Why is there no Birth Control Pill for men?
The answer I’d like to propose can be summed up in two closely linked words pilfered from the question itself:
Continue reading Why is There no Birth Control Pill for Men?
Tag Archives: Anthropology
Chimpanzee Food Sharing
Is chimpanzee food sharing an example of food for sex?
One of the most important transitions in human evolution may have been the incorporation of regular food sharing into the day to day ecology of our species or our ancestors. Although this has been recognized as potentially significant for some time, it was probably the Africanist archaeologist Glynn Isaac who impressed on the academic community the importance of the origins of food sharing as a key evolutionary moment. At that time, food sharing among apes was thought to be very rare, outside of mother-infant dyads. Further research has shown that it is in fact rare … the vast majority of calories consumed by human foragers in certain societies and at certain times of the year comes from a sharing system, while the fast majority of calories consumed by chimpanzees is hand to mouth without sharing.
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Heroes of the Future: Contrasting Contexts, The Race Thing, and Science Education
So Amanda and I arrive at some public building in a largish Midwestern city. I’m a scientist, here to sit on a panel for a public discussion related to science and education. The building, a library, is not open yet but is scheduled to open in a few minutes. There are two groups of people standing in the flurries and chilly wind waiting for opening. The larger group is pressed against the door, seemingly anxious, and I (incorrectly, it turns out) attribute this anxiety to the cold. I’m thinking they want to go inside because it is cold. All but two people in this group are brown to dark brown of complexion, mostly African American and two or three Native Americans, and probably some people I’d be uncomfortable guessing the ethnicity of. The other group was smaller, older, and very much whiter, standing away from the door off some distance from the others. I recognized one of these individuals as a person who goes to these sorts of events. So naturally, Amanda and I wandered over to that group figuring they would know something like where the panel discussion was to be, and so on.
Continue reading Heroes of the Future: Contrasting Contexts, The Race Thing, and Science Education
Great Moments in Human Evolution: The Invention of Chipped Stone Tools
Or not.
Much is made of the early use of stone tools by human ancestors. Darwin saw the freeing of the hands ad co-evolving with the use of the hands to make and use tools which co-evolved with the big brain. And that would make the initial appearance of stone tools in the archaeological record a great and momentous thing. However, things did not work out that way.
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Darwin and The Gauchos
We’re half way through Darwin Month, and only a tiny ways through the voyage. Need to hurry up! So, let’s skip ahead a bit and hit the Gauchos….
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Insisting that “races are real” is a self fulfilling and overt racist act. So stop it now, please.
Well, the above statement, while true, is just a tiny bit beyond the peer reviewed paper I’m reporting to you today, but this paper supports the assertion and the results presented in the paper should not be a surprise to anyone.
Here’s the basic idea:
Continue reading Insisting that “races are real” is a self fulfilling and overt racist act. So stop it now, please.
The Fantastic Mystery of the Younger Dryas
One of the most interesting and exciting stories in science is that of the Younger Dryas. The Younger Dryas was a climate event that had important effects on human history, and that has been reasonably linked to some of our most important cultural changes, and ultimately some evolutionary changes as well. That is one reason why it is interesting. In addition, the Younger Dryas was a pretty big deal … a climate change or something like a climate change that caused massive changes all around the earth, and fairly recently. But the cause of the Younger Dryas is at present unknown, although a series of explanations have been advanced, each as convincing as the next depending on one’s point of view. The Younger Dryas itself is interesting, and the story of how scientists have studied it and the changing explanations emerging from that research is just as interesting.
The latest science is beginning to suggest that it is all even more interesting and exciting (and scary) than previously thought.
The Story of Stories: The Siege of Mugombane
I think of her now as the Tea Lady, because she was drinking tea when I met her and had an English accent to go along with her English colonial outfit. She was one of the first native white South Africans I had met on my very first trip to that country. And now the Tea Lady, who was in fact a volunteer for the local historical society of a small town a couple hours drive north of Pretoria, was chugging her way up this steep, gravelly mountain path with the rest of us trailing behind gasping for breath.
entrance of Historic Cave. Photograph kindly provided by Dr. Amanda Esterhuysen.
