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Herodotus


Herodotus can be considered one of the first anthropologists, and his work can be considered some of the first anthropological studies. He “sought to understand other people and cultures by traveling far and wide.” [6] Even though he did not practice anthropology like it is practiced today, he created a rather unbiased, truthful recording of other cultures’ legends and lifestyles by using second-hand and third-hand accounts relating to his primary subjects.


“Herodotus of Halicarnassus here displays his inquiry, so that human achievements may not become forgotten in time, and great and marvelous deeds- some displayed by Greeks, some by barbarians- may not be without their glory.” –Opening sentence, The Histories, Herodotus

In his nine scrolls known as The Histories, written in the later period of his life (430 BCE), Herodotus describes the conflict between the Greeks and the Persians, but he often digresses from his topic to describe what he had learned through interviews of the Scythians, who lived near the Black Sea. He learned about and recounted information on how the Scythians lived, and he also learned about nomads who lived further north than the Scythians. Even though the information he recounts was translated many times before transcribed, artifacts similar to the ones he describes have been found in modern excavations in Russia and Kazakhstan.

Friar John of Pian de Caprine

The Journey of Friar John of Pian de Caprine to the Court of Kuyuk Khan, 1245-1247, is another very early cultural anthropological study. Written by Friar John of Pian de Caprine, this is one of the most descriptive, in-detail accounts of Mongols in the thirteenth century. Friar John had been sent by Pope Innocent IV to the Court of Kuyuk Khan, to witness the swearing in of a new Khan. Despite his Christian background, Friar John’s description of the Mongols is surprisingly unbiased.[7]

The Development of the Discipline

In 1861, Edward Burnett Tylor wrote what was arguably the first cultural anthropology book, Anahuac: Or Mexico and the Mexicans, Ancient and Modern (full text). This book reviewed Tylor’s recent trip to Mexico and the surrounding areas. The stories within the book demonstrated the many articulate views of the modern European culture compared to the diverse cultures of the county of Mexico. The book showed the first integration of education and cultural relativism. Tylor used what he understood about the world he knew, and compared it closely to what he encountered in Mexico. His most common references were to the distinct amounts of relics, both artistic and economical, which helped to depict the culture of the Mexican nation. Although it was a huge change in scenery for Tylor, the experience was well documented and his views kept the modern idea in mind about seeing a different culture in their eyes versus his own. Modern day examples of cultures valuing artistic "relics" can be seen in many many Western cultures today. From the importance that the Western Washington University radio station, KUGS places on their valuable antique records to the many amazing works of art preserved in the Louvre Art Museum in Paris, France. Art preservation is a huge part of culture today.


Armchair Anthropology and E.B. Tylor Arm chair anthropology: Anthropologists worked with studies and information collected by others, like missionaries, explorers, and colonial officials. They did not actually travel and collect their own data. Instead they used the data collected by others to propose theories about other cultures. This type of anthropology was coined "armchair anthropology." The theories were mainly focused on primitive society. An arm chair anthropologist in today's terms would not be much of an anthropologist, they are simply someone who takes others observations and views and forms an opinion from that. They usually are basing their opinions on a biased observation of the culture. This is to say that a missionary will give a description of the people dramatically different than the observations taken from a colonialist.

After Edward Burnett Tylor wrote Anahuac: Or Mexico and the Mexicans, Ancient and Modern, he never really traveled again, and thus became an armchair anthropologist. In 1871, he wrote what is considered his most important work, Primitive Culture. In this two volume work, Tylor develops an evolutionary culture theory, where cultures moved from one stage to another (from primitive to modern).

Early influential personalities

There were many people that contributed to the work of early anthropology. In the United States there was Lewis Henry Morgan and Franz Boas, while in the UK, there was Edward Burnett Tylor and James George Frazer. In France, two major contributors were Marcel Mauss and Claude Lévi-Strauss. These people all helped develop cultural anthropology as we know it today. More information on major contributors is available below.

