Anthropology

Homophily- Why Social Media Has Made You More Polarized

Everyone claims to care about diversity, individualism and tolerance. Very few people (R.I.P. Pete Seeger) really do. Instead, they want their beliefs affirmed and they want to demonize the opposition at every turn The remoteness and anonymity of social m ...

Article - News Staff - Jan 29 2014 - 12:40pm

Urban Scaling: Ancient And Modern Cities Follow Same Rules Of Development

Anthropologists have developed mathematical models that they say describe development patterns in both modern urban areas and ancient cities settled thousands of years ago. ...

Article - News Staff - Feb 13 2014 - 9:29am

Climate Change Linked To Indus Civilization Decline

If climate change sends us all back to the Stone Age, we wouldn't be the first culture. Or at least to the Bronze Age. It used to be that changes in climate were simply history, now they are an indictment of everything we might hold dear, like electr ...

Article - News Staff - Feb 26 2014 - 5:06pm

Out Of Beringia, Into America: It First Meant 10,000 Years On The Bering Land Bridge

We often think of the migration of Asians into America as a event that occurred when the Bering Sea was lower: They basically went over the land bridge that existed, from one part to another. Genetic and environmental evidence indicates instead that it wa ...

Article - News Staff - Feb 28 2014 - 10:26am

5,000 Years: Recent Natural Selection Altered The Appearance Of Europeans

It's no surprise that natural selection does not always take an evolutionary time scale.  When thousands of knights died during the Crusades at Acre, natural selection was being channeled. Yes, there were still other mechanisms of evolution but when ...

Article - News Staff - Mar 10 2014 - 5:20pm

Dene–Yeniseian Linguistic Phylogeny Suggests Humans Went Back To Asia From Beringia

Linguists have conducted what they call an evolutionary analysis to the relationship between North American and Central Siberian languages and say the results indicate that people moved out from the Bering Land Bridge, with some migrating back to central ...

Article - News Staff - Mar 12 2014 - 5:23pm

Wealth And Academia Found To Be Risk Factors For Violent Radicalization

The popular belief is that religion and being poor are the biggest risk factors for violent radicalization but a new analysis by Queen Mary University of London has instead found that youth, wealth, and being in full-time academia are more common in the UK ...

Article - News Staff - Mar 19 2014 - 2:02am

Do States Have Personalities? Political Scientists Say They Do

Do you live where your job is or do you move to be near people who match your personality as far as being agreeable or conscientious?  California has three Democratic state senators under indictment, all being paid while due process makes its way. That se ...

Article - News Staff - Mar 31 2014 - 7:40pm

Earliest Domestic Grains Along Silk Road Spread By Ancient Nomads

Charred grains of barley, millet and wheat deposited nearly 5,000 years ago at campsites in the high plains of Kazakhstan show that nomadic sheepherders played a surprisingly important role in the early spread of domesticated crops throughout a mountainou ...

Article - News Staff - Apr 1 2014 - 8:23pm

Want Less Rape And Homicide? Have A Male-Dominated Society

Conventional wisdom and sociological arguments have claimed that societies with more men than women, such as China, will become more violent, but a new study has found that a male-biased sex ratio does not lead to more crime. Rates of rape, sexual assault ...

Article - News Staff - Apr 7 2014 - 2:33pm