Anthropology posts
- March 15, 2010
- 11:37 PM
- 14 views
A Gene Story: the Negritos’ Early Southern Migration
by bonvito in time travelling
Current Biology’s article, The Human Genetic History of East Asia: Weaving a Complex Tapestry, presents another interesting evidence on the peopling of East Asia using evidences from mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) and non-recombining Y chromosomes (NRY) haplogroups.
Stoneking and Delfin’s genetic evidence presented an early southern dispersal that created refugia populations. The authors suggested that Philippine Negritos, [...]... Read more »
Stoneking, M., & Delfin, F. (2010) The Human Genetic History of East Asia: Weaving a Complex Tapestry. Current Biology, 20(4). DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2009.11.052
- March 15, 2010
- 05:52 AM
- 57 views
How to Stop Smoking
by Neuroskeptic in Neuroskeptic
1. Don't smoke.2. See 1.This is essentially what Simon Chapman and Ross MacKenzie suggest in a provocative PloS Medicine paper, The Global Research Neglect of Unassisted Smoking Cessation: Causes and Consequences.Their point is deceptively simple: there is lots of research looking at drugs and other treatments to help people quit smoking tobacco, but little attention is paid to people who quit without any help, despite the fact that the majority (up to 75%) of quitters do just that. This is good........ Read more »
Chapman S, & MacKenzie R. (2010) The global research neglect of unassisted smoking cessation: causes and consequences. PLoS medicine, 7(2). PMID: 20161722
- March 12, 2010
- 03:40 PM
- 44 views
Explain your total sheep played
by Simon Halliday in Amanuensis
When you come across a line like this in a paper, you can't help but laugh, "We now discuss and explain the cumulative number of sheep played in all rounds of the game." Yes, subjects played sheep. You may wonder how. I shall attempt to explain.In three papers based on work in South Africa and Namibia, Bjørn Vollan and, in one paper, his co-author Bernd Hayo investigate several different experiments with the Nama people. They ran trust games, trust games with third party punishment, and commo........ Read more »
Vollan, B. (2008) Socio-ecological explanations for crowding-out effects from economic field experiments in southern Africa. Ecological Economics, 67(4), 560-573. DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2008.01.015
- March 12, 2010
- 02:45 PM
- 45 views
Chasing Datura
by teofilo in Gambler's House
When I was discussing the archaeoacoustics of Chaco earlier, I mentioned that I was a little dubious about some of the stuff John Stein and Taft Blackhorse had said about Navajo connections to the Chaco Amphitheater. They associate it with a ceremonial tradition involving the ritual use of datura. There’s an immense anthropological literature on [...]... Read more »
Wyman, L., & Thorne, B. (1945) Notes on Navaho Suicide. American Anthropologist, 47(2), 278-288. DOI: 10.1525/aa.1945.47.2.02a00070
- March 11, 2010
- 10:18 PM
- 67 views
You know your ‘type’? It’s stress dependent…
by aimee in misc.ience
A number of interesting revelations to be had here, and all to do with our choices of ‘mate’.
And by mate, I don’t mean the antipodean colloquialism meaning ‘friend’. Nope, I mean mate as in, you know, someone you want to shag. As it were.
The first revelation in this paper* is that, for the most part, [...]
[Click on the hyperlinked headline for more of the goodness]... Read more »
Lass-Hennemann, J., Deuter, C., Kuehl, L., Schulz, A., Blumenthal, T., & Schachinger, H. (2010) Effects of stress on human mating preferences: stressed individuals prefer dissimilar mates. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2010.0258
- March 11, 2010
- 03:36 PM
- 54 views
It’s Official – Fathers ARE Important to their Childrens’ Upbringing
by Isabelle Winder in Going Ape
David Cameron’s “Broken Britain”, with its image of moral decay driven by the breakdown in family life and poverty, may be inciting a lot of debate in parliament and the public press, but to read many studies of human evolution, you might be mistaken for thinking that the human male has never actually played a meaningful role in childcare. Most evolutionary studies focus on female life history – age at first reproduction, number of offspring and interbirth interval, for example – to th........ Read more »
Gettler, L.T. (2010) Direct male care and hominin evolution: why male-child interaction is more than just a nice social idea. . American Anthropologist, 112(1), 7-21. info:/10.1111/j.1548-1433.2009.01193.x
- March 11, 2010
- 11:00 AM
- 43 views
Coca-Cola and Water Use in India: "Good Till the Last Drop"
by Eric Michael Johnson in The Primate Diaries
Coca-Cola sucks India dry. Image: Carlos Latuff / Wikimedia CommonsThe marketing executive who came up with Coca-Cola's popular slogan in 1908 most likely never expected it would be taken so literally. However, a hundred years ago there probably weren't many who imagined a term like "water wars" could exist in a region that experiences annual monsoons.