A brief history

Modern cultural anthropology has its origins in, and developed in reaction to, 19th century "ethnology", which involves the organized comparison of human societies. Scholars like E.B. Tylor and J.G. Frazer in England worked mostly with materials collected by others – usually missionaries, traders, explorers, or colonial officials – this earned them their current sobriquet of "arm-chair anthropologists".

Ethnologists had a special interest in why people living in different parts of the world often had similar beliefs and practices. In addressing this question, ethnologists in the 19th century divided into two schools of thought. Some, like Grafton Elliot Smith, argued that different groups must somehow have learned from one another, however indirectly; in other words, they argued that cultural traits spread from one place to another, or "diffused". This way of thinking could be better understood in the context of the school playground; everyone wants to be like the "cool" kid-they see what he has and they want it. This idea can be expanded to an entire culture, people see another group of people doing something better than them, and so they learn the new, more effective way of living.

Other ethnologists argued that different groups had the capability of inventing similar beliefs and practices independently. Some of those who advocated "independent invention", like Morgan, additionally supposed that similarities meant that different groups had passed through the same stages of cultural evolution. Morgan, in particular, acknowledged that certain forms of society and culture could not possibly have arisen before others. For example, industrial farming could have been invented before simple farming, and metallurgy could have developed without previous non-smelting processes involving metals (such as simple ground collection or mining). Morgan, like other 19th century social evolutionists, believed there was a more or less orderly progression from the primitive to the civilized.

20th century anthropologists largely reject the notion that all human societies must pass through the same stages in the same order, on the grounds that such a notion does not fit the empirical facts. Some 20th century ethnologists, like Julian Steward, have instead argued that such similarities reflected similar adaptations to similar environments.


Other ethnologists argued that different groups had the capability of inventing similar beliefs and practices independently. Some of those who advocated "independent invention", like Morgan, additionally supposed that similarities meant that different groups had passed through the same stages of cultural evolution. Morgan, in particular, acknowledged that certain forms of society and culture could not possibly have arisen before others. For example, industrial farming could have been invented before simple farming, and metallurgy could have developed without previous non-smelting processes involving metals (such as simple ground collection or mining). Morgan, like other 19th century social evolutionists, believed there was a more or less orderly progression from the primitive to the civilized.

20th century anthropologists largely reject the notion that all human societies must pass through the same stages in the same order, on the grounds that such a notion does not fit the empirical facts. Some 20th century ethnologists, like Julian Steward, have instead argued that such similarities reflected similar adaptations to similar environments.

Others, such as Claude Lévi-Strauss (who was influenced both by American cultural anthropology and by French Durkheimian sociology), have argued that apparent patterns of development reflect fundamental similarities in the structure of human thought (see structuralism). By the mid-20th century, the number of examples of people skipping stages, such as going from hunter-gatherers to post-industrial service occupations in one generation, were so numerous that 19th century evolutionism was effectively disproved.

In the 20th century most cultural (and social) anthropologists turned to the crafting of ethnographies. An ethnography is a piece of writing about a people, at a particular place and time. Typically, the anthropologist actually lives among another society for a considerable period of time, simultaneously participating in and observing the social and cultural life of the group. This way of studying a culture is much more of an unbiased view of the culture. As apposed to the previous method of the arm chair anthropologists, these scholars are there interacting with the people. As a way of learning about a culture these ethnographies are a great resource.

