Africa
Tag archives for Africa
ca 140 killed in Congo boat sinking
Posted by Greg Laden on July 29, 2010 Up to 140 people are feared dead after a boat carrying passengers and goods capsized on a river in the Democratic Republic of Congo, officials say. The accident happened on the Kasai river – a tributary of the Congo River – in the western province of Bandundu. Information Minister Lambert Mende told the BBC the…
John Kasaona: How poachers became caretakers
Posted by Greg Laden on June 10, 2010 Floribert Chebeya Bahizire found dead in Kinshasa
Posted by Greg Laden on June 3, 2010 A leading rights activist in the Democratic Republic of Congo has been found dead in the capital, Kinshasa. Floribert Chebeya’s body was discovered, partially clothed, on the back seat of his own car. source He was last known to have gone to a meeting with the national chief of police, Genral John Numbi. His driver…
Everything you know is sort of wrong
Posted by Greg Laden on May 28, 2010 Today is the big day! And not merely because it is TGIF* day.
A hail storm of biblical proportions
Posted by Greg Laden on May 21, 2010 When I was first in the Ituri Forest, I Noticed there were many kinds of plantains grown in the gardens there They varied by size and shape. One version seemed to have numerous black spots on the outside. When asking what it was called, I found its name was the same as the variety without…
Social Justice in the Tea, Chai, Rooibos, Aardwolf … Everything is connected to everything else.
Posted by Greg Laden on April 2, 2010 CHAI RANT!!!11!! It is time for another Chai Rant.
Race and National Bias in East African Palaeoanthropology
Posted by Greg Laden on February 24, 2010 A half century of struggle has resulted in more than a little change, which we hope is still ongoing.
From Fit to Fat to Fit and Back: Exercise and Weight Loss
Posted by Greg Laden on January 10, 2010 Did you ever watch cattle? I mean, really watch them, for a few hours? Mostly they just sit or stand around munching on grass, chewing their cud, or snoozing. But every once in a while a handful of them will stand up and point in one direction. And they may take a few steps in…
Nyamulagira Volcano and Human Evolution
Posted by Greg Laden on January 4, 2010 I had mentioned earlier that the volcanoes of the Virugna region in the Western Rift Valley (as well as other highland spots) have often been islands of rain forest separated from each other by different habitats, including grasslands and wooded savannas. this has produced an island effect that has been a laboratory for evolution, and…
The Volcano Nyamuragira: Some Context
Posted by Greg Laden on January 3, 2010 Nyamuragira, just now erupting, is one of the numerous Virunga Volcanoes, which form a large cluster of volcanoes spanning the border of Congo, Rwanda and Uganda, between Lake Ex-Edward (a.k.a. Lake Rutenzege) and Lake Kivu. The largest population center is Goma, on Lake Kivu, along the southern margin of the lava fields from these volcanoes,…
Congo Volcano Erupting
Posted by Greg Laden on January 2, 2010 Mount Nyamulagira, 25km (16 miles) from the eastern city of Goma, erupted at dawn on Saturday, sending lava into the surrounding Virunga National Park. About 40 endangered chimpanzees and other animals live in the area. But the country’s famous critically endangered mountain gorillas are said to be safe as they live further east. source These…
Crocs Afar
Posted by Greg Laden on October 23, 2009 One day, about six thousand years ago (or more like 15 thousand ? the timing of this is disputed) a volcano in the vicinity of Mwea, Uganda blasted a huge volume of stuff into the air, covering the surrounding landscape and choking off most of the life forms living in a nearby lake. (A very…
The meme of honourable death
Posted by Greg Laden on September 25, 2009 The Anglo Boer War (in what is now South Africa from October 11th, 1899 to May 31st, 1902) was a turning point in European style military history. Previously, infantry would operate in large blocks that would move forward, turn and open or close ranks, and winning an infantry engagement would involve getting your columns around…
Primitive Cultures are Simple, Civilization is Complex (A falsehood) I
Posted by Greg Laden on September 21, 2009 This is yet another in a series of posts on falsehoods. To refresh your memory, a falsehood is a belief held by a number of people that is in some way incorrect. That incorrectness may be blatant, it may be subtle, it may be conditional, it may be simple, it may be complex. But, the…
Reading Human Nature
Posted by Greg Laden on July 26, 2009 “Human nature” is an interesting topic. People will argue over the definition of human nature, but regardless of what people think or say, it is reasonable to assume that all humans share a psychological and developmental framework to the extent that any two people raised in the same background will ‘turn out’ similar with respect…
A True Ghost Story Part 5: The Grave on the Hill
Posted by Greg Laden on July 17, 2009 … continued … One of the main reasons we were staying in Kimberley at all was to assist the museum staff with a particular, and rather singular, survey and excavation. The location and circumstances of this field project were quite remarkable.
