Can we really stand on our own two feet?

Street_seamstress_vendor_Bangkok — Street side tailor in Bangkok. Many people around the world spend substantial time sitting/ Mark Fischer, Wikimedia Commons.

In his 1982 book Man, the Tottering Biped the South African-born anatomist and paleoanthropologist, Philip V Tobias (1925 – 2012), questioned the conventional wisdom, developed from Charles Darwin onwards, that standing in an upright stance on two feet freed our arms for tool making and tool using and marked a significant advance in human evolutionary history.

Tobias argued, instead, that the capacity to sit upright occurred long before the ability to stand on two feet and walk bipedally. Sitting upright, in his view, allowed our ancestors to develop a range of manual skills and with them the growth of a large brain.

Tobias made a further point about Homo sapiens’ achievement in standing upright:

“The way in which the body adjusted its structure and it bio-mechanics to the new way of uprightness and bipedalism may be described as little short of ingenious. Nonetheless, after perhaps four million years or more, we have not yet evolved a fault-free mechanism. Our bodies are still subject to what Sir Arthur Keith called the ills of uprightness. They include flat feet, slipped discs, hernias, prolapses and malposture. These maladies of uprightness account for much that keeps today’s orthopaedic surgeons busy. So the mechanism of man’s posture and gait, though resourceful and craftily contrived, is imperfect. The first human ancestors to come upright became heir to a host of new problems.”

That’s an impressive list but even so, it leaves out: plantar fasciitis, Achilles tendinitis, ankle sprains, shin splints, fallen pelvic floors, hernias, sway back (lordosis), a sideways curvature of the spine (scoliosis), a rounded upper back or hunch back (kyphosis), and spontaneously fractured vertebrae.

No one would disagree that standing upright, the head poised on top of the spine, is a truly remarkable achievement. Many biological anthropologists, such as Craig Stanford of the University of Southern California, believe it is the key defining feature of Homo sapiens. As he says in his 2003 book Upright:

Foot_bones — Feet are complicated. / Wikimedia Commons.

“Of the more than two hundred species of primates on earth today, one is bipedal. Of more than 4000 species of mammals, one – the same one – is fully bipedal when walking (a few oddities such as kangaroo rats and meerkats stand bipedally for a few moments at a time). If we include thousands more kinds of animals – such as amphibians and reptiles – walking on two feet emerges as the most unlikely way to get around. Kangaroos and birds such as ostriches and penguins are bipedal – sort of. But they are built on an entirely different body plan, and are not, strictly speaking, relying only on their legs for transport.”

Only the human primate, then, is able to come to a truly upright stance with fully extended knees and hips, that is without the bent leg joints found amongst bonobos and chimpanzees, our nearest relatives, and has the capacity to remain in that attitude for a significant amount of time.

Nevertheless, Tobias’s perspective on the problems of uprightness has plenty of contemporary supporters. “The human vertebral column is unique in its sinusoidal curvatures that allow the upper body to balance over the hips,” anatomist and physical anthropologist Bruce Latimer of Case Western Reserve University recently argued at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). “Turning a spine originally adapted for a quadruped into one that is perpendicular to the ground has resulted in numerous problems that are unique to our species. If you take care of it, your spine will get you through to about 40 or 50. After that you are on your own.” Continue reading “Can we really stand on our own two feet?” →

One more thing most people don’t know about nutcrackers

A recent letter to The Express (UK) offered a list of “Ten things you never knew about… nutcrackers.” Here is the list:

The earliest known nutcrackers have been identified by archaeologists as pitted stones used to crack nuts between 4,000 and 8,000 years ago.

The earliest known metal nutcracker dates back to the 3rd or 4th century BC.
Metal screw nutcrackers became popular in the 18th and 19th centuries with the development of the screw-cutting lathe.
The earliest known mention of nutcrackers in English is in Customs Accounts of 1481.
There is a Nutcracker Museum in Leavenworth, Washington. It is home to over 6,000 nutcrackers.
According to German legend, nutcrackers bring good luck to your family and protect your home.
For that reason, nutcrackers were popular Christmas presents for children.
The heroic Nutcracker of Tchaikovsky’s ballet comes from a story The Nutcracker And The Mouse King by ETA Hoffmann.
According to Guinness World Records, the largest nutcracker measures 10.10m (33ft 1in) high and was made in Germany in 2008.
Aristotle is said to have invented the first nutcracker with a lever action.

