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1 vote
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Scientists discovered the oldest known DNA and used it to reveal what life was like two million years ago in the northern tip of Greenland
4 votes -
Svante Pääbo deserves his accolade – palaeogenetics is an expanding field that tells us who we are
5 votes -
Swedish researcher Svante Pääbo has won this year's Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for his research into how human beings evolved
12 votes -
Did Neanderthals make art?
5 votes -
Three things I got wrong about patriarchy
5 votes -
The polyglots of Dardistan - At the crossroads of south and central Asia lies one of the world’s most multilingual places, with songs and poetry to match
3 votes -
Book review: The Dawn Of Everything
2 votes -
You're not allowed in this cave. But there's a copy.
7 votes -
Three centuries on, a shaman's precious rune drum returns home – instrument confiscated by the Danes is given back to the Sámi
4 votes -
Mysticism’s function
4 votes -
How our ancestors used to sleep can help the sleep-deprived today
7 votes -
Promethean beasts - Far from being hardwired to flee fire, some animals use it to their own ends, helping us understand our own pyrocognition
8 votes -
Human history gets a rewrite
13 votes -
Mutiny on the sex raft: How a 70s science project descended into violent chaos
9 votes -
America's first pastime
6 votes -
Picture Book Lust - Vanishing Asia by Kevin Kelly
5 votes -
Dogs have been our best friends for at least 23,000 years
13 votes -
The history of Yellowstone: Debunking the myth that the great national park was a wilderness untouched by humans
5 votes -
Five things worth knowing about empathy
4 votes -
The Skeleton Lake - Genetic analysis of human remains found in the Himalayas has raised baffling questions about who these people were and why they were there
11 votes -
Videos on anthropology?
A friend of mine asked me for good videos on anthropology. I'm at a complete loss. I have several good youtube channels for history, but finding anthropology-related content is surprisingly...
A friend of mine asked me for good videos on anthropology. I'm at a complete loss. I have several good youtube channels for history, but finding anthropology-related content is surprisingly difficult.
Any recommendations?
6 votes -
Why are we in the West so weird? A theory
6 votes -
David Graeber has died
16 votes -
The unraveling of America
10 votes -
Ancient bow-and-arrow technology dating back some 48,000 years has been discovered in a Sri Lankan cave, making it the oldest evidence of archery to be found in this part of the world
10 votes -
Africa’s biggest collection of ancient human footprints has been found
8 votes -
Is marriage over?
7 votes -
Who invented the wheel? And how did they do it?
13 votes -
Why we buy weird things in times of crisis
10 votes -
'Ghost' DNA from unknown ancestors found in West Africans
9 votes -
The most popular songs today are sadder than they were fifty years ago: can cultural evolution explain this negative turn?
11 votes -
"Humans were not centre stage": How ancient cave art puts us in our place
13 votes -
Correcting the historical bias against domestic materials
4 votes -
Can tattoos make you healthier?
3 votes -
A chance encounter in an Ethiopian goat pen has yielded a one-of-a-kind fossil: the nearly complete skull of a human ancestor that died some 3.8 million years ago
8 votes -
Remembering the forgotten Chinese railroad workers
8 votes -
The missing link that wasn’t
3 votes -
How modern life is transforming the human skeleton
16 votes -
New investigations into the Tahitian Mourner’s costume
1 vote -
Coffee: The muslim drink
12 votes -
This genealogy database helped solve dozens of crimes. But its new privacy rules will restrict access by cops.
4 votes -
Tractor driver finds South Island's first moa footprints in Otago river
7 votes -
'It's amazing tatau's persisted': How Samoan tattooing withstood colonialism
6 votes -
New species of ancient human discovered in the Philippines
7 votes -
New species of ancient human discovered in Philippines cave
15 votes -
The hidden resilience of “food desert” neighborhoods
9 votes -
What does the word 'civilized' mean to you? Can it be used to compare and contrast societies and cultures?
Do you believe that some cultures/societies are more 'civilized' than others? What is your definition of 'civilized' / what does it mean to be 'civilized'? ~ If you've studied history and/or...
Do you believe that some cultures/societies are more 'civilized' than others? What is your definition of 'civilized' / what does it mean to be 'civilized'?
~
If you've studied history and/or anthropology then surely you've heard many uses of the term "savages" to describe groups of people that were considered to be less 'civilized' than whomever was writing that piece.
I was also just reading a book that described in detail some of the really horrible war crimes committed by both sides in the Sri Lankan civil war including but not limited to: raging mobs burning people alive, murder and rape of civilians, use of child soldiers, suicide bombers, etc. Please note that in no way am I considering the people of Sri Lanka as 'uncivilized', just using an example of what seems to be 'uncivilized' behavior.An initial thought that I had was "huh, I'm glad I don't currently live somewhere where I could be burned alive based on my ethnicity/religion/beliefs by a rage fueled mob of people", but then the history of the western world came to mind - some of those exact same thing happened less than 100 years ago to many non-white groups of people in America, including some things even worse (read: human slavery). From here came a flood of other thoughts poking holes in whatever my initial definition of 'civilized' was. Plenty of things in present-day United States could be considered uncivilized. Yet one could make an argument that a more 'civilized' civilization might be one that allows many personal freedoms.
So, I want to ask all of you what you think of the concept of being 'civilized'. Is it a colonialistic-type term used to promote a higher sense of placement in the world that should be abolished. Does it have any merit in its use? If so, what do you think makes a civilized group of people and does one exist?
16 votes -
When we first made tools
9 votes -
Big gods came after the rise of civilisations, not before, finds study using huge historical database
15 votes