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POST: I have become extremely fascinated with the History and Pre History of civilization. What documentaries or series are a good watch for me? **Bonus question if you can answer**: archeologists / anthropologists / historians, do you have to learn how to operate a plethora of different equipment and techniques? For example, surveying equipment, some engineering (to reinforce old structures so they don't fall while you're excavating them), machine learning (reconstructing buildings out of pictures and recovered artifacts), carbon dating, etc? How can all of that possibly be covered in a PhD degree?
RESPONSE A: I have been listening to Patrick Wyman's podcast *Tides of History,* where he has recently started a dive into human pre-history (his podcast was originally marketed as the fall of Rome and the birth of the modern age). It's really good, accessible and well researched.
RESPONSE B: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time\_Team As for the bonus, check out my comment thread here: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskAcademia/comments/sfc7sp/am\_i\_too\_old\_to\_be\_pursuing\_a\_career\_in\_academia/huscu27/?context=3 The first few links have information about getting started in Archaeology. :)
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POST: had no expectations. They AGREED. And not just to one interview, they want to help me further my research. This had been my wildest dream. But now I am terrified. I do not have any idea where to start. I live in the middle of nowhere, USA and I always thought I'd have to wait until I reached a university with a well-known program to even have a chance at working with them. Can anyone recommend their favorite ethnography about music scenes where people are specifically with the musicians/performers so I can look more into how this has been done? Thank you!
RESPONSE A: I have a Masters in Ethnomusicology. If you can PM me a more specific genre I can probably suggest more specific ethnographies but here are a few that come to mind: Making the Scene: Contemporary New York City Big Band Jazz - by Alexander Stewart Club Date Musicians: Playing the New York Party Circuit - by Bruce A. Macleod Rumba Rules: The Politics of Dance Music in Mobutu’s Zaire - by Bob W. White Juju: A Social History and Ethnography of an African Popular Music - by Christopher Alan Waterman Performing the Nation: Swahili Music and Cultural Politics in Tanzania - by Kelly Askew Sound and Sentiment: Birds, Weeping, Poetics, and Song in Kaluli Expression - by Steven Feld Rationalizing Culture: IRCAM, Boulez, and the Institutionalization of the Musical Avant-Garde - by Georgina Born For some overall info on fieldwork and ethnography you also might want to check out. Asking and Listening: Ethnography as Personal Adaptation I’ve been out of the game for a bit so I’m sure there is a lot of work being done on more current music that I’m missing. I’d check out the society for ethnomusicology website and poke around. There is a journal you can subscribe to as well.
RESPONSE B: I wouldn't limit yourself to material just on music or ethnomusicology. Take this opportunity to get familiar with some of the main methods texts in the field. It's start with Bernard's Research Methods in Anthropology.
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POST: been studying an emerging music market remotely for sometime. I was frustrated and e-mailed an artist myself to ask about working with them. I had no expectations. They AGREED. And not just to one interview, they want to help me further my research. This had been my wildest dream. But now I am terrified. I do not have any idea where to start. I live in the middle of nowhere, USA and I always thought I'd have to wait until I reached a university with a well-known program to even have a chance at working with them. Can anyone recommend their favorite ethnography about music scenes where people are specifically with the musicians/performers so I can look more into how this has been done? Thank you!
RESPONSE A: American Hardcore (Hardcore Punk) Nothing Feels Good (Emo)
RESPONSE B: I have a Masters in Ethnomusicology. If you can PM me a more specific genre I can probably suggest more specific ethnographies but here are a few that come to mind: Making the Scene: Contemporary New York City Big Band Jazz - by Alexander Stewart Club Date Musicians: Playing the New York Party Circuit - by Bruce A. Macleod Rumba Rules: The Politics of Dance Music in Mobutu’s Zaire - by Bob W. White Juju: A Social History and Ethnography of an African Popular Music - by Christopher Alan Waterman Performing the Nation: Swahili Music and Cultural Politics in Tanzania - by Kelly Askew Sound and Sentiment: Birds, Weeping, Poetics, and Song in Kaluli Expression - by Steven Feld Rationalizing Culture: IRCAM, Boulez, and the Institutionalization of the Musical Avant-Garde - by Georgina Born For some overall info on fieldwork and ethnography you also might want to check out. Asking and Listening: Ethnography as Personal Adaptation I’ve been out of the game for a bit so I’m sure there is a lot of work being done on more current music that I’m missing. I’d check out the society for ethnomusicology website and poke around. There is a journal you can subscribe to as well.
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POST: I landed my dream gig. Now what? I've been studying an emerging music market remotely for sometime. I was frustrated and e-mailed an artist myself to ask about working with them. I had no expectations. They AGREED. And not just to one interview, they want to help me further my research. This had been my wildest dream. But now I am terrified. I do not have any idea where to start. I live in the middle of nowhere, USA and I always thought I'd have to wait until I reached a university with a well-known program to even have a chance at working with them. Can anyone recommend their favorite ethnography about music scenes where people are specifically with the musicians/performers so I can look more into how this has been done? Thank you!
RESPONSE A: Coming from a very different field of interest myself my recommendation might be a bit from left field but I would recommend looking at "Lions of the North: Sounds of the New Nordic Radical Nationalism" by Benjamin R. Teitelbaum. I have not had much contact with his works on the Swedish music scene so I can't tell you if there are some interesting papers too but I'm a sucker for his style in general so I would say it's at least worth a look even if you are going into a different direction. There might be some interesting pointers in his works.
RESPONSE B: Congratulations! I recommend Penelope Spheeris’ Decline of Western Civilisation, covering Hardcore, Hair Metal and Gutter Punk scenes in LA. I only watched them last year, and they’ve aged quite well. (She also directed Wayne’s World, but this is the research)
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POST: of this book by Diamond which I have seen skewered as Racist and worse, but never delved deeply enough into to understand the complaint. Put another way: As far as my reading the author's thesis is Luck explains the disparity between peoples technical development: no?
RESPONSE A: Searching a bit yeilded this: https://www.reddit.com/r/badhistory/wiki/v2/ggsg Guns Germs and Steel Breakdowns * /u/anthropology\_nerd calls into question the Lethal Gift of Livestock * Glaring flaws in New World interactions are dissected * Myths of Conquest is an excellent series that frankly belongs somewhere better than here * Very good discussion here You may notice that this is really light. Now this is stated in the linked threads, but the reason why there has been no focused attack on the works of Jared Diamond is simply because its too big! Its the gish gallop of history. So the only way a person trained in a field can dispute it is if they dive in and dissect micro portions of it. But then people argue that they are getting 'hung up on the details' and hand wave away all the inaccuracies.
RESPONSE B: You can find several answers here from myself and others. In short, the book is ignorant of the archaeological record, takes historical sources at literal face value, and winds up with claims that are true only in such broad strokes that they are no longer useful. Most damningly, it does not follow its own internal logic. The Inca king is said to not have expected Spanish treachery because he was not part of a literate tradition and hadn't heard any stories of betrayal, yet the Spaniard who conquered the Inca was *literally backstabbed* by his agents of a close friend. The Spanish centralized bureaucracy enabled them to conquer the world, but the Inca bureaucracy only enabled the Spanish to more easily rule them. The *exact same factors* are either a boon or a bane depending on if that party won in the end. It's one giant post hoc fallacy.
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POST: How common are societies that actually have more then two genders? Are they more or less egalitarian then societies with binary genders?
RESPONSE A: A quick google gets me this result as my first hit... That said it seems to leave out Inuit or Cree (cant remember which but am sided with Inuit) that also has a non binary gender so this may not be a complete guide http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/content/two-spirits_map-html/
RESPONSE B: In the South Sulawesi region of Indonesia, the dominant ethnic group is known as the Bugis. The Bugis have five distinct genders that are well integrated with society and have been recognized for over 600 years. Non-binary gender associations are hardly new. Bugis Genders Bugis Gender Norms Edit: to clarify the region the Bugis reside and not suggestively overstate their population size.
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POST: A lot of western European surnames begin with their word for "of" or "from" (van / von / de / del / da). Why isn't this the case in English?
RESPONSE A: By the time aristocratic families were naming themselves in English, familial surnames were already common. During the era where "of wherever" type names were common, English was still a culturally "low" language. Scholarly works were still mostly written in Latin all the way up to the 16th or 17th century.
RESPONSE B: Serfdom. Most nobles were part of houses or families, but there would be many so their actual surname was the place they owned. Most of population were peasant serfs possibly without surnames at all. As serfs got emancipated they sometimes take the names. In some countries Jewish surnames are similar versions of 'from place' Its not just Norman or Germanic in origin, they're like Arabs and big on patronymics because their socieities formed with small population. Europeans using geography is from population boom in landowners at the beginning of feudalism.
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POST: A lot of western European surnames begin with their word for "of" or "from" (van / von / de / del / da). Why isn't this the case in English?
RESPONSE A: They fell out of fashion at just the right time. Marked toponymic bynames were used everywhere in Middle English. Records from the period are littered with names like "Robert of Lawedre", "Margaret of Slyngesby", and "William of Burcetur". They were dead common among people in every stratum of society. Over the course of the Middle English period, it gradually became more popular to use unmarked toponymics, as in "Nicholas Winchestre", "Johanne Gundervyle", and "Alianore Willughby". The pendulum might've swung back the other way, but before it could the development of inherited surnames caused a sort of petrification of last names, keeping the majority in more-or-less their 16th or 17th century forms.
RESPONSE B: Serfdom. Most nobles were part of houses or families, but there would be many so their actual surname was the place they owned. Most of population were peasant serfs possibly without surnames at all. As serfs got emancipated they sometimes take the names. In some countries Jewish surnames are similar versions of 'from place' Its not just Norman or Germanic in origin, they're like Arabs and big on patronymics because their socieities formed with small population. Europeans using geography is from population boom in landowners at the beginning of feudalism.
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POST: How to keep up with latest work when outside of academia? Hey guys, A little different from most other questions here, but I graduated with an MA in Social-Cultural Anthropology about 6 years ago before moving into a different career path for work. I'm finding myself increasingly interested in my former studies again, but I'm not sure where to look to find the most up to date research. Is it all just paywalled unless you're currently in an institution or is there public facing sources I could read? Any recommendations? Thanks!
RESPONSE A: I like taking walks through university bookstores, libraries, departments etc when I can. Its something I do when travelling etc and once every six months in my own cities unis. Makes for a leisurely afternoon if nothing else and you never know what else you come across (signs for public lectures, film screenings, conferences)
RESPONSE B: American Anthropology Association is a good place for call to papers l, events and job postings
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POST: How to keep up with latest work when outside of academia? Hey guys, A little different from most other questions here, but I graduated with an MA in Social-Cultural Anthropology about 6 years ago before moving into a different career path for work. I'm finding myself increasingly interested in my former studies again, but I'm not sure where to look to find the most up to date research. Is it all just paywalled unless you're currently in an institution or is there public facing sources I could read? Any recommendations? Thanks!
RESPONSE A: American Anthropology Association is a good place for call to papers l, events and job postings
RESPONSE B: Twitter! I work in a tangential field, but many academics post their thoughts, ideas, materials on twitter. If you can't access it, most people will manage to get you unpaywalled material if you ask(or more likely just send you the pdf).
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POST: How to keep up with latest work when outside of academia? Hey guys, A little different from most other questions here, but I graduated with an MA in Social-Cultural Anthropology about 6 years ago before moving into a different career path for work. I'm finding myself increasingly interested in my former studies again, but I'm not sure where to look to find the most up to date research. Is it all just paywalled unless you're currently in an institution or is there public facing sources I could read? Any recommendations? Thanks!
RESPONSE A: The blogs. The blogs are gold, and too many to keep up with. For example: https://anthropoliteia.net/blog/ https://anthrodendum.org/ http://somatosphere.net/
RESPONSE B: American Anthropology Association is a good place for call to papers l, events and job postings
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POST: How to keep up with latest work when outside of academia? Hey guys, A little different from most other questions here, but I graduated with an MA in Social-Cultural Anthropology about 6 years ago before moving into a different career path for work. I'm finding myself increasingly interested in my former studies again, but I'm not sure where to look to find the most up to date research. Is it all just paywalled unless you're currently in an institution or is there public facing sources I could read? Any recommendations? Thanks!
RESPONSE A: Check out your university's Alumni association. I know University of Central Florida is free and lets you purchase a library card for I think $40 per year (maybe semester?). This should get you access to the library's resources.
RESPONSE B: I've been out of the game now for a couple years. I keep loose tabs on my area of interest through google scholar. Some stuff can be accessed for free as PDFs on there.
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POST: How to keep up with latest work when outside of academia? Hey guys, A little different from most other questions here, but I graduated with an MA in Social-Cultural Anthropology about 6 years ago before moving into a different career path for work. I'm finding myself increasingly interested in my former studies again, but I'm not sure where to look to find the most up to date research. Is it all just paywalled unless you're currently in an institution or is there public facing sources I could read? Any recommendations? Thanks!
RESPONSE A: Check out your university's Alumni association. I know University of Central Florida is free and lets you purchase a library card for I think $40 per year (maybe semester?). This should get you access to the library's resources.
RESPONSE B: Follow the professional associations on twitter and/or Facebook. For example, Society of Medical Anthropology has letters, white papers, conference schedules, etc. If you want to read *all* the articles in depth, you may be often out of luck, but you can also see trends and issues without any problems.