With all due respect, anthropologists would add an important number 11: our primate relatives, chimpanzees, have been cracking nuts for millennia.

Anthro in the news 6/28/10

• Iran says thanks but no thanks to US help
“So why would we force it on them?” asks cultural anthropologist William Beeman, professor and chair of the department of anthropology at the University of Minnesota. In a letter to the editor of the New York Times, Beeman explains that the ability of the United States to aid the Green movement in Iran is negated by decades of “interference in Iranian affairs” to the extent that any official American support of reform in Iran will “poison that movement with the plausible accusation of another round of American desire to dominate Iran.”

• Oh what a night
The annual all-night party at Stonehenge, England, draws thousands of people who wait for dawn at the Heel Stone. One participant with flowers in her hair said that “It means a lot to us…being British and following our pagan roots.” What Stonehenge now means to people is a story in itself. What it meant when it was in its heyday: “The truthful answer is that we don’t know exactly what it was for,” says Amanda Chadburn, an archaeologist who manages the site.

• Tall man walking
A second skeleton discovered in Ethiopia belonging to the same species as the world’s most famous fossil, Lucy, indicates that early human ancestors were walking on two feet by 3.6 million years ago. The new skeleton is that of a male about five and a half feet tall. Predating Lucy by 400,000 years, this new evidence suggests that little Lucy, who was a mere three and a half feet tall, was also a walker.

• Chimps fighting
A new publication about chimp “warfare” attracted major media coverage from the New York Times to the Economist. The question under consideration is: Do chimps fight for females or for land? The latest research based on field studies in Uganda says: land. John Mitani, a primatologist and professor of anthropology at the University of Michigan, presents his findings in Current Biology.

• In recognition and memoriam
Ellen P. Brown, cultural anthropologist, died June 11 of a brain hemorrhage. She had a B.A. in anthropology from Bryn Mawr and an MA and PhD in anthropology from Cambridge University. Her service with the US Peace Corps in Chad, where she remained for many years, led to a job for Exxon Mobil as a cultural broker between its pipeline project from Chad to Cameroon and local people.

You say yes, I say no…

The headlines are saying that “Chimps shake their heads to mean ‘no’ just like humans” with the implication that it may “reflect a primitive precursor of the human ‘no’ headshake,” according to Christel Schneider of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. Schneider spotted “preventive head shaking” from studying tapes of chimpanzees and bonobos in six European zoos.

I am shaking my head “no” to this wild assertion, and I am hopeful that Christel Schneider is, too, since the last line in the article indicates that she is aware that a shake of the head can mean “yes” in some cultures.

So why even talk about “a primitive precursor”? Precursor of what?

I had my first lesson about the arbitrary–not hard-wired–meaning of head shaking when I attended a classical Indian music concert as a college student in Syracuse, New York. During the performance, I was alarmed at seeing so many people in the audience shaking their heads in what I thought was a “no” message. They seemed to despair at the quality of the music. I felt sorry for the performers. After the performance, I learned that the head-shaking members of the audience were, in fact, deeply appreciative of the quality of the performance. Their side-to-side horizontal head movement meant, “yes, yes, wonderful, wah, wah.”

My second lesson is one that I probably share with thousands of other visitors to India, especially those lucky enough to be invited for a home meal. If, as an innocent American, you shake your head “no” when offered second helpings, you will find your hostess heaping yet more food on your plate. Again and again, because your hostess interprets your side-to-side head shaking as saying “yes, yes, more, please.”

The chimpanzees and bonobos living in European zoos would be at high risk for weight gain in India. Just like me.

Image: “Bonobo”, from flickr user tim_ellis, licensed with Creative Commons.

Anthro in the news 1/25/10

• Cultural anthropologist on key aspect of Haitian devastation

It’s rare that a cultural anthropologist is quoted on the front page of The New York Times or of any of the mainstream media. So it’s especially noteworthy when it happens. In this case, the article is even above-the-fold. “Burials without Rituals” describes the extreme psychological stress of Haitians facing loss of many family members, friends and others. This stress takes on an extra edge given the critical importance of proper burials to ensure good relations with the dead. The article draws on insights from Ira Lowenthal, a cultural anthropologist who received his doctorate in the United States and has lived in Haiti for 34 years. He comments: “Convening with the dead is what allows Haitians to link themselves, directly by bloodline, to a pre-slave past…” With so many bodies denied a place in family burial plots where many rituals take place, important spiritual connections are severed: “It is a violation of everything these people hold dear … On the other hand, people know they have no choice.”