However, any number of other ethnographic techniques have resulted in ethnographic writing or details being preserved, as cultural anthropologists also curate materials, spend long hours in libraries, churches and schools poring over records, investigate graveyards, and decipher ancient scripts. A typical ethnography will also include information about physical geography, climate and habitat. It is meant to be a holistic piece of writing about the people in question, and today often includes the longest possible timeline of past events that the ethnographer can obtain through primary and secondary research.

w:Bronisław Malinowski (who conducted fieldwork in the Trobriand Islands and taught in England) developed this method, and Franz Boas (who conducted fieldwork in Baffin Island and taught in the United States) promoted it. Boas's students drew on his conception of culture and cultural relativism to develop cultural anthropology in the United States. Simultaneously, Malinowski and A.R. Radcliffe Brown´s students were developing social anthropology in the United Kingdom. Whereas cultural anthropology focused on symbols and values, social anthropology focused on social groups and institutions. Today socio-cultural anthropologists attend to all these elements.

Although 19th century ethnologists saw "diffusion" and "independent invention" as mutually exclusive and competing theories, most ethnographers quickly reached a consensus that both processes occur, and that both can plausibly account for cross-cultural similarities. But these ethnographers pointed out the superficiality of many such similarities, and that even traits that spread through diffusion often changed their meaning and functions as they moved from one society to another.

Accordingly, these anthropologists showed less interest in comparing cultures, generalizing about human nature, or discovering universal laws of cultural development, than in understanding particular cultures in those cultures' own terms. Such ethnographers and their students promoted the idea of "cultural relativism", the view that one can only understand another person's beliefs and behaviors in the context of the culture in which he or she lived.

In the early 20th century socio-cultural anthropology developed in different forms in Europe and in the United States. European "social anthropologists" focused on observed social behaviors and on "social structure", that is, on relationships among social roles (e.g. husband and wife, or parent and child) and social institutions (e.g. religion, economy, and politics).

American "cultural anthropologists" focused on the ways people expressed their view of themselves and their world, especially in symbolic forms (such as art and myths). These two approaches frequently converged (kinship, for example, and leadership function both as symbolic systems and as social institutions), and generally complemented one another. Today almost all socio-cultural anthropologists refer to the work of both sets of predecessors, and have an equal interest in what people do and in what people say.

Today ethnography continues to dominate socio-cultural anthropology. Nevertheless, many contemporary socio-cultural anthropologists have rejected earlier models of ethnography which they claim treated local cultures as bounded and isolated. These anthropologists continue to concern themselves with the distinct ways people in different locales experience and understand their lives, but they often argue that one cannot understand these particular ways of life solely from a local perspective; they instead combine a focus on the local with an effort to grasp larger political, economic, and cultural frameworks that impact local lived realities. Notable proponents of this approach include Arjun Appadurai, James Clifford, George Marcus, Sidney Mintz, Michael Taussig and Eric Wolf.

A growing trend in anthropological research and analysis seems to be the use of multi-sited ethnography, discussed in George Marcus's article "Ethnography In/Of the World System: the Emergence of Multi-Sited Ethnography"]. Looking at culture as embedded in macro-constructions of a global social order, multi-sited ethnography uses traditional methodology in various locations both spatially and temporally. Through this methodology greater insight can be gained when examining the impact of world-systems on local and global communities.

Also emerging in multi-sited ethnography are greater interdisciplinary approaches to fieldwork, bringing in methods from cultural studies, media studies, science and technology studies, and others. In multi-sited ethnography research tracks a subject across spatial and temporal boundaries. For example, a multi-sited ethnography may follow a "thing," such as a particular commodity, as it transfers through the networks of global capitalism.

Multi-sited ethnography may also follow ethnic groups in diaspora, stories or rumours that appear in multiple locations and in multiple time periods, metaphors that appear in multiple ethnographic locations, or the biographies of individual people or groups as they move through space and time. It may also follow conflicts that transcend boundaries. Multi-sited ethnographies, such as Nancy Scheper-Hughes's ethnography of the international black market for the trade of human organs. In this research she follows organs as they transfer through various legal and illegal networks of capitalism, as well as the rumours and urban legends that circulate in impoverished communities about child kidnapping and organ theft.