On Feb........ Read more »
AIYER, A. (2007) THE ALLURE OF THE TRANSNATIONAL: Notes on Some Aspects of the Political Economy of Water in India. Cultural Anthropology, 22(4), 640-658. DOI: 10.1525/can.2007.22.4.640
- March 11, 2010
- 09:37 AM
- 22 views
Trusting and Bargaining in Africa
by Simon Halliday in Amanuensis
Are we Africans different to the rest of the world in our giving, punishing and trusting behaviour? Three remarkable economic anthropology studies try to examine this kind of question with several ethnic groups in four countries: the Pimbwe, Sukuma and Kahama in Tanzania, the Maasai of Kenya and the Ju/'hoan Bushmen of Namibia and Botswana. I can't to do any of the papers justice with my short comments, but I thought you might find them interesting nevertheless.The three papers take quite diffe........ Read more »
Wiessner, P. (2009) Experimental Games and Games of Life among the Ju/’hoan Bushmen. Current Anthropology, 50(1), 133-138. DOI: 10.1086/595622
- March 10, 2010
- 03:50 PM
- 31 views
Ancient DNA Isolated from Fossil Eggshells May Provide Clues to Eggstinction of Giant Birds
by GrrlScientist in Living the Scientific Life (Scientist, Interrupted)
tags: evolution, evolutionary biology, ancient DNA, aDNA, molecular biology, molecular ecology, archaeology, paleontology, fossil eggshell, extinct birds, giant moa, Dinornis robustus, elephant birds, Aepyornis maximus, Mullerornis, Thunderbirds, Genyornis, bpr3.org/?p=52,peer-reviewed research, peer-reviewed paper, journal club
Elephant bird, Aepyornis maximus, egg
compared to a human hand with a hummingbird egg balanced on a fingertip.
To conduct my avian research, I've isolated and........ Read more »
Charlotte L. Oskam, James Haile, Emma McLay, Paul Rigby, Morten E. Allentoft, Maia E. Olsen, Camilla Bengtsson, Gifford H. Miller, Jean-Luc Schwenninger, Chris Jacomb, Richard Walter, Alexander Baynes, Joe Dortch, Michael Parker-Pearson, M. Thomas P. Gilb. (2010) Fossil avian eggshell preserves ancient DNA. Proc. R. Soc. B. info:/10.1098/rspb.2009.2019
- March 9, 2010
- 02:35 PM
- 57 views
Evolutionary history of early primates places human origins in context
A simplified evolutionary tree of primate relationships showing the placement of Darwinius in relationship to other groups. From Williams et al., 2010.