• OMG limited brain capacity for Facebook friends

The Daily Mail, UK carried a piece highlighting the research of Robin Dunbar, professor of evolutionary anthropology at Oxford University. Dunbar is well-known for his work on sociality, grooming and friendship in nonhuman primates and throughout human evolution. He claims that the size of the human neocortex limits us to manage about 150 friends max. This figure has come to be known as Dunbar’s Number. It has been tested in various contexts from neolithic societies to contemporary office environments. Dunbar is now studying social networking sites to see if Dunbar’s Number applies. It seems to. “The interesting thing is that you can have 1,500 friends but when you actually look at traffic on sites, you see people maintain the same inner circle of around 150 people.” The published study will appear later this year.

• Thanks for the compliment

According to an article in the Chicago Herald-News, studies of social scientists and psychologists point to the nuanced meanings and effects of compliments. Peter Wogan, associate professor of anthropology at Willamette University in Oregon, highlights how gender affects the giving and receiving of compliments. He says that women tend to compliment other women on their appearance while men do not. If men compliment women on their appearance, women perceive it as a come-on and often deflect it. Blogger’s note: I was struck by how heterosexual these patterns sound. So I went to Google Scholar to learn more about Wogan’s research. I think I found the source (PDF file), a brief chapter based on a class project Wogan conducted a few years ago. Students in his “Language and Culture” class collected 270 compliments on the campus in Salem, Oregon. An intriguing glimpse into campus compliments, and a pilot study that would merit replication in different contexts.

• Thoughtful review of Secrets of the Tribe

Secrets of the Tribe is a new documentary exploring the ethical controversies related to anthropological and other research among the Yanomami of the Venezuelan Amazon since the 1960s. It will premiere in Sundance’s World Cinema Documentary Competition. The reviewer comments that the film is “…an often provocative interrogation of how all ambitious people impact the world around them and how difficult (or impossible) it is to be a mere observer.”

• Upcoming event noted in the The Nation

As posted in The Nation, The Palestine Center in Washington, D.C., is hosting a briefing: “Humanitarianism: Prolonging the Palestinian Political Plight?” with Ilana Feldman, assistant professor of anthropology and international affairs, The George Washington University. She is the author of Governing Gaza: Bureaucracy, Authority and the Work of Rule (1917-67). The event is free and open to the public. A light lunch will be served to registered guests at 12:30pm. The briefing and question/answer period will be from 1 – 2 p.m. on January 27. Registration is required.

Continue reading “Anthro in the news 1/25/10” →

Anthro in the news 1/11/10

• Tell it to the Marines
NPR aired an interview with cultural anthropologist Paula Holmes-Eber who teaches “operational culture” at Marine Corps University in Quantico, Virginia. Classes include discussion of cultural sensitivity and the cultural/social consequences of military presence and military actions, such as blowing up a bridge.

• Nacirema craziness goes global
In an article called “The Americanization of Mental Illness” in The New York Times Magazine, Ethan Watters (blog) describes how Western, especially American, globalization includes the spread of Western/American understandings of mental health and illness. He points to some of the negative consequences of this trend.

In discussing why people diagnosed with schizophrenia in developing countries fare better than those in industrialized countries, he draws on the work of medical anthropologist Juli McGruder of the University of Puget Sound. McGruder’s research in Zanzibar shows how Swahili spiritual beliefs and healing practices help the ill person by avoiding stigma and keeping social and family ties intact. Note: Nacirema is “American” spelled backwards.

• Guardians of the nameless dead
The bodies of hundreds of victims of political violence in Colombia are often disposed of by being thrown into rivers. Sometimes the bodies wash up on the river bank. WIS News describes the work of one local civil servant, Maria Ines Mejia, who spends time recovering bodies from the Cauca River and thereby helping authorities record the deaths and chronicle the killings.

Maria Victoria Uribe, an anthropologist with Colombia’s National Commission of Reconciliation and Reparation, names people like Mejia as “unknown heroes.” Michelle Hamilton, an expert in body composition who directs the Forensic Anthropology Center at Texas State University, notes that “…you can imagine trying to grab onto a water-logged body with the skin slipping off. It can come off in your hands.”

