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#anthropology
Interesting conversation, if you can skip past the podcaster's AI fetish. A few quotes follow...
Kanzi the bonobo died yesterday at 44 years of age. What an amazing life of learning he gave to humanity, teaching us how our concepts of mind are shared in other species. Hopefully, one day soon humans will share more kindness with the remaining apes of the world.
Linguists, animal lovers, and infographic designers--this article is for you. A beautiful, scrolling animation providing a visual analysis of animal sounds across cultures. Meet: cat! duck! and pig! (if they spoke in IPA). https://pudding.cool/2025/03/language/ #linguistics #anthropology #design #animals #animation #cat
Ancient Greco-Roman sculptures were scented, study reveals
https://archaeologymag.com/2025/03/ancient-sculptures-were-scented-study-reveals/
8 min
Work. I guess we should really call it, “fuck around and take a nap…. 
If you would like to learn more about the process of pit firing, we've got you covered: rakupottery.ca/pit-fired-po...
If you would like to learn more about these specific vases, click here: rakupottery.ca/product-cate...
#art #history #archeology #ceramics #anthropology
About Pit-Fired Pottery
1.5-million-year-old bone tools discovered in Tanzania are the oldest ever, reshaping early hominin technology
Archaeologists have uncovered a collection of bone tools at Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania, dating back 1.5 million years. This finding has pushed back systematic bone tool production by more than a million years and challenges previous assumptions about the technological capability of early hominins...
More info: https://archaeologymag.com/2025/03/1-5-million-year-old-bone-tools-tanzania/
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I get really fed up with ... let's call it caveman essentialism? This is everywhere and speaking as anthropologist, it's pure horseshit. The idea that "when we were cavemen" or "hunter-gatherers" or "back in the stone age," deployed to explain (read: justify, throw one's hands up at) modern, culturally specific behaviors, in the name of evolutionary biology ... this really gets my goat.
#anthropology @anthropology
2,400-year-old puppets discovered atop pyramid in El Salvador
In San Isidro, El Salvador, archaeologists have unearthed a stunning set of 2,400-year-old ceramic puppets atop a pyramidal structure. These findings shed new light on ancient public rituals and cultural exchanges in Central America...
More information: https://archaeologymag.com/2025/03/puppets-atop-pyramid-in-el-salvador/
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1,500-year-old female ascetic buried in chains discovered near Jerusalem
Recently, excavations at the Khirbat el-Masani monastery, northwest of Jerusalem, revealed the remains of an individual wrapped in heavy metal chains. Generally, this was a theme associated with male ascetics, but scientific analyses revealed a surprising truth: the remains belonged to a woman...
More information: https://archaeologymag.com/2025/03/female-ascetic-burial-near-jerusalem/
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Archaeologists uncover evidence of Neanderthal habitation in Ghamari Cave, Iran
Iranian archaeologists have uncovered compelling evidence of human habitation in Ghamari Cave dating back 40,000 to 80,000 years. The cave is located near Khorramabad in Iran’s Lorestan Province. Among the discoveries were stone tools, animal bones, and pottery...
More information: https://archaeologymag.com/2025/03/neanderthal-habitation-evidence-in-ghamari-cave-iran/
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1.4-million-year-old skull fragments linked to mystery human ancestor.
@Gizmodo reports: "The fragmentary facial bones belong to Homo affinis erectus, an esoteric offshoot of our family tree that inhabited Spain more than one million years ago."
My favorite non-fiction book is Lucy: The Beginnings of Humankind by Donald C. Johanson. I reread it often, but it is wildly out of date
I’d like to find a similar, popular science-y book that will bring me up to speed on what’s happened in the paleoanthropology field recently - any recommendations?
#archeology #hominids #anthropology #humanevolution
Fossil Bone fragments of oldest known Homo erectus face in western Europe found in Spain https://www.theguardian.com/science/2025/mar/12/bone-fragments-of-oldest-known-human-face-in-western-europe-found-in-spain
The family group/tribe is built on mutual support, but the modern conservative version is transactional, based on membership and loyalty. Actions that look like kindness are in reality actions to reinforce tribal loyalty. I think this is why so many people in conservative communties, who are trapped in entirely conservative information spaces, have a hard time breaking free. They see examples of community support as affirmations of their community goodness, and this narrative is drummed into them constantly. Conservative leaders have the advantage of labeling any disruptive people or ideas as 'foreign' and a threat, even if from within the community, so that they never even have to engage with new ideas on merit.
Kindness isnt a relevant trait to their tribal functioning, because the ability to be unkind and cruel to people who arent toeing the tribal line is necessary to upholding 'family law'. Kindness in others undermines their attempts to police peoples behavior (this is why its so important that men are in charge). Therefore, not only is kindness devalued, it is actively persecuted as a threat to conservative values. And that is only treatment of your in-group. If you reject kindness internally, imagine how easy it is to subject an out-group to cruel inhumanity. You can literally justify anything. What is horrifying is the degree to which everyday members of conservative communities have become willfully blind to the terrible treatment of others in order to hang on to an image of community goodness. I have witnessed far too much of this in my life.
Its worth stating that the left has its own, different kind of tribalism. They embrace kindness but there is a lot of pressure to prove the right kind of worth. It has a distinctly multicultural, anti-authoritarian tribalism, where the rules of the tribe are under constant negotiation. This makes communicating a platform challenging. Its a lot simpler for conservative platforms whose rules come from demagogues and an old book.
The flaw of designing a system without compassion is that the cruelty eventually becomes impossible to hide from the tribe, and the cruelty comes for everyone. #uspol #politics #disability #sociology #anthropology #kindness #geopol
The "Yo-He-Ho" theory suggests that human language evolved from rhythmic chants used during collective labor, emphasizing the social aspect of linguistic development.
#PonderLab #LanguageWeek #Anthropology
https://polilingua.com](https://www.polilingua.com/blog/post/theories-of-languages-origin.htm
In research on this talk, drawing on #ReichelDolmatoff's classic #Tukano ethnography, 'Amazonian Cosmos', Chris came across this excellent blog from @TootTropiques back in 2012. This discusses Reichel-Dolmatoff's #Nazi history in relation to his enormous contributions to #Colombian #anthropology and #Indigenous rights. Many anthropologists have taken inspiration from his work.
https://ethnoground.blogspot.com/2012/09/putting-reich-back-in-reichel-dolmatoff.html?m=1
A poet-anthropologist reflects on the resistance of rural women in the #Brazilian #Cerrado whose wisdom and knowledge help cultivate life amid the devastation of large-scale plantations.
'Pequi activates a sense of time, space, and materiality. It refers to a type of fruit that sprouts at a particular time of the year. Its trees grow exclusively in cerrado lands. Yet the smell spreads and touches people through cooking, and on the wind.'
#anthropology #gender #resistance #environment
https://www.sapiens.org/culture/pequi-winds-poem-jacqueline-ferraz-de-lima/
New study reveals Neanderthals faced a population crash 110,000 years ago
A new study has uncovered a major genetic bottleneck in Neanderthals about 110,000 years ago, shedding light on their demographic history and potential causes for their extinction. The research was conducted by an international team of scholars and published in Nature Communications...
More information: https://archaeologymag.com/2025/02/neanderthals-faced-a-population-crash/
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