Category archives: Anthropology

Lunar Anthropocene

Lunar Anthropocene

AnthropologyGeosciences

By César Tomé

Human beings first disturbed moon dust on Sept. 13, 1959, when the USSR’s unmanned spacecraft Luna 2 alighted on the lunar surface. In the following decades, more than a hundred other spacecraft have touched the moon — both crewed and uncrewed, sometimes landing and sometimes crashing. The most famous of these were NASA’s Apollo Lunar […]

Sustainable use of natural resources in Pantanal communities

Sustainable use of natural resources in Pantanal communities

AnthropologyEcology

By Invited Researcher

pantanal Author: Rafael Morais Chiaravalloti, Lecturer in Environmental Anthropology, University College London “How can we use nature in a sustainable way?” That is a question I, together with colleagues from different parts of the world, have sought to answer for a decade. We are dedicated to studying issues related to the sustainable use of natural […]

A founder event left its genetic mark in Ashkenazi Jews

A founder event left its genetic mark in Ashkenazi Jews

AnthropologyArchaeologyEthicsGeneticsHistory

By Invited Researcher

About two-thirds of Jews today – or about 10 million people – are Ashkenazi, referring to a recent origin from Eastern and Central Europe. They reside mostly in the United States and Israel. Ashkenazi Jews carry a particularly high burden of disease-causing genetic mutations, such as those in the BRCA1 gene associated with an increased […]

What’s next for ancient DNA studies after Nobel Prize honors paleogenomics

What’s next for ancient DNA studies after Nobel Prize honors paleogenomics

AnthropologyArchaeology

By Invited Researcher

For the first time, a Nobel Prize recognized the field of anthropology, the study of humanity. Svante Pääbo, a pioneer in the study of ancient DNA, or aDNA, was awarded the 2022 prize in physiology or medicine for his breathtaking achievements sequencing DNA extracted from ancient skeletal remains and reconstructing early humans’ genomes – that […]

Future evolution: from looks to brains and personality, how will humans change in the next 10,000 years?

Future evolution: from looks to brains and personality, how will humans change in the next 10,000 years?

AnthropologyBiologyEvolution

By Invited Researcher

Humanity is the unlikely result of 4 billion years of evolution. From self-replicating molecules in Archean seas, to eyeless fish in the Cambrian deep, to mammals scurrying from dinosaurs in the dark, and then, finally, improbably, ourselves – evolution shaped us. Organisms reproduced imperfectly. Mistakes made when copying genes sometimes made them better fit to […]

The dawn of what?

The dawn of what?

AnthropologyHistory

By Jesús Zamora Bonilla

For the intellectual history of our century, one of the most important books published in 2021 will probably be David Graeber’s and David Wengrow’s The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity , a monumental description of the evolution of the first human societies and of our understanding thereof. The book is conceived as […]

How a handful of prehistoric geniuses launched humanity’s technological revolution

How a handful of prehistoric geniuses launched humanity’s technological revolution

AnthropologyEvolution

By Invited Researcher

For the first few million years of human evolution, technologies changed slowly. Some three million years ago, our ancestors were making chipped stone flakes and crude choppers. Two million years ago, hand-axes. A million years ago, primitive humans sometimes used fire, but with difficulty. Then, 500,000 years ago, technological change accelerated, as spearpoints, firemaking, axes […]