Sociocultural anthropologists have increasingly turned their investigative eye on to "Western" culture. For example, Philippe Bourgois won the Margaret Mead Award in 1997 for In Search of Respect, a study of the entrepreneurs in a Harlem crack-den. Also growing more popular are ethnographies of professional communities, such as laboratory researchers, Wall Street investors, law firms, or IT computer employees.

Historic Cultural Anthropologists

Edward Burnett Tylor

Sir Edward Burnett Tylor (1832-1917), was born in Camberwell, London, England in 1832. He graduated from Grove House High School but never received a university degree due to the death of his parents. Following their death Tylor started having symptoms of tuberculosis. He decided to leave England and travel to Central America in search for a warmer climate. This is where he first started his research on anthropology. He is considered one of the early proponents of cultural evolutionism in Anthropology.

His first book, aptly titled Anthropology (1881), is considered fairly modern in its cultural concepts and theories. In 1883, Tylor joined the University Museum at Oxford and became a professor of Anthropology from 1896 to 1909. Most of Tylor's work involved the primitive culture and the minds of the people, particularly animism. Animism is a philosophical, religious or spiritual idea that souls or spirits exist not only in humans and animals but also in plants, rocks and natural phenomena. His work has been the foundation of many universities' Anthropological major curriculum. Some of his later works include: Researches Into the Early History of Mankind (1865)and Anahuac (1861). His most important work, "Primitive Culture" (1871), which was partially influenced by Darwin’s theory of biological evolution. It developed the theory of an evolutionary, progressive relationship from primitive to modern cultures. It did this by defining "culture or civilization" as "that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, moral, law, costom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society". This definition encouraged the idea that even primtives possessed capabilities ad habits that merited respect. Primitive stereotypes were thus changed. During his travels, he met a man named Henry Christy, who was also a Quaker interested in ethnology and archaeology, which influenced Tylor's interest in these areas.

Lewis Henry Morgan

Lewis Henry Morgan was born on November 21, 1818 near Aurora, New York. He graduated from Union College in Schenectady in 1840 and became an attorney by profession. Later in his profession he studied the Iroquois people of western New York and gathered extesive data about the Iroquois Confederation.

His book “League of the Ho-dé-no-sau-nee, or Iroquois” (1851) is considered one of the earliest objective ethnographic works of native peoples. From the book, one of the most important pioneering achievements of the first order is the study of kinship systems. What he found was that the Seneca designate their kin in a manner different from that of the Western culture. Unlike the Western culture, they merge collateral relatives, such as cousins, nieces, and aunts, into the direct line, like fathers, sisters, and daughters.

Franz Boas

Franz Boas, known as the Father of American Anthropology, was born in Minden, Germany in 1858. He earned a Ph.D in physics with a minor in geography at the University of Kiel in 1881 and later became a professor and founded the first department of anthropology in the United States at Columbia University.

Boas is well known for his studies on the Native population in Northern Vancouver and British Colombia, Canada. Influenced by the writings of Charles Darwin, Boas developed the theory of cultural relativism, devoting much of his life’s work to discrediting the importance of racial distinction in the field. At a time when armchair anthropology and racial prejudices were rampant, Boas emphasized the importance of impartial data, the use of the scientific method in his research, and rejected the idea of Western civilization’s supposed “cultural superiority.” Boas gave modern anthropology its rigorous scientific methodology, patterned after the natural sciences. He also originated the notion of "culture" as learned behaviors. His emphasis on research first, followed by generalizations, emphasized the creation of grand theories (which were only after tested through field work) [Link: Boas]. Boas was truly the first person to develop an ethnography which is a descriptive account of anthropological studies. A few of Boas’ students include anthropologists Alfred L. Kroeber, Margaret Mead, Jules Henry, and Ashley Montagu. Boas became Professor Emeritus in 1937, after serving over 40 years as Professor at Columbia University. He died in 1942.

