• Yanomami blood rights and wrongs
Blood samples collected by American researchers in the 1960s from the Yanomami Indians of Venezuela are still in a lab at Penn State University. The Yanomami want their blood back. They believe that the dead cannot pass into the spiritual world until all traces of their physical existence, including their blood, are destroyed. The situation is complicated: Yanomami blood samples were also distributed to the University of California at Irvine and the National Cancer Institute, and the blood may contain viruses, so shipping the blood requires extreme care. Fabio Federico, spokesperson for the Brazilian Embassy in Washington, says that “legal procedures and political issues” have delayed the process of returning the blood. Rob Borofsky, professor of anthropology at Hawai’i Pacific University and director of the Center for a Public Anthropology, has blogged about the situation, urging students to write letters to universities, politicians, and the news media supporting the return of the samples.
• American Indians in Providence, RI, protest new board game
On Saturday, American Indians took to the streets of Providence to demand that a new board game called “King Phillip’s War” be scrapped. More than 5,000 people died in the 17th century battle, most of them Indians. Professor Julianne Jennings of the department of anthropology at Rhode Island College and a member of the Nottoway Cheroenhaka Tribe, spoke at a gathering by the waterfront where Indian prisoners were shipped to the West Indies as slaves. She urged educators to include more Indian history in their textbooks, noting that “There are still people who believe the East Coast Indians no longer exist.”
• Hail to the chef: The Obamas’ personal favorite
Rick Bayless, proponent of Mexican cooking and sustainable farming, is the Obamas’ favorite chef. Hailing from Oklahoma, Bayless did doctoral studies in linguistic anthropology at the University of Michigan before pursuing his dream of learning about Mexican cooking on location. “From the moment I stepped foot there I felt like I was home. It was the vitality, the street life.” In 1980, he decided to take time off from his doctoral studies. He never went back. Nonetheless, it’s likely that Bayless’ study of anthropology has helped him become such a well-informed expert on Mexican traditional cooking.
• Big shoes to fill
William Safire, legendary columnist for the New York Times for more than 30 years, died in September. He has been replaced by Ben Zimmer. Zimmer studied linguistic anthropology at the University of Chicago and is a consultant for the Oxford English Dictionary. Blogger’s query: Is there something in the water this week re: linguistic anthropology?
• Historical forces shape cooperation
Cultural anthropologist Richard McElreath of the University of California at Davis is a member of a multidisciplinary research team that has been studying why, in large-scale societies, strangers are altruistic. Their findings, published in Science, indicate that “small and large communities regulate cooperation… in different ways because different mechanisms of monitoring and enforcement of norms work better at different scales of society.”
• Talking mummies
China claims that Xinjiang’s western desert is a longstanding part of “China.” Therefore, it can quash separatist movements in the region. The Tarim mummies, excavated in a site in Xinjiang, tell a different origin story. Their phenotypic features (long noses, high cheekbones) connect them with the central Asian Uyghurs, not with the mainstream Chinese populations. Blogger’s note: there is oil in the western desert as well as contested mummies.
• Who let the dogs in?
A few months ago, China had the hold on this innovation. Before that, Russia/Eastern Europe was in for the prize. A new DNA study, led by Bridgett vonHoldt and Robert Wayne of the University of California at Los Angeles makes them both losers, at least for now, by demonstrating that dogs were first domesticated in the Middle East.
• Read my footprints
A study published in PLoS ONE compares modern human footprints with those preserved at Laetoli, Tanzania, which are 4.4 million years old. David Raichlen, assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Arizona, says that “…the Laetoli footprints fall completely within the range of normal human footprints…[with] heel and toe depths that are relatively equal.”
• Us: a new exhibit
Several mainstream media covered the opening of the new exhibit, “What Does It Mean to Be Human” at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, in Washington, DC. Paleoanthropologist Rick Potts, director of the Smithsonian’s Human Origins Program, explains the two parallel narratives of the exhibit as being, first, “What does it mean to be human?” and second “Why does it matter?”
• Pre-Hobbits
The discovery of stone tools on the island of Flores, homeland of the “Hobbits” (Homo floresiensis) pushes back the arrival of early humans there to at least one million years ago and may help explain known animal extinctions on the island. Findings are published in Nature.
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