My student, Marta, exploded the other day.

She was sitting there in class two weeks ago and exploded. She does not know that I know this, but I noticed it happen. Since she was sitting, as usual, in the front row, and it was all in her face, the other students did not see it but I definitely did.

By “exploding” in this case I mean that her brain suddenly filled with unanswered questions, which she then started sending me in frantic emails. Many of these questions are about things we will eventually get to in class, but some are on issues that we won’t touch on at all. I decided, and I received her kind permission to do this, to answer her questions by blogging them. This way I get to kill two birds with one stone, which is usually a good thing (unless of course you are the second bird).

In some cases I’ve re-written the question a little, but in all cases, they are good questions. I cannot guarantee that all of my answers will be good. But I do appreciate Marta’s inspiration, and find it inspiring myself. My only concern is that Marta gets interested enough in this material to become a biological anthropologist and thus wastes an otherwise potentially productive life. I’m hoping she becomes a doctor or a world leader instead, but we’ll see…

OK, on to the first question (I’ll deal with others in later posts):
Continue reading Marta’s (good) questions, Greg’s (oft’ lame) answers: Bonobos? →