Anthropology

Outsourcing Parenthood: It Takes The Marketplace To Raise A Child

How did our ancestors raise so many kids, while modern parents struggle with the fast pace of life? It's unclear, but to help solve such First World problems, many businesses now offer traditional caregiving services ranging from planning birthday pa ...

Article - News Staff - Aug 26 2014 - 11:45am

Prosperity Leads To Language Extinction

Should languages be conserved? There are 5,000 languages in the world right now and clearly a lack of ability to communicate is a big factor in war. Some of the languages are spoken by very small populations in remote areas and many languages have disappe ...

Article - News Staff - Sep 3 2014 - 11:01am

Islamic State's 'Medieval' Ideology Owes A Lot To Revolutionary France

A protest against the killing of journalists by the Islamic State. Credit: Mast Irham/EPA By Kevin McDonald, Middlesex University ...

Article - The Conversation - Sep 9 2014 - 11:00am

Blame Evolution For Chimpanzee Lethal Aggression, Not Humans

Is chimpanzee intergroup aggression like primitive warfare, an adaptive strategy that gives the perpetrators an edge, or is it the consequence of human activities, such as provisioning- artificial feeding- by researchers or habitat destruction? A new stud ...

Article - News Staff - Sep 17 2014 - 1:18pm

Double Mastectomy: 'Angelina Effect' Has Been Long-lasting

Referrals for genetic testing more than doubled across the UK after actress Angelina Jolie announced in May that she proactively underwent a double mastectomy due to testing positive for a BRCA1 gene mutation. The rise in referrals continued through to Oc ...

Article - News Staff - Sep 19 2014 - 12:01am

Doom And Gloom Won’t Do It – Here’s How To Sell The Climate Change Message

But which words will lead to action? Credit: EPA By James Painter, University of Oxford Each of the 125 leaders attending the New York climate summit this week has been given four minutes to speak to the world. They (or their aides) may well have dipped i ...

Article - The Conversation - Sep 23 2014 - 4:55pm

Levallois Technique Rethink: Stone Age Tools Not African Invention

A new discovery of thousands of Stone Age tools has provided a major rethink about human innovation 325,000 years ago- and how early technological developments spread across the world.  The researchers found evidence which challenges the belief that a typ ...

Article - News Staff - Sep 25 2014 - 2:24pm

Not Wimpy: Humans Braved The Northern Cold As Well As Neanderthals

In 1908 the famously plump Venus of Willendorf, thought to be a symbol of fecundity, was discovered during an excavation near the Austrian town of Melk. It has been dated to 30,000 years ago and is one of the world’s earliest examples of figurative art. No ...

Article - News Staff - Oct 1 2014 - 9:31am

Children Need To Play Outdoors, But We're Not Letting Them

Evidence shows children are getting less unsupervised time outdoors. Credit: Brian Yap (葉)/Flickr, CC BY-NC By Shelby Gull Laird and Laura McFarland-Piazza ...

Article - The Conversation - Oct 3 2014 - 9:02am

Transport, Trade And Travel

was the title of a history book I had as a boy.  Good things, in their way — without them, I wouldn’t be able to sit here talking to you all and meeting some very interesting people online.  But some decidedly unpleasant customers do all too often hitch a ...

Article - Robert H Olley - Oct 7 2014 - 2:05pm