Iceman Bled to Death on Glacier – Killed by Arrow

At least that’s the title I should have used on March 20, 2007 when I scooped the BBC, the LA Times, National Geographic and other major and minor media outlets. My original post on the topic was at Anthropology.net, titled New Research on Ötzi, the Iceman, Cometh. From that post I discussed the study conducted [...]

Four Stone Hearth Letters

The Four Stone Hearth is a blog carnival that specializes in anthropology. Anthropology is the study of humankind, throughout all times and places. This discourse focuses primarily on four lines of research: * socio-cultural anthropology* bio-physical anthropology* archaeology* linguistic anthropology Each one of these subfields represent a stone in our hearth, a blog carnival aims [...]

Forbidden Archaeology? Some So-Called Out of Place Artifacts

I visit various internet sites each week that range from the scientific to the down right kooky. I must confess that “Kooky” fascinates me. But even on the science sites that have active message boards, there are frequent mentions of so-called “out of place artifacts” (OOPA’s?). Very often, these “artifacts” are used by someone to [...]

Paleoanthropology: Multiregional versus Replacement

The multiregional evolution hypothesis asserts that modern humans are the present manifestation of older species of hominids including Homo neanderthalensis and H. erectus. The replacement hypothesis, however, states that modern humans are a new species and that the older species mentioned above were replaced. In the latter hypothesis, transition of archaic H. sapiens to modern [...]

Howler Monkeys Part 2: Dietary Needs and Habits

Howler Photo by princessangel Milton’s Study on and Island in the Panama Canal Milton studied two groups of mantled howlers on Barro Colorado Island in the Panama Canal (1980) and discovered that while howlers don’t have to pursue their foods, neither can they use a “sit and wait” strategy. Their preference for seasonal foods presents [...]

Howler Monkeys Part 3: Vocalizations

Howler Photo by JeanKearn Perhaps the most familiar characteristic of the howler monkey are their vocalizations for which they are named. Howlers, both male and female, use their loud, lion-like roars (Fleagle 1999 p150) to advertise their presence and to warn or intimidate intruders (Kitchen 2004). Vocalizations may also provide auditory cues that reveal fighting [...]

Howler Monkeys Part 1: General Characteristics

 Afarensis has been doing his weekly “Know Your Primate” series, so I hope he won’t mind if I toss in my bit on the howler monkey. It was his series that inspired me and reminded me that I had this from a paper I wrote a while back. I’ll post this in two, maybe three, [...]

Gorillas Get Sodium From Tree Bark

I remember my Primate Evolution class and the mention that Gorillas chew bark and spit it out. The hypothesis, according to my professor, was (if I remember correctly) possibly they do this for some nutrient they cannot get elsewhere. As it turns out, new research has shown that decayed wood provides over 95% of the [...]

Stone Tools of a new Hominid Species?

On 5/23/06, I blogged about Homo floresiensis: New Species or Modern Human? and I mentioned the debate over whether H. floresiensis represents a new species of hominid or just a pathologically affected modern human. These are the two primary dogs in the hunt, but there are others. Susan Larson of Stoney Brook University gave a [...]

Homo floresiensis: New Species or Modern Human?

One of the more fascinating debates in anthropology right now is the explanation of LB1, a.k.a. “the Hobbit,” –the proposed new hominid species Homo floresiensis. Found in 2003 in the Liang Bua Cave on the island of Flores in Indonesia. There’s been some recent buzz in the journal Science as, first; Falk et al (2005) [...]