Anthropology

The Rapid Bursts Of Language Evolution

Scientists at the University of Reading have discovered that languages change and evolve in rapid bursts rather than in a steady pattern. The research in Science investigates thousands of years of language evolution, and looks at the way in which languages ...

Article - News Staff - Feb 3 2008 - 6:16pm

The Big Burp And The Evolution Of Elements

In The Big Bang and the Birth of Culture, we talked about the beginning of culture long before what anthropologists had previously assumed. In Supersynchrony And The Evolution Of Mass Culture, we talked about how even the most primitive components of the u ...

Article - Howard Bloom - Feb 5 2008 - 6:24pm

Don't Blame Europe: Lice Arrived 500 Years Before Columbus

Lice from 1,000-year-old mummies in Peru may unravel important clues about a different sort of passage: the migration patterns of America’s earliest humans, a new University of Florida study suggests. “It’s kind of quirky that a parasite we love to hate ca ...

Article - News Staff - Feb 7 2008 - 1:09pm

The Legacy Of Viking Invasions In Northwest England

According to a study in Molecular Biology and Evolution, the Vikings never left Northwest England- up to 50 percent of the DNA they found in men had Scandinavian ancestry. The 100 men in the study were primarily from the Wirral in Merseyside and West Lanca ...

Article - News Staff - Feb 10 2008 - 6:30am

Human Migration: The 20,000 Year Beringian Layover

The human journey from Asia to the New World was interrupted by a 20,000-year layover in Beringia, a once-habitable region that today lies submerged under the icy waters of the Bering Strait. Furthermore, the New World was colonized by approximately 1,000 ...

Article - News Staff - Feb 13 2008 - 12:30am

Neanderthal Nomads

A 40,000-year-old tooth has provided scientists with the first direct evidence that Neanderthals moved from place to place during their lifetimes. In a collaborative project involving researchers from the Germany, the United Kingdom, and Greece, Professor ...

Article - News Staff - Feb 16 2008 - 2:13am

Impact Of Original Migration Still Seen In Harmful Genetic Variations Of Europeans

Human migration from Africa to Europe more than 30,000 years ago is still visible in the genes of Europeans today- and because the numbers were small, the harmful variations were magnified as time passed. A study in the Feb. 21 issue of Nature compared mor ...

Article - News Staff - Feb 20 2008 - 1:43pm

Mayan Equality- Not Just Royalty Were Allowed To Build Temples For Human Sacrifice

An intrepid archaeologist is well on her way to dislodging the prevailing assumptions of scholars about the people who built and used Maya temples. From the grueling work of analyzing the “attributes,” the nitty-gritty physical details of six temples in Ya ...

Article - News Staff - Feb 25 2008 - 3:51pm

Study: Vikings More Metrosexual Than Previously Believed

Vivid colors, flowing silk ribbons, and glittering bits of mirrors- the Vikings dressed with considerably more panache than we previously thought. The men were especially vain, and the women dressed provocatively, but with the advent of Christianity, fashi ...

Article - News Staff - Feb 25 2008 - 4:57pm

Maya Blue Ancient Pigment Mystery Solved

Anthropologists from Wheaton College (Illinois) and The Field Museum have discovered how the ancient Maya produced an unusual and widely studied blue pigment that was used in offerings, pottery, murals and other contexts across Mesoamerica from about A.D. ...

Article - News Staff - Feb 26 2008 - 8:09pm