The first human fossil dredged out of the North Sea. I was just saying to my fiend the other day, how I never could understand why no one was looking underwater in places they thought ancient camp sites might be-- sea level was much lower then, everyone agrees, but they thought ancient peoples would stay only up where we live now? So I'm super-glad that someone looked and found something, and maybe other people will do the same in places other than, say, Egypt and Greece.
The Archaeology Channel. Video clips from all across the field.
Organized mammoth barbecue pits have been found. I lvoe learning about how ancient people ate.
A list of universities offering Linguistic Anth degrees. It's on the list of degrees to get, after writing, then comes LibSci / Archiving, then I want to do anthropology, either Linguistics or Nutritional.
Ancient beads and behavioral modernity. I love the idea that it happened slowly. I love that we can tell that fact now.
National Archives up on YouTube. An awesome resource for historical anthropology.
Ancient flutes. It pushes back the use of music, and that means maybe people were people further back then we thought-- or maybe scientists were unfairly harsh about what defines modernity-- or maybe we're less special then we thought.
Prehistoric cannibalism: The article says they were eating kids and treating them like food animals. It says they were probably enemies. It doesn't say anything about what this means philosophically-- did they see these other people as something else, as animals, the way whites once viewed their slaves? Did they eat their own, too, or only outsiders? What did it mean? Or did people just taste good?
Apparently, the things used to identify mummy gender aren't infallible. The article says they misinterpreted the gender; I want to know if this was an egyptian transvestite, a man living and dying as a woman, and if that's normal, part of a religious sect, a choice or a secret or what.
Apparently, most cave artists-- at least the ones leaving hand stencils-- were women, if teh hand-shapes can be trusted. I don't know if I trust the measurement hypothesis, as they're basing it on modern hands and there's no concurrent male hands to compare them to if these are all female, but I love the idea. If they are ritual sites, it lends credence to the idea that women were the spiritual leaders, and I know of a few feminist scholars who will be super-thrilled.
Earliest known human family: Genetic testing verifys that they're all related, and their placement may help scientists decode other graves, as well as adding another layer to the metaphysics of prehistoric burrial.
Speaking of, facedown burrial seems to be a universal way to shame people in death.
A group of scientists are claiming that orangutans have a closer link to humans based on physical traits than chimps do. But they don't have genetic evidence to back this up, and it sounds like they're actually trying to refute DNA analysis, which is kind of backward and old-fashioned. Stricly bone analysis is flawed and has been replaced.
No comments:
Post a Comment