Protective gloves and boots of medical personnel dry in the sun. Source: CNN.
On the move: Ebola and ebola fear
Ebola is a fast-spreading virus that liquifies internal organs and kills six in 10 victims. It is not clear if it is a new disease or has been around for a long time. Some academics have talked about it being responsible for the Black Death plague epidemics of the Middle Ages which killed millions across Europe and Asia. The current outbreak has killed hundreds, it has infected over 1,200 people of whom 670 have died. So far, cases have been reported in three countries: Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone. Local, regional, and international travel could speed up the spread of the disease.
The Daily Recordquoted Cambridge University’s Peter Walsh, a biological anthropologist and ebola expert: “It’s possible someone infected will fly to Heathrow having infected other people sitting next to them or by using the toilet. Continue reading “Anthro in the news 8/4/14”→
• Happy birthday to the Occupy movement Zuccotti Park/Wikipedia
This past week marked the two-year anniversary of the Occupy Wall Street movement. On September 17, 2011, a small band of activists took over Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park until Mayor Michael Bloomberg cleared them out. An article in Businessweek notes that, in contrast to the thousands who packed the park in 2011, only around 100 people showed up for Tuesday’s anniversary at Zuccotti Park. Perhaps the movement is defunct. Businessweek reports that, recently David Graeber, professor of cultural anthropology at the London School of Economics, said that he is “taking a little time off” from the movement.
• Hearing voices and sometimes killing people
In an opinion piece for The New York Times, cultural anthropologist Tanya Luhrmann of Stanford University writes about the rising “specter of violence caused by mental illness.” She emphasizes that the vast majority of people with schizophrenia never commit violent acts. In fact, they are far more likely to be the victims of violence than perpetrators of it.
The risk of violence from people with schizophrenia, she says, increases sharply when people have disturbing hallucinations and use street drugs. We also know that many people with schizophrenia hear voices only they can hear, and “They are often mean and violent.”
She asks “whether the violent commands from these voices reflect our culture as much as they result from the disease process of the illness.” The cultural construction of the messages of voices appears to be demonstrated by a comparative study Luhrmann is conducting with colleagues at the Schizophrenia Research Foundation in Chennai, India, to compare the voice-hearing experience of 20 people with schizophrenia in San Mateo, California, and 20 people in Chennai. While both groups of patients have much in common, the voices heard by patients in Chennai are considerably less violent than those heard by patients in San Mateo.
She says that as the memorial was being designed, there was tension between commerce and remembrance: “This is one of the most valuable pieces of land in the world — it held the largest office complex in the country … But then you had all these other people who said this is a now historic piece of land where so many thousands of people were killed.”
The memorial includes One World Trade Center, which will be used as commercial space, and a memorial area with reflecting pools and the names of those who died. While some families are pleased with the design of the memorial plaza, others hoped that there would be artifacts from that day incorporated into the memorial.
“For many families, they felt like there needed to be more that remembered the day itself and the attacks, and not just the twin towers,” Greenspan said.
• On the future of the Occupy Wall Street Movement
Q: Were you disappointed that the Occupy Wall Street movement didn’t accomplish more?
A: I’m personally convinced that if it were not for us, we might well have President Romney. When Romney was planning his campaign, being a Wall Street financier, a 1 Percenter, he thought that was a good thing. That whole 47 percent thing that hurt him so much was something the right wing came up with in response to our 99 percent.
From the blogger: Here is the last aitn for 2012. I had to work hard to find any mainstream media mention of cultural anthropology, whereas archaeology continues to attract substantial media attention, and we can almost always count on something about Neanderthals to attract interest. Please check out anthropologyworks’ short piece on the cultural anthropologist who was most in the news in 2012. Stay tuned for 2012 highlights from aitn and my top dissertation picks for 2012. And Happy New Year!
Debt by David Graeber• Debt as a best book of 2012
The Global and Mail (Canada) asked several writers and avid readers to comment on their top book of 2012, from contemporary fiction to classic literature and nonfiction. Novelist Sheila Heti chose Debt: The First 5,000 Years.