The study of human origins can be a paradoxical thing. We know that we evolved from ancestral apes (and, in fact, are just one peculiar kind of ape), yet we are obsessed with the features that distinguish us from our close relatives. The "big questions" in evolutionary anthropology, from why we stand upright to how our brains became so larg........ Read more »
Williams, B., Kay, R., & Kirk, E. (2010) New perspectives on anthropoid origins. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0908320107
- March 9, 2010
- 09:04 AM
- 60 views
Sleep deprivation impairs emotion recognition
by William Lu in The Quantum Lobe Chronicles
The ability to read emotions is an important part of the human experience; the only way to successfully navigate through complex social environments. It comes in handy especially if you don the title of psychotherapist or professional poker player. Without it, you become socially inept. You enter the world of the autistic individual.Thanks to Charles Darwin we now know that it’s not just the eyes that are “the windows to the soul”. He first wrote about the subject of facial expressions in ........ Read more »
van der Helm E; Gujar N; Walker MP. (2010) Sleep Deprivation Impairs the Accurate Recognition of Human Emotions. SLEEP, 33(3), 335-342. info:/
Ekman P, & Friesen WV. (1971) Constants across cultures in the face and emotion. Journal of personality and social psychology, 17(2), 124-9. PMID: 5542557
Steadman, L. (1980) : Kuru Sorcery: Disease and Danger in the New Guinea Highlands . Shirley Lindenbaum. American Anthropologist, 82(3), 692-694. DOI: 10.1525/aa.1980.82.3.02a01130
- March 9, 2010
- 12:46 AM
- 40 views
60,000 year old decorated ostrich eggshell canteens from Diepkloof, South Africa
by Julien Riel-Salvatore in A Very Remote Period Indeed
Sometimes, it's what a paper doesn't emphasize that's the most thought-provoking and has the most far-ranging implications. A case in point is the recent paper by Texier et al. (2010) on decorated (i.e., engraved/incised) ostrich eggshell fragments from the Middle Stone Age site of Diepkloof in South Africa. The paper provides a lot of information about the sequence of deposits at the site, as well as on their archaeological contents. They emphasize specifically the layers attributed to the Howi........ Read more »
Henshilwood, C., d'Errico, F., & Watts, I. (2009) Engraved ochres from the Middle Stone Age levels at Blombos Cave, South Africa. Journal of Human Evolution, 57(1), 27-47. DOI: 10.1016/j.jhevol.2009.01.005
Texier, P., Porraz, G., Parkington, J., Rigaud, J., Poggenpoel, C., Miller, C., Tribolo, C., Cartwright, C., Coudenneau, A., Klein, R.... (2010) A Howiesons Poort tradition of engraving ostrich eggshell containers dated to 60,000 years ago at Diepkloof Rock Shelter, South Africa. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0913047107
- March 8, 2010
- 01:20 AM
- 37 views
The Volcano Factor
by teofilo in Gambler's House
I’ve written a lot here recently about the Athapaskan migration(s) into the Southwest. It’s a very interesting topic in a lot of ways. I find it especially fascinating because although the evidence that it happened is very strong, nothing else about it can be easily determined. We know that at least one migration of Athapaskan-speakers [...]... Read more »
Moodie, D., Catchpole, A., & Abel, K. (1992) Northern Athapaskan Oral Traditions and the White River Volcano. Ethnohistory, 39(2), 148. DOI: 10.2307/482391
- March 7, 2010
- 11:16 AM
- 63 views
Human and Chimpanzee Handedness
by Isabelle Winder in Going Ape
Of the many mysteries surrounding human evolution, the question of why humans, alone out of all the apes, display a strong tendency towards being right-handed is perhaps less well known than uncertainties about our locomotion, brain size and cultural capacity. Yet the fact remains, over 90% of humans are right handed, and strongly so - there are proportionally few left-handed individuals and very few ambidextrous ones. Handedness is a manifestation of laterality - having a behaviourally dominant........ Read more »
Braccini S, Lambeth S, Schapiro S, & Fitch WT. (2010) Bipedal tool use strengthens chimpanzee hand preferences. Journal of human evolution, 58(3), 234-241. PMID: 20089294
- March 5, 2010
- 06:00 PM
- 61 views
Culture and the human genome: a synthesis of genetics and the human sciences
by Wintz in A Replicated Typo
Humans are immersed in culture from birth. It is so fundamental to our experience, and what it means to be human itself, yet we often overlook the consideration that “cultural practices might have transformed the selection pressures acting on humans” (Laland, Odling-Smee & Myles, 2010, pg. 137).
