Across the millennia, one of our common traits is the desire to feel special: this has been played out in terms of aristocratic status, patriarchal markers, race, and middle-school politics. Finding a solid boundary between “human” and “non-human” is yet another instance of seeking specialness. However, both scientists and historians are making this boundary increasingly […]
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The use of magical amulets and charms was common in the Ancient Roman world, where most people didn’t think material causality determined their futures. Instead, more people considered the dangerous forces of fate, the daemonia who embodied those forces, or the Gods to be the primary agents in everyday existence. In order to gain some
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Across the world, prehistoric cultures have marked the landscape with monuments expressed as mounds, circles, and ditches. Anthropologists frequently interpret these structures in light of their astronomical or religious focus, but recent research by Lynne Kelly has argued for a more pragmatic function. It turns out, cultures transitioning from nomadism to full-time agriculture across the
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This is a contemporary rendition of the Ancient Roman leader, Gaius Julius Caesar (100-44 BCE), recreated by Dutch anthropologist Maja D’Hollosy. To make it, D’Hollosy referenced a recent analysis of Caesar by Tom Buijtendorp, two contemporary busts, and coin imagery. The upshot of the composite sculpture illustrates a man who got into power despite, not
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Scientific genome analysis has shaped history once again with a recent study published in the science journal _Nature Communications_. This painting of death strangling a victim of the plague gets at the horror caused by the infamous Black Death, a pandemic that wiped out a third of Europe’s population in the 14th century. By studying
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You are looking at a late 3rd-c. CE Tauroctony, the sacred scene from the Roman Cult of Mithras. Frequently compared with the emerging religion of Christianity, Mithraism featured a savior deity who came down from the stars to save his adherents. Worshippers of this cult were all men, and they met in chambers that resembled
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This bra broke history: excavated out of a rubble heap from a medieval castle in Austria in 2008, it was one of four bras discovered there, all dating to the 15th century. This find brought up to four our total examples of extant medieval bras — before these fragments from Lengberg Castle, we had zero.
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This is one of the most famous pharaohs from Ancient Egypt: Hatshepsut (d. 1458 BCE). She was highly effective in all arenas — economic, foreign policy, religious affairs — but although those who lived under her rule recognized her authority, having a female ruler (even a super talented one) jarred too much with expectations about
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This closeup of a female figurine now at the Penn Museum of Anthropology and Archaeology is an example of similar ones common to the Kingdom of Judah in the 8th through 6th centuries. (The second image shows more.) Historians debate their meaning — did they represent the Cannanite Goddess Asherat, who was sometimes associated as
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The tradition of gift-giving in human history resonates deeply this time of year, and although we usually think of this custom as a joyful one celebrating bonds of affection, love, and friendship, anthropologists have studied it in other contexts. Shown here in this 15th-century engraving by Northern Renaissance artist Martin Schongauer is a legend famous
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It’s almost New Year’s Eve, a time when many people gather for celebrations throughout the night and into the wee hours of the morning. Rationally we know that nothing really changes when the clock rolls from 11:59 to midnight – The new calendar year is a human invention, and yet we are conditioned to feel
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Here’s a story for you: the oldest recorded story we know of, in fact. This smudgy cave painting made international headlines last December when scientists in Indonesia reported the discovery of a panel measuring about 14 feet depicting a hunting narrative — this picture is a detail. Dating the mineral deposits atop the pictures, which
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The earliest date that humans first settled in the Americas is something anthropologists do not agree upon – yet. Although whole-genome DNA processing might someday shed more light on the subject, some scholars favor an idea that people first crossed the Bering Straights less than 20,000 years ago, while others argue for an earlier wave
Meadowcroft Rockshelter Read More »
Many Ancient and Medieval ideas about how the human body worked seem laughable now, but before the science of molecular biology developed, a lot of conclusions just had to be conjecture (fueled also by cultural and confirmation bias). And that’s why – well into the early modern era – many scientists believed that menstrual blood
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This is _The New York Times_ 1907 headline that sensationalized a science experiment by a man named Duncan Macdougall. He had decided to run a macabre series of tests to see whether a human soul had weight. Six volunteers close to death agreed to spend their last breaths on a scale in his medical office,
Does A Human Soul Have Weight? Read More »
Human evolution shows that Homo Sapiens evolved physical features suitable to long-distance running. About two million years ago, the east African landscape entered a drying period, and many forested lands turned into grasslands or patchy open woodlands. These conditions would have favored our ancestors’ development of characteristics that could run after animals and scavenge prey
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So here’s a question for you – will the sun rise tomorrow? I think so, and you do as well (hopefully), but this man showed that you couldn’t prove it. Not with logic, anyway.You are looking at David Hume (d. 1776), one of the most important philosophers ever. A skeptic and a naturalist, Hume praised
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Here is one of the most famous job advertisements in the history of psychology. In 1971, Professor Philip Zimbardo enlisted a number of highly educated men to participate in an experiment about prison life. Those who enrolled in the project knew more about what they were getting into than most participants of psychological tests, and
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Here come two points about human evolution – the first is one that I imagine is not surprising to you, but the second may be, and might make you wince.First, the animal in this photo is not an ancestor of us Homo Sapiens. We did not evolve from apes but share a common progenitor that
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Today’s social-media aficionados take a lot of personality tests that we know are pure rot, like “what your birth crystal says about the way you treat your pets” or “what your quarantine eating habits reveal about your financial investment patterns.” The bust pictured here reflects similarly outlandish claims from a century and a half ago,
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