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POST: mods removed it and then someone suggested this sub... Obviously this applies to tribes that have seen/heard of western dress code. And know how we have rules about women covering boobs and genitals in most places. And how on an average day most women are covered from roughly the boobs to the knees at least. I know there are differences in reasons why Westerners and Muslims dress differently. But many remote tribes go round pretty much naked. Westerners probably cover 1/2-3/4s of skin depending on the weather and Muslim women probably cover 90%+ of skin, depending on whether they wear a hijab or burka etc. So the difference between what tribes people and westerners wear is similar to the difference between westerners and women in the middle east. Just a thought... NOTE: I'm not supporting the idea that female Muslims/ women living in the middle east should be forced to completely cover up. Or that all us Westerners should go round naked all the time
RESPONSE A: Which tribes do you have in mind? Most of the images you've probably seen are probably people wearing traditional cultural dress for tourism/entertainment purposes. The San bushpeople featured in The Gods Must be Crazy started dressing like this for as long as they've had contact with colonials. People dress appropriately for their climate and vocation everywhere in the world, except when we don culturally specific garb or uniforms. If you take a boat deep into the Amazon, the people you meet there will be wearing t-shirts and shorts. Aboriginal Australians love wearing name-brand sneakers just as much as the residents of Los Angeles. However, they do see television and movies and assume that is how foreigners normally dress, and yes this looks very odd to them. So, the U.S.A equivalent of grass skirts and loincloths would look something like this.
RESPONSE B: I recall documentary where a tribe in New Guinea that only wears penis sheaths was asked what they think about American clothing. The tribe man said we must all love the smell of our own shit. These guys run around in the hot wild all day, clothes would only slow them down and trap sweat and odor. So it was as alien to them as their customs are to us.
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POST: I've been looking at ancient art recently and noticed that while clothes vary in pre-modern societies, many societies seem to have more coverage for women than men, regardless of what is covered. Is there a reason for this? E.g., Egyptians, Greeks, a lot of native dress. Obviously even traditional dress in most places is subtly impacted by western norms which say that women must cover both their genitalia and their breasts, and enforces much more modesty generally, but it's something I'm noticing even in primary sources like artwork or traditional dress known to be in place before western influence.
RESPONSE A: women do have a higher resting comfort temperature than men, ie at the same temperature a woman would usually want to be dressed in warmer clothes than a man so that could play a factor even today, i see a lot more dudes comfortably wearing shorts in what i consider pretty cool weather. Women might wear skimpy clothes in cold weather too more these days, but they're probably feeling that cold more then men.
RESPONSE B: In the later Roman Empire, after it was almost completely converted to Christianity, both men and women had nothing but their hands exposed in contemporary art Search for the famous mosaic images of the Emperor Justinian and the Empress Theodora in the church of S. Vitale, Ravenna Italy. 6th century
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POST: Did native Americans have any access to alcohol pre-contact? Had they not invented it? That seems to be the suggestion, based on historical accounts of how adversely native Americans were affected by the white man's *firewater.*
RESPONSE A: They did have fermented alcoholic beverages, yes, notably the Chicha (Maiz beer) in the Andes, the Cayum (Cassava wine) in the area of Brazil, not to mention the Tepache/Alua common from Mexico to Brazil (Corn or pineapple wine). I'm not very knowledgeable about North America or the Plata region tbh. But there's a big difference between light beers and fresh wines and destilled alcoholic beverages (aka Firewater), which the natives in the Americas hadn't yet managed to do.
RESPONSE B: Link to an answer I wrote about this topic on r/askhistorians some time ago: Here
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POST: When did haircuts/shaving start? I was wondering today while I got my haircut when it all started. Apes obviously don’t cut their hair or shave it, so how far along the evolutionary line did cutting our hair and shaving begin? Did it start as a style thing to decorate our bodies, or was it a functional thing to keep our hair out of our faces or give enemies one less thing to grab?
RESPONSE A: Haircuts and shaving go back to at least the Upper Palaeolithic (25,000-30,000 years ago) and probably before. Contemporary portrays of shaggy and unkempt "cavemen" are wrong. The archaeological record shows Cro-Magnon and other ancestors valued grooming and decoration, including styling hair. Some Venus figurines seem to have beaded, netted or styled hair, for example. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus\_of\_Willendorf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus\_of\_Brassempouy In terms of tools, obsidian or chert would do the trick. If you could make a stone spearpoint or knife you could make a razor too. This is paywalled but if you can access it, it gives a more complete answer: https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1525/aa.1999.101.2.288
RESPONSE B: Possible it happened gradually and less than an organized conscious decision. My thoughts are that it happened around the time we developed thinner and thinner hair? Maybe when we started using pelts to warm us? Maybe when fire kept us warm enough we could evolve dependently? Very interesting question!
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POST: while I got my haircut when it all started. Apes obviously don’t cut their hair or shave it, so how far along the evolutionary line did cutting our hair and shaving begin? Did it start as a style thing to decorate our bodies, or was it a functional thing to keep our hair out of our faces or give enemies one less thing to grab?
RESPONSE A: Haircuts and shaving go back to at least the Upper Palaeolithic (25,000-30,000 years ago) and probably before. Contemporary portrays of shaggy and unkempt "cavemen" are wrong. The archaeological record shows Cro-Magnon and other ancestors valued grooming and decoration, including styling hair. Some Venus figurines seem to have beaded, netted or styled hair, for example. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus\_of\_Willendorf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus\_of\_Brassempouy In terms of tools, obsidian or chert would do the trick. If you could make a stone spearpoint or knife you could make a razor too. This is paywalled but if you can access it, it gives a more complete answer: https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1525/aa.1999.101.2.288
RESPONSE B: the sculptures of the ancient greeks show that they definitely practiced shaving and hair cutting. Roman sculptures of their Gallic tribal enemies indicate that the gauls shaved as well. (there's a famous statue, The Dying Gaul, which shows the gaul rocking a very 80s mustache.) the ancient Egyptians likely also got shaves and haircuts. historical representations of Sargon of Akkad and Nebuchadnezzar show them with elaborately styled beards. I am not an anthropologist... but I am guessing that shaving probably was inspired by comfort, but also used as a form of conspicuous consumption. look at me with all the leisure time to spend shaving and styling my hair, and the power/income to employ stylists/barbers.
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POST: Why did throat singing become popular among Central Asian and Inuit cultures?
RESPONSE A: I'm reading this book, "greening the paranormal" by Jack hunter. It's a collection of academic essays, many of which talk about how the paranormal relates to the environment in ancient cultures. Quite an interesting read. Anyway, one paper discussed how many ancient cultures navigated the land based on sound/acoustics, and throat singing was addressed. They talked specifically about Asian cultures that practice it, and how shamans will pinpoint acoustically unique locations in caves and against cliff walls that when they performed throat singing in a particular spot, the reverberation would echo it back in a specific way, making it sound like nature itself was communicating with the shamans. Perhaps throat singing itself is ideal for these resonation techniques? The paper didn't address this question specifically unfortunately, so this is just my guess based on the papers I read.
RESPONSE B: There has been research done that shows Statistical significance for > Vowel use will be more common in warm climate languages than cold climate languages (126). https://hraf.yale.edu/ehc/hypotheses/1102 I don’t have a source readily available but I read a paper a couple years ago on this also translating to bird song as well to some degree. Likely there is some latitudinal importance. And I wonder if this translate to this type of song in some way.
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POST: When/where was the concept of marriage first introduced? I am having a polite debate with someone who believes that the idea of marriage comes from the Bible. I personally feel like people were marrying before that, but would really like to hear some opinions from others.
RESPONSE A: "Marriage" is just a term. Pair-bonding likely pre-dates humanity, and certainly was practiced by at least some of the earliest anatomically modern humans.
RESPONSE B: No matter how you define it (as pair bonding, as a religious ritual, or as a contract), people were absolutely getting married before biblical times. If your friend wants an easy answer, consider ancient Egypt.
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POST: If human history was condensed to a 24 hour day, what time did the agricultural revolution start?
RESPONSE A: What are you considering human? Australopithecus? Homo habilis? Neandertals? Homo sapiens? Homo sapien sapiens? Also, for agriculture do you mean when grains were first eaten? Or when they were domesticated? Does place matter? This isn't quite what you want but might give some perspective https://waitbutwhy.com/2013/08/putting-time-in-perspective.html
RESPONSE B: To be snarky, the first domestication of plants precedes the first writing, so human history starts with agriculture already in place. Otherwise, as others have said, it really depends on your definitions of what do you mean by "human," "history," "agriculture," when, where, and so on. If we take Anatomically Modern Homo sapiens at 300k BP, and agriculture at 10k BP: 290/300=0.9666666 0.9666666\*24=23.2 23.2 hours is 11:12pm
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POST: agricultural revolution start?
RESPONSE A: What are you considering human? Australopithecus? Homo habilis? Neandertals? Homo sapiens? Homo sapien sapiens? Also, for agriculture do you mean when grains were first eaten? Or when they were domesticated? Does place matter? This isn't quite what you want but might give some perspective https://waitbutwhy.com/2013/08/putting-time-in-perspective.html
RESPONSE B: As others have said, it depends on your definition of ‘human’. The term ‘human’ now generally refers to anything from *H. erectus* to us, so that’s a roughly 2 million year span of time. If you limit it to just *H. sapiens* then it’s a roughly 300,000 year span of time. A large part of why ‘human’ no longer refers to just our single species is because when people were initially listing the traits rush they considered to be uniquely ‘human’ they listed ones that they thought applied only to us, sort of defining ‘human’ in a tautological manner. They assumed that no other species had these traits, then we started discovering that our ‘uniquely human’ traits weren’t so unique after all. Neanderthals and Denisovans made art and jewelry, *H. erectus* controlled fire and cooked foods, a variety of ancestors and relatives displayed all sorts of complex behaviors and technologies. As a result there were basically two options (simplifying a bit here), either redefine what ‘human’ meant, try to come up with a new set of criteria that wouldn’t be shared with any other species (a process doomed to failure) and try to change thousands of years of discussion and broad agreement on what it means to be ‘human’ (also an idea doomed to failure), or to accept that other species having this suite of traits should be included as ‘human’. This latter approach is the one that makes the most sense and is easiest, so ‘human’ now refers to a handful of closely related species, not just us. This is oversimplifying a bit, but it captures the core of the issue.
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POST: What would be an example of a modern myth?
RESPONSE A: If we take myths to mean things that are obviously untrue or fanciful, this will get controversial very quickly. If we take myths to mean 'stories received from authorities or from our elders to explain the world around us,' then there may be many. Most people with a K12 education can repeat many facts of science and history, such as the Big Bang theory, Newton's laws of gravity, the orbit of the Earth around the Sun, the existence of cells and atoms, the American Revolution, the signing of the Magna Carta, *without ever having tested or investigated these ideas personally*. Of course, we hope (and I believe) these ideas, theories, and facts were arrived at as a result of rigorous scientific processes and can reasonably be believed and relied upon, so they are not identical to mythology in the old sense, but nevertheless the information filters to the general public through the same basic process as old myths: somebody who seems to know more about the subject than you tells you the answer. If you want specifically stories, I guess you could say something like the story of Washington and the Cherry Tree or John Henry would both seem somewhat mythical.
RESPONSE B: I agree with the commenter who said it depends on how you define myth. If you are thinking of the cultural stories we tell that are meant to tell us how the world works, who "good" and "bad" people are, what is moral, and so on, then I think the story that "If you work hard you will get ahead" and "rags to riches" stories are important capitalist myths. The story that race exists and tells us something about people is another one (ie: one race is more athletic than another, or smarter than another, etc). That men are big and strong and rescue women from other bad men. A more limited version might be the story of poisoned Halloween candy or finding a fried rat in your bucket of chicken.
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POST: For those of you interested in cultural anthropology, are there any website with regular content published?
RESPONSE A: Depends very much on your specific area of interest and what level of detail you're looking for. For non-paywalled, varied anthropological writing for a general audience, https://www.sapiens.org/ is pretty good - it's from the Wenner Gren foundation, one of the big funders of anthropology research.
RESPONSE B: good question. This would probably be a main hub type of web-site, branching out into further hubs of interest. I could see a lot of great information being sourced from such a resource. Enough information to perpetuate independent web-sites and further refinements, of the records of Anthropology. "Probably should be."
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POST: Do you pronounce it neanderTHALL or neanderTALL? Which is correct, and why is there a difference?
RESPONSE A: Hill to die on. No th.
RESPONSE B: the opposite of whoever said it before i say it
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POST: Do you pronounce it neanderTHALL or neanderTALL? Which is correct, and why is there a difference?
RESPONSE A: Its Neanderthal, the difference comes from a change in german spelling (neanderthals are named after the neander valley, which in german is called neandertal, however in the past/ at the time when the neanderthals were discovered it wouldve been spelt neanderthal with th).
RESPONSE B: the opposite of whoever said it before i say it
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POST: Do you pronounce it neanderTHALL or neanderTALL? Which is correct, and why is there a difference?
RESPONSE A: An old professor of mine would be very adamant about pronouncing it neandertall. As a result that's what I use.
RESPONSE B: the opposite of whoever said it before i say it
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POST: Do you pronounce it neanderTHALL or neanderTALL? Which is correct, and why is there a difference?
RESPONSE A: In university, I was taught that when talking about actual neanderthal, its T. If using it in common speak (e.g. OMG, that guy spit on the floor, what a neanderthal) then TH is acceptable.
