Tag Archives: anthropology

What is War Good for? Sparking Civilization, Suggest UCLA Archaeology findings from Peru

Warfare, triggered by political conflict between the fifth century B.C. and the first century A.D., likely shaped the development of the first settlement that would classify as a civilization in the Titicaca basin of southern Peru, a new UCLA study suggests.

Charles Stanish, director of UCLA’s Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, and Abigail Levine, a UCLA graduate student in anthropology, used archaeological evidence from the basin, home to a number of thriving and complex early societies during the first millennium B.C., to trace the evolution of two larger, dominant states in the region: Taraco, along the Ramis River, and Pukara, in the grassland pampas. (more…)

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Anthropologist: Japan Will Rise Above This Disaster

“Japan will recover from the catastrophe that has hit its shores,” says Bernard Bernier, director of the Université de Montréal Department of Anthropology. “This will not be a turning point in the country’s history.” 

“I don’t want to underestimate the repercussions of the drama that has unfolded in the affected communities,” says Bernier. “In addition to the dead and the wounded, 300,000 people are now homeless. And the national economy is greatly indebted, which will make it that much more difficult to finance reconstruction projects. But the country has rolled up its sleeves before.”  (more…)

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Colossal Fossil: Museum’s New Whale Skeleton Represents Decades of Research

ANN ARBOR, Mich.—There’s a whale of a new display at the University of Michigan Exhibit Museum of Natural History, a leviathan that represents a scientific saga of equally grand proportions.

A complete, 50-foot-long skeleton of the extinct whale Basilosaurus isis, which lived 37 million years ago, now is suspended from the ceiling of the museum’s second floor gallery and will reign over an updated whale evolution exhibit scheduled to open in April 2011. (more…)

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Chimpanzee Gangs Kill for Land, New Study Shows

ANN ARBOR, Mich.—Bands of chimpanzees violently kill individuals from neighboring groups in order to expand their own territory, according to a 10-year study of a chimp community in Uganda that provides the first definitive evidence for this long-suspected function of this behavior.

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