Anthropology

Raiders Of The Lost Arawaks: Columbus Was Not Exaggerating About Caribbean Cannibalism

When Christopher Columbus discovered a continent unknown to Europeans, his accounts included harrowing descriptions of native pirates who cannibalized men and kept women as sex slaves, but more recent humanities scholars, even ones who readily accept oral ...

Article - News Staff - Jan 10 2020 - 12:20pm

The War On Baby Formula Goes Global- And It Will Keep Women Out Of The Work Force

Infant formula was the great liberator for working moms who wanted to have careers but in the last decade there has been a backlash against it, often adopting the veil of scientific legitimacy. ...

Article - News Staff - Jan 14 2020 - 6:41pm

Why There Are Seven Days In A Week

Waiting for the weekend can often seem unbearable, a whole seven days between Saturdays. Having seven days in a week has been the case for a very long time, and so people don’t often stop to ask why. Most of our time reckoning is due to the movements of t ...

Article - The Conversation - Jan 18 2020 - 7:30am

War-Mongers Get The Girls: The Biological Spoils Of Battle

About 10 percent of Asia can claim to be descended from Genghis Khan and they are absolutely correct, genetic studies show; the reason is that part of the benefit to rampaging across Asia, the mid-East and into Europe was a lot of sex. But it isn't j ...

Article - News Staff - Jan 27 2020 - 3:01pm

Cultural Group Selection Theory: Cooperation As An Outcome Of Competition?

It doesn't seem like it if you watch political news but humans are unusually cooperative. We are unique in that we often cooperate with genetically unrelated strangers. Nurses, firefighters, helping someone who dropped a package, standing in line, the ...

Article - News Staff - Feb 4 2020 - 5:25pm

For Valentine's Day, Generation Z Wants Casual Hookups

As we lick our Valentine card envelopes and slip into something more comfortable, it’s a good time to ponder our sexual relationships. ...

Article - The Conversation - Feb 11 2020 - 8:30am

Chinese Eugenics Upside: It Reduced The Education Gap Among Women

Much has been made of Chinese student achievement test scores, but inconvenient confounders are often ignored, such as that Chinese learn by rote. No teach in America wants to do that. Teachers are poorly paid and clean their own toilets. And only elite ki ...

Article - News Staff - Feb 13 2020 - 8:00am

The Alternative Facts Of Ancient Greece

In an age of deepfakes and alternative facts, it can be tricky getting at the truth. But persuading others – or even yourself – what is true is not a challenge unique to the modern era. Even the ancient Greeks had to confront different realities. ...

Article - The Conversation - Feb 25 2020 - 7:30am

The Mystery Of Russia's Ancient Bone Circles

In Ukraine and the west Russian Plain, there remain mysterious bone circles made from the remains of dozens of mammoths long ago.  About 70 of them are known to exist. One, outside the modern village of Kostenki 250 miles south of Moscow, has been dated to ...

Article - News Staff - Mar 16 2020 - 11:32pm

Extinction: Maybe Cro-Magnon Wiped Out Neanderthals After All

Why is Homo neanderthalensis gone while Homo sapiens have bent the world to our will?  In recent years, there has been speculation that climate change wiped out Neanderthal people, or interbreeding with us, since many of us have DNA shared by Neanderthals ...

Article - Hank Campbell - May 20 2020 - 1:02pm