First contact for health’s sake.
Peruvian officials have, Science Daily reports, made like technologically advanced aliens and had first contact with a very isolated tribe: Peru’s Ministry of Culture begins […]
anthropology
Science Art: Fig. 3, The Pocket Cephalometer, or Compass of Coordinates, by Dr. Gustave Le Bon, c.1878.
This is a demonstration of an instrument used to measure “cephalic index,” or how big a person’s head was. This was, at this point in […]
SONG: Vulnerable Ape Theory (Going to a Blues Show with the Young Earth Creationists)
SONG: “Vulnerable Ape Theory (Going to a Blues Show with the Young Earth Creationists)”. ARTIST: grant. SOURCE:Based on “Vulnerability made us human: how our early […]
The Vulnerable Ape theory of human origins.
PhysOrg turns the “brutal caveman” stereotype on its head, with a new look at our earliest ancestors as sensitive folks who got a leg up […]
The thing that really sets human beings apart: our chins.
Thanks to Science Daily, I’ll never think of my beard the same way again. They’ve got new insight into the evolution of humankind’s most uniquely […]
The Big-Brain Gene. So here’s where the trouble started….
Sci-News.com showcases the gene that gave us (and our Neanderthal and Denisovan cousins) big brains: A gene that is responsible for brain size in modern […]
The oldest harmony. (Well, polyphony.)
University of Cambridge researchers have gotten to the root of the chord. (See, that’s a music theory joke.) No, really, they’ve found was seems to […]
Latin American diabetes risk traced to Neanderthal ancestors.
BBC has more on one unfortunate modern human inheritance from our ancestors interbreeding with Neanderthals: The gene variant was detected in a large genome-wide association […]
Invisible ink revealed… a few centuries later.
The medievalists at Medievalists.net are all excited over a new technology that “unerases” writings that were erased by scribes to make more room on precious […]
How Forbidden City was built: ice machine!
Not the moving parts kind, but the wedge/screw/lever kind. Want to move giant blocks of stone a few miles, but the locomotive and crane haven’t […]
Utopia or catastrophe: How long do civilizations live? (And how can we find another?)
Those questions were raised in, of all publications, Astrobiology Magazine. Why are astrobiologists so concerned about human culture? Because if civilizations can really die out, […]
Science Art: Catafalque at a Funeral at Hubbatale, ca. 1925 from “Mortuary ritual of the Badagas of Southern India” by Paul Hockings.
Found on Archive.org’s collection of Fieldiana. A “catafalque” is a kind of dais on which a coffin rests when it’s on display, as for a […]
Prehistoric art shows psychedelic traces, scientists say.
Alternet (of course) spreads the news that researchers studying our earliest ancestors have collected some intriguing proof that cave painters were tripping: Their thesis intriguingly […]
Science Art: Nazca Lines, Peru, 2000, NASA’s Earth as Art
These are probably the world’s largest petroglyphs. They’re ancient rock carvings that we can see from space. You can’t make out the funky checkerboards, or […]
SONG: “Mesopotamia” (a penitential B52s cover)
SONG: “Mesopotamia” (penitential cover) (To download: double right-click & “Save As”) ARTIST: grant. SOURCE: This is a cover (a late one) making up for a […]