Anthropological Curiosities

News pertaining to all things Anthropology and Archaeology. New finds, old info, fascinating pictures and quotes.

[corkboardofcuriosities]

Fossils

With special guest, Jeff Goldblum!

[buxina]

Since I was a child, I have been bothered by, let’s call it the irrational, and have been trying to find an order behind what is given to us as a disorder. It so happened that I became an anthropologist, as a matter of fact not because I was interested in anthropology, but because I was trying to get out of philosophy.

Claude Lévi-Strauss. Myth and Meaning. 1978. (via buxina)

[skunkbear]

Remember those skulls I posted a couple days ago? Well, you can see 360 degree views here.

[archaeologicalnews]

Chinese archaeologists have unearthed relics of musical instruments from a complex of tombs dating back thousands of years in Zaoyang city, Hubei province, the local Chutian Metropolis Daily reported Tuesday.

A stringed instrument “Se” and a frame to hold chime bells were among the items...

[futurismnews]

Archeologists Find Mythical Tomb of Osiris (God of the Dead) in Egypt

Contrary to what we see in the movies, there were no untimely deaths as a result of this discovery… http://bit.ly/1vJbbte

[ancientart]

The Frome Hoard: the largest collection of Roman coins found in a single container.

Dave Crisp, a Wiltshire metal-detector enthusiast found the hoard of 52,503 coins dating from the 3rd century AD, while metal-detecting near Frome. Mr Crisp reported the find to his local Finds Liaison Officer, and the container was consequently excavated by archaeologists. The second photo shows a plan of the pot in situ, and here’s what this pot of coins looked like during excavation. 

The hoard is now housed at the Museum of Somerset, in Taunton.

"The reason it was buried remains something of a mystery.

Usually you tend to think of coin hoards being buried for safety in the times before there were banks, and those that are found today are the ones that were not recovered, presumably because the person that owned them had some sort of misfortune and didn’t pick them up.

In this case, though, the volume of coins in this very rounded pot - they weigh 160kg (353lb) - has led to the suggestion that they may well represent a votive offering of some sort. Precisely what, we don’t know.”

-Stephen Minnitt, Somerset County Council’s head of museums.

Courtesy Portable Antiquities Scheme.

[poisonwasthecure]

"Skeleton in the remains of a basketwork coffin, Tarkhan, Egypt, First Dynasty, ca. 3000 B.C."

[anthrocentric]

[anthrocuriosities]

Anyone up for a little holiday reading?

[anthrocuriosities]

[achapelallofgold]

Before They Pass Away by Jimmy Nelson.

This is a long term project, displaying beautiful photographs of remote tribes, out in the valleys, jungles and ice fields etc. Nelsons goal is to capture their magnificent essence in pictures, before they pass away.

For more click here.

[sci-universe]

Happy Charles Darwin Day!

“There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”

Illustration by Alan Kennedy

[beahomebody-blog]

The job of the anthropologist is to make explicit what’s taken for granted by everyone else.

Allan Young (via beahomebody)

[artsyrup]

[scientificillustration]

Bones by Chamo San

[anthrocuriosities]

"A 1.34-million-year-old partial skeleton of the Plio-Pleistocene hominin Paranthropus boisei – including arm, hand, leg and foot fragments – found at the Olduvai Gorge site in Tanzania represents one of the most recent occurrences of the hominin before its extinction in East Africa." -Sci-News.com

[theolduvaigorge]

Skull Suggests Single Human Species Emerged From Africa, Not Several

Well-Preserved Find 1.8 Million Years Old Drastically Simplifies Evolutionary Picture

by Robert Lee Hotz

"A newly discovered 1.8 million-year-old skull offers evidence that humanity’s early ancestors emerged from Africa as a single adventurous species, not several species as believed, drastically simplifying human evolution, an international research team said Thursday.

The skull—the most complete of its kind ever discovered—is “a really extraordinary find,” said paleoanthropologist Marcia Ponce de Leon at the University of Zurich’s Anthropological Institute and Museum, who helped analyze it. “It is in a perfectly preserved state.”

Unearthed at Dmanisi in Georgia—an ancient route in the Caucasus for the first human migrations out of Africa—the skull was found at a spot where partial fossils of four other similar individuals and a scattering of crude stone tools had been found several years ago. They all date from a time when the area was a humid forest where saber-tooth tigers and giant cheetahs prowled. Preserved in siltstone beneath the hilltop ruins of a medieval fortress, the remains are the earliest known human fossils outside Africa, experts said.

David Lordkipanidze, director of the Georgian National Museum, who led the team, reported the discovery in Science. The primitive skull was first uncovered on Aug. 5, 2005—his birthday. “It was a very nice present,” he said.

Taken together, the finds at Dmanisi are especially important because experts in evolution could analyze the physical differences between individuals living in the same place at the same time almost 2 million years ago, when humankind first emerged from Africa to people the world, according to Yale University anthropologist Andrew Hill.

"It gives you a chance to look at variation for the first time," said Dr. Hill, who was not involved in the discovery" (read more).

***Hmm. I need to read the study ASAP.

(Source: Wall Street Journal)

[alphacaeli]

Here’s the original study. It’s not open access, though. Reading now~

[anthrocuriosities]

The fantastically bejeweled skeletons of Catholicism's forgotten martyrs.

[randomblogsnet]

Dendrochronology was posted at http://www.randompicturesblog.com/2013/05/dendrochronology/

Dendrochronology