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Afarensis

Anthropology, Evolution and Science

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afarcomp3.jpg Afarensis is a 3.5-2.8 million year old hominin from the Kada Hadar member of the Hadar formation in the Middle Awash, Ethiopia. He is approximately 41 inches tall, weighs approximately 60 pounds and has a cranial capacity of a whopping 410 cc (approximately). Afarensis is currently considered to be transitional between apes and humans and displays some traits of both. Since he spends a lot of time on the couch watching monster movies, some observers question whether he is an obligate biped (although no one has observed him climbing a tree). He also has a blog called Transitions:The Evolution of Life His previous blog can be found here.
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"Loyalty to petrified opinion never broke a chain or freed a human soul..."
Mark Twain


"Ideology is a poor substitute for rational thought..."
Afarensis


"It isn't faith that makes good science...it's curiosity"
Prof. Jacob Barnhardt, The Day the Earth Stood Still


"This man wishes to be accorded the same privilege as a sponge. He wishes to think!"
Clarence Darrow, Inherit the Wind


"...I become fearful when I see people substituting fear for reason..."
Klaatu, The Day the Earth Stood Still


"I want you to grab life by its little bunny ears and get in its face..."
The Simpsons


"This is between me and the vegetable..."
Seymour Krelborn, The Little Shop of Horrors


"There are bad laws and cruel laws and the people who enforce them are both bad and cruel..."
Thea, Isle of the Dead


"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably." Jean- Luc Picard, Star Trek: The Next Generation

"But the limit of tolerance for these human foibles is obtained when the proponent of a questionable scientific doctrine endeavors to maintain it against all possible odds by misrepresentation, misinformation and suppression of contradictory data, and by insinuating unfairness in opponents of his views."
Franz Weidenreich, Morphology of Solo Man


"Man stands alone in the universe, a unique product of a long, unconcious, impersonal material process with unique understanding and potentialities. These he owes to no one but himself, and it is to himself that he is responsible. He is not the creature of uncontrollable and undeterminable forces, but his own master. He can and must decide and manage his own destiny."
George Gaylord Simpson, Life of the Past


Yeah he's the Dick to the Dawk to the phd, he's smarter than you he's got a science degree! Yeah he's the Dick to the Dawk to the phd, he's smarter than you he's got a science degree!
Unknown

Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look into the abyss, the abyss also looks into you.
Frederich Nietzsche


But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
The Declaration of Independence


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Archaeology:

Book Review: Who Owns Antiquity? Museums and the Battle Over Our Ancient Heritage

When I first heard about this book I knew I would have to review it. The question of who owns the items archaeologists dig up has been the subject of a long, and frequently bitter, debate. Here in the United...

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Archaeological Ethics and the Law

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Archaeology and Intelligent Design: A Must Read Post

Chris over at Northstate Science has a must read post on the subject of archaeology and intelligent design. I particularly liked this: The issue here is that proponents of Intelligent Design regularly hijack archaeological method and theory to cite as...

Civil War Cemetery in New Mexico Looted

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3,000 Year Old Mixtec Cremations

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35,000 Year Old Artifacts Found in Australia

Science News Daily has the story:...

Interesting Anthropology News and Other Stuff

The other day when I said blogging would be light I had the best of intentions, but like when Bill Dembski shouts"Waterloo" reality has conspired against me. The intertubewebnet thingy has thrown some interesting stories up into the cybersphere....

Oops! Manco Pata is a Natural Formation

And not the lost city of Paititi. According to National Geographic Peruvian archaeologists have examined the site. Findings include:...

Interesting Science News: Mainly But Not Exclusively Anthropologically Related

Science Daily reports on an interesting new application of Radiocarbon dating: From the end of World War II and up until about 1960, the superpowers of the Cold War era, conducted nuclear tests, detonating bombs into the atmosphere. These detonations...

Tomb Engravings Found at Lismullin

National Geographic has an article about new tomb engravings found at Lismullin, Ireland. Unfortunately, the area is about to be paved over and turned into a highway. From National Geographic:...

Finding Neanderthal Children In the Archaeological Record: Is There A Subconcious Bias?

PalArch's Journal of Archaeology of Northwest Europe has an interesting article on toolmaking by Neanderthal children (see here for my previous post on the subject of children in the archaeological record). The article makes extensive use of research by Phillip...

Bone Detectives

Kambiz mentions a new archaeology show on the Discovery Channel. The show is called The Bone Detectives and is scheduled to start airing on January 14th. The Discovery Channel has been airing "sneak peaks" and the episode I caught concerns...

Nuvuk: Arctic Archaeology

The BBC has an excellent story about Arctic Archaeology. The story focuses on Nuvuk, close to Barrow, where erosion due to ocean currents is taking its toll on the site:...

Update on George Washington's House

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