• Celebration and warning
Survival International’s “weighty coffee-table book,” We Are One: A Celebration of Tribal Peoples, is reviewed in the Ecologist. The unity and diversity of indigenous peoples around the world is celebrated in beautiful photographs and through the words of tribal and non-tribal people. Given that Survival International commissioned the book, it also expectedly contains a message of deep concern about the dangers to survival that so many indigenous/tribal cultures face.

• Who rules?
Janine Wedel is a cultural anthropologist and professor of public policy at George Mason University. Her book, The Shadow Elite: How the World’s New Power Brokers Undermine Democracy, Government, and the Free Market, was reviewed in the Financial Times and by Arianna Huffington of the Huffington Post. Wedel has appeared at several book launches in D.C.
Continue reading “Anthro in the news 1/11/10” →

Anthro in the news 12/28/2009

• Mexican national award to U.S. anthropology professor

Antonio N. Zavaleta, professor of anthropology at the University of Texas at Brownsville and Texas Southmost College, received the Premio Otli Award. It is given by the Mexican government to non-Mexican citizens who work to improve the quality of life for Mexican citizens living abroad.

• Australian of the Year Award goes to legal anthropologist/law professor

The Australian of the Year Award goes to an Australian recognized for bettering the world and inspiring others to do so as well. Patricia Easteal, associate professor in the University of Canberra’s faculty of law, won the award for her efforts in advancing human rights and justice in Australia by highlighting equity issues in the law, courts, prisons and policing. She earned a Ph.D. in cultural anthropology at the University of Pittsburgh and is a dual citizen of the United States and Australia. Her publications, including 13 books authored or co-edited and more than 100 journal articles, have had an impact on legal reform and public policy especially in the area of violence against women. “There is still a way to go,” she says.

• Liberté, égalité, sexualité

An article in The Independent describes how schools across France may be facing student revolts about the right to wear sexy clothes in school. Some schools forbid low-slung trousers (for males presumably), short garments (for females presumably) and piercings. A rumor at one school of a potential ban on all contact between couples prompted students to threaten a “day of kissing.” Sociologist Michel Fize of the Centre Nationale de la Recherche Scientifique says that he is not surprised at the increase in teenagers wanting to dress provocatively. He places the blame on television and a “hyper-erotic” society: “How can you say to a teenage girl that she is baring too much of her shoulder when those on television are doing exactly that?” In the meantime, isn’t this the same country that gets upset when Muslim girls want to cover their heads in school?

• A community of heroin addicts

WHYY Radio interviewed cultural anthropologist Philippe Bourgois, professor of anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania, about his 12 years of research with homeless heroin addicts and crack smokers in San Francisco. Bourgois and photographer Jeff Schonberg published their findings in a 2009 book, Righteous Dopefiend. An exhibit by the Slought Foundation in Philadelphia provided an “ethno-photographic” display during December.

• Chimpanzee cutlery

For the first time, chimpanzees have been seen using tools, specifically cleavers and anvils, to cut food into bite-sized bits, according to a report from BBC. In other words they are processing food with tools, a significant step beyond using tools to procure food as in ant-fishing and nut-cracking. The study of chimpanzees in the Nimba Mountains of Guinea was carried out by Ph.D. student Kathelijne Koops and William McGrew of the University of Cambridge and Tetsuro Matsuzawa of Kyoto University.

• First foreign geisha or not?

Mainstream media picked up on the debut of cultural anthropologist Fiona Graham, an Australian by birth with a Ph.D. from Oxford, as Sayuki, a trained geisha who bills herself as the first foreign geisha. In the 1970s, however, American cultural anthropologist Liza Dalby, with a Ph.D. from Stanford, did long-term participant observation in a geisha community and trained to be a geisha, making her the more likely first foreign geisha. Dalby is the author of Geisha, among other books. Graham seems to be suggesting that Dalby didn’t go through all the necessary steps and dressed and acted as a geisha simply through the courtesy of her geisha friends.

