Anthropology posts
- February 1, 2008
- 01:02 PM
- 3,030 views
Friday Peer Reviewed Cat Blogging
by Greg Laden in Greg Laden's Blog
A paper just out in Genomics presents a very thorough study of cat genetics. Cat as is in kitty cat. The findings are expected, yet surprising in a few areas. The conclusion the authors draw about cat origins is very weak, in my view, but the information this study provides about cat breed genetics is excellent and will be of value cats around the world.
Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...... Read more »
M LIPINSKI, L FROENICKE, K BAYSAC, N BILLINGS, C LEUTENEGGER, A LEVY, M LONGERI, T NIINI, H OZPINAR, & M SLATER. (2008) The ascent of cat breeds: Genetic evaluations of breeds and worldwide random-bred populations. Genomics, 91(1), 12-21. DOI: 10.1016/j.ygeno.2007.10.009
- January 31, 2008
- 09:04 AM
- 2,480 views
Are We In The Anthropocene? No.
by Greg Laden in Greg Laden's Blog
Proposals to give the latter part of the present geological period (the Holocene) a new name ... the Anthropocene ... are misguided, scientifically invalid, and obnoxious. However, there is a use for a term that is closely related to "Anthropocene" and I propose that we adopt that term instead. Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...... Read more »
Jan Zalasiewicz, Mark Williams, Alan Smith, Tiffany Barry, Angela Coe, Paul Bown, Patrick Brenchley, David Cantrill, Andrew Gale, Philip Gibbard.... (2008) Are we now living in the Anthropocene. GSA Today, 18(2), 4. DOI: 10.1130/GSAT01802A.1
S Pimm. (2006) From the Cover: Human impacts on the rates of recent, present, and future bird extinctions. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 103(29), 10941-10946. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0604181103
- January 30, 2008
- 04:03 PM
- 2,455 views
Biology of Color Preference
by Greg Laden in Greg Laden's Blog
Color is funny. Anthropologists have long known that different cultures have different relationships, linguistically and in day to day practice, to the color spectrum. For example, the Efe Pygmy Hunter-Gatherers of the Ituri Forest describe things as white, black, or red, and that's it. They live in a world of green. Going with the model for "Eskimos" having a hundred words for snow because snow is so important in their environment, one would expect that the Efe would have a h........ Read more »
A HURLBERT, & Y LING. (2007) Biological components of sex differences in color preference. Current Biology, 17(16). DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2007.06.022
- January 28, 2008
- 11:03 PM
- 2,334 views
Eurasian Pleistocene Extinctions & Ecological "Overkill"
The skeleton of an Irish Elk (Megaloceros giganteus) at the AMNH.
Discussions of mass extinctions nearly always give rise to heated debates as to the mechanism(s) behind the disappearance of so many taxa in a short amount of time, and one of the most active debates still surrounds the extinction of Pleistocene megafauna. All over the world the extinction of large animals appears to be correlated with the movements of our own species, Homo sapiens, into new territories. Disease and climate ch........ Read more »
D PUSHKINA. (2008) Human influence on distribution and extinctions of the late Pleistocene Eurasian megafauna. Journal of Human Evolution. DOI: 10.1016/j.jhevol.2007.09.024
- January 28, 2008
- 04:01 AM
- 2,224 views
UFOs versus the Rainbow Serpents
One of the advantages of tripping to other libraries is that you get to browse journals you’d otherwise miss. One example is the Journal of the Royal Institute for Anthropology, which I wouldn’t see at Leicester. That is a pity because I’m missing some stuff like Close encounters: UFO beliefs in a remote Australian Aboriginal ... Read more »
Eirik Saethre. (2007) Close encounters: UFO beliefs in a remote Australian Aboriginal community. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 13(4), 901-915. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9655.2007.00463.x
- January 27, 2008
- 01:03 PM
- 2,538 views
Hybrids of Blind Fish Can See
by Greg Laden in Greg Laden's Blog
The loss of sight in cave dwelling species is widely known. We presume that since sight in utter darkness has no fitness value, the mutation of a gene critical to the development of the sense of sight is not selected against. Over time, any population living in darkness will eventually experience experience such mutations, and these mutations can reach fixation. Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...... Read more »
R BOROWSKY. (2008) Restoring sight in blind cavefish. Current Biology, 18(1). DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2007.11.023
- January 25, 2008
- 09:03 PM
- 2,251 views
Did Humans or Climate Change Cause the Extinctions of Pleistocene Eurasian Megafauna?
