anthropology

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The 13 Most Worthless Majors

Want a job? Avoid fine art, according to 'Daily Beast' list

(Newser) - Hey, college students: If your life plans include getting an actual job, you may want to avoid the stars of the Daily Beast 's "most useless" majors list. Majors are ranked in terms of employment, taking into account unemployment rates among recent and experienced grads, earnings, and likely...

Holding a Gun Makes You Look Bigger

Appearance of physical power increases when holding a weapon: Study

(Newser) - A person wielding a gun appears bigger and brawnier than a person without a gun, according to a new UCLA study. Researchers showed photographs of hands clutching guns, power drills, handsaws, and other tools to test subjects and then asked them to guess the size and muscularity of the person...

Men, Women Starting to Look More Alike

Study of ancient skulls shows fewer differences

(Newser) - Anthropologists comparing ancient skulls to modern ones say it's getting harder to tell the girls from the boys. North Carolina State researchers who examined skulls from Spain and Portugal going back to the 16th century say that the differences between male and female specimens have diminished over the ages, reports...

Humans Left Africa Far Earlier Than We Thought

Stone tools defy genetic story

(Newser) - Stone tools discovered in the Arabian peninsula suggest modern humans may have left Africa 125,000 years ago—some 50,000 years earlier than previously believed. Genetic data points to humans departing Africa around 60,000 to 70,000 years ago, the BBC notes. But the genetic data is "...

Ancient Pinkie Reveals Your New Relatives

DNA helps decode history of Denisovans

(Newser) - A 30,000-year-old finger is pointing the way to a population of humans experts never knew existed. The pinkie bone, discovered in southern Siberia in what's known as the Desinova Cave, contains DNA that scientists used to sequence the entire genome of the young girl it belonged to, NPR reports....

In Spanish Cave, Neanderthal Bones Tell of Cannibalism

Fragments come from group of 12, possibly related

(Newser) - In the forests of northern Spain is a cave named El Sidrón, and inside lies one of the richest troves of Neanderthal remains known to man. Since explorers first stumbled upon jawbones in 1994, 1,800 Neanderthal bone fragments have been discovered there, some of which contain accessible bits...

Early Man Survived By Growing Up Slowly

It's how we outsmarted the Neanderthals

(Newser) - Immaturity may be the key to the human race’s dominance. Neanderthals have brains roughly the same size as early humans, and their tools were just as good, so scientists have long puzzled over how Homo sapiens became the top primates on the block. Now, some scientists think they have...

Neanderthals: Smarter Than We Thought

They were 'more like our brothers and sisters,' anthropologists say

(Newser) - Turns out the Geico cavemen have a point: Neanderthals have been getting a bad rap. Until recently, scientists assumed that Neanderthals only learned advanced survival skills when they met more modern humans. But scientists have now found evidence that they developed human-like skills—like creating new tools, hunting more elusive...

Meat Made Us Smarter

 Meat Made Us Smarter 
in case you missed it
Aug 7, 2010 7:00 PM CDT

Meat Made Us Smarter

...and learning how to cook it made us human

(Newser) - Sorry, vegetarians: Humans have meat to thank for the evolutionary changes that made us the large-brained tool-users we are today. Some 2.3 million years ago, our ancestors made the jump from gnawing all day on leaves and nuts to scavenging carcasses. This, anthropologists say, was the magic moment when...

Moon Trash Declared National Treasure

Calif. aims to preserve Apollo urine containers, space boots

(Newser) - California has named the remains of the Apollo 11 mission—including urine containers and space boots—a state historical resource. Experts in the nascent field of space archeology worry that, without preservation, what they call a "sacred site of world history" might be looted by future missions or space...

