Anthropology

Competition Gets The Blame For Our Oversized Brain (Not Global Warming)

Human brains have tripled in size over the past 2 million years,  growing much faster than those of other mammals. What might the reasons be for such dramatic brain expansion? University of Missouri researchers studied three hypotheses for brain growth: ec ...

Article - News Staff - Jun 22 2009 - 2:06pm

Why Are Some Soccer Players Better Than Others?

Yesterday, the Brazilian national team overcame a 2 goal deficit to defeat the USA squad 3-2 in the final of the Confederations Cup.   The unheralded USA team was a surprise but  teams always are until they achieve big wins over a period of time.    Then i ...

Article - News Staff - Jun 29 2009 - 9:13am

Deducing Societal Trends From Second Life

Do friends wear the same clothes or see the same movies because they have similar tastes, part of the reason they became friends or, once a friendship is established, do individuals influence each other to adopt like behaviors?  Social scientists don' ...

Article - News Staff - Jul 3 2009 - 1:20pm

CSI Neanderthal: Interspecies Homicide Of Shanidar 3

Neanderthals were stoutly-built and human-like and lived at the same time and in the same areas as some modern humans.  But they went extinct. Anthropologists have tried to solve the mystery of Neanderthal's fate since the first fossils were discovere ...

Article - News Staff - Jul 20 2009 - 3:21pm

Australian Aborigines Were Once Indians- Study

New genetic research in BMC Evolutionary Biology found telltale mutations in modern-day Indian populations that are exclusively shared by Aborigines.  The new study indicates that Australian Aborigines initially arrived via south Asia. Dr Raghavendra Rao w ...

Article - News Staff - Jul 21 2009 - 6:39pm

The Linguist Challenge- Classifying A Click

If you were a linguist, how would you accurately describe 'click' sounds distinct to certain African languages?   It's no easy task but in order to accurately preserve a language like N|uu, which has fewer than 10 remaining speakers (and all ...

Article - News Staff - Jul 25 2009 - 9:44am

Is There A Semantic Organization Of Human Language?

Language networks are built based on different principles and, for the most part, are designed to be scale-free.  Global statistical properties of language networks are independent of linguistic structure and typology so do linguistic structures really inf ...

Article - News Staff - Aug 11 2009 - 9:57am

Qesem Cave Hypothesis- Lower Paleolithic Humans Deserve More Hunting Respect

Did late Lower Paleolithic people hunt or were they scavengers?    A University of Arizona anthropologist says that humans living at a Paleolithic cave site (Qesem Cave) in central Israel between 400,000 and 250,000 years ago were as successful at big-game ...

Article - News Staff - Aug 13 2009 - 9:49am

Candomblé- Modern Day Animal Sacrifice Without The Zeitgeist

Want to drive  the politically correct segment of academia into a  tailspin?   Tell them there's a group of people hurting animals and watch the outrage.   Then tell them they are religious and watch it grow.   But then tell them they are a South Amer ...

Article - News Staff - Aug 25 2009 - 10:30pm

Lost Sounds Orchestra: Ancient Musical Instruments Brought Back To Life

Do you long to hear the dulcet sounds of the salpinx, barbiton, aulos or the syrinx?   Of course not, because no one has heard them in centuries.   Most people have never even heard of them. But you will soon have the chance to experience musical instrumen ...

Article - News Staff - Aug 30 2009 - 1:07pm