• Modern human behavior = compartmentalized activity areas

One indicator of “modern humans” is the existence of defined living areas for different activities which is taken to indicate formalized conceptualization of living space and organizational skills. A new study by archaeologists at Hebrew University, published in Science, has pushed back the date for such behavior to as early as 750,000 years ago. Evidence comes from the site of Gesher Benot Ya’aqov in northern Israel. Excavations were carried out under the direction of Naama Goren-Inbar. Members of the international research team include Ella Werker, Nira Alperson-Afil, Gonen Sharon, Rivka Rabinovich, Shosh Ashkenazi, Irit Zohar and Rebecca Biton of the Hebrew University Institute of Archaeology; Mordechai Kislev and Yoel Melamed of Bar Ilan University; Gideon Hartman of the Max Planck Institute; and Craig Feibel of Rutgers University. Archaeologist Alison S. Brooks, an anthropology professor at The George Washington University and not involved in the research, is quoted in The New York Times as saying: ”This is an extraordinary site,” and the evidence of hearths itself “implies some kind of spatial organization.” But what would Foucault say? Didn’t he write that the disciplinary use of space occurred in the late 18th century?

• Precolonial farming in Hawai’i

A multidisciplinary team including archaeologist Patrick Kirch, professor of anthropology at the University of California at Berkeley, has found evidence of extensive dryland farming systems dating from precolonial times that could have supported one million people. Ecologist Samuel Gon III, cultural advisor and senior scientist with the Nature Conservancy, is quoted in the Star Bulletin as saying that the findings suggest “we can wean our reliance on food from the outside.” The research is described in the Journal of Archaeological Science.

• Headless in Vanuatu

The oldest and largest skeleton find in the Pacific Ocean has been discovered in a coral reef in Vanuatu. The multidisciplinary research team is led by Stuart Bedford and Matthew Spriggs of Australian National University in collaboration with the Vanuatu Cultural Centre. So far, 71 individuals have been recorded. They are all headless and some have their limbs broken, perhaps so they could be stuffed into crevices in the reef. Mads Ravn, team member and head of research at the University of Stavanger’s Museum of Archaeology in Norway is quoted in Science Daily: “The way these people are buried bears witness of a body concept which is different from the whole-body concept in Europe…”

• Nazareth house dated to the time of Jesus

A dwelling in Nazareth appears to be dated to the time of Jesus and was probably one of about 50 houses in what was then a remote hamlet. The research is being carried out by a team of Israeli archaeologists led by Yardena Alexandre, excavations director at the Israel Antiquities Authority. Alexandre said, “There was a logical possibility that a young Jesus could have played around the house with his cousins and friends.”

• Tis the time for lists

Several news media have presented their list of notable deaths in 2009. Three English-language sources that I have seen — The Sunday Times (London), The Observer (England), and the Los Angeles Times — include French cultural anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss on their lists. The Sunday Times has a modest list of four, so that’s quite a tribute. The Observer‘s list, organized chronologically by death date, is too long to count. Ditto for the list in the LA Times which organized individuals into categories such as “from the halls of power,” “big screen and small,” “cultural trailblazers,” “wordsmiths” and “LA legends.” Lévi-Strauss’ name appears in the “agents of change” group which also includes Eunice Kennedy Shriver and Norman Borlaug.

Stunned by the massive New York Times obituary coverage (starting on the front page with a photo and continuing with an interior full-page) following the death of American economist Paul Samuelson, this blogger feels that there may be some justice in the world after all since Professor Samuelson didn’t make it on any of the lists discussed here.

Anthro in the news 12/21/09

• Cultural anthropologist wins national award in Australia

A book critiquing public policy toward Australia’s aborigines over several decades has won the Manning Clark House Cultural Award 2009. The awardee is Peter Sutton, a cultural anthropologist and linguist and senior research fellow at the University of Adelaide and the South Australian Museum. His book, The Politics of Suffering: Indigenous Australia and the End of the Liberal Consensus, challenges the way successive governments have dealt with indigenous issues. According to the Canberra Times, it has polarized many readers in both academic and mainstream circles. The author says he has been surprised at the depth of feeling: “I’m touched by the fact that so many people are relieved by the book… It’s given them a certain cathartic release from silences and from being unable to think where they were heading.” He has, however, been upset by the “more personal attacks.”

• Ardi wins as top scientific breakthrough

Science magazine anointed Ardipithecus ramidus (its long-awaited description, not the discovery of the fossils since they were found over a decade ago) as the Breakthrough of 2009, and the mainstream media eagerly picked up on the announcement. According to Bruce Alberts, editor-in-chief of Science, the Ardipithecus research “changes the way we think about early human evolution, and it represents the culmination of 15 years of painstaking, highly collaborative research by 47 scientists of diverse expertise from nine nations, who carefully analyzed 150,000 specimens of fossilized animals and plants” (source). A special issue of Science was devoted to articles by various team members on the fossils and their significance.