Ruth Benedict

Ruth Benedict.jpg
Ruth Benedict was and American anthropologist whose work was greatly influenced by her mentor and teacher Franz Boas, the father of American anthropology. She was born in New York City on June 5, 1887 and died September 17, 1949. She graduated from Vassar College in 1909 and entered graduate studies at Columbia University in 1919, studying under Franz Boas and receiving her PhD in 1923. The central idea of her book Patterns of Culture (1934), which was translated into fourteen different languages and used in universities for many years, is that each culture chooses from the “great arc of human personalities” but only dominant traits emerge in people’s characters and the overall character of society. Ruth Benedict expressed the idea that ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny which holds that the growth or change of the individual is a reflection of the growth or change of the species. She desired to show that each culture had its own moral imperatives that could be understood only if one studied that culture as a whole. Benedict conducted fieldwork in New Mexico with the Native American Pueblo people and used data from Franz Boas and other colleagues like Margaret Mead to supplement her research.

Margaret Mead

Margaret Mead (1901-1979) was the oldest of five until one of her younger sisters died at just nine months of age. Mead was born on December 16 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1901. After graduating from Barnard College, she received her Ph.D. from Columbia University3. It was there where she met her greatest influences, anthropologists Ruth Benedict and Franz Boas. She was married three times in her life, her first marriage with Luther Sheeleigh Cressman, an archeologist. Her third and longest-lasting marriage (1936–1950) was to the British Anthropologist Gregory Bateson with whom she had a daughter, Mary Catherine Bateson, who would also become an anthropologist. Margaret Mead focused mainly on child-rearing and personality traits in Samoa, New Guinea, and Bali. It was here she was able to take a positivist method to her research. Mead was also popular to mass media as a speaker and writer of her work.

In the 1930’s Margaret Mead used a method called controlled comparison, or taking hypotheses to different cultural settings. Each setting would match up to a separate experiment. This allowed anthropologists, such as Mead, to study human life by participant-observation instead of an artificial lab setting. Mead used this method when she studied four different societies in an attempt to discover the range and causes of gender role. It is still used today. Margaret Mead was known for introducing radical proposals and being an activist. One of her most memorable stances on issues was her outspoken advocacy on birth control.From her findings she was able to produce many ethnographic writings, such as Coming of Age in Samoa (1928) and Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies (1935)3.

Marvin Harris

MarvinHarris.jpg

Marvin Harris (1927-2001), was born on August 18, 1927 in Brooklyn, New York. After joined the U.S. Army in World War II then attended school at Columbia University. After graduating, Harris became an assistant professor at Columbia University. His main focus of study was ideological features of culture. Later Harris did fieldwork in Mozambique in 1957 and started focusing more on behavioral aspects. He is also well known for his explanation on Indian cultures ‘sacred cows’. Harris did most of his fieldwork in Brazil, Mozambique, India, and Ecuador.

Harris was an American Anthropologist known for his writing and influence on cultural materialism. Harris’ studies were mostly based on Latin America and Brazil. Harris used Karl Marx and Malthus’s information to help form his own opinions and ideas. Harris had over 16 books published. After Harris’ publication, The Rise of Anthropological Theory, the American Anthropological Association had lots of talk and criticism over his theory. Harris’ work has helped anthropologists learn and gain more information about his studies.

Napoleon Chagnon

Napoleon Chagnon was born in 1938 in Port Austin, Michigan. He is an American anthropologist who is best known for his ethnographic work with the Yanomamö tribe of the Amazon between Venezuela and Brazil. He was a major player in developing to the evolutionary theory of cultural anthropology. He first documented the Yanomami tribe as savages who treated him very badly, but as time progressed he gained the nickname of Shaki, meaning "pesky bee".

