Hacker News with Generative AI: Anthropology

A skeleton made from the bones of at least eight people thousands of years apart (smithsonianmag.com)
Found in a cremation cemetery in Belgium, the skeleton includes bones dating to the Neolithic period and a Roman-era skull, according to a new study

Archaeology, History, Belgium, Anthropology, Human Remains

111 points by mhb 12 days ago | 43 comments

The survival skills of Helena Valero (woodfromeden.substack.com)
One of the most important anthropologists of the 20th century was a dirt-poor mestizo woman called Helena Valero. After having read the one and only book in English about her, I'm convinced of that. Her insights into a primitive society is worth more than that of the vast majority of anthropologists, for one simple reason: Helena was there for real, as a member of those societies. She didn't only study stone age life. She lived it.

Anthropology, History, Substack, Biography

91 points by paulpauper 46 days ago | 34 comments

Franklin expedition captain who died in 1848 was cannibalized by survivors (arstechnica.com)
Scientists at the University of Waterloo have identified one of the doomed crew members of Captain Sir John S. Franklin's 1846 Arctic expedition to cross the Northwest Passage.

History, Arctic Exploration, Anthropology, Archaeology, Science

16 points by paulcapewell 51 days ago | 8 comments

The Dogma of Otherness (1986) (davidbrin.com)
Anthropologists tell us that every culture has its core of central, commonly shared assumptions — some call them zeitgeists, others call them dogmas. These are beliefs that each individual in the tribe or community will maintain vigorously, almost like a reflex.

Anthropology, Culture, Sociology, Beliefs

116 points by m463 52 days ago | 89 comments

Flesh and Blood (2021) (theanarchistlibrary.org)
In the mid-twentieth century, a British anthropologist named A. M. Hocart proposed that monarchs and institutions of government were originally derived from rituals designed to channel powers of life from the cosmos into human society.

Anthropology, History, Sociology

53 points by wahnfrieden 59 days ago | 28 comments

Wisdom of Kandiaronk–Indigenous Critique, Myth of Progress and Birth of the Left (theanarchistlibrary.org)
Anthropologist David Graeber has been working for seven years, with archaeologist David Wengrow, on a work devoted to a history of inequality. A first excerpt from this work was published online in 2018.

Anthropology, History, Inequality, Indigenous Cultures

4 points by wahnfrieden 72 days ago | 0 comments

Human population dynamics in Paleolithic inferred from fossil dental phenotypes (science.org)

Paleontology, Human Evolution, Genetics, Archaeology, Anthropology

24 points by diodorus 88 days ago | 0 comments

'The Cheese and the Worms': Carlo Ginzburg Launches Microhistory (mitpress.mit.edu)

History, Books, Italy, Anthropology

25 points by benbreen 89 days ago | 4 comments

Yes, we have noticed the skulls (slatestarcodex.com)

Anthropology, Culture, Sociology

15 points by NavinF 90 days ago | 2 comments

Behavioral Specialization During the Neolithic–An Evolutionary Model (2018) (frontiersin.org)