Anthropology

Scientists in Madagascar, at the American Museum of Natural History in New York and the Vienna Natural History Museum and at the University of Massachusetts Amherst now have a nearly complete…

A new study in the Journal of Marriage and Family found that serial cohabiters are less likely than single-instance cohabiting unions to result in marriage and, if serial cohabiters do marry, divorce…

A 19th-century historian traveling in southern Ohio later wrote about his first glimpse of Union Village, a Shaker community located near Harrison, Ohio: "When I caught sight of the first house, my…

The ability to make fire millennia ago was likely a key factor in the migration of prehistoric hominids from Africa into Eurasia, a researcher at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem's Institute of…

As promised in my previous post, I would like to bring to people’s attention one of the best reviews of scientific investigations of religion as a social phenomenon, a paper published in Science (3…

Cremation, "air burial," grave cairns, funeral mounds, mummification, belief in life after death – death practices sacred to one culture are often considered "odd" or even terrifying by another. The…

Want to cause a fight between anthropologists and evolutionary biologists? Throw out an opinion on whether early societies were heirarchical or egalitarian. Great apes societies are very…

Belief in God encourages people to be helpful, honest and generous, but only under certain psychological conditions, according to University of British Columbia researchers who analyzed the past…

Countries with strict social rules and behavioral etiquette may foster unruly drinking cultures and characteristic bad behavior, according to a new report on alcohol and violence released today by…

Researchers say they have found evidence that supports the idea that the emergence of agriculture in prehistory took much longer than originally thought. Until recently researchers say the story of…