• Myths about Afghanistan live on
“Ten Years In, Afghan Myths Live On” is an op-ed that appeared in the New York Times on October 8. It is co-authored by my colleague, Ben Hopkins, a historian at George Washington University, and Magnus Marsden, an anthropologist at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London. Hopkins and Marsden are co-authors of a new book, Fragments of the Afghan Frontier. In the op-ed, the authors point out that the “West” today is replicating the errors of the British in Afghanistan by adhering to stale and useless caricatures of the Afghan people.

• All night long
Slate took on the issue of sexuality last week and highlighted the work of Barry and Bonnie Hewlett, anthropology professors at Washington State University. The Hewletts believe they have found a society with a lot of sexual interaction going on. They have done long-term research with the Aka people of the Central African Republic. In a report published last year in African Study Monographs, the researchers discuss their findings from research that was prompted by hearing people report having sex three or four times per night.

• Toddlers share
An article in the Toronto Star discussed findings, published online by the journal PLoS ONE, that children as young as 15 months have a well developed sense of sharing. Marco Schmidt, a doctoral student at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany, and co-author of the study, observed 15-month-olds as they watched videos of people sharing crackers or milk.

• My language, my self: speaking up for Punjabi language
The Times of India reported that linguistic anthropology experts raised the issues of marginalization and distortion of Punjabi language in education, media and common use, during a seminar organized at the Punjabi university. Joga Singh, head of the Linguistic Anthropology and Punjabi Lexicography department at Punjabi University, insisted on the need of making Punjabi a medium of instruction at all levels of education.

• New thinking about ancient “temples”
Science Daily reports that ancient structures uncovered in Turkey and thought to be the world’s oldest temples may not have been religious buildings. Findings are published in the October issue of Current Anthropology. Archaeologist Ted Banning of the University of Toronto argues that the buildings found at Göbekli Tepe may have been houses for people, not the gods.

• Digging up old roads
Science Daily reports findings of a University of Colorado Boulder team who excavated a Maya village in El Salvador buried by a volcanic eruption 1,400 years ago. They have found an ancient road that was covered by a blanket of ash. The road, known as a “sacbe,” is roughly 6 feet across and is made from white volcanic ash. In Yucatan Maya, the word “sacbe” (SOCK’-bay) means “white way” and describes an elevated ancient road typically lined with stone and paved with white lime plaster and that sometimes connected temples, plazas and towns.

Continue reading “Anthro in the news 10/10/11” →

• Culture and chronic pain
Scientific American includes a comment about chronic pain from medical anthropologist/psychiatrist Arthur Kleinman in an article on experiencing pain: “However complicated to articulate and difficult to interpret, the patient’s experience of pain is lived as a whole. Perception, experience, and coping run into each other and are lived as a unified experience… Physiological, psychological; body, soul; mind, body; subjective, objective; real, unreal; natural, artificial – these dichotomies, so deeply rooted in the Western world and its profession of medicine, are at the heart of the struggle between chronic pain patients and their care givers over the definition of the problem and the search for effective treatment.”

• 100th anniversary of ethnography of the Veddah
The Sunday Times (Colombo) carried an article discussing the classic ethnography of Sri Lanka’s indigenous Veddah (or Vedda) people. They include a quotation from the British ethnographers, C.G. Seligmann and Brenda Z. Seligmann in the preface of their 1911 book, The Veddas: “The Veddas have been regarded as one of the most primitive of existing races and it has long been felt desirable that their social life and religious ideas should be investigated as thoroughly as possible.” The article goes on to say that the book “contains views on ethnicity which were acceptable at the time it was published.”

• Deeper history is better history
The New York Times included a major review of new, multi-authored book called Deep History: The Architecture of Past and Present. Authors include an impressive coalition of archaeologists, cultural anthropologists, and others (Timothy Earle, Gillian Feeley-Harnik, Felipe Fernández-Armesto, Clive Gamble, April McMahon, John C. Mitani, Hendrik Poinar, Mary C. Stiner, and Thomas R. Trautmann). The book encourages readers to think big and deep about history and connections between past and present. For example: that shell beads in Europe’s Upper Paleolithic were mass produced on a scale, at the time, as iPhones are today, and what that all means.

