Two tiny genetic shifts helped early humans walk upright
Scientists have linked bipedalism to changes in how the human pelvis developed millions of years ago.| Science News
Tonight, October 21, 2025 at 7 p.m. US Central Time, I'll be having a conversation on Zoom with Stephen Paff, author of the Ethnodata blog and host of the new podcast Democracy Demythologized. See the bottom of this post for information about how to join.| The Maurin Academy for Regenerative Studies
Scientists have linked bipedalism to changes in how the human pelvis developed millions of years ago.| Science News
DNA and stone tool comparisons suggest Eastern European Neandertals trekked 3,000 kilometers to Siberia, where they left a genetic and cultural mark.| Science News
New York City is constantly experiencing construction and renewal. Every day, offices and apartments vibrate with the sound of perpetual surgery as spades and jackhammers expose and stitch up the... READ MORE| NYU Press
About 42,000 years ago, early modern humans across Europe and the Near East began producing remarkably similar types of stone tools. Archaeologists had long assumed that these shared designs reflected a single tradition of technology—one passed west across the continent as Homo sapiens migrated from the Near East to Europe. But a new report published […]| Archaeology News Online Magazine
Archaeologists have uncovered a well-preserved Late Bronze Age burial complex near the ancient coastal port of Yavneh-Yam in Israel, yielding rare evidence of Canaanite funeral practices and elite connections with Egypt around 3,300 years ago. The discovery, described in the journal Antiquity, was unearthed after construction works inadvertently broke through the ceiling of a monumental […]| Archaeology News Online Magazine
The remarkably well-preserved remains of a man who died in central Mexico around 1,000 years ago have revealed the ancient human microbiome — the community of bacteria that once thrived in his intestines. The findings, published in PLOS ONE, offer a glimpse into the microorganisms that inhabited the bodies of pre-Hispanic Mesoamericans centuries before contact […]| Archaeology News Online Magazine
A new paper published recently in PLOS ONE has uncovered evidence that early humans who inhabited the region near present-day Rome butchered a giant elephant around 404,000 years ago, ate its meat as food, and used its bones as tools. The discovery, at the Casal Lumbroso site in northwestern Rome, is one of the most […]| Archaeology News Online Magazine
AI analysis reveals Homo habilis was preyed on by leopards, reshaping our understanding of early human evolution.| Archaeology News Online Magazine
A user of a different stack exchange site recently mentioned a supposed polar bear killing technique devised by Inuit hunters. I found it quite difficult to find any other source for the story, but eventually managed to track down a reference to a book from 1919, Ethnography; a partial and preliminary description of the races of man by Loomis Havemeyer and Albert Galloway Keller, and turned up the following quote from page 151 of the original (or page 163 from this online copy): In hunting th...| Recent Questions - History Stack Exchange
Saurabh Chowdhury writes from an anthropological perspective to discuss the entanglements between evolutionary biological variations and modern sociocultural prejudices. Over millions of years, the human body has evolved with a wide range of variations.| the polyphony
Alpa Shah, award-winning author and anthropologist, discusses the state of democracy in India in an interview with The Oxford Student.| The Oxford Student
Totemic ancestral connections to land in Warlpiri and other Indigenous Australian cultures are lines of becomings resonating with some concepts proposed by philosophers Deleuze and Guattari. The post Dreaming and Deleuze appeared first on Edinburgh University Press Blog.| Edinburgh University Press Blog
A recent archaeological study has uncovered an extraordinary cultural phenomenon in Neolithic China: the systematic modification of human bones. In the journal Scientific Reports, the research documents the first and only known example of this practice in prehistoric China, adding another window into the Liangzhu civilization that existed in the Yangtze River Delta from around […]| Archaeology News Online Magazine
The Gobi Desert today is one of the driest and harshest landscapes on Earth, stretching over northern China and Mongolia. Yet, a recent study published in PLOS One reveals that thousands of years ago, the desert was dotted with wetlands and lakes that nourished fertile ground for human life. University of Wrocław archaeologists, in collaboration […]| Archaeology News Online Magazine