“I can’t think of anyone who shouldn’t read David Graeber‘s paradigm-shifting book on the ethics of debt. He’s an anthropologist and one of the Occupy movement’s greatest thinkers. Here, he shows how debt has been a central economic, political, and social tool throughout human history. It’s an essential read, particularly for those who, in the wake of the financial crisis, believed we were at the beginning of “an actual public conversation about the nature of debt, of money, of the financial institutions,” and were stunned not to see that conversation happen.” Heti’s most recent book is the novel How Should a Person Be?
• Hadrian’s auditorium found under streets of Rome
Several media sources, including the BBC, covered the findings in Rome of an ancient auditorium 18 feet below one of Rome’s most-trafficked junctions. Italian archaeologists announced the discovery of a 900-seat arts center dating back to the second-century reign of Emperor Hadrian.
Hadrian bust, Palazzo dei Conservatori, Capitoline Museums/Wikipedia Archaeologists believe the structure was an arts center or auditorium, built by Hadrian where, beginning in 123 C.E., Roman noblemen gathered to hear rhetoricians, lawyers, and writers recite their works. According to the archaeologists running the excavation, Hadrian’s auditorium is the biggest find in Rome since the Forum was uncovered in the 1920s.
• 800 year-old skeletons unearthed in Cholula, Mexico
The skeletons were discovered as the archeologists supervised the installation of a new drain in an old neighborhood of Cholula, a city located 120 kilometers north of the Mexican capital. They were found buried just a few centimeters below a paved section of asphalt, said archeologist Ashuni Romero Butron, who added “fortunately they were not damaged by erosion before the paving.” He said most of the 12 skeletons are complete and laboratory analysis is ongoing.
Ramesses• Judean temple found
Israeli archaeologists have uncovered a rare temple and religious figurines dating back to the Judaean period nearly 3,000 years ago. The discoveries were made at Tel Motza, outside Jerusalem, during archaeological work ahead of new highway construction in the area. Anna Eirikh, a director of the project, said the discoveries were rare evidence of religious practices outside Jerusalem in the Judaean period. The findings date to the 9th-10th century B.C.E.
• Death of a pharoah
Scans of the mummy of Ramses III reveal that his throat was slit. The pharaoh Ramses III ruled Egypt in the 12th century B.C.E. A plot by his wife to kill him in order to place her son on the throne is documented in an ancient papyrus, but the exact circumstances of Ramses’ death have been unclear. ”The big cut is in his throat, and it was very deep and large,” said Albert Zink, an anthropologist at the European Academy, who was involved in the research. ”It would have killed him immediately.” Zink and colleagues from Egypt, Italy and Germany, published their findings in the British Medical Journal. [Blogger’s note: so now we know the immediate cause of death, but we still don’t know who did the deed].
• 4,000 year-old spear heads found in Sinaloa, Mexico
Credit: INAH Researchers have discovered 4,000-year-old spearheads and other artifacts at a site in the northwestern state of Sinaloa, according to Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History.
Archaeologist Joel Santos Ramirez said that the find “will change the chronologies of the antiquity of human settlement in the northwest of the country.”
• Neanderthal genome mapping update
According to a piece in CBC news, renowned archaeological geneticist Svante Paabo is almost finished with the mapping the DNA of Neanderthals, a distant cousin of modern humans.
Paabo has found that many people today carry within their DNA about 3 to 5 percent in common with Neanderthals. Paabo says it is important to learn more about Neanderthal DNA to reveal the differences between us and them, differences that have seen modern humans survive and thrive over the millennia while Neanderthals have become extinct.
Svante Paabo with reconstructed Neanderthal skull. Frank Vinken/Max Planck Gesellschaft He is quoted as saying: “I really hope that over the next 10 years we will understand much more of those things that set us apart. Which changes in our genome made human culture and technology possible? And allowed us to expand and become 7, 8, 9 billion people and spread all over the world?”
• In memoriam
Glenys Lloyd-Morgan died at the age of 67 years after a career devoted to the understanding of Roman archaeology. She graduated from the archaeology department at Birmingham University in 1970 with a dissertation on Roman mirrors. In 1975, she joined the Grosvenor Museum, Chester, where she catalogued collections and did re-enactments as a Roman lady. Later, she became a finds consultant specializing in Roman artifacts. She was made a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries in 1979.
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