"Dance," the policeman instructed. The girls in front of him, naked from the waist up, obeyed. A tourist's camera panned round to another young woman, also naked and awkwardly holding a bag of grain in front of her. "Dance for me," the policeman commanded.
The young woman giggled, looked shy and hopped from foot to [...]
Ping! The other day, I got a Facebook friend request in my in box. This is now a relatively rare occurrence – I’m long past the frenzy of those first few Facebook months when friend-finding was more satisfying and addictive than chocolate, and I’m done gorging myself on it all. But, intrigued, I opened it [...]
The Kumeyaay people practice their traditions and revive native crafts in remote areas of Mexico and California as encroaching civilization brings electricity and running water.
–For the Kumeyaay, ancient ways and modern times – latimes.com
The story of the evolution of modern humans can be a bit confusing, species-wise, with many early hominins co-existing without an obvious linear succession. But, geographically, all the action has appeared to take place in Africa, at least until the appearance of Homo erectus, which left Africa and spread globally, only to be replaced by [...]
In the first century AD, a Greek geographer and historian named Strabo noted that a peninsula just south of Athens called Piraeus had, at one time in the past, been an island. It's unusual for landforms to change so quickly that humans can take notice, even over generations, so that's a pretty interesting claim. The [...]
When Lévi-Strauss at last reached the Nambikwara after an 800-mile trek, the encounter shattered his romantic expectations. "I had been looking for a society reduced to its simplest expression," he wrote, and "that of the Nambikwara was so truly simple that all I could find in it was individual human beings." The men of the [...]
Peter N. Peregrine, courtesy of Alice Domurat Dreger:
Dear Supporters of Anthropological Science,
I write as President of the Society for Anthropological Sciences (SAS) to inform you of a troubling development that occurred at the Executive Board (EB) meeting of the American Anthropological Association (AAA) this past weekend. The EB adopted a new [...]
In The Onion – Archaeologists Unearth Lousiest Civilization Ever:
Archaeologists working in a remote section of the Amazon Rainforest announced Tuesday that they have discovered the ancient remnants of what they claimed may be the lousiest civilization in human history.
According to Dr. Ronald Farber, a professor from the University of Minnesota who [...]
Kon-Tiki is a Norwegian documentary about the Kon-Tiki expedition led by Norwegian explorer and writer Thor Heyerdahl in 1947, released in 1950. The movie, which was directed by Thor Heyerdahl and edited by Olle Nordemar, received the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature at the 24th Academy Awards in 1951. The Oscar officially went to Olle Nordemar. It [...]