RESPONSE B: the opposite of whoever said it before i say it
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POST: Do you pronounce it neanderTHALL or neanderTALL? Which is correct, and why is there a difference?
RESPONSE A: In grew up hearing the "th" in the U.S. 40+ years ago, but now exclusively hear it pronounced with a "t" (living in Canada).
RESPONSE B: the opposite of whoever said it before i say it
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POST: Is sexual attraction driven by society too? They say men prefer women with some hip to waist ratio, and women prefer men based on some shoulder to hip ratio. It sounds like biology determined that. It really feels like that. But I'm learning that a lot of things are socially driven. A lot of things we just don't know either way. It bothers me a lot. People make proclamations about the way society should be run, based on what our supposed nature's are. And I just want to know for myself the specifics of these different situations such as the one I'm talking about here. I'm only on a basic 101 textbook level here. I'm reading anthropology. But this question isn't answered directly if at all from what I'm reading. I'm thinking the answer is we don't know either way. I don't know.
RESPONSE A: i'm coming at it more from a sociology angle than anthropology, but i think the "answer" if there can even be a definitive answer is that there are components of sexuality that are biological aspects (see: e.g., sexologists measuring physical arousal to stimuli) and then a social layer on top of that. if we take Judith Butler for example, we could consider sexuality as constructed on top of underlying desires and how we categorise them to be the construct. another theory of the social aspect would be the sexual scripts theory developed by Gagnon and Simon, which essentially says that the way we "do" sexuality is learned from social cues - think: sex ed classes, romance movies, pornography etc.
RESPONSE B: "they say" Who says? Can they cite their sources? How were the experiments designed? How were cultural controls applied? Was every person surveyed a white American college student? Think critically about the "common knowledge" you have.
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POST: Is sexual attraction driven by society too? They say men prefer women with some hip to waist ratio, and women prefer men based on some shoulder to hip ratio. It sounds like biology determined that. It really feels like that. But I'm learning that a lot of things are socially driven. A lot of things we just don't know either way. It bothers me a lot. People make proclamations about the way society should be run, based on what our supposed nature's are. And I just want to know for myself the specifics of these different situations such as the one I'm talking about here. I'm only on a basic 101 textbook level here. I'm reading anthropology. But this question isn't answered directly if at all from what I'm reading. I'm thinking the answer is we don't know either way. I don't know.
RESPONSE A: "they say" Who says? Can they cite their sources? How were the experiments designed? How were cultural controls applied? Was every person surveyed a white American college student? Think critically about the "common knowledge" you have.
RESPONSE B: There's an influential study in psychology that demonstrated our perception of attractive faces adapts quite rapidly to distorted images - with just a couple of minutes of exposure to different faces with relatively large manipulations in facial features, in a consistent direction (examples), we will then rate normal faces as less attractive than the distorted faces. Fitting the mind to the World: Face Adaptation and Attractiveness Aftereffects (Mueller et al, 2003) Building upon this is a lot of research suggesting the biological mechanism is a preference for averageness, related to the evolutionary theory of koinophilia. So, if the averageness hypothesis holds true then our perception of attractiveness would be shaped by culture as an adaptation to the average features in our local population, and also in maladaptive ways by exposure to filtered and manipulated images on social media.
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POST: m? I have Jewish origins, am froma low income family, I don't have a great income, not a great self esteem, and I ask myself a lot of questions. Not posting here to discuss those things, just to set a context. I also have some interest in Bourdieu. I'm trying to build strong arguments against social darwinism. Evolutionary psychology is also a little controversial. I often mix up survival of the fittest, self determination, free will, individualism. My main intuition is that civilization is an artificial construct, thus it's less susceptible to the same evolutionary processes you see in nature. For example, nature is known to be unfair in essence, while civilization greatly strives for justice, fairness and ideals. I know I'm comparing very different things, like apples and oranges, but I'm still curious to ask. Are there philosophers or anthropologists who have tried to deconstruct eugenics, social darwinism or even evolutionism with interesting arguments? As long as they are not religious?
RESPONSE A: Out of curiosity, at what point do you think social groups (which I assume you think evolved) stopped being the product of evolution on the way to civilization? Cooperative species value fairness greatly - Frans de Waal's work on morality and fairness in primates and other species is fascinating.
RESPONSE B: I don't know if this will be helpful, but I wonder what exactly you mean when you say that "civilization is an artificial construct" separate from "nature?" Human civilization is built on cooperation and mutual support, and I don't think it really means anything to describe civilization as artificial. Humans are a part of nature just as much as any animal, and human society emerged organically through evolutionary processes. A house is no more artificial than a beehive, a human dam is no more artificial than a Beaver's. Survival of the fittest doesn't just apply to the individual, it applies to societies too, and the ones that engage in cooperation win out. The social Darwinism that had lead to things like eugenics fails by its own criteria. If it was a successful basis for societal organisation then it would have become dominant.
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POST: darwinism. Evolutionary psychology is also a little controversial. I often mix up survival of the fittest, self determination, free will, individualism. My main intuition is that civilization is an artificial construct, thus it's less susceptible to the same evolutionary processes you see in nature. For example, nature is known to be unfair in essence, while civilization greatly strives for justice, fairness and ideals. I know I'm comparing very different things, like apples and oranges, but I'm still curious to ask. Are there philosophers or anthropologists who have tried to deconstruct eugenics, social darwinism or even evolutionism with interesting arguments? As long as they are not religious?
RESPONSE A: When I was in college in the 70's we were taught the reason Spencer (Social Darwinism) was wrong was because it is not the survival of the strongest or fittest it was survival of the best adapted to their niche .... and the reason Eugenics is wrong is that offspring tend to regress to the mean. High or low IQ people people are more likely to have children who are more average than they are and average people are more likely to have children who are less average ( higher or lower IQ ) than they are. No serious scientist that I know of doubts that Darwin's insight that all species of organisms arise and develop through natural selection is true though they may argue about the details. .
RESPONSE B: > while civilization greatly strives for justice, fairness, and ideals Without getting into the nebulous idea of "civilization" itself, I dont think this is a sentiment that most modern anthropologists and historians would cosign. The history of "civilized society" is one that is rife with injustice. For instance, many would classify Ancient Rome as a civilization, but fair it most certainly wasn't. The patricians regularly oppressed, abused, and manipulated the plebeians, slavery was rampant, and the Roman military regularly robbed neighboring societies of their sovereignty mostly for monetary gain and prestige. All in all I wouldn't classify the majority of human civilizations as being any more intrinsically "fair" than gorilla society.
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POST: "Insanity" in other civilizations Do (or did) people of other civilizations like native-americans, hunter-gatherers, australian aboriginals etc suffered from mental illnesses? I would guess yes, but are (or were) the same illnesses people from the "West", like depression or schizophrenia? Even in the West, were mental problems the same through out history? I hope I'm phrasing this correctly. Thanks!
RESPONSE A: There was a Stanford study that showed that voices heard by people with schizophrenia vary from culture to culture (https://news.stanford.edu/2014/07/16/voices-culture-luhrmann-071614/), with those in some cultures hearing voices as positive or helpful. This raises the idea that perhaps in a culture where shamans are expected to talk to spirits, or where everyone is expected to communicate with God or with ancestors, people with schizophrenia could "blend in" and not be seen as disabled - or would perhaps even be seen as gifted with an important skill or talent. On a related note, Western cultures continue to have an interesting relationship with LGBT people, until recently viewing gay people as disordered, and still viewing trans people as disordered, whereas many cultures have accepted trans and queer people as a "third gender" and some have even ascribed shamanic powers to trans people, who can negotiate between the masculine and feminine. I don't mean to equate being LGBT with being mentally ill (I myself am trans and have also experienced depression and anxiety, and don't view my own gender identity as disordered, while my depression and anxiety were much more clearly an "illness"), but to point out that definitions of what is "normal" vs. "disordered" vary from culture to culture, and are handled differently as a result.
RESPONSE B: This is from memory, so take it with a grain of salt, but I remember reading a paper that suggested mental illness in the past wasn’t as noticeable because lives were simpler. Our more complex culture and civilization means that functionality has to be higher. As I said, from memory. I hope I remembered it right.
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POST: How influential was the russian frontier in the formation of russian culture as compared to the american frontier?
RESPONSE A: Great question. I'd love to know too
RESPONSE B: Incredibly important, not just during the period where the eastern Turkic/Mongol nomads extracted tribute and raided but to the continued development through the Soviet Union. You should look into the Cossack colonization of the east and the website “17 moments in soviet history” especially the sections on the non Russian(ethnically) east.
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POST: How influential was the russian frontier in the formation of russian culture as compared to the american frontier?
RESPONSE A: Great question. I'd love to know too
RESPONSE B: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2640127?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents This article by David Moon covers the topic quite nicely. One interesting claim he makes is that the entrenchment of serfdom in Russia proper was partly caused by the presence of an open frontier and the formation of Cossack hosts. Basically, discontent peasants in Russia had the option to just run away and set up farms in the steppe, or to join a Cossack party, which were known for their democratic structure. If such an option wasn't available it is more likely there would have been more revolts, and more attempts by the serfs to fight for their rights. But since there was this 'safety-valve', serfdom was strengthened by the nobles of the state, as unhappy peasants would just fly rather than fight.
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POST: language-A. Some IRL examples I can think of (apologies if any of these are misconceptions): upper-class Romans in the late-republic era being able to speak Greek in addition to Latin; Russian nobles at certain times post-Peter the Great speaking French or English as opposed to Russian; government bureaucrats in the Byzantine/Eastern Roman Empire being able to speak or write Latin in addition to Greek; and English nobility in the post-Norman Conquest era predominantly speaking French rather than English. Would also appreciate some recommendations on further reading on this subject!
RESPONSE A: I would recommend *Voices of Modernity: Language Ideologies and the Politics of Inequality* (2003) by Richard Baumann and Charles Briggs. In it they explore hegemonic provincialization of language as a practice of legitimizing social inequalities.
RESPONSE B: When a society operates using different languages or distinct dialects of the same language, they're referred to as *diglossic*. The situation is called *diglossia*. Especially when the languages are closely related and form a continuum, the terms *acrolect*, *mesolect*, and *basilect* are used for the high, middle, and lower prestige varieties or features. A good example would be Haiti. Metropolitan French is the acrolect and Haitian Creole is the basilect. Mesolects tend to be hard to define, but in this case, it would be Haitian French, which is mutually intelligible with Metropolitan French but has some pronunciation features typical of Creole and incorporates more Creole loanwords. In general, the term *prestige* is used to describe languages or features that are perceived as superior by speakers. However, there is also covert prestige, which describes the usage of features of a basilect to communicate that one is a member of an "in-group". Think about how many terms and even grammatical features are borrowed from Black American English into General American English, we could say that usage of these terms communicates covert prestige, as generally, features of Black American English are stigmatized.
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POST: pro democratic thinking, if thinkers that defy these tendencies in there own writing exist? I know there are anarchist and marxist anthropologists and they seem to be tolerated in academia. As I would imagine it is quite difficult to sustain a far-right ideology throughout years of studying cultural differences, so If there are some they most likely would be in sub-academia (whatever you wanna call it). My interest in this sparked more as weird curiousity. Any recommendations?
RESPONSE A: Well, there is one odd subsect (and I say sect because it IS a cult) of archaeology that generally draws from more right-wing ideology: Mormon archaeology. Anthropology and archaeology are taught quite extensively by Mormon archaeologists at places like BYU and then trained Mormon archaeologists will go to Latin America - specifically countries with Maya archaeology - to study the archaeology there. Sounds good up to this point, but they’re using their profession to try and prove the existence of Jesus in America and white, Mormon/Christian people having lived in the Americas before the Maya, Aztecs, Olmecs, and generally just anyone who isn’t white. Now, I haven’t read any of the research (because wow it must be flawed) but the mental gymnastics an archaeologist would have to take to help prove this “theory” must be fascinating in its own way. But that’s my contribution to this question, do with it what you will. *Edit: also there was this weird/bigot committee/movement at SAAs last year done by old right-wing archaeologists going against Native and Indigenous peoples.
RESPONSE B: You mighr be able to find obscure works on space and place from a nativist perspective that draw on Heidegger and his concepts of dasein, etc. I doubt it would be openly fascist or anything, but progressive geographers heavily criticised the geography of space and place for some of its inherent conservatism. I can't recommend any in particular, but I'm sure that there are some more traditionalist types attracted to that.
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POST: What are some of the most important debates and disagreements in anthropology at the moment?
RESPONSE A: I had an anthropology professor many years ago that said the biggest debate in the field is if a white sauce is permissible on a pizza. He insisted that you could tell a lot about their scholarship on how they answered that question.
RESPONSE B: This is more of a moral debate than a theoretical one or one on practice I guess, but in my department back in undergrad there were two camps on the “weaponized/militarized” anthropology debate. That is the use of anthropology (and anthropologist) by occupying militaries to gain an ethnographical layout of occupied lands. The US military was doing this most notably in Afghanistan, and a former graduate of our program was actually doing it post-grad school. A few of the professors firmly believed that anthropologist could aid relations between the locals and US troops, and also record many aspects of culture/artifacts that are destroyed by war. The other side detested the practice, citing anthropology’s unflatteringly history as an instrument of imperialism, and argued that real ethnography couldn’t be done with a military demanding quotas or giving or giving orders, and that an anthropologist would be viewed as part of the occupying forces by the local population. The topic was often brought up in my four years, and I’d bet it’s still being discussed today. There’s an interesting book, Weaponizing Anthropology, that I just remembered I wanted to read on the topic.