Deforestation Reveals Signs of 'El Dorado'

 Deforestation Reveals 
 Signs of 'El Dorado' 


lost city of gold found?
Jan 6, 2010 7:05 AM CST

Deforestation Reveals Signs of 'El Dorado'

Team spots evidence of massive Amazon civilization

(Newser) - The legends of lost cities that drew Spanish explorers to their doom seeking "El Dorado" in the Amazon may have been rooted in truth after all. Deforestation in Brazil and northern Bolivia has revealed signs, including roads and massive earthworks, of an Amazon civilization much bigger than anything previously...

Tiger's Silver Bullet: Humanity
 Tiger's Silver Bullet: Humanity 
opinion
Dec 14, 2009 2:53 PM CST

Tiger's Silver Bullet: Humanity

Woods' icy demeanor won't get him back in society's good graces

(Newser) - A classic anthropological model suggests that Tiger Woods has to show humility and humanity if he's to win back his fans. From a scientific perspective, "it's already clear that Woods will not easily regain his place as one of the planet's most ubiquitous pitchmen and a cultural hero."...

Anthropologist Levi-Strauss Dead at 100

French ethnologist introduced structuralist theory

(Newser) - Claude Levi-Strauss, widely considered the father of modern anthropology for work that included theories about commonalities between tribal and industrial societies, has died. He was 100. The French intellectual was regarded as having reshaped the field of anthropology, introducing structuralism—concepts about common patterns of behavior and thought, especially myths,...

Anthropologist: Modern Male Is 'Worst' Man Ever

We're not as robust, Aussie argues in new book

(Newser) - California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is such a girly man by Neanderthal standards that some caveman's wife could have kicked his ass in arm wrestling, an Australian anthropologist argues in his new book. In fact, Peter McAllister calls modern males the "worst" men in history, at least when it comes...

Were Dogs Domesticated as Dinner?

A look into the origins of the human-canine connection

(Newser) - Today, they’re man’s best friend, but dogs may have originally come to humans as their best bet for dinner. Researchers in Sweden examined the DNA of dogs around the world and found that they all seemed to be of the same lineage, pointing to “a single domestication...

Cooking: What Separates Men From Apes (and Women)
Cooking: What Separates Men From Apes (and Women)
INTERVIEW
Jul 29, 2009 1:14 PM CDT

Cooking: What Separates Men From Apes (and Women)

And anthropologically speaking, women are always the cooks

(Newser) - Cooking—not just eating—meat is what prompted human evolution, Richard Wrangham argues in his book Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human, and he discusses his beliefs—including an opposition to the trend of raw diets—with Salon. “Raw foodists argue quite strongly that it is our natural...

How Did Neanderthals Die? We Ate Them

New study suggests cannibalism by modern humans

(Newser) - Anthropologists may have solved the mystery of how the Neanderthals died out. A new study suggests they were hunted and eaten by modern human beings, reports the Guardian. The controversial theory argues that a Neanderthal jaw bone shows signs of butchering similar to the techniques humans used on deer in...

Scientists Find Fossil of 'Mother of All Primates'

(Newser) - Scientists have discovered a 47 million-year-old primate fossil that they believe represents the common ancestor of all later monkeys, apes, and humans, reports the Wall Street Journal. The find supports a theory that humans' ancient ape-like ancestor was an adapid, which is also believed to be linked to lemurs. The...

Anthropology Book By Obama's Mom to Hit Shelves

Study of Indonesian craftsmen will hit shelves 14 years after her death

(Newser) - Barack Obama's mother died before she finished revising her Ph.D dissertation for publication, but two of her fellow anthropologists have now completed the job, reports the Chicago Tribune. Stanley Ann Dunham's Surviving Against the Odds: Village Industry in Indonesia—the study of blacksmiths and other rural craftsmen she completed...

Meet the First European

Forensic artist reconstructs face of first modern human found in Europe

(Newser) - Meet the first modern European. His face—or hers, as researchers have been unable to determine the sex—was reconstructed by a forensic artist based on a partial skull and jawbone discovered in a Romanian cave. The facial features linked to the 35,000-year-old bones recall the continent's immediate African...

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