The faces of centuries-old Colombian Andean mummies have been digitally reconstructed for the first time, providing a remarkable insight into pre-Columbian South America’s funerary traditions. The project, led by Liverpool John Moores University’s Face Lab in collaboration with Colombian institutions, was revealed this summer at the XI World Congress on Mummy Studies in Cusco, Peru. […]| Archaeology News Online Magazine
A new detailed analysis of archaeological evidence demonstrates that early human populations of southern South America relied on extinct megafauna—such as giant sloths, giant armadillos, and prehistoric horses—as a regular food source, rather than as occasional or opportunistic prey. The results defy common presumptions that these large animals were hardly affected by human hunting and […]| Archaeology News Online Magazine
Archaeologists have uncovered a rare and remarkably preserved collection of stone tools, dating to around 30,000 years ago, at the Paleolithic site of Milovice IV in the Czech Republic. The collection, discovered during excavations carried out in 2021, consists of 29 blades and bladelets that were apparently collected together with care, most likely in a […]| Archaeology News Online Magazine
A crushed and distorted skull discovered in central China nearly 35 years ago is now redefining our understanding of early human evolution in Asia. Scientists have digitally reconstructed the 1-million-year-old Yunxian 2 cranium and discovered that it likely belonged to a close relative of the mysterious Denisovans and was a member of a lineage called […]| Archaeology News Online Magazine
While scrolling through twitter, I came across this image being shared around by certain right wing accounts, as well as forums and websites relating to eugenics. It makes the claim that populations of people from Africa are more genetically distinct from other ethnic groups than domestic dogs are from wolves and coyotes. The implication the people sharing this graphic seem to have made is that the data suggests that African people are a different species from other human ethnic groups. The r...| Recent Questions - Skeptics Stack Exchange
Join Stephen Paff and Laurie Johnson October 14, starting at 7 p.m. US Central Time, as they discuss the implications the recent AI technology will have on people and society. The session will be live on zoom. You can get in on this conversation by becoming a patron of the Maurin Academy at the Salt of the Earth level or above.| The Maurin Academy for Regenerative Studies
September 15, 2025 MISSISSAUGA, Ontario and NEWPORT, R.I. — In the United States, Northeastern and Midwestern residents tend to have higher physical, social, mental and financial—i.e., “traditional”—wellness, while Southern residents have report higher “existential” wellness, involving a sense of purpose, fulfillment and community identity, according to a new analysis of survey data from more than 325,000 Americans.| Nationhood Lab
September 15, 2025 MISSISSAUGA, Ontario and NEWPORT, R.I. — In the United States, Northeastern and Midwestern residents tend to have higher physical, social, mental and financial—i.e., “traditional”—wellness, while Southern residents have report higher “existential” wellness, involving a sense of purpose, fulfillment and community identity, according to a new analysis of survey data from more than 325,000 Americans.| Nationhood Lab
September 15, 2025 MISSISSAUGA, Ontario and NEWPORT, R.I. — In the United States, Northeastern and Midwestern residents tend to have higher physical, social, mental and financial—i.e., “traditional”—wellness, while Southern residents have report higher “existential” wellness, involving a sense of purpose, fulfillment and community identity, according to a new analysis of survey data from more than 325,000 Americans.| Nationhood Lab
Ancient Southeast Asian mummies, up to 12,000 years old, reveal early hunter-gatherer burial practices and smoke-drying techniques.| Archaeology News Online Magazine
Discovery of jade dental inlays in Maya children reveals early cultural traditions once thought exclusive to adults.| Archaeology News Online Magazine
It’s a visually stunning tradition: each spring, Southern faculty compete in a photo competition that spotlights their research. David Paulson, ’10, an instructor in the Department of Anthropology, won this year’s “Best in Show” prize with his striking image from a recent trip to Vietnam. “I’ve spent two years of my life there,” says Paulson, […] The post Ancient Rite, Modern Lens appeared first on News at Southern.| News at Southern
“American Indians are not perceived when theaters of being Indian are knocked down. We are not perceived when we choose to leave,” writes David Shane Lowry in his book, LUMBEE PIPELINES.| Fancy Comma, LLC