by Greg Laden in Greg Laden's Blog

Did humans wipe out the Pleistocene megafauna? This is a question that can be asked separately for each area of the world colonized by Homo sapiens. It is also a question that engenders sometimes heated debate. A new paper coming out in the Journal of Human Evolution concludes that many Pleistocene megafauna managed to go extinct by themselves, but that humans were not entirely uninvolved. Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...... Read more »
D PUSHKINA. (2008) Human influence on distribution and extinctions of the late Pleistocene Eurasian megafauna. Journal of Human Evolution. DOI: 10.1016/j.jhevol.2007.09.024
- January 24, 2008
- 10:04 AM
- 2,601 views
New Study of Antarctic Ice Loss
by Greg Laden in Greg Laden's Blog
The amount of ice lost to the sea from Antarctica has increased by 75 percent in the last 10 years. This is the result of an increase in glacial flow. It had previously been thought, and perhas was the case, that Greenland ice loss outpaced the Antarctica. This is no longer the case. Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...... Read more »
Eric Rignot, Jonathan Bamber, Michiel van den Broeke, Curt Davis, Yonghong Li, Willem van de Berg, & Erik van Meijgaard. (2008) Recent Antarctic ice mass loss from radar interferometry and regional climate modelling. Nature Geoscience. DOI: 10.1038/ngeo102
- January 23, 2008
- 02:04 PM
- 2,643 views
After the End Permian Mass Extinction
by Greg Laden in Greg Laden's Blog
The end-Permian mass extinction event was the big daddy of all the known mass extinction events. Life on the planet Earth was almost entirely wiped out. A new paper explores the post-extinction recovery of ecological systems. Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...... Read more »
Sarda Sahney, & Michael Benton. (2008) Recovery from the most profound mass extinction of all time. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, -1(1), -1--1. DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2007.1370
- January 23, 2008
- 04:05 AM
- 2,348 views
One of Rome’s major monuments has gone missing
The map above is a closer look at a map of ancient Rome by Allyn and Bacon. It’s interesting because it shows the position of the Solarium, or the Horologium Augusti, a giant sundial set up by Augustus. It’s the subject of a paper in the Journal of Roman Studies by Peter Heslin: Augustus, Domitian ... Read more »
Peter Heslin. (2007) Augustus, Domitian and the So-called Horologium Augusti. Journal of Roman Studies, 1-20. info:ISSN/0075-4358
- January 22, 2008
- 10:09 AM
- 1,300 views
New paper in neuroeconomics
by Benoit Hardy-Vallee in Natural Rationality
On the subjective value of delayed monetary rewards:Neuroimaging studies of decision-making have generally related neural activity to objective measures (such as reward magnitude, probability or delay), despite choice preferences being subjective. However, economic theories posit that decision-makers behave as though different options have different subjective values. Here we use functional magnetic resonance imaging to show that neural activity in several brain regions—particularly the ve........ Read more »
Joseph W Kable, & Paul W Glimcher. (2007) The neural correlates of subjective value during intertemporal choice. Nat Neurosci, 10(12). DOI: 10.1038/nn2007
- January 22, 2008
- 10:09 AM
- 1,323 views
I'm so sad I would accept anything
by Benoit Hardy-Vallee in Natural Rationality
no I am good, thanks, I just found a new study on the Ultimatum Game by Harlé & Sanfey that show that people in a sad (but not in a happy) mood reject more 'unfair' offers:Our findings are consistent with our initial hypothesis, namely that sadness may focus the responder's attention on the negative emotional consequences of unfair offers rather than the positive impact of accepting such offers (i.e., monetary reward), thereby prompting lower acceptance rates of unfair ........ Read more »
Katia M Harlé, & Alan G Sanfey. (2007) Incidental sadness biases social economic decisions in the Ultimatum Game. Emotion (Washington, D.C.), 7(4).
- January 21, 2008
- 04:06 PM
- 1,972 views
More to maize evolution than selection
by Jeremy in Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog
Our thanks to Hannes Dempewolf for this guest post.
What forces drive maize evolution and what factors contribute to the generation of maize agrobiodiversity? This question has been the focus of a recent study, published in PNAS.1
Contrary to the popular opinion that maize diversity at present is largely a result of artificial selection on ... Read more »
G Dyer, & J E Taylor. (2008) A crop population perspective on maize seed systems in Mexico. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 105(2), 470-475. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0706321105
- January 21, 2008
- 12:08 PM
- 2,531 views
Chimpanzee Food Sharing
by Greg Laden in Greg Laden's Blog
Is chimpanzee food sharing an example of food for sex?