• Anthropologists honored by AAAS

The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) announced its 531 new fellows. Seven are anthropologists: Susan M. Cachel, Rutgers University; Diane Zaino Chase, University of Central Florida; Katerina Harvati, Eberhard Karls University of Tübigen; Andrew Hill, Yale University; Gary D. James, Binghamton University; Ellen Messer, Brandeis University; Yolanda Moses, University. of California, Riverside; and Lynnette Leidy Sievert, University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

• Nancy Scheper-Hughes releases interview about Israeli illegal organ harvesting

In 2000, Nancy Scheper-Hughes, professor of anthropology at the University of California at Berkeley, conducted and taped an interview with Yehuda Hiss, former head of the Abu Kabir forensic institute near Tel Aviv. Hiss admitted that in the 1990s pathologists at Abu Kabir harvested skin, corneas, heart valves and bones from the bodies of Israeli soldiers, Israeli citizens, Palestinians and foreign workers, often without permission from family members. Hiss was removed from his post in 2004 when details about the organ harvesting were first reported, but he still works at Abu Kabir. According to the Guardian, Israel’s health ministry says that all harvesting in Israel is now done with permission and in accordance with ethics and Jewish law. The article is not clear as to why Scheper-Hughes decided to release the interview now.

• Rice as life in Japan

A feature article in the double holiday edition of the Economist about the importance of rice in Japan draws heavily on the insights of cultural anthropologist Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney, the William F. Vilas professor of anthropology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. She is an authority on Japanese culture and author of many prominent books including Rice As Self: Japanese Identity through Time. She notes that the origin myths of many cultures focus on the origin of the universe, whereas Japan’s is “…about the transformation of a wilderness into a land of abundant rice at the command of the Sun Goddess, whose descendants, the emperors, rule the country by officiating at rice rituals.” These rituals are closely tied to Shintoism, Japan’s indigenous religion, which emphasizes the importance of subordination of self-interest to the well-being of the group. Rice is a major component of national identity: to be Japanese is to eat rice, specifically rice grown in Japan. But modernity threatens the centrality of rice in the diet as young urbanites increasingly opt for meals featuring meat, potatoes and bread. A growing movement, however, seeks to preserve Japan’s rice heritage. One such development is the establishment of an upscale restaurant in Tokyo called Kokoromai (“Heart of Rice”) which has more than 10 varieties of rice on the menu.

• The silent epidemic of childhood hunger in the U.S.

An article in The Washington Post addresses the challenges of widespread and growing childhood hunger in the U.S. and quotes medical anthropologist Mariana Chilton of Drexel University. Commenting on how the problem of child hunger is complex and subtle and cannot be solved by providing food alone, she says “Most people who are hungry are not clinically manifesting what we consider hunger. It doesn’t even affect body weight.” The lack of nutritious food is just one of several pressures facing low-income families including housing and energy costs. Chilton is part of Children’s Health Watch, a network of pediatricians and public health researchers in Philadelphia and four other U.S. cities, and she is organizer of the “Witnesses to Hunger Project” which has provided video cameras to 40 mothers to document the challenges they face and their efforts to feed their children. The videos will be used to lobby the U.S. government.

•Anthropology puts the people in technology engineering

Intel Labs’ People and Practices Research group (PaPR) has a vision of a more human-centered technology future. The group applies principles from “forward-looking anthropology” along with sociology and psychology to predict what people will require in the future. Ken Anderson, an anthropologist with PaPR, says, “We are trying to understand what people actually do in order to better design technology.” For example, because people frequently task switch when using technology, Intel is working on a new turbo boost feature that will be delivered early in 2010.

• Anthropology puts the people in public policy

The Dominion Post carried an article about a one-day seminar in Wellington led by Christian Bason (LinkedIn), head of the Danish thinktank Mindlab. The purpose was to talk about how to redesign public policy processes to take into account the people they are trying to help: taxpayers. Mindlab was established in Denmark to improve service delivery through understanding what people need. One example of success was reducing turnaround time for work injury cases. Bason said that anthropology has become “hip” in government service in Denmark: “instead of studying tribes in South America they are using anthropology to study taxpayers.”

