Primitive Cultures are Simple, Civilization is Complex (A falsehood) III
Category: Falsehoods
This is the third of three parts of this particular falsehood. (Here is the previous part)...
Posted by Greg Laden at 11:01 AM • 12 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
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Category: Falsehoods
This is the third of three parts of this particular falsehood. (Here is the previous part)...
Posted by Greg Laden at 11:01 AM • 12 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Falsehoods
I'd like to offer a way of thinking about the difference between what we call "civilization" and what some people call "primitive cultures" that will be more useful and less falsehood-prone
Posted by Greg Laden at 1:54 PM • 39 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Archaeology
The practice of growing food and keeping livestock was invented numerous times throughout the world. One 'center' of agriculture is said to be the Middle East. Despite the fact that calling the Middle East a "center" in this context is a gross oversimplification, it is...
Posted by Greg Laden at 3:51 PM • 8 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Anthropology
A short list of foundational readings in ethnography for the Evolutionary Anthropologist.
Posted by Greg Laden at 12:50 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Origin of Agriculture
This is an old story being resurrected wiht new data: Biblical diet 'unhealthy' A new study into the diet of ancient Israel has revealed that far from being 'the land of milk and honey', its inhabitants suffered from the lack of a balanced diet....
Posted by Greg Laden at 8:42 PM • 7 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Anthropology
One of the most interesting and exciting stories in science is that of the Younger Dryas. The Younger Dryas was a climate event that had important effects on human history, and that has been reasonably linked to some of our most important cultural changes, and...
Posted by Greg Laden at 8:04 PM • 26 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Maize weevil, Sitophilus zeamais [usda] ... or the corn rust or the corn root cutter or whatever pathogen that comes along that cannot be fought off with a cleverly concocted combination of chemicals. This is because all we eat is corn, or so it...
Posted by Greg Laden at 10:16 AM • 14 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Corn (maize) was domesticated in the earlier part of the Holocene in Mexico from a wild plant called teosinte. Subsequent to the discovery of this area of origin by MacNeish, a great deal of research has gone on to track the spread of maize across...
Posted by Greg Laden at 12:40 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
A very good day of grunting worms. Credit: Ken Catania So-called Gene-Culture Co-Evolution can be very obvious and direct or it can be very subtle and complex. In almost all cases, the details defy the usual presumptions people make about the utility of culture,...
Posted by Greg Laden at 10:06 PM • 18 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Are certain ancient artifacts from West Asia evidence of the earliest horticulture related fertility rituals, and belief in the Evil Eye?
Posted by Greg Laden at 1:14 PM • 8 Comments • 0 TrackBacks