Anthropology

  1. Anthropology

    Cultures of Reason

    East Asian and Western cultures may encourage fundamentally different reasoning styles, rather than build on universal processes often deemed necessary for thinking.

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  2. Anthropology

    Ishi’s Long Road Home

    The reappearance of a California Indian's preserved brain, held at the Smithsonian Institution since 1917, triggers debate over the ethics of anthropological research and the repatriation process.

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  3. Anthropology

    Searching for the Tree of Babel

    Researchers are using new methods of comparing languages to reveal information about the ancestry of different cultural groups and answer questions about human history.

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  4. Anthropology

    Attack of the Ancestor: Neandertals took a stab at violent assaults

    The pieced-together fragments of a 36,000-year-old Neandertal skull reveal a bony scar caused by a blow from a sharp tool or weapon.

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  5. Anthropology

    The DNA Divide: Chimps, people differ in brain’s gene activity

    The distinctive looks and thinking styles of people and chimpanzees derive from the contrasting productivities of their similar DNA sequences.

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  6. Anthropology

    Unified Erectus: Fossil suggests single human ancestor

    A newly found fossil skull may clear up an ongoing debate about whether the human ancestor Homo erectus was a single or several species.

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  7. Anthropology

    DNA Diaspora: Humanity may share tangled genetic roots

    A controversial new genetic analysis concludes that Homo sapiens evolved by expanding out of Africa in multiple waves beginning at least 600,000 years ago and then interbreeding, rather than totally replacing close relatives such as the Neandertals.

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  8. Anthropology

    A Fair Share of the Pie

    A cross-cultural project suggests that people everywhere divvy up food and make other economic deals based on social concepts of fairness, not individual self-interest.

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  9. Anthropology

    The Way We Were

    Dig into news, educational material, and even an online documentary about the contentious science of human evolution. This impressive Web site is operated jointly by the Institute of Human Origins and Arizona State University. Go to: http://www.becominghuman.org/

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  10. Anthropology

    Stone Age signs of complexity

    Ancient engravings found in South Africa support the theory that humans began to think and behave in symbolic ways a surprisingly long time ago.

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  11. Anthropology

    The gene that came to stay

    A gene thought by some scientists to foster a bold, novelty-seeking personality, as well as attention-deficit hyperactivity (ADHD), apparently spread substantially in human populations over roughly the past 40,000 years.

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  12. Anthropology

    Evolving in Their Graves

    Understanding what early, rudimentary burials meant to modern humans' antecedents—assuming early humans did, in fact, bury their dead—could help anthropologsts untangle a lasting mystery of human evolution.

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