• Anthropology puts the culture in skin care products

Tramayne Butler earned a PhD in cultural anthropology from the University of Michigan and is now founder and CEO of AnthroSpa Logic LLC, which produces natural skin care products. She started researching and developing her line while teaching part-time as an adjunct instructor and spending time at home with her two young children. Inspired by her fieldwork in Kenya and extensive world travels, she realized that skin care products could benefit from cross-cultural knowledge about medicinal and beauty practices and use of organic materials.

• Leprosy most old

The DNA of a 1st century CE man buried in a tomb in the Old City of Jerusalem reveals that he had leprosy, making him the oldest proven case of leprosy. The location of the tomb suggests that he may have been a priest or member of the social elite. The condition of his hair and the quality of the textile shroud he wore are further indications that he was not a social outcast, in spite of suffering from a disfiguring disease. Details of the research are published in PLoS ONE.

• Say it with flowers

Flowers placed near the head of a human buried during the Bronze Age is the first such evidence from that period. The grave is located south of Perth, Scotland. The findings are described by Kenneth Brophy of the University of Glasgow in the journal British Archaeology. BBC news quotes Brophy as saying that the discovery of the flowers brought home to him the human touch involved, that “actually these are people that you are dealing with.”

• Dancing to a different culture

Researchers in the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, confirm the diversity of human cultures and human cognition. They asked a group of German children and a group of Namibian children to learn a dance. The German children and the Namibian children, however, consistently used different hand movement directions. Daniel Haun comments, “The human mind varies more across cultures than we generally thought.” The findings are published in the journal Current Biology.

• More evidence of chimp smarts

Primatologist Jill Preutz of Iowa State University has observed a group of savanna chimpanzees in Senegal for over nine years. Her latest discovery is that the chimpanzees understand how wildfires behave and can predict the movement of wildfire well enough to avoid it calmly. She feels that this finding sheds light on how early human ancestors may have learned to control fire. A paper co-authored with Thomas LaDuke of East Stroudsburg University, is published online in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology.

• Stone age pantry

Archaeologist Julio Mercader of the University of Calgary, with colleagues from Mozambique’s University of Eduardo Mondiane, has found the earliest direct evidence of extensive consumption of wild cereals. Dozens of stone tools, excavated from deep within a cave near Lake Niassa in Mozambique, were used to grind wild sorghum by Homo sapiens more than 100,000 years ago. Mercader comments that “inclusion of cereals in our diet is considered an important step in human evolution because of the technical complexity and the culinary manipulation required.” The findings are published in Science.

• Tough teeth for tough times

A team of researchers, including biological anthropologists Paul Constantino and Peter Lucas of The George Washington University, have shown that natural selection in three ape species favors those with teeth that can handle “fallback foods” during times of scarcity. Gorillas, orangutans and chimpanzees favor a fruit-based diet. But they all possess molars than can allow them to chew tough foods such as leaves and bark. The findings are published in Science.

• Development projects do not benefit India’s tribals

KIRTADS (Kerala Institute for Research, Training and Development Studies of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes) organized a national seminar to discuss tribal knowledge, biodiversity, intellectural property rights and the impact of modernity on livelihood sustainability. Vineetha Menon, professor and head of the anthropology department at Kannur University, says that modernity has disturbed the tribals’ livelihood systems and that poverty-eradication schemes have not helped them. K. N. K. Sharma, former director of KIRTADS, pointed to the negative effects of land alienation and expressed criticism of the government for not protecting tribal land rights.

• Nepali cultural anthropologist dies

Renowned cultural anthropologist Saubhagya Shah died as a consequence of a heart attack at the age of 45. Shah earned his doctorate in anthropology from Harvard University. He was a professor in Tribhuvan University’s sociology department and coordinator of its Conflict, Peace and Development Studies program. Shah’s interests focused on the state, democratization and development. In his chapter in the edited book, State of Nepal, he offers a critique of the burgeoning NGO sector in democratic Nepal and notes that both government and non-governmental sectors are competing for the same resources. In an essay titled “Democracy and the Ruse of Empire” (PDF file), Shah points out: “It is ironic that the more Nepal sinks into the abyss of violence and anarchy, the more it emerges as an attractive destination for all manners of gun runners, conflict managers, crisis entrepreneurs and democracy missionaries out to make a quick buck or a fast name.” We have lost a keenly insightful anthropologist and articulate champion of peace, human rights, and counter-imperialism.

• Still remembering L-S
British cultural anthropologist Adam Kuper has written a tribute to Claude Lévi-Strauss which received a full page in Nature (login required).