We can’t observe the brain activity of extinct human species. But we can observe modern brains doing the things that our distant ancestors did, looking for clues about how ancient brains worked.
When new discoveries are jealously guarded under lock and key, science suffers.
Andy Wright
Robots are strange creatures, and not only because they might steal our jobs. We humans actually have good reason to be a little worried about these machines.
FBI Director James Comey and National Security Agency Director Michael Rogers at hearing on allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta
A ‘witch hunt’ is what Trump called investigations into his campaign and Russian interference in the 2016 election. An anthropologist explains the connection between witch hunts and social control.
Dogs are a big part of their owners’ routines – which makes their loss even more jarring.
'Silhouette' via www.shutterstock.com
Anthropologists gather clues about how our ancient ancestors lived from their teeth. What will future anthropologists make of us based on the fossilized pearly whites we’ll leave behind?
At many Spanish missions in the US and Latin America, the rising sun illuminates the altar on the winter solstice or other symbolic days. To the faithful, these events meant that Christ was with them.
Rose and Groote Eylandters Nertichunga, Machana and Nabia, Groote Eylandt, 1941.
Courtesy of SLNSW, Frederick Rose papers, Box 5
The book Red Professor: the Cold War Life of Fred Rose tells of a progressive anthropologist who was stymied by non-Indigenous people in powerful positions. Sadly, it’s a narrative that still resonates today.
How many colors in your language’s rainbow?
Eye image via www.shutterstock.com.
New research investigates how people sequentially add new color terms to languages over time – and the results hold surprises about assumptions linguists have made for 40 years.
Watercolour painting of a Haida painted wooden mask.
Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford 2014.89.1a
With the refugee crisis, Brexit, and the rise of populist extremism, we must defend the teaching of anthropology. And in doing so, we might expand and rethink ideas of “the humanities”.
Looks like paradise – but how did the first people get there?
Global Environment Facility
Researchers ran computer simulations that take into account environmental variability and geographical setting to investigate how early explorers made it to these tiny, remote islands in the Pacific.
The forest around Lake Waikaremoana in New Zealand has been given legal status of a person because of its cultural significance.
Paul Nelhams/flickr