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Death and the anthropologist
Sunday's travel theme here in Rome was death. OK, for an anthropologist you have to imagine this is more cheerful than it sounds. After walking the flea market at Porta Portese, I ran to the gate of...
View ArticleNo echoing the echo chamber here
Seems to be a theme going in the press today: The Internet is making us stupid by connecting us with the things we like. Yes, when I write it that way, it sounds kind of silly, doesn't it? But that's...
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Views from Rhino Cave, Tsodilo Hills, Botswana
Sheila Coulson, Sigrid Staurset and Nick Walker [1] (doi isn't working yet, so here's a PDF link, 12 MB) have published a long summary of findings from Rhino Cave, in the Tsodilo Hills of northern...
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Lapidary
From the lapidary of a medieval cloister hidden in a forgotten corner of Rome.
View ArticleA problem of fuzzy mammoths
Paleogenomics is changing the way we study evolution. In a number of cases, it now allows us to study extinct organisms with the same methods as we study living ones. A study last year in PLoS...
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The cost of a premier faculty
The Guardian has an article titled, "Richard Dawkins heads line-up at private £18,000-a-year university". I point to the story only to draw attention to this: The college aims to attract candidates...
View ArticleQuote: The lark or the eagle
Nero Wolfe, in Fer-de-Lance: Must I again demonstrate that while it is permissible to request the scientist to lead you back over his footprints, a similar request of the artist is nonsense, since he,...
View ArticleGould's "Unconscious Manipulation of Data"
OK, so I can't say it's not "brain science" because measuring skulls is as close to brain science as anthropology ever gets. But it just shouldn't be that hard to measure volume. It's a simple physical...
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Did Gould's ghost destroy my garage?
So...yesterday I posted a link and commentary on a new paper showing Stephen Jay Gould had seriously erred in his argument that Samuel Morton's data were fudged ("Gould's 'Unconscious Manipulation of...
View ArticleAbsence of Chauvet
Some folks have asked me if I would write a review of Werner Herzog's new Cave of Forgotten Dreams movie. Now that I'm back from Europe I would love to do it, but it's not showing anywhere remotely...
View ArticleWhy tweet?
Dorothy Bishop has written "a gentle introduction to Twitter for the apprehensive academic", which covers the basics pretty well.
View ArticleThe sign of four
Gene Expression this morning is worth some thought, a post about the mtDNA of Andaman Islanders and their connections to mainland Asian populations. "Present genetic variation is a weak guide to past...
View ArticleThe immune systems of archaic humans
I've just submitted an abstract for a conference in the fall, with the title, "Immunogenetics of archaic humans." Ten years ago, it would have been beyond imagining that this kind of science would be...
View ArticleEugenics legacy
The AP reports that North Carolina has convened a task force to hear testimony from the subjects of the state's forced sterilization program: "NC grapples with legacy of sterilization programs"....
View ArticleOld nests
Matt Walker of BBC Earth News has an article about how gyrfalcons have continuously used the same nests for thousands of years "2,500-year-old bird's nest found". It's carbon dating of nest contents,...
View ArticleGenomes on ice
Heather Pringle reports from a mummy meeting in San Diego some news about Ötzi the Iceman. Most interesting: we'll soon see his genome. Also at the meeting, researchers led by geneticist Angela Graefen...
View ArticleDid Denisovans have genetic adaptations to high altitude?
We don't really know the extent of territory that might have been occupied by the population represented by the Denisova genome. The signs of mixture into the Melanesian/New Guinea population suggests...
View ArticleBrainy books
I was in the local library this afternoon and browsing through the science section. There were quite a number of popular books on neuroscience published across the last fifteen years or so. These were...
View ArticleGalton remembered
Steve Jones writes in the BBC News on the occasion of the hundredth anniversary of Francis Galton's death: "Francis Galton: The man who drew up the 'ugly map' of Britain". He cites many interesting...
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