I briefly review six books that improved my anthropological grounding and appreciation of rewilding over the summer of 2025 Continue reading →| Do the Math
Ten years after its discovery, the Huei Tzompantli of Tenochtitlan reveals new insights into Mexica society, ritual, and origins.| Archaeology News Online Magazine
on reading The Dawn of Everything| Winnie Lim
In 2015, I was back in India’s capital city, Delhi after two years of fieldwork in villages in rural parts of the country. On my return, the city had changed. There was something different in the atmosphere, which was leading to far-reaching, unexpected effects. For instance, during my morning commutes as I turned on the radio to one of Delhi’s most popular radio stations the radio jockey blared every hour or so, ‘Hawa-laat’! The Hindi word Hawalaat translates as a prison. If the word...| Platypus
DNA from two 7th-century burials in England reveals recent West African ancestry, reshaping early medieval migration history.| Archaeology News Online Magazine
'Oddly shaped head' left in Italian cave 12,500 years ago is Europe's oldest known case of cranial modification, study finds| Archaeology News Online Magazine
Decades of global surveys point to a single, consistent foundation of well-being: our relationships.| The MIT Press Reader
In 2025 Sage is celebrating our origin story. When she was 24 years old, Sara Miller McCune, a female entrepreneur, founded a […]| Social Science Space
The Story | “The crucial thing is the story.” That is what I claim in A Good Look at Evil, my book which holds that the person who...| Dear Abbie: The Non-Advice Column
In 'Something Between Us,' anthropologist Anand Pandian explores the walls that divide America| The Hub
Associate Professor of Anthropology Miriam Belmaker has been named the 2025 Tulsa Undergraduate Research Challenge (TURC) Outstanding Mentor. This award recognizes University of Tulsa faculty who oversee TURC projects and go above and beyond expectations, leaving a profound impact on their students’ education and careers. Belmaker, whose lab focuses on the past and present ecological […]| The University of Tulsa
Today’s post comes to us from Jennifer Moore, the Regents’ Professor of Law at the University of New Mexico and author of the new book Women’s Work: Building Peace in... READ MORE The post The Work of Writing Women’s Work appeared first on University of Pennsylvania Press.| University of Pennsylvania Press
Neanderthals used heat and water to extract fat from bones 125,000 years ago, revealing advanced food processing skills.| Archaeology News Online Magazine
Ochre tools from Blombos Cave reveal early Homo sapiens used pigment for advanced stone toolmaking 70,000–90,000 years ago.| Archaeology News Online Magazine
Ancient genomes of M. lepromatosis in Chile reveal leprosy existed in the Americas 4,000 years ago, long before European contact.| Archaeology News Online Magazine
A 42,000-year-old mammoth ivory boomerang from Obłazowa Cave, Poland, rewrites the origins of boomerangs and symbolic tools in human history.| Archaeology News Online Magazine
Rosa Mistika is a Swahili classic by one of Tanzania’s most revered writers, Euphrase Kezilahabi. It was banned upon publication in 1971 and translated into English by Jay Boss Rubin... READ MORE| Yale University Press
The University of Tulsa is pleased to announce that Aaron Schoenfeldt has been selected as the 2025-26 Duane H. King Postdoctoral Fellow at the Helmerich Center for American Research on the grounds of Tulsa’s renowned Gilcrease Museum. Schoenfeldt holds a master’s degree in social sciences from the University of Chicago and will receive his doctorate […]| The University of Tulsa
The University of Tulsa’s Graduate School recently hosted the 2025 Graduate Student Awards Banquet. Several unique honors were bestowed upon students and| The University of Tulsa
Ever wonder what it is like to be in the next life, that is, to be dead? (I thought it best to leave the word “dead” out of the title of this essay.) Since this is something we all must face sooner or later, I thought it might be of interest to engage in some […]| Strange Notions
For those who reject the notion of free will, our experience of making our own decisions is nothing more than a deep-seated illusion. “The reality is,” insists biologist Anthony Cashmore, “not only do we have no more free will than a fly or a bacterium, in actuality we have no more free will than a bowl of […]| Strange Notions
Last month I was very happy to be able to add a few thoughts to a discussion on Tim Jenkins’ (my PhD supervisor of almost ten years ago…) six new books on the history and anthropology of the concept of the flying saucer and the alien (“Images of Elsewhere”, published by Peter Lang) for a … Continue reading A Response to Tim Jenkins’ “Images of Elsewhere”, Six New Books on Flying Saucers – Book Launch, Cambridge 14th May 2025| Professor Beth Singler