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POST: m, is this a very modern thing (20th century) or did this start much earlier.
RESPONSE A: I have actually recently been reading up on spirit possession and exorcism rituals in Kel Ewey Tuareg culture so i might be able to bring something of value here. Exorcisms in Tuareg culture is not anything like the "devil banishing" from modern christianity. They believe that people can get possessed by spirits called Kel Essuf (People of Solitude). To rid a person of this spirit it needs to be appeased by a ritual of music and song. People of all social ranks can be possessed, but mostly females. ' This is an excellent article if you want some further reading on the subject: https://doi.org/10.1525/ahu.1993.18.1.21 As well as videos of the rituals themselves: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qg-lq75G-C8
RESPONSE B: Ponticus the Christian Monk wrote the Practikos in the 4th Century. It’s a melding of Meditational Aescetic practices from the Greeks and Christian ideas. A lot of Non-Dual Meditation and Open Monitoring Meditation practices involve cessation of intrusive thoughts and focusing of the mind on a single act. Avoiding predictive processed thought opens the meditator up to a new type of ‘unmeasured’ experience frequently described as a religious experience. Ponticus talks at length about the intrusive thoughts we must master in order to have a Heaven on Earth experience. In his system, there are 8 deadly ‘demons’ of thought we must observe and master; a list that eventually became the 7 deadly sins. There’s also the “Jesus Prayer”, a short mantra repeated over and over again 24/7; a practice similar to “Focusing on the Breath” also meant to drown out predictive thought. I imagine many Meditative processes used Religious imagery to describe a Cognitive process that wasn’t quite understood. http://www.ldysinger.com/Evagrius/01_Prak/00a_start.htm
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POST: Having just watched the Ham-Nye debate and stumbled across this subreddit, I have to ask: any cretionist anthropologists out there? Oops misspelled creationist. Oh well.
RESPONSE A: Evangelical Christian, and an Old Earth Creationist here. There aren't all that many of us. My graduate and undergraduate professors all did double takes when I "came out" as a Christian who studied human evolution. I don't personally know any Young Earth Creationists in the discipline, but they may be out there. To be more specific, I'll quote an earlier discussion of the topic. I believe God created the world, and our species was an intentional outcome of creation. All evidence points to a long period of creation/shaping of the universe, with a deep history of life on this planet. I don't hold an exact literal interpretation of the first few chapters of Genesis (in the history of biblical study such a literal perspective is a somewhat strange/recent phenomenon). Outside of that, I really don't know how it all works. I don't know at what point along our line we became "human", and I don't know what the Creator's interaction with his creation was like beforehand. I have lots of questions, but they don't produce anxiety in not knowing.
RESPONSE B: I've encountered them in my undergrad courses for sure, not in grad school though- you know, it's probably more common than you'd think, because I think some creationists go into anthropology trying to find evidence to support their beliefs... plus the interest in biblical history/archaeology... anyways just for funsies here's the American Anthropological Association's Statement on Evolution and Creationism- interesting, I think.
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POST: Having just watched the Ham-Nye debate and stumbled across this subreddit, I have to ask: any cretionist anthropologists out there? Oops misspelled creationist. Oh well.
RESPONSE A: I knew one in grad school. She was one of those "microevolution but not macroevolution" types. To her credit (I guess), she was not a young-Earth creationist. She was the only doctoral student I know of who failed her prelim exams.
RESPONSE B: Evangelical Christian, and an Old Earth Creationist here. There aren't all that many of us. My graduate and undergraduate professors all did double takes when I "came out" as a Christian who studied human evolution. I don't personally know any Young Earth Creationists in the discipline, but they may be out there. To be more specific, I'll quote an earlier discussion of the topic. I believe God created the world, and our species was an intentional outcome of creation. All evidence points to a long period of creation/shaping of the universe, with a deep history of life on this planet. I don't hold an exact literal interpretation of the first few chapters of Genesis (in the history of biblical study such a literal perspective is a somewhat strange/recent phenomenon). Outside of that, I really don't know how it all works. I don't know at what point along our line we became "human", and I don't know what the Creator's interaction with his creation was like beforehand. I have lots of questions, but they don't produce anxiety in not knowing.
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POST: if you have a ba in anthropology, what was the salary in your entry level job after graduation? (pls include a year and location bc that changes the salary's purchasing power) and were you able to live on it comfortably?
RESPONSE A: Back in the early 90s, *before* I got by BA in anthropology, I worked with the CRM and made about $12/hr. Then I went to undergrad, got my degree, and there were no jobs, everyone wanted me to volunteer my time instead of paying for it, including CRM (which had tried to get me to go do a different university that was closer to where I'd been working, but wasn't going to keep me employed during university). I volunteered as a university teacher overseas instead, and didn't come back to anthropology, although certain aspects of it do come in handy in my current ecology and conservation job. When I came back to an academic setting I went for my MS in ecology instead.
RESPONSE B: Went from BA to PhD program, funded. Stipend was $10k per semester, with occasional opportunities to supplement with summer work, meaning that I made a total of $26k per year in Phoenix, AZ. ​ After leaving that position, I now make $56k per year in Washington, DC, working at a museum.
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POST: Are such 19th century writers as Emile Durkheim, Max Weber, Lewis H. Morgan, Élisée Reclus, Maxim Kovalevski and Pierre Kropotkin still considered an authority on ancient and modern archaic society?
RESPONSE A: What is "modern archaic"?
RESPONSE B: Certainly not. They're considered important thinkers, and some of their ideas are still relevant (although usually in heavily modified and updated form), but there has been a century of improvement in anthropological and sociological thinking. Many 19th century anthropologists were "armchair anthropologists", often hardly leaving their home countries and relying on secondhand "ethnographies" written by missionaries, traders, or explorers. The problem of the anthropologist's own bias is bad enough even in the best of circumstances, but relying on secondhand information from a missionary about the religious practices of a group that you've never been within 10,000 miles of? That's going to introduce a hopeless amount of error and misunderstanding. Methodology, especially, has improved dramatically since the 19th century. Also, sociology started out as a highly positivist field, and that has been thoroughly discarded by most modern sociologists. This is not to say that Durkheim or Weber or so on didn't contribute immensely to the field. Any college or graduate program in sociology or anthropology or related fields is going to include them as required reading, because even if many of their ideas are considered flawed or outdated, subsequent work has nevertheless built upon their contributions, or else exists in opposition to them. So while they're still influential and worth reading, 19th century anthropologists are not at all considered authoritative.
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POST: Are such 19th century writers as Emile Durkheim, Max Weber, Lewis H. Morgan, Élisée Reclus, Maxim Kovalevski and Pierre Kropotkin still considered an authority on ancient and modern archaic society?
RESPONSE A: Certainly not. They're considered important thinkers, and some of their ideas are still relevant (although usually in heavily modified and updated form), but there has been a century of improvement in anthropological and sociological thinking. Many 19th century anthropologists were "armchair anthropologists", often hardly leaving their home countries and relying on secondhand "ethnographies" written by missionaries, traders, or explorers. The problem of the anthropologist's own bias is bad enough even in the best of circumstances, but relying on secondhand information from a missionary about the religious practices of a group that you've never been within 10,000 miles of? That's going to introduce a hopeless amount of error and misunderstanding. Methodology, especially, has improved dramatically since the 19th century. Also, sociology started out as a highly positivist field, and that has been thoroughly discarded by most modern sociologists. This is not to say that Durkheim or Weber or so on didn't contribute immensely to the field. Any college or graduate program in sociology or anthropology or related fields is going to include them as required reading, because even if many of their ideas are considered flawed or outdated, subsequent work has nevertheless built upon their contributions, or else exists in opposition to them. So while they're still influential and worth reading, 19th century anthropologists are not at all considered authoritative.
RESPONSE B: I learned about Durkheim, Weber, and Morgan in a theory class for the anth major. As far as I can tell they were authorities for their time, no doubt any ethnographies written will be insightful. But...they lived in the 19th century and the turn of the 20th...so their theories are quite outdated but are interesting.
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POST: Folk Korean game "Stone battle" - It was played for thousands of years and it was actually quite dangerous. What are similar customs observed in other cultures? https://kpopjacketlady.com/2017/02/21/and-stones-may-break-my-bones-the-korean-stone-throwing-game-called-seokjeon/ https://newmoun.tistory.com/752 a 16th century record of Stone Battle in an ancient capital of the Silla dynasty (in Korean)
RESPONSE A: In certain parts of Peru there is a ritual battle known as the ch'iaraje. Sounds very similar to this. https://books.google.co.jp/books?id=dRNkEAAAQBAJ&pg=PA33&lpg=PA33&dq=ch%27iaraje&source=bl&ots=NCoUmv7NDg&sig=ACfU3U371xzO3NX4_5JsYiFLeyJrMhYi6A&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjctcmwqvX7AhWDGIgKHYbVC0c4ChDoAXoECAUQAg#v=onepage&q=ch'iaraje&f=false
RESPONSE B: Well, in rural Wisconsin we played a game that we called "chucker rocker" as in you chuck (throw) rocks at one another in our local stone quarry/gravel pit. We would pair up into teams and go onto each other's shoulders and take turns throwing rocks at the other team, usually the lower team member's face or groin to get them to drop the team member they were carrying. As someone now in my thirties I cringe at how badly we could have hurt one another over a stupid game.
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POST: Any YouTube channels about anthropology/human evolution? Hello all! I'm been looking for YouTube channels that deal exclusively on the topics of anthropology (preferably physical anthropology) or human evolution. I've already subscribed to John Hawks's channel, would anyone have any other suggestions? Thanks.
RESPONSE A: Check out the BOAS Network http://boasnetwork.com
RESPONSE B: I just started watching these lectures from Stanford university. Really fun to watch and the professor is a cool and funny dude. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL087286BAF7B3D458
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POST: issues etc.. since we need it and use it less the more the tech is developing.
RESPONSE A: >I know i sound like an amateur but what im trying to ask is how is it called when someone study and research human evolution and biomechanics of the han body in order to understand how it work for treating the human body in physiotherapy , For the most part - people don't do that. While you'll \_hear\_ a lot of chatter about "the paleolithic diet for good health", and modern medicine can be \_informed\_ to some degree by an understanding of evolutionary history -- the paleoanthropology of the jaw doesn't get you to a treatment for temporal mandibular joint syndrome. Human evolution and contemporary human medical concerns may have significant overlaps -- but the problems of "what to do about my bad back now" vs "how the sacral spine changed over hundreds of thousands of years" -- they're really very different domains. A spinal surgeon doing a laminectomy or vertebral fusion -- might have an interest in human evolution, but it doesn't really matter much to what he does for his patients.
RESPONSE B: To clarify, are you asking for a kind of ancestral kinesiology? You want to know what movements we did historically and how that affects how we move today? Is there a particular line you’re drawing between historical archers and, say, historical re-enactment archers or people who use ancestral weapons and tools recreationally in modern times? There is such a wide variety of behaviors across cultures and many of them aren’t split easily between a vague “then” and “now.” So I guess I’m asking if there’s a particular culture or timeframe you’re asking about (e.g. how did using stone tools affect muscle development in modern descendants of a specific stone-tool-wielding culture), or if you’re asking if there is an entire field of study dedicated to the evolutionary impacts of *everything* humans have ever done across all cultures and how those motions manifest in the movements passed down in each different culture with their different tools and motions?
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POST: What currently used symbol has been used the longest in human history? Are there symbols that have been used with the same or very similar meaning for all recorded history (or further)? And what is the oldest confirmed example of this? I would exclude depictions of things like paintings of animals or items. My question comes from the modern question of how to convey meanings like danger or location to future people.
RESPONSE A: The rainbow serpent ancestral being in Australian Aboriginal culture. It’s known as the longest continual art tradition—and religion—in the world. “By painting this figure on bark today, Aboriginal people are carrying on the longest uninterrupted mythological tradition in the world, which has been the subject of art and ceremony for possibly thousands of years. It remains as one of the oldest and continuous religious beliefs for human kind, and its images continue to be painted by Aboriginal artists today.” Source: https://japingkaaboriginalart.com/articles/rainbow-serpent/ See also https://www.jstor.org/stable/40387039
RESPONSE B: off the top of my head, palm impressions is the first I can think of (i though wonder whether you would consider that as a symbol or susbume that within the animals category that you prefer to be shunned in this case). Palm impressions have been evidenced in parietal art from as early as during the middle pleistocene (dated between ∼169 and 226 ka BP) to as recent as today itself on the doorways or walls of Hindu households or temples. Another such symbol that was stolen and made notorious by a European empire in the previous century is the Swastika which dates back to around the Early Bronze age, has been found almost around the whole globe, and still is an auspicious symbol in Hindu households (source: Hindu myself)
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POST: What currently used symbol has been used the longest in human history? Are there symbols that have been used with the same or very similar meaning for all recorded history (or further)? And what is the oldest confirmed example of this? I would exclude depictions of things like paintings of animals or items. My question comes from the modern question of how to convey meanings like danger or location to future people.
RESPONSE A: Cave Paintings from 40,000 years ago had a number of common symbols that may be what you’re asking about. You can google it to see all of them, but as far as symbols we still see there’s a few examples. Circles, Triangles, Spirals, and Crosshatches (#); although as far as common meaning who can say.