Behind us, back beyond the tea, was The Limeworks, an old fertilizer mine that has yielded a respectable number of australopithecine (early human ancestor) remains. Off to our left, as I followed the tea lady and was, in turn, followed by my flock of tourists (I was leading an ecotourist-educational trip to South Africa), was the Cave of Hearths. Cave of Hearths is said by some to be one of the longest occupied archaeological sites in the world (second longest, to be exact) with artifacts dating from the Oldowan to much more recent times representing a ‘continuous’ (in paleolithic terms) use by humans for perhaps 1.5 million years or so.
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The Best of Anthropology Blogging of 2008
Hey I won in the Hippos category!!!!!
Other categories include “Best Blind Date,” “Best Spike Lee Joint,” and “Best Use of Ritalin.”
Have a look. There are a lot of great blog posts linked to here. Like a super mega meta anthro carnival. Enjoy!
Sex Ratio Bias in India
Sometimes boys are worth more, sometimes girls are worth more. In an evolutionary sense. Or, more correctly, the value of a certain sex … as an offspring … can be measured in fitness terms. Fisher noted this and hypothesized this was the explanation for the 50-50 sex ratio we usually see. As one sex becomes more rare, it becomes more valuable, and thus parents (mothers, perhaps, usually) bias towards that sex. Then the disparity goes away and thus the differential value goes away.Of course, the truth is that we don’t actually see the 50-50 sex ratio all the time … many species of organisms have a highly biased sex ratio. Many have a highly biased ratio in adults, much more biased than in offspring. This sort of thing varies quite a bit. But what about humans, and what about the report that Indian girl-boy ratios at ‘all-time low’ … Continue reading Sex Ratio Bias in India
You Must Welcome Your White European Overlords
…. Be a cog in the wheel. Trust us, you’ll be happier ….
Be God
I have to confess that I really like Sim City. I have not touched it since I started blogging …. but I have many fond memories of firing all the hospital workers and unleashing tornadoes on wealthy neighborhoods, or using the terraforming tools to build landscape with a barely hidden but rich geological history then paving it over with suburbs, slums, and mixed used residential projects.But somehow, having all this power is a little unsatisfying. Maybe it would be more fun to be … I dunno, maybe ….
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Is there intelligent life elsewhere in the universe?
Several thousand intelligent beings have surrounded two funny looking blue trees. On some planet. Elsewhere. [Image source] Back in the old days, when Carl Sagan was alive and at Harvard, there was an annual (or at least frequent) debate between Sagan and my adviser, Irv DeVore. The debate was about the possibility of intelligent life having evolved on other planets.You already know Sagan’s argument: There are billions and billions of Galaxies, each with billions and billions of stars, so there are billions and billions and billions and billions of stars. Even if the probability of planets forming around a star is low, and of an earth like planet being one of them, and being at the right distance from the star, etc. etc. etc. there are still going to be a very large number of worlds amenable to the origin of life, and some of those, the evolution of complex life, and some of those will give rise to intelligent life, and some of them will ask the same question we are asking now and seek to explore the possibility of life on other planets.Then, I guess we get together in a coffee shop on Alpha Centauri and talk about it. Continue reading Is there intelligent life elsewhere in the universe?
Be nice to me or I might not talk to you. Or worse, maybe I will talk to you…
Recently published research shows that individual humans will be nicer (more altruistic) when there is the possibility that the recipient of an act can respond verbally. The paper, “Anticipated verbal feedback induces altruistic behavior” is published in Evolution and Human Behavior for March. Continue reading Be nice to me or I might not talk to you. Or worse, maybe I will talk to you…
Whence”Blue Blood?”
A “Blue Blood” is an upper classer, or one with new money, or nobility, or something along those lines (the use of the term varies, as is the case with almost all terms in any language, of course). The meaning of the term came up in discussion of actual blue (or not) blood, here. Well, I looked it up on Wikipedia and following is an edited down summary of the possible truth of the matter of “Blue Blood.” Continue reading Whence”Blue Blood?”