Through his research of the Yanomamö people, Chagnon gained information about the genealogies of these people in order to find out who was married, who was related, and cooperation and settlement pattern history. Through this research he was a pioneer in the fields of sociobiology and human behavioral ecology. He also pioneered in visual anthropology, by creating documentaries about the Yanomamö people and their society. His works include: The Yanomamo Series, in collaboration with Tim Asch, including 22 separate films on the Yanomamo Culture, such as The Ax Fight (1975), Children's Magical Death (1974), Magical Death (1988), A Man Called Bee: A Study of the Yanomamo (1974), Yanomamo Of the Orinoco (1987). He has also written a few books on the Yanomamö culture: Yanomamö: The Fierce People(1968), Chagnon, N. (1974), written at New York, Studying the Yanomamö, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Yanomamo - The Last Days Of Eden, 1992.

Although much of his work was meant to document the growing of a culture, he has also been credited as a destroyer of the culture. According to Darkness in El Dorado, by Patrick Tierney, Chagnon aided the spreading of measles to the Yanomamo people. All claims by Tierney have been refuted, but it is a fact that due to exposure to other outside cultures, the people of this tribe were exposed to diseases that their bodies could not fight. Chagnon was not only known for his ethnography but he was also well known for criticism and controversy about his work and opinions.

Ray Birdwhistell

Ray L. Birdwhistell born in 1918 was raised alongside his brother in Ohio. He attended Fostoria High School where he was very involved with athletics, debate team, journalism, and a history club. He later graduated in 1936 in a class of approximately 16 students. After high school, Birdwhistell furthered his education at the University of Chicago where he earned his Ph.D. in anthropology. Birdwhistell then went on to teach at the University of Toronto, University of Louisville, and the University of Buffalo. He then became a professor at the University of Pennsylvania where he pursued his interest in nonverbal communication and kinesics.

Birdwhistell found most of his studies through observing people interactions in films. His interest in kinesics led him to study the way people used their bodies or bodily gestures to communicate nonverbally. His observations concluded that people use eye movement, facial expressions, and their chest to convey information. After acquiring this knowledge of nonverbal communication, Birdwhistell published two books; Introduction to Kinesics and Kinesics and Context.

Ray Birdwhitstell was an American Anthropologist, best known for his pioneering studies into the field of kinesics (the study of gesture posture and bodily motion as it relates to nonverbal communication). Born in Ohio in 1918, he got his Ph.D. in Anthroplogy at the University of Chicago. He later went on to teach at the Universities of Toronto, Louisville, and Buffalo. Birdhitsell released two texts on Kinesics, Introduction to Kinesics, and Kinesics in context. Although "Kinesics in Context" was better known. Birdwhitsell died in 1994.(2)

Julian Steward


Unidentified Native Man (Carrier Indian) (possibly Steward's informant, Chief Louis Billy Prince) and Julian Steward, 1940
Julian Steward was born on January 31, 1902 in Washington D.C. He was raised in a Christian Science household, and therefore was discouraged from practicing sciences at home. He didn't discover his love for the sciences until he was to attend boarding school in Owens Valley, California, at the edge of the Great Basin. As an undergraduate, Steward studied for a year at Berkeley under Alfred Kroeber and Robert Lowie, after which he transferred to Cornell University, from which he graduated in 1925 with a B.Sc. in Zoology. He went back to Berkeley to pursue graduate work. Steward received his Ph. D. degree in Anthropology in 1929 with a thesis entitled The Ceremonial Buffoon of the American Indian, a Study of Ritualized Clowning and Role Reversals. Steward went on to establish an anthropology department at the University of Michigan, where he taught until 1930. The department later gained notoriety from the appointment and guidance of Leslie White, with whose model of "universal" cultural evolution Steward disagreed. In 1930, Steward moved to the University of Utah, which appealed to Steward for its proximity to the Sierra Nevadas, and nearby archaeological fieldwork opportunities in California, Nevada, Idaho, and Oregon.Steward's career reached its apogee in 1946 when he took up the chair of the anthropology department at Columbia University - the center of anthropology in the United States. At this time, Columbia saw an influx of World War II veterans who were attending school thanks to the GI Bill. Steward quickly developed a coterie of students who would go on to have enormous influence in the history of anthropology, including Sidney Mintz, Eric Wolf, Roy Rappaport, Stanley Diamond, Robert Manners, Morton Fried, Robert F. Murphy, and influenced other scholars such as Marvin Harris. Many of these students participated in the Puerto Rico Project, yet another large-scale group research study that focused on modernization in Puerto Rico.Steward left Columbia for the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he continued to teach until his retirement in 1968. There he undertook yet another large-scale study, a comparative analysis of modernization in eleven third world societies. The results of this research were published in three volumes entitled Contemporary Change in Traditional Societies. Steward died in 1972.