RESPONSE B: An idea that could take you down a deep rabbit hole is to consider metaphors, gestures and sound signals. For instance the conceptual metaphor of up = higher status has been found in chimpanzees. For gestures, touch as a signal of affection is something we share at least with mammals. On a less serious note, the neanderthal hashtag engraving in Gibraltar might have marked something or was just made to look cool, probably similar reasons for its usage today. :)
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POST: What currently used symbol has been used the longest in human history? Are there symbols that have been used with the same or very similar meaning for all recorded history (or further)? And what is the oldest confirmed example of this? I would exclude depictions of things like paintings of animals or items. My question comes from the modern question of how to convey meanings like danger or location to future people.
RESPONSE A: “**How to convey meaning like danger or location...**” that excludes “**depictions of things like paintings...**”? I think the best answer to your specific question would probably be **Gesticular Pointing** or **Finger Guns** for the technical term.
RESPONSE B: I'd say the stick-man figure to represent us. Looking at the Cave Paintings in france, generally the artist has to go into a lot of detail to depict what specific animal is being portrayed: specific body shape, ears. eyes, horns and dots on wild cattle, a different body shape, a different tail, different way of coloring the body (dun body and white underbelly) for horses. But the simple stick man - we don't need to put eyes and ears and fingers and toes on it, or even have it be the right color. We just know that it is 'us'
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POST: Has something like a list of universal emotions all humans share ever been made? What about the following emotions are they universal and cross cultural?: grief, envy, jealousy, guilt, shame, regret
RESPONSE A: how would you confirm that another person (say, me, for example) shares a given emotion with you? how would you confirm that another person who speaks a different language shares a given emotion with you? Maybe there's a standard historical translation of "xyz" to "grief" -- how do you interrogate whether they're actually "the same"? what does it mean to share emotions? anyway, your question is a standard in psychology, so you can get a lot of answers by asking in that field. For example they've got their six or seven "universal facial expressions".
RESPONSE B: Another one best suited for *r/AskPsychology, but... Psychologists measure both neurological activity and various bio params such as pupil dilation, heart rate, blood pressure, skin conductivity, etc., to try and detect and categorize emotional states. The problem is that many emotions - e.g. lust and fear - can appear very similar using externally measurable criteria, and it may not be clear which a subject is experiencing based on these measurements alone. So while Psychologists would, I think, generally agree there is a gamut of common emotions displayed as part of the typically-functioning human condition, the interpretation and cognitive experience of those emotions will be situational and personal. *That's not to say that one person's experience of lust or fear is significantly different than another's*, but rather that, in arousal state XYZ whether you report lust or fear will be situational, based on your own interpretation of that situation.
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POST: What are the theories behind why the cuisines of some culture feature spicy foods much more than others?
RESPONSE A: Here’s a link to a piece that discusses some of the competing hypotheses used to explain the hot food-hot climate connection: https://news.cornell.edu/stories/1998/03/food-bacteria-spice-survey-shows-why-some-cultures-it-hot
RESPONSE B: "Chile Pepper in China" by Brian R. Dott, covers this well. Portuguese pushed them hard in SE Asia. But particularly in China it wasn't until the late 1700's until they took hold. Essentially it was the high cost of salt, ginger and peppercorn that drove them to popularity amoung the lower classes in China. The same is likely true in SE asia. Ginger and peppercorn have heat but are expensive. Peppers were easy to grow and cheap. So poor folks adopted them to either complement native spices or supplant them if they were too expensive. Over time, "peasant food" often becomes national cuisine and adopted into elites dishes. In the case of China it only took a few generations and they became part of the identity of certain regions
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POST: How did humans make anything out of meteoric iron? Wikipedia lists a variety of ancient items known to be made from meteoric iron. What I'm curious about is how anyone was able to effectively form items from iron, prior to the iron age. Forging would have been difficult and would have required coal or at least charcoal, and knowledge/skill in forging. Did these skills and technologies exist prior to the iron age? I'm assuming casting wouldn't have been feasible either, and filing or grinding would have required materials that they didn't have. Do we have a sense of how people approached this?
RESPONSE A: The knowledge of hot forging would have been available before the Iron Age, yes, because copper was worked in a similar manner using heat/hammering/annealing. Copper gets softened and hardened in an opposite way compared to iron, so the exact metallurgy skills are not directly transferable, but the ability to shape hot metal would apply. A creative metal smith with a nice piece of meteorite might be able to figure out the differences with some experimentation. You said that filing and grinding would have required materials they wouldn’t have had but that’s not true. You can grind an iron-nickel meteorite almost the same as a groundstone tool. You couldn’t peck away excess material before grinding but it would otherwise be the same. People were making fine tools of jade, quartz, chalcedony, and even corundum before the Iron Age, and all of those are harder than an iron-nickel meteorite.
RESPONSE B: Meteoric iron can be cold-hammered. It's a slow process, but given that the Inuit in Greenland were pounding pieces off the Cape York meteorite and making tools from them, I'd say there's your evidence that it can be done. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cape_York_meteorite
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POST: When did humans start having significant “free time” to pursue activities that weren’t directly related to survival?
RESPONSE A: A lot of experts propose that humans had more free time prior to the advent of agriculture.
RESPONSE B: Some argue that with agricultural innovation more humans had time to engage in other activities that were not only for getting resources/food. And, to an extent, this is true. Farmers will work on getting food, whereas others will become specialized in other things like: carpentry, jewelcrafting, writing, etc However, Sahlins' Original Affluent Society discussed how, in a nutshell, hunter gatherer societies only need to spend 15-20 hours a week procuring their food. To compare, our society needs 40 hours for a living wage. And even then, it is not to get our food, it is to get money so that we can get our food (barring people who grow what they eat).
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POST: I heard that Traditional Maori culture Loathed Reptiles. Why could that be? I got it from a 1800 century writer that thought the Maori where Aryans. Why did Maori culture fear reptiles.
RESPONSE A: New Zealander here, I have never heard of Maori having any fear of reptiles. They'd have no reason to whatsoever - New Zealand has very few, and the skinks and geckos that are here are completely innocuous. >I got it from a 1800 century writer that thought the Maori where Aryans. I'm going to guess this is the problem right here.
RESPONSE B: The Maori People are still alive and thriving in New Zealand! I’m sure you could use the internet to connect with one of their representative groups and ask them for yourself. 🙂
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POST: I heard that Traditional Maori culture Loathed Reptiles. Why could that be? I got it from a 1800 century writer that thought the Maori where Aryans. Why did Maori culture fear reptiles.
RESPONSE A: New Zealander here, I have never heard of Maori having any fear of reptiles. They'd have no reason to whatsoever - New Zealand has very few, and the skinks and geckos that are here are completely innocuous. >I got it from a 1800 century writer that thought the Maori where Aryans. I'm going to guess this is the problem right here.
RESPONSE B: New Zealand has very few reptiles, with only skinks, geckos and the tuatara. I found this link which may be of interest https://teara.govt.nz/en/ngarara-reptiles
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POST: I heard that Traditional Maori culture Loathed Reptiles. Why could that be? I got it from a 1800 century writer that thought the Maori where Aryans. Why did Maori culture fear reptiles.
RESPONSE A: you could try /r/newzealand, someone might have heard of this idea
RESPONSE B: New Zealander here, I have never heard of Maori having any fear of reptiles. They'd have no reason to whatsoever - New Zealand has very few, and the skinks and geckos that are here are completely innocuous. >I got it from a 1800 century writer that thought the Maori where Aryans. I'm going to guess this is the problem right here.
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POST: I heard that Traditional Maori culture Loathed Reptiles. Why could that be? I got it from a 1800 century writer that thought the Maori where Aryans. Why did Maori culture fear reptiles.
RESPONSE A: New Zealand has very few reptiles, with only skinks, geckos and the tuatara. I found this link which may be of interest https://teara.govt.nz/en/ngarara-reptiles
RESPONSE B: Not reptiles in general but certain interactions with them. I.e; a skink running in front of you is a sign of death. Same with a fantail coming in to your house. Comes down to culture, tradition, beliefs, all of the above etc. Souce: Maori.
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POST: I heard that Traditional Maori culture Loathed Reptiles. Why could that be? I got it from a 1800 century writer that thought the Maori where Aryans. Why did Maori culture fear reptiles.
RESPONSE A: Not reptiles in general but certain interactions with them. I.e; a skink running in front of you is a sign of death. Same with a fantail coming in to your house. Comes down to culture, tradition, beliefs, all of the above etc. Souce: Maori.
RESPONSE B: you could try /r/newzealand, someone might have heard of this idea
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POST: I heard from someone that native Americans didn’t have a concept of illegitimate children And even if the child was of Europeion decsent they would be treated equally. Is that correct?
RESPONSE A: Generally anyone who makes blanket statements about "Native Americans" should be questioned, since the term encompasses literally thousands of different cultures (and does not even include Canadian, Mexican, South American, and Alaskan natives). I don't know if this was true of some tribes, but which tribe(s) is the first question you should ask.
RESPONSE B: The news media Vox is currently doing a series with Netflix (where you can also watch it) called Explained. One episode is on monogamism and they touch a bit on what I think you are asking. In some indigenous tribes a child can easily have multiple fathers. If more than one man slept with the woman during her pregnancy they will all be considered to be a father of that child. Hence, it is not possible to talk about illegitimate children either.
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POST: I heard from someone that native Americans didn’t have a concept of illegitimate children And even if the child was of Europeion decsent they would be treated equally. Is that correct?
RESPONSE A: Generally anyone who makes blanket statements about "Native Americans" should be questioned, since the term encompasses literally thousands of different cultures (and does not even include Canadian, Mexican, South American, and Alaskan natives). I don't know if this was true of some tribes, but which tribe(s) is the first question you should ask.
RESPONSE B: Depends entirely on the culture, like most things. Here in New Mexico, where many native people have continued life with unusually little disturbance, the Catholic religion has been dominant in the region for so long (since 1500s) that monogamous marriage and paternity is taken seriously. During colonization/before widespread extermination, many tribes were noted to have more flexibility in sexual relations and marriage and in who was considered a relative. Many settler children were kidnapped and subsequently adopted by native people during early colonization, and usually considered full members of the tribe. Quanah Parker was a famous Comanche leader whose mother was European and adopted as a child, obviously there were no issues with his legitimacy.
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POST: I've heard that the idea of "race" doesn't exist, I'm open to this, but have a question. Why, if race doesn't exist do some people have darker skin, and others lighter? Would genetics not be the cause of some people having darker, and some lighter skin? I mean to make no assumptions, and I might've worded this wrong, but I'm just curious.
RESPONSE A: Of course genetics cause some people to have lighter or darker skin. Genetics also cause some people to have lighter or darker hair and lighter or darker eyes. Would you consider someone with blue eyes to be a different race than someone with brown eyes?
RESPONSE B: I suggest you take a look at some of the other threads discussing this (as linked here by another user), and then if you still have a specific question not answered, you can post again. It's a common question, and a completely decent one. We don't say to read the other threads because we don't think it's important, it's just asked a lot. Hope they answer your question! :)
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POST: seem to find any academic sources on this topic. Is it true that virtually everyone died around 30? Or was 30 the average age taking into account all the people who died in infancy? Academic sources appreciated!
RESPONSE A: 30 was the average age taking into account all the people who died in infancy and childhood. If you survived beyond those years, which obviously many people didn't you had a reasonable chance of living into your 50s. Life expectancy for women between 20 and 40 was much lower than for men in the same age bracket due to the dangers of childbirth and the resulting infection. Women who survived their childbearing years, or who had no children had the same life expectancy as men beyond 40 years of age. Life expectancy was lower in cities than in the country due to the easy spread of disease and lack of sewerage. For academic sources see: http://books.google.com.au/books?id=nVBpEKX4ppYC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Old+Age+in+Medieval+England&hl=en&sa=X&ei=rmPYU-2TAta78gXzqoDgCw&ved=0CBsQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=childhood&f=false (page 127 onwards) http://books.google.com.au/books?id=T3EwHTrRZEsC&pg=PA46&dq=Life+expectancy+Medieval+London&hl=en&sa=X&ei=M2bYU_GhDsym8AWhooGYCw&ved=0CDgQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=Life%20expectancy%20Medieval%20London&f=false (page 46 onwards)
RESPONSE B: Remember, top-level comments on AskAnthropology need to be clear, informative, and must be based on valid sources that are either provided in the post, or can be provided when requested.
