Anthropology

Small Talk Could Serve An Evolutionary Need To Bond With Others

We think of small talk as a way to pass the time or kill an awkward silence but a group of evolutionary psychologists are suggesting that these idle conversations could be a social-bonding tool passed down through evolution- well, in their press release t ...

Article - News Staff - Dec 21 2015 - 9:36am

Then And Now: Religion And Politics Mean Social Tension And Conflict

Though we like to think we are more enlightened, advanced or progressive than in the past, it really isn't so. We aren't all that different from 2,000 years ago- kids were kids, parents worried the new generation would doom society, and people f ...

Article - News Staff - Dec 21 2015 - 2:57pm

Crows On Film: Fashioning Tools Or Anthropomorphism?

Scholars say video recordings show that tropical corvids fashion complex tools in the wild. The team attached tiny video 'spy-cameras'  to the crows to observe their natural foraging behavior and say there were two instances of hooked stick tool ...

Article - News Staff - Dec 23 2015 - 9:02am

Holly, Ivy And Other Pagan Practices Of Christmas

Every year, almost without thinking about it, we incorporate certain plant species into our Christmas celebrations. The most obvious is the Christmas tree, linked historically in England to Prince Albert – but its use in British homes goes back to at leas ...

Article - The Conversation - Dec 24 2015 - 10:52am

Parents Play A Role In Preventing Teen Fighting

Nearly 25 percent of all teens reported being involved in a physical fight in the past year, with higher rates of violent altercations among African-American and Latin-American adolescents than European-American ones. To find out why, scholars writing in  ...

Article - News Staff - Dec 30 2015 - 2:42pm

Why Americans Can Never Be Happy- Genes?

For as much time as Americans spend saying it is the greatest country on Earth, a whole lot of people worry about creating safe spaces where free expression is not allowed, or protesting the behavior of people they don't like. ...

Article - News Staff - Jan 17 2016 - 12:25pm

Blame Global Warming On Christopher Columbus? Not So Fast

As Europeans spread across the New World, native Americans were overmatched. People who had never even learned how to write were up against soldiers with muskets- and new diseases they had no immunity against. But lost in all of the anthropological specul ...

Article - News Staff - Jan 25 2016 - 5:00pm

What Species Would Dominate If Humans Went Extinct?

In a post-apocalyptic future, what might happen to life if humans left the scene? After all, humans are very likely to disappear long before the sun expands into a red giant and exterminates all living things from the Earth. Assuming that we don’t extingui ...

Article - The Conversation - Jan 27 2016 - 9:30am

4 Ways To Stop Online Bullying

Bullying is a common technique to gain power or prestige, and has been for as long as humans and other animals have existed. It can take many forms. School yard tactics, like taking lunch money, have grown into Internet campaigns, such as tormenting kids ...

Article - News Staff - Jan 27 2016 - 8:58am

Internet Searches Reflect Increase In E-Cigarette Popularity

The Oxford Dictionaries selected "vape"--as in, to smoke from an electronic cigarette or inhalation device--as word of the year in 2014. Internet users' search behavior tells a similar story.  ...

Article - News Staff - Feb 11 2016 - 9:12am