HENRY - The human evolution news relay
Entries in the ' anthropology ' category
Written July 13, 2008 in anthropology, cultural evolution, evolution, genetics, language, linguistics, phylogenetics
In today’s, Evolution: Education and Outreach, Anastasia Thanukos takes A Look at Linguistic Evolution:
Anyone who has ever tackled a Shakespeare play knows that English has changed substantially in the 400 years since Elizabeth I ruled England. In fact, Elizabethan English can seem like a completely different language from the one we speak today. Just try describing [...]
Written July 9, 2008 in africa, americas, anthropology, europe, genetics, human prehistory, mtDNA
Scientific American covers the human diaspora in a nice broad-brush overview:
Fifty or sixty thousand years ago a small band of Africans—a few hundred or even several thousand—crossed the strait in tiny boats, never to return.
The reason they left their homeland in eastern Africa is not completely understood. Perhaps the climate changed, or once abundant shellfish [...]
Written July 4, 2008 in anthropology, cultural evolution, europe, evolution, genetics, human prehistory, it-was-better-in-my-day, language, music, stupidity
….and the award for the stupidest science story I’ve seen in months goes to LiveScience.com for “Cave Men Loved to Sing“, in which we’re told that our cave-dwelling ancestors used echo-location:
With only dull light available from a torch, which couldn’t be carried into very narrow passages, the ancient hunters had to use their voices like [...]
& in P.N.A.S. - Is an eclipse described in the Odyssey?
Plutarch and Heraclitus believed a certain passage in the 20th book of the Odyssey (”Theoclymenus’s prophecy”) to be a poetic description of a total solar eclipse. In the late 1920s, Schoch and Neugebauer computed that the solar eclipse of 16 April 1178 B.C.E. was total [...]
Written June 24, 2008 in anthropology, cultural evolution, evolution, genetics, human prehistory, people
Paul Ehrlich talks about his recent study of Polynesian canoes, and whether human culture evolves via natural selection:
Biologists have a pretty good idea of both how flies become resistant to DDT and how humans and primates have diverged over time. That’s because the mechanism underlying these processes is the same. Using evolution we can understand [...]
Remember the amazing lost tribe that was being hawked all over the news a few weeks ago? Ahh, not so lost after all. The real story is actually a whole lot more interesting:
…far from being unknown, the tribe’s existence has been noted since 1910 and the mission to photograph them was undertaken in order to prove that ‘uncontacted’ tribes still existed in an area endangered by the menace of the logging industry….
According to his account, the Brazilian state of Acre offered him the use of an aircraft for three days. ‘I had years of GPS co-ordinates,’ he said. Meirelles had another clue to the tribe’s precise location. ‘A friend of mine sent me some Google Earth co-ordinates and maps that showed a strange clearing in the middle of the forest and asked me what that was,’ he said. ‘I saw the co-ordinates and realised that it was close to the area I had been exploring with my son – so I needed to fly over it.’…
…’When I saw them painted red, I was satisfied, I was happy,’ he said. ‘Because painted red means they are ready for war, which to me says they are happy and healthy defending their territory.‘
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Hanging from the neck of a live goose. Chasing a speeding wheel of cheese down a mountainside. Children smoking. Europeans do all of this and more…. Everyone knows about that annual tempting of fate known as running with the bulls in Pamplona. It’s one of those festivals that make the saner among us scratch our heads in confusion and wonder, “How was that ever a good idea?“
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