If, like me, you’ve spent a lot of your life in progressive/liberal circles, it’s easy to believe that any kind of authoritarianism is “unnatural”, alien to normal, healthy human behaviour. Sometim…| Magistra et Mater
COVID-19 continues to plague us, Mpox is an emerging global threat, and the avian flu is decimating industrial poultry as well as endangered wildlife. What do all these epidemics have in common? They originated in wild animals and spread to domestic animals and people. This pattern of spread is a trademark of many diseases, termed […] The post Could Restoring Forests Reduce Disease Risk? A Case Study of Hantavirus in Madagascar appeared first on Research Blog.| Research Blog
The History of Social Science has published its first issue. Sponsored by the Society for the History of Recent Social Science (HISRESS), the journal offers an international forum for the... READ MORE The post First issue of History of Social Science now available appeared first on University of Pennsylvania Press.| University of Pennsylvania Press
Two recent studies show that bonobos demonstrate female coalition power against male dominance, and suggests humans historically exhibited egalitarian behaviours, challenging notions of inevitable …| Nicola Griffith
According to The Missing Profits of Nations report, a research collaboration between the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Copenhagen, at least 72 percent of Fortune 500 companies maintain subsidiaries in offshore tax havens, with an estimated 40 percent of multinational profits shifted to tax havens each year.| rackham.umich.edu
Technical mastery has long been part of religious or spiritual awe, as well as a means to create or strengthen power relations... Bitcoin and all the aura surrounding its creation had this same characteristic.| The Crypto Syllabus
A Conversation with Robert Ashmore about the poetry of Li He.| Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies
Family forms Emmanuel Todd, The Explanation of Ideology: Family Structures and Social Systems (Blackwell, 1985, French original from 1983) was written a long time before the author became a promine…| Magistra et Mater
The first in a series of ongoing blog posts from Smithsonian Libraries and Archives’ Audiovisual Media Preservation Initiative, spotlighting the labor of Smithsonian media collections staff. With millions of exceptional more »| Smithsonian Libraries and Archives / Unbound
Welcome to the Monday Report, where you can read about UT Press books that have appeared in the media each week. Here is the news for 3.3.25| University of Texas Press
A Q+A with Anthropologist Philipp Demgenski| Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies
We will not go gentle into that good night here at Strong Language. We will rage. Oh, we will rage, all right, uttering our shit’s, fuck’s, and damn’s until the bitter-ass end. And that’s true for …| Strong Language
← Back to the HHRRC Special Initiative| Forensic Technology Center of Excellence
Author: Alexander Dugin Translator: Jafe Arnold Originally published in Literaturnaia gazeta [Literary Newspaper] in 2003, republished in the book The Radical Subject and its Double (Moscow: Eurasian Movement, 2009). *** The human and the world. It would seem that the posing of such a question is relevant at all times. However, everything is much more […]| Eurasianist Internet Archive
Author: Alexander Dugin Translator: Jafe Arnold Chapter 1 of Noomakhia – The Yellow Dragon: The Civilizations of the Far East (Moscow: Academic Project, 2018) *** China is recognized to be an independent and unique civilization by virtually everyone, and therefore there is no need to prove this. Rather, we are faced with attempting to reveal the structure […]| Eurasianist Internet Archive
Living with a Papua New Guinea tribe in the ’80s presented this anthropologist with a question for today.| Nautilus
Written by Yu-Han Huang and Li-Ting Chang. This article is about the 30th NATSA Conference’s closing forum, which discussed the historical development of Taiwan Studies as a field, particular…| Taiwan Insight
Father Deacon Ananias's paper delivered at the 2024 Orthodox MontaNIKA conference at Holy Trinity Serbian Orthodox Church in Butte, MT.| Patristic Faith
A surprise discovery reveals cocaine may have been widely available and used in Europe, centuries earlier than previously thought.| The Debrief
Recent fossil discoveries on the Indonesian island of Flores have revealed that Homo floresiensis, commonly referred to as "hobbits" were even tinier than previously thought.| ArchaeologyNews Online Magazine