• Evidence of ritual cannibalism in Mexico
A cache of cooked and and carved human bones has been discovered in El Salto, Durango State, northern Mexico. The site dates to around 1425 and was formerly home of the Xiximes tribe. As quoted in the Daily Mail, Joe Luis Punzo, an archaeologist with the Mexican National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH), said that cannibalism “was a crucial aspect of their world view, their identity.” The cannibalistic rituals were tied to the agricultural cycle of planting and sowing corn, according to the research reported in National Geographic.

• Very old footprints in Mexico
Footprints from early humans that are between 4500 – 25,000 years old have been discovered in the Sierra de Tarahumara mountains in the northern state of Chihuahua. The prints were made by three adults and a child. A local resident informed the researchers of the footprints. “It took us a lot of work to find them because they are not easily identified,” said anthropologist Jose Concepcion Jimenez of the Mexican National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH).

• Human-animal relationships and human evolution
Interacting with animals on an intimate basis led humans to develop sophisticated tools and evolve enhanced communication skills, including language, Dr Pat Shipman of Pennsylvania State University told the Observer. Animals, she posits, helped humans to evolve the vital skills of empathy, understanding and compromise: “The longest and enduring trend in human evolution has been a gradual intensification of our involvement with animals,” Shipman is quoted as saying. She added that as the world becomes increasingly urbanized, people have less contact with animals and the consequences are potentially catastrophic.

• Anthro on the road
Retired cultural anthropology professor, Bill Fairbanks, is on a long walk to learn about America. After teaching anthropology for 41 years at Cuesta College, he is now walking from his home in Los Osos, California, to Boston. He started his walk in 2009. According to an article in the Chicago Tribune, Fairbanks says: “I needed a challenge. So, I figured I would just walk across the country and study it as I go.” Fairbanks jots down his thoughts and e-mails them in daily updates via his laptop to anyone who requests them.

• Remains from the Spanish conquest
Fourteen human skeletons estimated to date back to the 17th century have been found buried under an old pedestrian walkway in the city of Merida, capital of the southeastern state of Yucatan, Mexico. Agustin Peña Castillo, responsible for the work of archaeological preservation, said that several of the skeletons have “spade teeth” (incisors with a cupped, shovel shape on their inner side, a genetic trait typical of Indian populations).

• Message in a lock of hair
According to coverage in Science Daily, an international team of researchers has pieced together the human genome from an Aboriginal Australian. Professor Eske Willerslev, of the University of Copenhagen, who headed the study, explains: “Aboriginal Australians descend from the first human explorers. While the ancestors of Europeans and Asians were sitting somewhere in Africa or the Middle East, yet to explore their world further, the ancestors of Aboriginal Australians spread rapidly; the first modern humans traversing unknown territory in Asia and finally crossing the sea into Australia. It was a truly amazing journey that must have demanded exceptional survival skills and bravery.” Other commentary appears in the New Scientist which quotes Mark Stoneking of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. Findings are  published in the journal Science.

• On human evolution
The Philadelphia Inquirer carried an article about human evolution, and how to define “human” in its Arts and Entertainment section which quotes several biological anthropologists and archaeologists on their views about how to determine when we became human. [Blogger’s note: I have mixed feelings about seeing major questions about human evolution discussed in the Arts and Entertainment section].

• Kudos
Anthropologist Barbara King has been invited to guest-blog for National Public Radio. King is Chancellor Professor of Anthropology at William and Mary. The title of the blog, 13.7, refers to the age of the universe in billions of years. NPR describes the feature as the “intersection of science and culture.”

• In memoriam
Ivan Karp, died recently at the age of 68 years. Karp earned his doctorate in anthropology from the University of Virginia and joined the faculty of Emory University in 1994. At Emory, he served for many years as National Endowment for the Humanities professor and director of the Center for the Study of Public Scholarship. Karp is most known for making connections between cultural anthropology and the arts.