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POST: Why are the petroglyphs of civilizations and peoples that are oceans apart so similar? I was referred here by r/askhistorians because they felt that you fine people would be of better help. Recently, some petroglyphs were found near Aswan, Egypt, and the petroglyphs, logically, are from before the rise of hieratic and hieroglyphs. I noticed that they are strikingly similar to the ones that are perhaps more well-known petroglyphs left behind by the Fremont peoples and the Anasazi/Ancestral Puebloans of the Four Corners states, specifically the antelope as seen in the link above. I don’t subscribe to the Ancient Aliens idea, so why are these glyphs so similar despite being from areas with cultures that later had drastically different art forms? Thanks in advance
RESPONSE A: Can you post the antelope picture from the desert Southwest so I can compare it to the onyx? My theory is someone familiar with animals will be able to point out critical differences and say one is clearly a prong horn or bighorn. But I'm also thinking there are only so many ways of drawing a leopard/jaguar for example, or especially birds in flight So if people have these animals around then depictions of them are going to be similar. Buy you won't find depictions of crocodiles or elephants or giraffe in the desert Southwest
RESPONSE B: I would say that the similarities you are seeing largely stem from the use of similar materials with similar creative limitations, and choosing to exaggerate similar features whilst depicting similar subjects. I don't think any of that is indicative of a shared creative tradition. If you examine carefully the artistic conventions are quite different between cultures and continents; notice how in the Egyptian petroglyphs a single curved line is used to represent the negative space beneath the animals' legs with another line above representing the shape of body, whereas in the examples you mention from the Americas animal bodies are represented by a blob/oval with limbs attached. They have actually taken fascinatingly *different* approaches to representing similar things. (Edit for grammar)
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POST: Do sexual preferences & fetishes exist in tribal, hunter-gatherer societies, or are they byproducts of advanced culture?
RESPONSE A: To be clear. I believe OP is asking about paraphilias and not fetishes. I need to look for citations, but there was a presenter in dan savages savage love cast discussing that while there are some paraphelias that are just about crossed wires or developmental incidents (foot fetish etc) many paraphelias are products of their time and environment. Example: an indigenous person, may have a paraphelia for feet, but literally may lack the ability to communicate that fetish. As there is no description or accessible dialogue to discuss it. But that same person, were they born in the USA today, may be into feet and high heels and understand that. Tldr: if you have no idea you can be "into" something or that something doesn't exist it will often go undisclosed or unsaid. Sorry I can't share links, on mobile.
RESPONSE B: I'm following this from your first post on /r/AskSocialScience, which was directed here. I have always curios about this as well, so here's to hoping we get an answer.
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POST: Do sexual preferences & fetishes exist in tribal, hunter-gatherer societies, or are they byproducts of advanced culture?
RESPONSE A: I'm following this from your first post on /r/AskSocialScience, which was directed here. I have always curios about this as well, so here's to hoping we get an answer.
RESPONSE B: I'm currently reading Napoleon Chagnon's "Noble Savages" about his study of the Yanamamo. He gets fairly detailed sexual histories from his informants. He documents numerous violations of their own taboos of adultery, fewer of incest, one incident of a sex with a prepubescent girl, but no incidents of homosexual relationships. With as much as 130/100 male female ratio & polygynous headmen having many wifes causing a dearth of women sex partners for many young men, some expected they would turn to homosexuality as an outlet. Chagnon thinks it was quite rare. Rape & gang rape of captives from neighboring villages was quite common & not taboo. Reproductive success was paramount for security in this dangerous society. It meant more male kin to support one politically & militarily, and more sisters & daughters to give as wives to win allies. One would be an easy target for politically ambitious men. Killing you to demonstrate their fierceness would increase their stature with no risk. A woman's sexual access was closely guarded by father & brothers & then by her husband. Yanamamo are fiercly jealous. Women were often stolen in raids & brought to new villages as wifes. They were basically pregnant nursing their entire fertile years & beaten often. The ever present risk of violence & the central role sexual access played in fights & wars makes me think there was little room for "deviant" sexual behavior.
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POST: Do sexual preferences & fetishes exist in tribal, hunter-gatherer societies, or are they byproducts of advanced culture?
RESPONSE A: I'm following this from your first post on /r/AskSocialScience, which was directed here. I have always curios about this as well, so here's to hoping we get an answer.
RESPONSE B: Woh woh woh. First 'advanced' is a VERY value loaded term. There are some pretty decent arguments that agriculture and population increase did nothing to improve quality of life. Just don't use the term... change does not equal advancement. Secondly, 'fetishes' are usually defined in opposition to what is seen as normal, which can vary quite a bit from culture to culture. So this is quite difficult to operationalise. I'm sure you find people with sexual preferences that deviate from the norm everywhere. I have no evidence to back this up, but... if there is a prescribed norm, it seems statistically likely that you'll find some people who deviate from it! Sadly I can't provide you with much solid data as topics like this can land researchers in hot water. Sex is something it's usually best not to directly ask about! I think the internet probably has something to do with the spread of some of the more crazy stuff you hear about in the West. Porn producers have an economic incentive to make their videos stand out, which I think goes a long way towards explaining the prevalence of really 'odd' stuff. A larger population size would also allow people who do have unusual tastes to find groups of like-minded individuals more easily. Furthermore, with more people, you get more outliers in every respect, be it height, skill at tennis or statistical abnormality of sexual preferences. On the other hand, there's plenty of historical evidence for some quite kinky things happening throughout history, throughout the world. There seems no decent reason that this should be exclusive to post-agricultural societies.
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POST: other than an Anthropologist. I’m just feeling like there’s no way in, and down about the real possibility I may never be happy in life because I can’t pursue what I love.
RESPONSE A: This is based only on my experience as an anthro undergrad who completed an MA and then abandoned the dream. This was also many years ago (90s/early 00’s). It’s going to be difficult, but not impossible. True dream academic jobs where you are researching and teaching what you love are out there of course, but they are difficult to get, usually take time to get even after PhD work (I.e. you will be poor for awhile), involve a lot of politics, and require some kind of novel research or copious amounts of publishing. People think that anthropology is a “throw-away” science or something people do just because it sounds cool. But most at the top of academic anthro are highly intelligent and motivated. They have probably enjoyed a bit of luck as well. If you want to achieve that then have a solid idea of *exactly* what discipline of anthro you want to pursue and develop a passion for it. Start networking now and reading any and every journal article you can find. Be prepared to take graduate classes as an undergrad and find someone willing to mentor you. Outside of academia there are other jobs. Museum work as you mentioned, contract archaeology if you like that side of the discipline, government jobs that take cultural and linguistic anthropologists, etc. I ended up in a pretty decent project management position. It’s nothing I ever imagined I would be doing but it has served me well financially for many years. Granted it sucks my soul away, but my grad degree got me in the door and it was all about performance and learning on the job after that.
RESPONSE B: I am an anthropologist working in the video games industry. There is jobs, but you need to make a plan and decide on what you want to do and work on that path. A PhD is not always needed! I think it is possible to follow your dream, but it is not easy. Try to find student job in museum, internship, or any other things that could help you to get some experience. Good luck :)
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POST: What is your day-to-day like as an Anthropologist? Please specify what exact field, linguistic/biological etc. and what your role is? If inclined, I would like to know the kinds of meetings you have or paperwork you fill out, be as specific as you want!
RESPONSE A: Bio-anthropologist in non-tenure track job. Very few meetings besides lab meetings twice a month and the occasional meeting for research purposes. Paperwork is usually related to laboratory results, IRB, research safety, or class administration stuff. Day to day: running laboratory analysis everyday, purchasing lab related things, and teaching twice a week (or teaching prep on non teaching days). I spend a lot of time dealing with emails from various people, much of which is deleting stuff that doesn't pertain to me (the most annoying thing). On some days I'll spend mornings writing or working on peer review stuff for a journal. For the most part couldn't be happier with it. I control my own schedule and spend most of my time doing things I enjoy. Occasionally I'll go to academic meetings (twice a year) or every couple years engage in field work (which I love)
RESPONSE B: Archaeologist: I hike everyday in a new place and dig holes every 30 meters. I consult government agencies and Native tribes. I also find the best bbq in every town.
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POST: What is your day-to-day like as an Anthropologist? Please specify what exact field, linguistic/biological etc. and what your role is? If inclined, I would like to know the kinds of meetings you have or paperwork you fill out, be as specific as you want!
RESPONSE A: Postdoc in a linguistics department and research fellow in another. Monthly lab meetings, monthly group meetings, occasional other meetings. Lots of informal "meetings" with collaborators. Teaching load is minimal, usually 1 class per semester plus other advising or independent studies. Currently advising one grad student, last semester 2 undergrads. I'm not sure I have anything I'd consider paperwork other than end-of-term grades.
RESPONSE B: Archaeologist: I hike everyday in a new place and dig holes every 30 meters. I consult government agencies and Native tribes. I also find the best bbq in every town.
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POST: When do you become an Anthropologist? When do you get to actually call yourself an anthropologist (or any specific kind of academic, for that matter)? Once you have a Bachelor's Degree? A Graduate Degree? When you get a long-term full-time job in the field? When you publish your first research in the field? What if you publish research as an undergrad? The same question goes for subfields of anthropology. Am I an archaeologist if I graduated with an emphasis in archaeology? Am I a zooarchaeologist if I publish undergrad research in zooarchaeology? I just don't want to feel like an imposter. Thanks for your input.
RESPONSE A: I would say either when you're publishing original research or when you're being paid to be one.
RESPONSE B: I think if you are conducting anthropological research or working in a practical application of anthropology/archaeology. For example I know a number of people with master's degrees who have worked as forensic anthropologists and aren't necessarily publishing, but they're absolutely working as anthropologists. Or maybe you're not publishing yet but you're doing research... Are you supposed to talk to your potential interlocutors and say "Hi I'm a researcher who will be an anthropologist once I've published the results of this study" ? You'd probably just introduce yourself as an anthropologist.
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POST: When do you become an Anthropologist? When do you get to actually call yourself an anthropologist (or any specific kind of academic, for that matter)? Once you have a Bachelor's Degree? A Graduate Degree? When you get a long-term full-time job in the field? When you publish your first research in the field? What if you publish research as an undergrad? The same question goes for subfields of anthropology. Am I an archaeologist if I graduated with an emphasis in archaeology? Am I a zooarchaeologist if I publish undergrad research in zooarchaeology? I just don't want to feel like an imposter. Thanks for your input.
RESPONSE A: I have a ba in anthropology, I've never earned a bean from it so would never call myself a anthropologist . I'm a person who uses anthropological practice in my career working with people. Sometimes I inflict some of what I learned on them. My favourites are Clifford geertz thick description, the panopticon by Foucault and killing an elephant by Eric Blair . Colonialism and prisons ? What's not to like.
RESPONSE B: You are an archaeologist when you work a project to completion. I am talking dirty fingernails, collecting data, no one remembering to bring a roll of TP, the whole nine yards until the final report is submitted.
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POST: When do you become an Anthropologist? When do you get to actually call yourself an anthropologist (or any specific kind of academic, for that matter)? Once you have a Bachelor's Degree? A Graduate Degree? When you get a long-term full-time job in the field? When you publish your first research in the field? What if you publish research as an undergrad? The same question goes for subfields of anthropology. Am I an archaeologist if I graduated with an emphasis in archaeology? Am I a zooarchaeologist if I publish undergrad research in zooarchaeology? I just don't want to feel like an imposter. Thanks for your input.
RESPONSE A: I have a ba in anthropology, I've never earned a bean from it so would never call myself a anthropologist . I'm a person who uses anthropological practice in my career working with people. Sometimes I inflict some of what I learned on them. My favourites are Clifford geertz thick description, the panopticon by Foucault and killing an elephant by Eric Blair . Colonialism and prisons ? What's not to like.
RESPONSE B: So, im not an anthropologist, but I think that my field is a good homolog. as a wildlife biologist, I consider one a biologist if they are working in the field. Paid or not. Any requirement of publishing or having a link to academia is B.S. to me. Academia is a small fraction of many fields that gets too much attention and cache.
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POST: How do anthropologists draw the line when an ethnicity is formed and it disappears? Is there any checklist or criteria that says when an ethnic group/ethnicity is created and when it has transformed into a new ethnicity? For instance the Normans were an ethnicity that formed and disappeared. Where do you draw the line between forming and disappearance or transformation into another ethnicity?
RESPONSE A: Ethnic groups can be subjectively defined, That is, people see themselves as belonging to particular group. Ethnic groups can be objectively defined. That is, outsiders see them as a particular group. In an ideal situation the objective and subjective overlap perfectly. But ethnicity is a fuzzy concept and we rarely get to deal with the ideal. If one was forced to draw a line, it would probably be when both subjective and objective perspectives agree that a group exists and then when there is no longer either subjective or objective perspectives to support the continued existence of a group. Situational ethnicity and ethnic revival being wild cards here.
RESPONSE B: The simple answer is no, there is no criteria. Anthropology is always a matter of reporting and developing the stories that emerge from communities, and it is not the "job" of the Anthropologist to disprove or reduce those stories to a scientific maxim. The Normans were a community that can be studied anthropologically because there was an actual nominal community that has been written about as if it were ethnically contiguous at the time (and in some senses, it still does), and it doesn't matter what the actual ethnicity of those people were. Actually, what *does* matter is that they were of ethnically diverse genotypes, and this can be easily proven. The only thing relevant to the common notion of "ethnicity" is the fact that geographically isolated populations will produce higher frequencies of certain alleles over time, but there is never a point at which "higher frequency" becomes a "new group" because human societies are always intermixing, always trading, always growing in complexity over time.
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POST: How do anthropologists draw the line when an ethnicity is formed and it disappears? Is there any checklist or criteria that says when an ethnic group/ethnicity is created and when it has transformed into a new ethnicity? For instance the Normans were an ethnicity that formed and disappeared. Where do you draw the line between forming and disappearance or transformation into another ethnicity?
RESPONSE A: I don't know of a checklist, but I do know of some examples where the process of ethnogenesis is better documented than in a lot of other cases. Look into the history of the native peoples of the Everglades. The Calusa tribe, Miccosukee tribe and the Seminole. In these cases, the members of the tribe got together and a shared tribal tradition and identity emerged organically within relatively recent history.
