Anthropology

A Gesture Is Worth A Thousand Words?

What sets human communication apart from lower animals is its compositionality, which means that units of meaning can be combined and new meanings can be constructed. The words "blue" and "car" have their own meanings but combined there ...

Article - News Staff - Mar 23 2021 - 1:00pm

Keeping Kosher Only Happened Gradually In Ancient Judea

An analysis of ancient fish bones from 30 archaeological sites in Israel and Sinai which date from the Late Bronze Age (1550-1130 BC) until the end of the Byzantine period (640 AD) finds that Judeans commonly ate non-kosher- lacking scales or fins- fish. ...

Article - News Staff - May 25 2021 - 12:42pm

Voices From Stone: How A Scottish Graveyard Reveals The Untold Stories Of Colonial Women In India

When I was a child growing up in Kolkata, I would hear stories about the European colonisation of Bengal – the precolonial name of India’s West Bengal. These were selective narratives from a particularly male perspective, and presented colonisers as trans ...

Article - The Conversation - Jun 22 2021 - 5:31am

Are Missing Fingers In Gargas Cave Paintings The First Known Sign Language?

(Inside Science)-- Tens of thousands of years ago in what is now Europe, people held their hands against cave walls and blew a spray of paint, leaving bare rock where their hands had rested. Many of these stencils show all five fingers, but in some, finge ...

Article - Inside Science - Jun 28 2021 - 1:39pm

Do Airbnb Listings Increase Crime?

There is a belief that Airbnb listings cause increased crime in residential neighborhoods- or at least annoying late-night parties which increase risk of crimes. However, a new paper suggests that while Airbnb listings can be linked to a reduction in the l ...

Article - News Staff - Jul 15 2021 - 9:42am

Pessimism Makes The Headlines But The World Is Getting Better

Pessimistic s cenari ...

Article - Eduard Petiška - Aug 30 2021 - 3:50pm

Like Western Civilization? Thank Dairy Farming

Not a lot is truly known about the cultural world of early mankind but one thing is settled; when food insecurity dropped and it became more affordable, in terms of time or money, culture flourished and expansion began. Domestication of animals and farming ...

Article - Hank Campbell - Sep 22 2021 - 12:14pm

The Liao River Valley Is The Birthplace Of 100 Trans-Eurasian Dialects And Languages

A new paper reaffirms how humankind's embrace of agriculture, and resulting lower 'cost' of food, led to a cultural boom that resulted in mass migration and many of the world's major language families. If you speak modern Japanese, Kor ...

Article - News Staff - Nov 10 2021 - 5:43pm

Health Disinformation Didn't Start With COVID-19, Lessons From The Past Can Help Combat It

Anti-vaccine sentiment is not new but from the 1950s until the late 1990s it was isolated small pockets of deniers. With claims that MMR vaccines, and then preservatives in vaccines, caused autism, the west coast of America became overrun with vaccine deni ...

Article - News Staff - Nov 14 2021 - 12:36pm

Single In America: What COVID-19 Has Changed About Dating Since 2020

A demographically representative sample of 5,000 single adults between the ages of 18 and 98 finds a big switch in a post-pandemic world; only 78 percent believe being physically attractive is most important, compared to 90 percent in 2020. And marriage is ...

Article - News Staff - Nov 22 2021 - 6:23pm