Anthropology

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

Peace Through Partying At The Sorceror's Wake

At the Hilazon Tachtit cave site, before it was Israel, before King David even fought the Philistines, the area north of Nazareth and west of the Sea of Galilee was populated by Natufians, an early settled people, and in 2008 archaeologists revealed detail ...

Article - Hank Campbell - Oct 1 2023 - 12:49pm

How Would You Interpret 'Blue' And 'Green' If Your Language Lacked Those Words

If you visit Japan, you may be surprised that Japanese traffic lights have blue on go rather than the green in the U.S. Actually, green is the standard there, just as red is, they just have a different definition of green. It is rather common that things w ...

Article - News Staff - Nov 24 2023 - 3:17pm

The Predicament Of Diversity: No One Agrees On What It Means

“Diversity” as a concept has a lexical and political value all its own, with a widespread appeal. The problem with that is, however, that no one actually has the same idea of what diversity actually means. There is some consensus that the concept has, ove ...

Article - The Conversation - Dec 26 2023 - 2:58pm

Minorities Don't Buy Populist Rhetoric Of Either US Party As Much As Whites Do

America is one of the most religiously, racially and ethnically diverse countries in the world, but that doesn't mean Latinos, Asians or Blacks believe that Democrats and Republicans want them as anything more than reliable voting blocs. A new analysi ...

Article - Hank Campbell - Jan 31 2024 - 10:43am

Social Media Brings Out Our Baser Natures- Anger Is Rising In Democracies

Like old media such as newspapers and televisions, content on social media is tailored toward audience engagement. Television and newspapers have long known that 'dead bodies sell' but in social media it can be sold in real-time. It has sped up i ...

Article - Hank Campbell - Mar 12 2024 - 2:00pm

Civilization (And Beer): An Enormous Improvement On The Lack Thereof

Fermentation Came First Evidence mounts almost daily that beer started humans on the path to civilization even before the invention of agriculture some twelve thousand years ago. A paper in Evolutionary Anthropology says that, based on tests of artifacts, ...

Article - Norm Benson - Apr 8 2024 - 3:33pm

The Oldest Profession May Be Fashion Design

There are five professions(1) but lots of occupations and trades lay claim to being the oldest one despite predating the concept by millennia. Farming is around 14,000 years old but a new study reveals one less-considered trade predates it by tens of thous ...

Article - News Staff - Jul 1 2024 - 11:07am