For those of you with some sort of investment in human evolution, it’ll be quite clear that gaps between culture and biology are being broached by a variety of researchers. Anthropol........ Read more »
Laland KN, Odling-Smee J, & Myles S. (2010) How culture shaped the human genome: bringing genetics and the human sciences together. Nature reviews. Genetics, 11(2), 137-48. PMID: 20084086
- March 5, 2010
- 11:30 AM
- 52 views
Setting the Fossil Record Straight
by Rob Mitchum in ScienceLife
It was the fossil infamously hyped as the scientific discovery “THAT WILL CHANGE EVERYTHING.” But one year after its controversial press conference debut, Darwinius masillae has come under increased scrutiny from a scientific community already skeptical about the 55-million-year-old primate fossil’s Hollywood roll-out. When scientists from Norway, Germany and Michigan published the original Darwinius paper [...]... Read more »
Williams BA, Kay RF, Christopher Kirk E, & Ross CF. (2010) Darwinius masillae is a strepsirrhine-a reply to Franzen et al. (2009). Journal of human evolution. PMID: 20188396
- March 5, 2010
- 03:09 AM
- 45 views
What makes a Haplorrhine a Haplorrhine?
by zinjanthropus in A Primate of Modern Aspect
Williams, Richard Kay, Christopher Kirk and Callum Ross have published a new paper in the Journal of Human Evolution reassessing the phylogenetic placement of Darwinius masillae, the much-hyped Adapid fossil published last summer. Brian Switek at Laelaps and Eric Michael Johnson at The Primate Diaries have written some excellent posts summarizing the most recent [...]... Read more »
Williams, B., Kay, R., Christopher Kirk, E., & Ross, C. (2010) Darwinius masillae is a strepsirrhine—a reply to Franzen et al. (2009). Journal of Human Evolution. DOI: 10.1016/j.jhevol.2010.01.003
Franzen, J., Gingerich, P., Habersetzer, J., Hurum, J., von Koenigswald, W., & Smith, B. (2009) Complete Primate Skeleton from the Middle Eocene of Messel in Germany: Morphology and Paleobiology. PLoS ONE, 4(5). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0005723
- March 3, 2010
- 03:15 PM
- 58 views
Darwinius Is Not a Human Ancestor
by Eric Michael Johnson in The Primate Diaries
Artist rendering of Darwinius. Image: Julius T. CsotonyiLast year's publication of the fossil primate Darwinius masillae claimed it to be the oldest haplorhine primate ever discovered and a multimedia blitz campaign touted the find as the ultimate "missing link" (an erroneous term that should forthwith be forbidden to all science journalists). Brian Switek at Laelaps (who has an excellent review of this paper) m........ Read more »
Williams, B., Kay, R., Christopher Kirk, E., & Ross, C. (2010) Darwinius masillae is a strepsirrhine—a reply to Franzen et al. (2009). Journal of Human Evolution. DOI: 10.1016/j.jhevol.2010.01.003
- March 3, 2010
- 08:16 AM
- 55 views
New Study Confirms That "Ida" is Not Our Great-Great-Great-Great-Etc. Grandmother
The exceptionally preserved skeleton of Darwinius, known popularly as "Ida." From PLoS One.
Almost ten months ago an international team of researchers introduced the world to an exquisitely-preserved primate from the 47 million year old oil shales of Messel, Germany. Dubbed Darwinius masillae, and nicknamed "Ida" and "The Link", the fossil was touted as one of our earliest primate ancestors in a massive media campaign worthy of a Hollywood blockbuster. Yet the trouble was that there was no........ Read more »
Williams, B., Kay, R., Christopher Kirk, E., & Ross, C. (2010) Darwinius masillae is a strepsirrhine—a reply to Franzen et al. (2009). Journal of Human Evolution. DOI: 10.1016/j.jhevol.2010.01.003
- March 2, 2010
- 02:52 PM
- 102 views
Is Your Brain A Communist?
by Neuroskeptic in Neuroskeptic
Capitalists beware. No less a journal than Nature has just published a paper proving conclusively that the human brain is a Communist, and that it's plotting the overthrow of the bourgeois order and its replacement by the revolutionary Dictatorship of the Proletariat even as we speak.Kind of. The article, Neural evidence for inequality-averse social preferences, doesn't mention the C word, but it does claim to have found evidence that people's brains display more egalitarianism than people thems........ Read more »
Tricomi E, Rangel A, Camerer CF, & O'Doherty JP. (2010) Neural evidence for inequality-averse social preferences. Nature, 463(7284), 1089-91. PMID: 20182511
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