Anthropology

Y Chromosome Evidence For South American Colonization 18,000 Years Ago

The history of humans is a history of expansion, from the recesses of Africa outward across the world. No one is really a native and yet everyone is, because all humans were first an invasive species but if you are born in a place, you are then native.  So ...

Article - News Staff - Aug 19 2022 - 12:45pm

You're Probably More Neanderthal Than You Think

Once upon a time, terms like 'primate' and 'Neanderthal' were used as joke insults, but they are both entirely true, and the latter even more so now. Unlike databases of where people live such as companies like Ancestry uses to claim &# ...

Article - News Staff - Aug 23 2022 - 11:39pm

Banquets Of The Dead In Roman Spain

It is common today to have food, or even a feast, to memorialize the dead. It is a legacy from ancient times. Across the Roman Empire, funerary rituals were conducted to ensure the protection of deities and the memory of the deceased.  They were required b ...

Article - News Staff - Aug 26 2022 - 9:57am

Culture Wars

Count the times the word “culture” came out of reporters’ mouths last week, and you’d think they were anthropologists. Usually in this context: “The culture of white supremacy has gone fully mainstream.* “The bedrock idea uniting right-wing communities…  ...

Article - Fred Phillips - Nov 24 2022 - 1:10pm

How Cats Went From Pest Control To Pet 10,000 Years Ago

The most popular pets are cats and dogs but their origins as human companions are much different. Dogs became domesticated during the ice age 23,000 years ago as humans and wolves co-habitated in tolerable refuge areas. Scavenging and then feeding by human ...

Article - News Staff - Dec 5 2022 - 2:23pm

The Animals We See As Friends Versus Food

Ask a hunting guide about what your first experience as a novice hunter should be and they will say a turkey. No one ever cried over eating turkey whereas a rabbit would be a bad idea for many. A new survey in Human-Animal Interactions attempted to assess ...

Article - Hank Campbell - Dec 12 2022 - 12:02am

Anthropologists Link Monogamy To Significant Inequalities Among Women

Cooperative breeders, where we count on the help of others to raise offspring,is not unique to humans. It may only appear that way. A new paper amassed data from 90 human populations comprising 80,223 individuals from many parts of the world — both histori ...

Article - News Staff - Jun 12 2023 - 4:27pm

Cannibalism Is Our 1.5 Million-Year-Old Legacy, And For Other Animals It's Much Longer

Nearly 3 million years ago, early human ancestors used some of the oldest stone tools ever found to butcher hippos and pound plant material, and for half that time they were butchering each other- a new paper says 1.45 million years of killing each other f ...

Article - News Staff - Jun 26 2023 - 10:09am

Slaves, Servants At Machu Picchu Came From Lands Incans Colonized

The first investigation of the genomic diversity of individuals buried at Machu Picchu and adjacent places around Cusco, the Inca capital finds that the mitmas- slaves- and members of the empire who were forced to serve elites and lived, worked, and died a ...

Article - News Staff - Jul 26 2023 - 3:15pm

How Did Neanderthals Come Up With The Idea For Birch Tar? New Paper Reveals Cognition Clues

Both Neanderthal and early modern humans used birch tar- the first time in known history that a new material came into use. Coming up with it is one thing, but finding a way to scale it is more challenging. ...

Article - News Staff - Sep 25 2023 - 12:39pm