One of the most important transitions in human evolution may have been the incorporation of regular food sharing into the day to day ecology of our species or our ancestors. Although this has been recognized as potentially significant for some time, it was probably the Africanist archaeologist Glynn Isaac who impressed on the academic community the importance of the origins of food sharing as a key evolutionary moment. At that time, food........ Read more »
Kimberley Hockings, Tatyana Humle, James R Anderson, Dora Biro, Claudia Sousa, Gaku Ohashi, Tetsuro Matsuzawa, & Sarah Brosnan. (2007) Chimpanzees Share Forbidden Fruit. PLoS ONE, 2(9). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0000886
- January 17, 2008
- 12:00 AM
- 2,080 views
Remnants of some ancient tribal idiom: deciphering the oldest Siwu to appear in print
by Mark D. in The Ideophone
Remnants of some ancient tribal idiom: deciphering the oldest Siwu to appear in print... Read more »
Rudolf Plehn. (1898) Beiträge zur Völkerkunde des Togo-Gebietes. Mittheilungen des Seminars für Orientalische Sprachen, 2(part III).
- December 29, 2007
- 11:24 PM
- 4,190 views
Identifying Hatched Turkey Eggs at Archaeological Sites
by Kris Hirst in Archaeology @ About.com
The history of the domestication of turkeys is one of those great questions in archaeological science.
While archaeologists are certain Meleagris spp was domesticated in North America probably at least...... Read more »
EB BEACHAM, & S DURAND. (2007) Eggshell and the archaeological record: new insights into turkey husbandry in the American Southwest. Journal of Archaeological Science, 34(10), 1610-1621. DOI: 10.1016/j.jas.2006.11.015
- November 23, 2007
- 11:39 AM
- 3,569 views
New Dating Technique Tested at Lene Hara Cave
by Kris Hirst in Archaeology @ About.com
An international team lead by Sue O'Connor of the Australian National University and reported in a recent article in the Journal of Archaeological Science have developed a new rock art...... Read more »
Maxime Aubert, Sue O'Connor, Malcolm McCulloch, Graham Mortimer, Alan Watchman, & Marc Richer-LaFleche. (2007) Uranium-series dating rock art in East Timor. Journal of Archaeological Science, 991-996. DOI: 10.1016/j.jas.2006.09.017
- September 21, 2007
- 01:41 PM
- 2,140 views
Homo floresiensis – Human or Not?
by Kris in Ge·knit·ics
There’s a retelling of old fable called The Seven Blind Mice, which I’ve enjoyed reading to my kids over the years. In the story, seven blind mice encounter an object and try to determine what it is. One thinks it’s a pillar, another a fan, one a snake, and one a rope. The last mouse [...]... Read more »
Tocheri, M., Orr, C., Larson, S., Sutikna, T., Jatmiko, ., Saptomo, E., Due, R., Djubiantono, T., Morwood, M., & Jungers, W. (2007) The Primitive Wrist of Homo floresiensis and Its Implications for Hominin Evolution. Science, 317(5845), 1743-1745. DOI: 10.1126/science.1147143
- September 20, 2007
- 05:02 PM
- 2,125 views
Phylogeography of the Human X Chromosome
by Kris in Ge·knit·ics
Catching up on some reading from this summer, I ran across an article by Santos-Lopes et al. from PLoS ONE. A Worldwide Phylogeography for the Human X Chromosome attempts to analyze the phylogenetic distribution of X chromosome haplotypes. Recall that in humans, females have two X chromosomes, while males have one X and one Y. [...]... Read more »
Santos-Lopes SS, Pereira RW, Wilson IJ, & Pena SD. (2007) A worldwide phylogeography for the human X chromosome. PloS one, 2(6). PMID: 17593958
- November 30, 1999
- 12:00 AM
- 1,498 views
Heroin’s Anthrax Problem
by Rebecca Kreston in BODY HORRORS
Anthrax is a deadly disease with high rates of morbidity and mortality. Because it is, thankfully, also quite rare, it is relatively easy to track its whereabouts and going-ons when an outbreak occurs. Typically, outbreaks of anthrax have been traced to groups of people involved in high-risk activities involving grazing animals and their byproducts: anthrax favors shepherds, butchers, wool-sorters, leather workers, and even the odd drum-playing hippies. In 2009, however, an outbreak upended this........ Read more »
Berger, T., Kassirer, M., & Aran, A. (2014) Injectional anthrax - new presentation of an old disease. Eurosurveillance, 19(32), 20877. DOI: 10.2807/1560-7917.ES2014.19.32.20877
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