RESPONSE B: The simple answer is no, there is no criteria. Anthropology is always a matter of reporting and developing the stories that emerge from communities, and it is not the "job" of the Anthropologist to disprove or reduce those stories to a scientific maxim. The Normans were a community that can be studied anthropologically because there was an actual nominal community that has been written about as if it were ethnically contiguous at the time (and in some senses, it still does), and it doesn't matter what the actual ethnicity of those people were. Actually, what *does* matter is that they were of ethnically diverse genotypes, and this can be easily proven. The only thing relevant to the common notion of "ethnicity" is the fact that geographically isolated populations will produce higher frequencies of certain alleles over time, but there is never a point at which "higher frequency" becomes a "new group" because human societies are always intermixing, always trading, always growing in complexity over time.
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POST: How come there are so many mentions of giants in ancient texts? So many cultures around the world seem to share the idea of giants, and several even share the same supposed origin of said giants: Heavenly organisms who come to earth and mate with humans to produce these humungous, chaotic Nephilim-like beings. Even cultures that had been seperated by miles of ocean seem to share this similar idea of human-god hybrids. Why is this such a common theme in several sacred texts found across the globe? Is it just human nature to come up with ideas like that, or do they all pull from a common historical event? There has to be an explanation for this stuff with firm grounding in scientific fact, right?
RESPONSE A: Dinosaur fossil bones could be interpreted as giants and monsters. Thesis of this book on the classical world: http://press.princeton.edu/titles/9435.html
RESPONSE B: > There has to be an explanation for this stuff with firm grounding in scientific fact, right? Not necessarily. I'm no expert in this topic, but coincidence mixed with theoretical evolutionary psychology could explain many separate ancient cultures' similarities. But this is in no way scientific fact.
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POST: How come there are so many mentions of giants in ancient texts? So many cultures around the world seem to share the idea of giants, and several even share the same supposed origin of said giants: Heavenly organisms who come to earth and mate with humans to produce these humungous, chaotic Nephilim-like beings. Even cultures that had been seperated by miles of ocean seem to share this similar idea of human-god hybrids. Why is this such a common theme in several sacred texts found across the globe? Is it just human nature to come up with ideas like that, or do they all pull from a common historical event? There has to be an explanation for this stuff with firm grounding in scientific fact, right?
RESPONSE A: Mammoth skulls are thought to have been the basis for myths about the Cyclops. The large front-facing nasal aperture looks very much like an eye socket. Dinosaur bones, especially skulls, are thought to have been the inspiration for dragon myths. It's generally believed that the large, post-cranial remains of megafauna, including dinosaurs-- which can be found around the world on every inhabited continent-- were the principal inspiration behind stories of giants.
RESPONSE B: Dinosaur bones
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POST: Through history, many nomadic and semi-nomadic groups adopted a sedentary lifestyle. Were there sedentary/"civilized" groups reverting to a nomadic way of life? If so, how and why?
RESPONSE A: Yes, intersecting with Roman history many times. First there were the Teutons and Cimbri, Germanic or Celtic groups that left their homes amd migrated, eventually arriving in Italy and fighting with Rome. Later, Julius Caesar fought the Helvetii, a group of Gallic Celts who were pushed into migration and wandering by population changes and invasions in their homeland in modern Switzerland. Much later, you run into the Migration Period when a cascading effect pushed Germanic tribes to migrate westward away from the Huns. In all three cases a whole population abandoned their homes to migrate. The former two were relatively shortlived as far as the historical record shows, but the Migration Period saw many of those tribes become semi-nomadic as they wandered around Europe.
RESPONSE B: A decent number of Manchus/Jurchen, after the collapse of the Jin dynasty and the mongols came in, adopted the nomadic lifestyle. Also, most formerly Soviet Central Asians were forcibly settled during Russian empire/Soviet times, but some...and very few...today (especially during the summer) actually live nomadically then come back to their villages for school/hide from the cold.
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POST: belief systems exercise some control or at least judgement over sexual life (incest for example is quite oftenly condoned I believe). However in some cases the list of things which are forbidden get extreme to the point of "everything is forbidden except sex for procreation". And I have a hard time believing that it "just happens", there must be some internal logic and external factors which lead cultures to come to this conclusion. Hopefully this post is appropriate for this sub
RESPONSE A: People all too often isolate "religion" away from the culture in which it is inextricably intertwined, then make inaccurate conclusions about what religion does. For instance, secular western progressive culture has a TON of rules about sex, particularly in how consent is defined, how consent functions within power disparities, protocol that governs how consent is granted and revoked, and strict penalties for violating any rules. And that's a good thing. Sex plays a huge role in any community, so any culture is going to have some amount of protocol built around sex. I don't know any reason why monotheism vs polytheism would play a role, though there is research on moralizing vs amoral gods, which I've only seen applied to questions of altruism.
RESPONSE B: This is a really complicated set of issues, and you really have to take into account the specific histories of different religions, and whether religion works differently based on the kinds of political (power) systems a society has in place. But one thing to keep in mind is that one powerful way to control people is to control their sexuality. If you can get people to be willing to follow your rules in the most intimate and private moments, it will be very difficult for them to reject the group or the rules in other areas of their lives. As an added bonus, by getting people to follow your rules during sexual intimacy, you are putting the group (or religion) in between the people in the relationship. Instead of being about 2 or more people loving and caring for each other, sexual intimacy becomes another way for two or more people to worship the religion. Instead of having strong social ties between individuals, you get strong social ties to the group.
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POST: I've seen a lot of (kind of sensational) articles claiming that neanderthals were incredibly strong compared to homo sapiens. But these comparisons are almost always done with modern humans, who live sedentary lives. What would that comparison look like if it was done with hunter gathers instead?
RESPONSE A: Many of the comparisons are done with *H. sapiens* remains that were contemporaneous. Don't confuse 'anatomically modern' with simply 'modern'. The muscle attachment points for Neanderthals are, generally speaking, larger, as are the bone cross sections. It's currently thought that the increased muscle mass Neanderthals carried meant that they had an increased minimum calorie intake requirement. The greater calorie requirement of Neanderthals compared to us is thought to have been one of the key things that led to the extinction of Neanderthals. - Churchill & Rhodes 2006 *How strong were the Neandertals? Leverage and muscularity at the shoulder and elbow in Mousterian foragers* - Hockett 2012 *The consequences of Middle Paleolithic diets on pregnant Neanderthal women* - Venner 2018 *A New Estimate for Neanderthal Energy Expenditure*
RESPONSE B: There was a recent NPR interview with a European museum curator on a book publishing tour. He described neanderthal as a wrestler and sapiens as a runner. He argued the difference in build was a factor in sapiens dominance in open plains which bacame prevailent with a warming climate. Also, big bodies are adapted to cool climates. I'm hunting for the interview. I think it's Clive Finlayson here: https://www.npr.org/podcasts/452538775/on-the-media
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POST: Are there any theories as to the purpose of deliberate-lie traditions (Santa, Easter Bunny, Tooth Fairy) or why they are, as far as I can tell, unique to Western Christendom? I'm Jewish, so the whole practice of deliberately misleading children for extended periods (as in beyond a quick joke at their expense) and essentially gaslighting them is incredibly alien despite its commonality, and seems like it must be somehow connected to Christian ideas of virtue and sin.
RESPONSE A: All of the examples you give link back to much older pagan traditions. Also, the afikomen?
RESPONSE B: Did you come here to seek academic inquiry or to satisfy your preconceived notions about religion? From your argumentative responses, it seems like the latter.
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POST: Are there any theories as to the purpose of deliberate-lie traditions (Santa, Easter Bunny, Tooth Fairy) or why they are, as far as I can tell, unique to Western Christendom? I'm Jewish, so the whole practice of deliberately misleading children for extended periods (as in beyond a quick joke at their expense) and essentially gaslighting them is incredibly alien despite its commonality, and seems like it must be somehow connected to Christian ideas of virtue and sin.
RESPONSE A: All of the examples you give link back to much older pagan traditions. Also, the afikomen?
RESPONSE B: So I think what you're asking is, are surviving European folk traditions the result of Christianization, or were pre-existing pagan / heathen folk traditions altered when those populations became Christian? The short answer is sometimes and frequently yes. But you asked about specific folklore, so I'll speak those examples specifically. Some of your examples are simply pre-Christian symbolism repackaged (the Easter Bunny is a fertility symbol, Christian Easter is really Ostara, rebranded to include Jesus & co.: http://www.religionfacts.com/ostara), some have argued that contemporary Santa Claus is actually Odin / Wotan, but most disagree (there is probably the most evidence for Santa being St. Nicholas, who was a real person: https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/12/131219-santa-claus-origin-history-christmas-facts-st-nicholas/), but Santa as we understand him in America and most of the West was a marketing invention, Coca-Cola probably being the most recognizable. According to this article from Smithsonian Magazine, every culture has a folk belief around children losing their teeth, but the Tooth Fairy as we know it is most likely a 20th Century American invention, having no direct link to religion at all.
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POST: What do you see as the main difference between anthropology and sociology?
RESPONSE A: You might find my answer here helpful. In short, as far as topics that I've read both anthro and socio publications from, anthropologists are more likely to ask big questions about small things and sociologists are more likely to ask small quesitons about big things. An ethnographer might ask how gender, class, and nationality are constructed among a single group of souvenir vendors whereas the sociologist will ask about the impacts of a single municipal statute on souvenir vendors across the whole city. Again, though, as others have said, it's often got a heck of a lot more to do with what department you're in and what's written on your degree than what research you actually do.
RESPONSE B: Traditionally, cultural anthropologists have studied pre-industrial societies whereas sociologists are studying industrial or post-industrial societies. However, those lines are being blurred more and more and I personally know "Cultural Anthropologists" who study "post-industrial populations".
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POST: How did paleolithic homo sapien deal with big cats in their foray across the world? Is there any anthropological evidence with regards to how h.sapiens dealt with big cats in both defensive and offensive contexts in the past? Any answers about modern-day hunter-gatherer conflicts with big cats would also be appreciated.
RESPONSE A: I recall a study suggesting that human-looking masks unearthed in the archaeology of modern-day NW India were carved specifically to fit the *back* of the head and not the front. I need to go digging (haha), but memory says ~9k-7k BCE on the artefacts. The authors' suggestion was that the masks could have been effective in helping deter ambush predators like cats. This was based on a reconstruction of the masks, worn on the back of the head, and the response of modern predatory cats to those masks in a controlled environment. The masks were catalogued in both adult and child sizes, though obviously extrapolated from fragmentary evidence, so take everything with lots of salt. The authors' suggestion was that mesolithic/neolithic peoples facing predation by cats may have worn these on the back of their heads as a deterrent to ambush attacks, esp. against children. Edit: I'm sure this study was the focus of some "History Channel" docu-drama or similar. In fact, the program team tested the hypothesis using simple printed paper masks strapped to the back of researchers' heads - which worked v. well. I'll see if I can dig that up, b/c it was quite entertaining to watch.
RESPONSE B: I'm not aware of any hard evidence of tactics used millennia ago, but there are people who still deal with lions on a regular basis. Research Maasai tribe?
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POST: How did paleolithic homo sapien deal with big cats in their foray across the world? Is there any anthropological evidence with regards to how h.sapiens dealt with big cats in both defensive and offensive contexts in the past? Any answers about modern-day hunter-gatherer conflicts with big cats would also be appreciated.
RESPONSE A: Looking at two social animals that deal with the same predation. Gelada, will make alarm calls and run to a safe area when leopards are spotted. Chimps group together and try to find where the leopard is. https://www.eva.mpg.de/fileadmin/content_files/staff/boesch/pdf/behav_leopard_predation.pdf
RESPONSE B: Not an anthropologist. Years ago was I on a seminar with a professor in etology specialized in dogs. He had spend a nice portion of his life studying the relationship between dogs/canines and humans especially in less developed part of the world, where they still keep dogs like they have in historic times. Once he was somewhere in Africa, where he saw some small-ish dogs in a village. He asked the residents, what they used the dogs for, and they said, they keept them for protections against lions. A bit baffled, he asked, how these small dogs could fight of a big lion? Easy. They can't. The villagers just counted on the dog to make enough fuss before the lion killed it, that they would be warned and have time to gather together, get the kids behind them and scare of the lion with weapons. It is probably not unreasonable, what earliere men used similar warningsystems. Many ambush predators give up, if the prey discover them and start acting accordingly.
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POST: Were dogs domesticated separately in the Old and New World, or did the original populations that crossed the Bering Straight bring their dogs with them from Siberia?
RESPONSE A: See most recent work on the subject Perri, Angela R., et al. "Dog domestication and the dual dispersal of people and dogs into the Americas." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 118.6 (2021): e2010083118. ​ >"Advances in the isolation and sequencing of ancient DNA have begun to reveal the population histories of both people and dogs. Over the last 10,000 y, the genetic signatures of ancient dog remains have been linked with known human dispersals in regions such as the Arctic and the remote Pacific. It is suspected, however, that this relationship has a much deeper antiquity, and that the tandem movement of people and dogs may have begun soon after the domestication of the dog from a gray wolf ancestor in the late Pleistocene. Here, by comparing population genetic results of humans and dogs from Siberia, Beringia, and North America, we show that there is a close correlation in the movement and divergences of their respective lineages. This evidence places constraints on when and where dog domestication took place. Most significantly, it suggests that dogs were domesticated in Siberia by ∼23,000 y ago, possibly while both people and wolves were isolated during the harsh climate of the Last Glacial Maximum. Dogs then accompanied the first people into the Americas and traveled with them as humans rapidly dispersed into the continent beginning ∼15,000 y ago."
