Anthropology

Assisted Birth- A 5 Million Year Old Evolutionary Heritage

Contrary to the TV sitcom where the wife experiencing strong labor pains screams at her husband to stay away from her, women rarely give birth alone. Today, there are typically doctors, nurses and husbands in hospital delivery rooms, and sometimes even oth ...

Article - News Staff - Feb 18 2009 - 12:16am

What Happened To Culture? Female Genital Mutilation Among Negev Bedouins Has Almost Disappeared

Researchers at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) in Beer-Sheva have determined that the once prevalent custom of female genital mutilation (FGM) among the Bedouin population in the Negev has virtually disappeared. FGM, also known as "female cir ...

Article - News Staff - Feb 21 2009 - 12:34pm

Koobi Fora: 1.5 Million-Year-Old Human Footprint Shows Anatomically Modern Feet

Ancient footprints show that some of the earliest humans walked like us and did so on anatomically modern feet 1.5 million years ago.  This anatomical interpretation is the conclusion of Rutgers Professor John W.K. Harris and an international team of colle ...

Article - News Staff - Jul 24 2011 - 11:26am

Cultural Cosmology- Is European Colonization A Sickness Damaging South America?

When Evo Morales, Bolivia's first president of Indian origin, was appointed in 2006 he initiated a "decolonising revolution."   Now, in a new thesis in social anthropology at the University of Gothenburg, Anders Burman examines how the gover ...

Article - News Staff - Feb 27 2009 - 10:31am

Will We Say ‘Dirty’ Tomorrow?

To the historian, English is a fascinating language.  Unlike most of the languages of Europe, it underwent an almost complete makeover following the Norman invasion (1066 and All That).  As a result, although or basic words and grammar are basically like ...

Article - Robert H Olley - Feb 28 2009 - 3:30am

Mmmmm, Horse Milk? Equine Domestication Goes Back Farther Than Thought

Not only have horses been domesticated longer than we thought but they were also milked, says an article in Science. The researchers have traced the origins of horse domestication back to the Botai Culture of Kazakhstan circa 5,500 years ago, about 1,000 y ...

Article - News Staff - Mar 5 2009 - 3:52pm

'Peking Man' Is 200,000 Years Older Than Thought- So How Did He Survive The Cold?

A new dating method found that "Peking Man" is around 200,000 years older than previously thought.  So how did he adapt to the cold of even a mild glacial period? The Zhoukoudian, China, site of the remains of Homo erectus, commonly known as &quo ...

Article - News Staff - Mar 12 2009 - 3:04pm

Native American Creationism

There's a federal law that says Native American bones held by museums or other institutions have to be returned to the tribe they are associated with- if the tribe can prove the bones are in fact associated with them. Nature is reporting that the Univ ...

Blog Post - Michael White - Mar 19 2009 - 9:32am

Could The Story of Cain & Abel Be The Story of The Genocide of Neanderthals?

A couple of years back I read a theory in Charles Pellegrino's book "Ghosts of Vesuvius" that has fascinated me since, that the Biblical story of Cain and Abel is an echo of the genocide of Neanderthals by Homo sapiens. It is known that Nean ...

Blog Post - James Hawkins - Mar 27 2009 - 1:06pm

Let's Put Vikings In Charge Of Immigration

Long before they became famous as barbaric raiders, Vikings played nice with British and Irish culture, according to findings at a recent Cambridge University conference. The conference, entitled "Between the Islands", was organized by the Univer ...

Article - News Staff - Apr 2 2009 - 5:03pm