yet, and jumps to the conclusion that Homo sapiens has superior hand... Continue Reading →
Thanks to twin studies, schizophrenia is one of the few mental illnesses that we know have a genetic inheritance pattern. Schizophrenia often presents as a inability to separate reality from non-reality, where patients often experience hallucinations and stimuli that do not exist, such as hearing voices. Just how this deleterious disease came about to be... Continue Reading →
Dienekes shared the abstract to a paper that seems to completely contradict an earlier study. It is pretty evident from the title of newer study, "Do humans prefer altruistic mates? Testing a link between sexual selection and altruism towards non-relatives," what the authors tested. And they confirm that there is a linkage between the propensity... Continue Reading →
Wired Science shared some news of an interesting panel titled, "What it means to be human" held at this year's World Science Festival in New York City. This week, we saw Michael Tomasello's take on this question. Last month there was the What Makes Us Human conference. We've also read Marc Hauser’s postulates. Wired Science... Continue Reading →
Michael Tomasello, a well known comparative psychologist, has a column in today's New York Times where he writes on, "How Are Humans Unique?" In the piece, Tomasello argues that our cultural, linguistic, economic and tool-use have all come about because of our tendency for "collective cognition." His argument stems from two of his recent papers,... Continue Reading →
There's a new PLoS ONE paper making the rounds in the press today. The research behind it fits the kinda stuff you may see on Dienekes' Anthropology Blog and sometimes on GNXP... it is basically an investigation on the attractiveness of a symmetrical face. The paper is published open access, under the title, "Symmetry Is... Continue Reading →
The American Association for the Advancement of Science just wrapped up its annual meeting yesterday and the press is releasing a lot of summaries on what was presented. Of interest to anthropology are these four postulates, presented by Marc Hauser, the factors that differentiate human cognition. Before I jump into this, I wanna review that... Continue Reading →
I've got a couple pseudo-science, evolutionary psychological news bits to share with you. The first is coverage of Alan Harvey music evolutionary theory that he presented at the Annual Australian Neuroscience Meeting. From the article, "[Alan Harvey] says music is not just a pretty sound, but also a way of communicating that is just as... Continue Reading →
