Anthropology

Modern Humans Colonized Europe And Asia 70,000 Years Ago

Modern humans date back only about 200,000 years. How did that turn into the population of the planet and the extinction of Neanderthals? We have to leave the world of science to speculate on that but physical evidence does provide some guideposts. Fossil ...

Article - News Staff - Jan 29 2015 - 11:34am

Bowhunting As Neolithic Status Symbol

Bowhunting has made a big comeback in the 21st century. Suddenly women love it- and their inclination to shoot something up close and personal without getting their hands messy is reason enough not to provoke American women. But it won't be for food, ...

Article - News Staff - Feb 2 2015 - 11:54am

Aidan, Sex And The City, And How 'Spontaneous' Social Norms Emerge

15 years ago, the name "Aidan" was barely a blip on the radar of Americans with new babies, ranking a lowly 324th on the Social Security Administration's list of popular baby names. Then a popular character with that name was on the televisi ...

Article - News Staff - Feb 3 2015 - 4:55pm

Educated, White Collar People Disavow Collectivism, Embrace Individualism Over Time

The American century was the result of a can-do attitude born in the 19th century. As prosperity began to increase, collectives, such as unions, became the norm, and they were endorsed by many educated elites- but they were still promoting individualism in ...

Article - News Staff - Feb 5 2015 - 3:44pm

Ancient Romans Ate Meals Most Americans Would Recognize

By Joel N. Shurkin, Inside Science-- Let's pretend it is 56 B.C. and you have been fortunate enough to be invited to a party at the home of Lucius Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus, a great social coup. Piso, after all, was Julius Caesar's father-in-la ...

Article - Joel Shurkin - May 25 2015 - 11:10am

This Valentine's Day, Take Another Little Piece Of My Heart- Or Hair

Bits of the self have historically been un memoire emotional aides. Cristiana Gasparotto As Valentine’s Day approaches, many of us will think about sharing a token of our affection. The ubiquitous card is often teamed with a staple of the season: chocolat ...

Article - The Conversation - Feb 13 2015 - 9:00am

Calotte Fossil Skull Connects Continents- And Shows How The First Modern Humans Came To Europe

In Manot, a karstic cave in the North of Israel close to the Lebanese border, excavations that began in 2010 have documented the peopling of the cave for over 100,000 years. Around 30,000 years ago, the roof of the cave collapsed and sealed the archaeologi ...

Article - News Staff - Feb 14 2015 - 8:01pm

Real Paleo Diet: Anything Early Hominids Could Find

Early hominids didn’t have a lot of time to whip up coconut flour pancakes. Credit: United Artists Reconstructions of human evolution are prone to simple, overly-tidy scenarios. Our ancestors, for example, stood on two legs to look over tall grass, or beg ...

Article - The Conversation - Feb 17 2015 - 2:09pm

Out Of Africa Due To Weather: Did Climate Change Cause Early Human Migration?

Why did the first human populations migrate out of Africa? It is the biggest debate in anthropology but no one can be sure of the answer. When it happened can at least be an informed debate and two hypotheses dominate the cultural landscape- but they both ...

Article - News Staff - Feb 20 2015 - 10:14am

Vikings Were Craftsmen Too

The connections between technology, urban trading, and international economics which have come to define modern living are nothing new. Back in the first millennium AD, the Vikings were expert at exploring these very issues. ...

Article - The Conversation - Feb 20 2015 - 11:08am