RESPONSE B: We don't really know how they got there, but there are remains in Danger Cave, Utah, from around 9,000 years ago. It was briefly mentioned in an interview here, but that burial site might be a good place to start. They're referenced more here, though the article isn't focused on dogs. I'm afraid I can't point you at more scholarly sources.
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POST: Why and when did homosapiens develop such a fascination or even an obsession with material objects that hold no practical benefit to survival, or have no use other than to be possessed? Things such as "precious" metals and stones... or even art.
RESPONSE A: I think its a mistake to think about objects as divided between functional for survival or not. A sad reflection on the state of thinking in evolutionary sciences esp when popularised. The ethnographic record should teach us that humans don't have a neat divide between functional and aesthetic. The worldviews of many peoples blends concepts of cosmology, personhood, materials and decoration into one coherent ontology, not a simple binary. How to explain Mesolithic graves where someone stood and knapped an entire blade core into the grave, blades are functional no? Why would they need them in the grave? Take Skateholm in Sweden, why would a buried dog need an antler hammer? Look at the Langdale greenstone axes, axes are functional or are they attractive, or is there some quality we don't understand that straddles both? We are missing the context in which material culture arises in almost all of prehistory, why would someone go to the trouble of carving out an ornate beetle from lignite and carry it around alongside an actual necklace trilobite fossil? Unless perhaps there were taboos that had been violated and needed restoring thus allowing animals to be fished and hunted. We just don't know. But we shouldn't fall into this trap of dividing objects into functional and not functional.
RESPONSE B: That predilection probably predates the actual evolution of *Homo sapiens*.
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POST: determine this.
RESPONSE A: This may not answer your question, but I think it provides some understanding to the topic. Indigenous cultures are inseparable from their territories. The market economy, or capitalism, is of the understanding that humans can manipulate nature for their own personal gain. In contrast, Indigenous cultures are representative of the territory and aim to live harmoniously with nature. If we look to the coastal peoples of B.C., for example, then you can see the importance of seafood, such as halibut, salmon, shellfish, seaweed, etc, as well as resources such as oolichan grease, cedar bark for weaving, and traditional medicines found on the territory, such as devil's club. All of which are common symbols found in their culture. The clan animals also represent important local wildlife, with animals such as the orca, eagle, raven, and wolf being commonplace. If the coastal people's were moved inland, then much of their culture would not apply in a practical sense. Indigenous cultures are living cultures and are represented heavily by their place of origin. "Living" or harvesting in nature is quintessential to understanding and practising Indigenous cultures. Check out the novel 'Monkey Beach' by Eden Robinson, it is a great book that blends contemporary and traditional concepts of the Haisla. https://www.amazon.ca/Monkey-Beach-Eden-Robinson/dp/0676973221
RESPONSE B: Most indigenous cultures, don’t even view nature as nature like Western culture does. Māori for example, view nature as a combination of atua (gods); mainly the earth mother papatūānuku and Tāne mahuta (the god of the forest). As humans, we come from the earth, a living, breathing thing that has been here long long before us, names, and stories. Therefore we have a collective responsibility to protect what we originate from and our ancestors before us. The concept of nature doesn’t quite apply, especially in the Māori worldview, that’s more of a western sense of looking at it, it’s that separatism where you struggle to see the difference.
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POST: religions around the world. Were these ideas "borrowed" between cultures or did they generally develop independently? Is it more a case of conscious beings' awareness of their own mortality, communally adapted to a global perspective, or were there a number of central thought schools which influenced farther flung cultures and religions? Or am I just way off?
RESPONSE A: I am not even close enough to being qualified to give a good, detailed answer, as I'm just a hobbyist, but maybe I can point you in a direction until one appears. I believe the "End of the World" motif would fall under the general mythology that cultures around the world independently share. I was introduced to this idea from reading The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Cambell. The Monomyth concept introduced by Cambell was that all important mythological stories are part of one great single story, and that various cultures, completely independently of each other, retell these same stories over and over again. This applies to groups from the the Middle East to the Amazon to East Asia to the west Pacific Islands. Of course, each culture will influence how the story is told, but the fundamental motifs are all the same. One might expand on that and say, at the core of all human beings, the things that we hold most important and the mechanisms for how we interpret the world, nature, and ourselves are all shared and the same. The End of the World myth would then just be extension of this. As human beings, we all share the same uncertainty and fear of the unknown. So, various cultures created similar stories on how to explain this commonality. An emotional aside: I think comparative mythology is one of the most beautiful subjects to study. If you break down the core idea, all people, regardless of place of birth, race, religion, are the same. We have the same wants, desires, fears, and ideals. Evolution explains how all organisms are connected biologically, if you go back far enough. Comparative mythology explains how all human beings are connected socially, psychologically, and spiritually.
RESPONSE B: I'm interested in this as well. Is there as much commonality in creation/origin stories as there is in "the end" stories?
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POST: Outlets for angry young men in traditional societies? It seems like we have a problem of (mostly) young men becoming dissatisfied with their social position and acting out in a violent way. Did pre industrial societies also had this issue and if so, did they find a way to channel it in a less harmful direction? I suppose the obvious answers would be hunting or raiding. But I'm curious what the experts have to say.
RESPONSE A: Is it viable to presuppose that "angry young men" is an innate disposition in males? I'm not even sure it makes sense to talk about angry young men today, but what we might identify as such could be explicable in terms of the historical development of capitalism towards fewer, less secure jobs or the pressures of (post)modern society and its cultural expectations of fluid gender roles and new responsibilities. I dont have an answer but i just dont think you can presuppose that young men are innately angry.
RESPONSE B: In many West African societies, a man, independent of his age, is considered a child by society until he is married. This to me is informative of the phenomenon of Jihadi Brides and provides a valuable parallel to the profile of mass shooters in the United States.
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POST: Why do humans have the tendency to walk in a big circle in the absence of distinctive landmarks?
RESPONSE A: Scientists used to believe that uneven strides (one leg taking slightly longer steps than the other) led to walking in circles. Some German scientists tested this theory and found that it didn't quite correlate, even when they gave people shoes that had uneven sole thickness. So the current theory is that the issue of veering in circles is actually happening in the brain rather than in the body. The brain autocorrects a little too far with each step and ends up getting wildly off course if there aren't constant reference points to move toward.
RESPONSE B: Could you clarify what you are talking about with some specific examples?
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POST: Why do humans have a longer lifespan than other primates (and all other land mammals, for that matter)? Is it a byproduct of our lifestyle, or did we actually evolve towards longevity? If it's the latter, then what was the purpose of such an adaptation in humans?
RESPONSE A: We have a low extrinsic mortality rate that allows us to have a slower more protracted life history (with higher investment in offspring): https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6223763/
RESPONSE B: It's been hypothesized that because of how social humans are, it was advantageous to have older members of the community alive to contribute knowledge and help for things like child rearing, food sources, etc. leading to increased fecundity and survival of children and grandchildren. You might find it interesting to read up on the Grandmother Hypothesis and other offshoots of this hypothesis.
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POST: I read somewhere that humans originated in East Africa, probably Ethiopia. But many of the oldest man-made settlements and structures like Gobkli Tepe, Uruk, etc. aren’t anywhere near Ethiopia. Do we know anything about the first humans’ journeys out of Ethiopia to these other lands? Like, has it been written about?
RESPONSE A: Probable pathways for those migrations and things like the climatic conditions during that period have been written about. Encounters with Neanderthals and such and such. What exactly are you looking for when you say "written about"?
RESPONSE B: Yes, we do, primarily because of DNA. Anthropology, and almost every other science, has a bias in knowledge because of what is preserved because of what preservation requires. Preservation of any specific element of *anything* is exceedingly, vanishingly unlikely. It's astonishing when anything is found. Warm and wet climate means almost nothing gets preserved, so it doesn't even make sense to spend energy and the huge cost of exploration in those locations. So, expeditions go to locations where ancient elements *might possibly* be found. But DNA is a treasure trove, because current living beings preserve many elements of their deep history in their DNA.
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POST: Is there any option where I can read anthropological research papers for free?
RESPONSE A: You can always find abstracts and author names for papers. If it strikes your interest, email the corresponding author. They usually are happy to share.
RESPONSE B: Hahaha, no one is going to say it? Sure, you can try the *"email the author"* route--but I don't think this works as often or as quickly as anyone here is suggesting. And then there is this other method you could use. It rhymes with "Pie Rub". Sure, it’s “illegal”…you’re “stealing” from people who did none of the intellectual work. I did something “illegal” today when I drove 46 mph in a 45 mph zone.
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POST: Is there any option where I can read anthropological research papers for free?
RESPONSE A: Hahaha, no one is going to say it? Sure, you can try the *"email the author"* route--but I don't think this works as often or as quickly as anyone here is suggesting. And then there is this other method you could use. It rhymes with "Pie Rub". Sure, it’s “illegal”…you’re “stealing” from people who did none of the intellectual work. I did something “illegal” today when I drove 46 mph in a 45 mph zone.
RESPONSE B: JSTOR also makes some stuff available for free. Google Scholar always worked best for me. Another thing you could try is emailing the authors or any articles you want to read and requesting a copy of their articles.
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POST: Are there any Anthropological or cultural studies done on Nepali cuisine or nepal in general? I want to do a research paper on the culinary practices of the Nepalese people, so i was wondering if you know any anthropological writings on Nepal.
RESPONSE A: There's a lot of anthropological work on Nepal. It's not my area (I'm a Tibetologist) but I cross the anthropological section adjacent to the sources I need all of the time. One of the problems you'll run into is that Nepal is one of the most ethnically and culturally diverse countries on earth, so finding anything that can be called comprehensive "Nepali" will be difficult.
RESPONSE B: I enjoyed suitably modern , but I don’t remember how much they talked about food. Your best bet honestly is to go to the library. There should be plenty of material.
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POST: What are some examples of myths/legends/oral histories from your culture? I am collecting stories for an undergrad Anthropology project, so I might use your story! Anything is acceptable, and I’m eager to hear your stories.
RESPONSE A: I have a paper I wrote in college for an anthropology course that details a folktale ghost story told in Kentucky. As part of the paper I wrote out every version I could get my hands on. If your interested I could send you the material. Just message me.
RESPONSE B: There are a lot of “bubbe meisas” (old grandmother stories) out there, but one of my favorites has to be why Ashkenazi Jews don’t name children after living people. Apparently the malach ha’movet (angel of death) may get confused when it’s time for the elder person to die and take the little kid instead. Our grim reaper/evil eye can apparently also be confused or kept out if you cover mirrors in a house of mourning or say phrases to yourself like “keyn ayn hara” if someone praises you (to keep from seeming too boastful and tempting fate).
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POST: What are some examples of myths/legends/oral histories from your culture? I am collecting stories for an undergrad Anthropology project, so I might use your story! Anything is acceptable, and I’m eager to hear your stories.
RESPONSE A: There are a lot of “bubbe meisas” (old grandmother stories) out there, but one of my favorites has to be why Ashkenazi Jews don’t name children after living people. Apparently the malach ha’movet (angel of death) may get confused when it’s time for the elder person to die and take the little kid instead. Our grim reaper/evil eye can apparently also be confused or kept out if you cover mirrors in a house of mourning or say phrases to yourself like “keyn ayn hara” if someone praises you (to keep from seeming too boastful and tempting fate).
RESPONSE B: the hoopsnake has always been my favorite, not entirely sure how that story ended up being an oral folk tale at my school in Pennsylvania in the 1980s. Also, the Seven Gates of Hell in Hellam Township.
Which response is better? RESPONSE
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B
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POST: Why is the Mother Earth and father sky myth so common across creation stories? I’ve been looking into Maori myths recently and it struck me that they have the story of the earth and the sky being the mother and father to all life. These two beings were then pushed apart by their children to let in life and light, iirc this is a similar story as the ones told in Greek, Egyptian and certain Asian religious/spiritual beliefs as well. So my question is, what other groups have similar stories and why is this particular myth so common and wide spread across the globe?
RESPONSE A: Because the sky seeds the earth and then the earth grows things.
RESPONSE B: It's been theorised that the natural cycle of the seasons reinforced the idea of a Mother earth goddess & Father sky god. The earth nurtures life, plants emerge from it in spring. Not too far of a metaphorical stretch to say the earth gives birth to plants. As for the sky father. If the earth is mother, pregnant with life; How does a woman get pregnant? She must be fertilized. How do the crops grow, there must be rain. The Sky father must fertilize the earth for plants to grow. Earth as mother and sky as father are reflected in many mythological systems. And when you get agricultural communities in on the deal it gets reinforced; what with the need for plowing & seeding of the earth for the crops to grow. Go & read some mesopotamian poetry about Inanna & Dumuzi; it's damn near poragraphic in its innuendos. There’s even an interesting outlier that almost reinforces the connection. In Egypt, the crops didn’t depend on rain; they depended on the orderly cyclical flooding of the Nile. And in the Egyptian pantheon there is no meeting of male sky & female earth to create life. It’s self-creating order arising from the primordial waters of chaos then, a male earth & the female sky are separated and the space between fills with life.
Which response is better? RESPONSE
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