Researchers have uncovered a significant Slavic settlement and burial ground near Wettin-Löbejün in Germany.| ArchaeologyNews Online Magazine
Archaeologists have unearthed a large Bronze Age burial mound surrounded by Iron Age cremation burials in Petershagen-Windheim, Germany.| ArchaeologyNews Online Magazine
Donald Nonini and Dorothy Holland interviewed sustainable farmers and food activists across N.C. to develop better models for local food systems.| UNC Research Stories
Educating the Body presents a history of physical education in Canada, shedding light on its major advocates, innovators, and institutions.| University of Toronto Press
Educating the Body presents a history of physical education in Canada, shedding light on its major advocates, innovators, and institutions.| University of Toronto Press
A few weeks ago, Rachel Schurman and I published The Complex Choreography of Agricultural Biotechnologies in Africa in the journal African Affairs. In the article, we surveyed nearly 30 years of strategic and well-funded efforts by donors to bring GMOs to Africa. These efforts, we contend, have so far yielded very little. How come? We argue that […]| Joeva Sean Rock
I'm very excited to be giving a talk at UC Berkeley next month on genetically modified crops, sustainability, and qualitative research methods.| Joeva Sean Rock
Happy to share that my article, “We Are Not Starving: Challenging Genetically Modified Seeds and Development in Ghana" received the 2019 Boahen-Wilks Prize for Outstanding Scholarly Article in Ghana Studies.| Joeva Sean Rock
On October 23, 2019, the University of San Francisco hosted five leading African food sovereignty activists for a night of discussion, food, and networking. We were fortunate to hear from Victoria Adongo (Peasant Farmers Association of Ghana), Mariam Bassey-Orovwuje (Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa), Dr. Million Belay (Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa), Mariam […]| Joeva Sean Rock
It’s December, which means I’ve hit the year anniversary of my defense (wow!) and 2019 is near. I’ve been reflecting on work done the past year – not because productivity is the goal – but because I, like many others, constantly fall into the trap of feeling underproductive and therefore overlooking actual accomplishments. So, I […]| Joeva Sean Rock
Why aren't rich and tasty food cultures more central to development efforts?| Joeva Sean Rock
A Writer's Conscience | I just finished reading – actually skimming – what I’m tempted to name as the worst book in the history of the...| Dear Abbie: The Non-Advice Column
The Rackham Program in Public Scholarship supports publicly engaged scholarship through mutually beneficial projects created between Rackham students and community partners.| Rackham Graduate School: University of Michigan
I got up today, had my morning coffee, and was surprised to find that AI music is pretty much solved. Okay, there are still some audible artifacts, and you can argue that the song I linked to is ge…| Pointers Gone Wild
I’m due to get my degree soon in Anthropology, though I mainly focused on systems. I also have officially a minor in Comp Lit. (Comparative Lit which does World Literature–Or compare everything to Europe which is the real title they don’t tell you). Systems, means things that are prejudiced and discriminatory in our societies, say, LGBTQIA, women, gender, socio-economic class, etc. I’ve wanted since High school to focus on media exchange (i.e. import and export of say books and movies...| Eclectic Creative
It’s back to school time and I thought it would be great to kick off the year with some fun facts about human bones. Let’s jump right in! Human adult skeletons are made up of about 206 bones…| The Rockstar Anthropologist
This is part three (final) of the 2019 Black History Month series on two important sites- the African Burial Grounds in NYC and a tiny island called St. Helena. Sorry, it was delayed, but Black His…| The Rockstar Anthropologist
In the month of February, I was working on a series for Black History Month. Unfortunately, midway through the series, the Rockstar Anthro Pup, died. I took a couple weeks away from writing while w…| The Rockstar Anthropologist
This is part two of the 2019 Black History Month series on two important sites- the African Burial Grounds in NYC and a tiny island called St. Helena. In this second part, I’ll discuss the bu…| The Rockstar Anthropologist
The Royal Navy began to police the water for ships filled with enslaved people en route to the Caribbean and the Americas. Some of these ships were made to turn back, but they all didn’t go back to…| The Rockstar Anthropologist
