♥ Anthropology

Anything and everything of anthropological interest.

[newrider]

[wamscoastsmoker]

IT’S HALLOWEEN TIME TO GET SPOOKY

[notsocialphobixanymorelmao-deac]

I T S T H E M I D D L E O F J U N E

[wamscoastsmoker]

I T I S H A L L O W E E N T I M E T O G E T S P O O K Y

[pwhyxco]

ok who the fuck got this on my dash it’s still june

[wamscoastsmoker]

get spooky

[tshifty]

how does this appear every june

[theslaybymic]

We have some great news for people who take photos of their food

Did you take a photo of a meal recently only to have a friend or loved one criticize you for it? Stop letting people shame you for taking photos of your food. You’re actually better at life than them.

Follow @this-is-life-actually

[halachachic-deactivated20160803]

Very Accurate

[linguisten]

Linguistics without anthropology is sterile; anthropology without linguistics is blind.

Charles Hockett (via linguisten)

[xekstrin]

I thought this was an article from the Onion but it’s not 

[anthmusings]

I guess you never realize how weird culture is while you’re inside it.

smbc-comics.com

A basic premise of ethnocentrism. 

(via anthmusings)

[ucsdhealthsciences-deactivated2]

Eye Think, Therefore I Need Glasses

For years, researchers have been watching with some alarm a rising prevalence of myopia in Asia. It’s estimated that up to 90 percent of schoolchildren in countries like China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore and South Korea suffer from near-sightedness.

Past conventional wisdom blamed the cause primarily on genetics. For example, there’s published evidence that three key ethnic groups in Singapore (Chinese, Indians and Malays) all have shown steep increases in myopia prevalence since the mid-1990s, which suggests a similar sensitivity to risk factors.

New evidence, however, indicates that environmental and cultural factors play a major role in rising rates of myopia. Specifically, how early and how often parents make their kids hit the books. For example, a study published in JAMA Ophthalmology reports that firstborn children are 10 percent more likely to be nearsighted than subsequent siblings, a finding they ultimately correlated with “reduced parental investment in education of children with later birth order.”

In other words, parents put a lot of time and effort in their first child; not so much with those that follow. The thinking is that first-borns are taught and expected to bear down in school sooner, harder and longer than siblings who follow. As a result, they’re more likely to not spend enough outside time in bright sunlight, which is important to eye health and development.

The presumed upside, of course, is a smarter kid. The possible downside is one that doesn’t see quite so well. Myopia rates in the U.S., by the way, aren’t quite so dramatic: somewhere between 20 and 50 percent of Americans.

[pbsdigitalstudios]

Theory…you keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

[deathandmysticism]

Anatomist Harris Mosher with a teaching skull, ca. 1929

[assbaka]

the teaching skull knows. the teaching skull is benevolent. thank you, teaching skull.

[unexplained-events]

Researchers have used Easter Island Moai replicas to show how they might have been “walked” to where they are displayed.

VIDEO

[vero-in-technicolor]

Giant Vegans by VegArt

[biodiverseed]

Rhinos also have tiny brains in relation to their size, and spend most of their day eating; elephants also spend 12-18 hours a day eating to support their remarkably inefficient digestive system. Pandas – another species that has to spend all day eating – have a gut flora that is adapted to eating meat, which is a reason they are basically catatonic all the time.

Almost all the other large animals that would fit this description, like cattle, goats, sheep, giraffes, yaks, deer, and antelope – are ruminants, meaning they have a specialised four-chamber stomach, with which they ferment and re-chew their food (the cud). They also spent most of their time eating, and most of them will eat other animals opportunistically.

The closest analogues we have for our gut shape are capuchin monkeys and savanna baboons, who are omnivores that: “make extensive use of their hands for pre-processing of high-quality food items.” All of the other great apes eat insects at the very least. Even our smallest closest relatives, bonobos, eat honey, eggs, and small animals.

We have a different evolutionary trajectory from all these animals: the human brain evolved to the size it is because of the uptick in protein consumption derived from the consumption of meat.

[elcomfortador]

[azertip]

elcomfortador:

What people will dress like in 1950, as imagined by the cover of Life magazine in 1914. By Otho Cushing. Via this blog post.

[questionabletastetheatre]

nailed it

[roachpatrol]

please imagine Grease with this sort of costuming

[elanorpam]

of all the things to retain why is it the cane

[itsokaytobesmart]

NEW VIDEO!

Why Do We Laugh?

Chuckles, chortles, giggles, or guffaws… let’s face it. Laughing is really weird. Why do we do it?

It’s one of the few universal human behaviors that reaches beyond borders of language and culture. While laughter is usually associated with humor, scientists have found that most laughter has little to do with funny business and more about bringing people together.

Find out more in this week’s It’s Okay To Be Smart!

Also, I would apologize for all the bad jokes in this video, but the truth is that I’m not sorry, not even a little bit 😎

[idontwantsurgery-deactivated201]

You don’t live in a vacuum and everything you think and feel is somehow impacted by societal expectations

[academic-illiterati-deactivated]

Society is not a structure that exists independent of human action. It is ‘socially constructed,’ emerging from the countless symbolic interactions that occur each day between individuals. By examining how and why we interact with others, symbolic interactionism reveals how the everyday experiences of people help to construct and maintain social institutions and, ultimately, society itself.

Newman, David M. Sociology: Exploring the Architecture of Everyday Life, Brief Edition. 4th ed. Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications, 2015. Print.

Chapter 2: Seeing and Thinking Sociologically

(via socio-logic)

[lefayss-blog]

dragons are mentioned in almost all cultures all across the world even before they had interaction with each other and you’re telling me they didn’t exist

[wizardshark]

its almost like all around the world people were digging up huge reptile skeletons with no explanation

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Portraits of homeless people using libraries

Libraries, “the last bastion of democracy,” are a haven for America’s 500,000 homeless people, where literature, Internet access, and nonfiction can come together to provide respite from the relentless brutality of life on the streets.

In a series of moving portraits of homeless people using San Francisco, Sacramento and San Jose’s public libraries, Fritz Hoffmann tells a visual story of forgotten people in quiet reflection and study, and makes us remember something we’d prefer to forget. The librarians in the story see their role as defending democratic access to information and ideas and public space – in San Francisco, the library system now has a full-time social worker.

Read the rest…