A true ghost story. Part I: A City of Death and Misery
Posted by Greg Laden on July 13, 2009 Everything I’m about to tell you in this story is true.1 This is a long story, so it may span more than one blog post. You might not want to read this story while you are alone or while sitting in the dark.2
Wildlife in Protected Areas Compared to Non-Protected Areas of Kenya
Posted by Greg Laden on July 9, 2009 It has become virtually axiomatic that as climate shifts or other potential insults to the ecology of a given area occur, plants and animals enclosed in parks bounded by “impermeable” landscapes are at great risk. Instead of the extreme ranges of a plant or animal moving north or south, or across a gradient of rainfall,…
What a Difference a Century Can Make
Posted by Greg Laden on July 8, 2009 At the beginning of the 20th century, a traveler in Central Africa made mention of some strange people that he had come across. He was traveling among regular, run-of-the-mill natives…probably Bantu-speaking people living in scattered villages and farming for their food. But along the way, strange people came out of the forest. These strange people…
Mail Order Brides and Hypergyny
Posted by Greg Laden on July 1, 2009 Seymour had a mail order bride and he was very proud. Seymour was a night watchman that I got to know because I was forever lurking around at night, passing through alarmed doors and making a nuisance of myself and, usually, keeping just one step ahead of Seymour, who’s main objective in life was to…
The good book
Posted by Greg Laden on June 28, 2009 Whenever I sat at Joseph and Mary’s dinner table, Mary showed a great deal of interest in my work. In between her frequent forays away from the dining room table to get this or that food item, or to issue instructions to a servant, or whatever, she would sit at the table across from me…
Don’t be a Jew
Posted by Greg Laden on June 27, 2009 Joseph and Mary, and Little Joe and Mary, and Grinker and I, sat around the table where most of the dinner had been laid out. Additional bits and pieces of the dinner would be brought out as needed shortly, but now it was time to pray. So we held hands and bowed our heads, and…
Michael Jackson Thrilled The Kids in Zaire
Posted by Greg Laden on June 25, 2009 I have only one Michael Jackson story.
The Great White Missionary
Posted by Greg Laden on June 25, 2009 It was a rare day that I was at the Ngodingodi research station at all … usually I was off in the forest with the Efe Pygmies, up the road excavating an archaeological site. It was also rare that Grinker, my cultural anthropologist colleague, was at the research station. He was spending most of his…
The Storm
Posted by Greg Laden on April 26, 2009 This is the final Congo Memoir. The penultimate installment is here. The final installment is below the fold …. If you are interested in issues pertaining to the Congo that are quite current, consider having a look at Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide (recently made quite well known by being…
The Lion, The Tent, and the Anthropologist
Posted by Greg Laden on March 8, 2009 … continued form the previous Congo Memoir … I’ve mentioned lions before. There was the first time I encountered one in the wild when a lioness came within a couple of feet of me one dark night while we were lost in the savanna. There was the time Biker and I nearly walked into a…
On Edge
Posted by Greg Laden on February 23, 2009 … continued … A routine had settled in. Every morning, Joan would go off with Zorba and the crew and look for bones. I would go off by myself and track the lions and antelope. Biker’s routine was a bit more difficult then ours. His research on fire required that go every four hours, night…
The Mountain Giveth, The Mountain Taketh Away
Posted by Greg Laden on February 14, 2009 ( … continued … ) It was near the end of the major field season in the Upper Semliki Valley, where dozens of Zairois workers (mostly off duty school teachers) and a dozen or so Zairois, Ethiopian, Tanzanian, Kenyan, Belgian, British and American scientists (including faculty and graduate students) were working side by side on…
Great Moments in Human Evolution: The Invention of Chipped Stone Tools
Posted by Greg Laden on February 12, 2009 Or not. Much is made of the early use of stone tools by human ancestors. Darwin saw the freeing of the hands ad co-evolving with the use of the hands to make and use tools which co-evolved with the big brain. And that would make the initial appearance of stone tools in the archaeological record…
How diverse were early hominoids?
Posted by Greg Laden on February 12, 2009 And hominids. We know the fossil record underestimates diversity at least a little, and we know that forested environments in Africa tend to be underrepresented. Given this, the diversity of Miocene apes may have been rather impressive, because there is a fairly high diversity in what we can assume is a biased record. But I’d…
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