While Julian Steward was a famous anthropologist for many reasons, one of which by being a professor of such high caliber and his ability to produce such a high class of scholars. In addition to his role as a teacher and administrator, Steward is most remembered for his method and theory of cultural ecology. During the first three decades of the twentieth century, American anthropology was suspicious of generalizations and often unwilling to draw broader conclusions from the meticulously detailed monographs that anthropologists produced. Steward is notable for moving anthropology away from this more particularist approach and developing a more nomothetic, social-scientific direction. His theory of "multilinear" cultural evolution examined the way in which societies adapted to their environment. This approach was more nuanced than Leslie White's theory of "universal evolution," which was influenced by thinkers such as Herbert Spencer. Steward's interest in the evolution of society also led him to examine processes of modernization. He was one of the first anthropologists to examine the way in which national and local levels of society were related to one another. He questioned the possibility creating a social theory which encompassed the entire evolution of humanity; yet, he also argued that anthropologists are not limited to description of specific, existing cultures. Steward believed it is possible to create theories analyzing typical, common culture, representative of specific eras or regions. As the decisive factors determining the development of a given culture, he pointed to technology and economics, while noting that there are secondary factors, such as political systems, ideologies, and religions. These factors push the evolution of a given society in several directions at the same time.

Paul Farmer

Paul Farmer is a medical anthropologist as well as a medical doctor. He was born in 1959 and began working to provide health care to the poor populations while still in graduate school at Harvard. After graduating in 1990, he continued to work to provide health to the poor populations around the world. He specialized in infectious disease while in school and today focuses on those that disproportionately affect the poor, such as tuberculosis. Farmer has been awarded several honors; including the Conrad N. Hilton Humanitarian Prize, American Medical Association's International Physician Award, and the 2007 Austin College Leadership Award. Back in 1987, Farmer helped put together a nonprofit called Partners in Health, whose mission is both medical and moral. Now, the group treats 1,000 patients daily for free in the Haitian countryside. The group also works to cure drug-resistant tuberculosis among prisoners in Siberia and in the slums of Lima and Peru. Farmer has devoted his life to providing medical services to the underprivileged. He uses his anthropological knowledge and ethnographic analysis to create sustainable and practical health care services for those in need. He works to offset the negative effects in those societies caused by social and structural violence. Farmer is well known for the concept of "pragmatic solidarity", the idea of working to meet the needs of the victims while advocating for positive social change.

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Originally posted by the lioness,:
wikipedia?

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Yep, that's the best source in this case. Yaw droppin' isn't it?

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Cranial features and race

27 Nov 2011
Individuals whose ancestry derives mostly from different parts of the world sometimes have different cranial features. Forensic anthropologists have studied these differences for many years, finding some that are especially useful for distinguishing ancestry. In American legal contexts, ancestry is usually at issue as a way of determining the racial affinity of unidentified skeletal remains. Hence, the forensic anthropologist usually tries to make a determination as to whether a skull has features that indicate African, European, Asian or Native American ancestry.

Cranial features are not perfect indicators of ancestry: Forensic anthropologists using multiple features claim at best 85% accuracy in their assessment of racial ancestry. When we know less about the context of a skull, we will be less and less accurate.

Here are some traits that vary between skulls with different race backgrounds. Most of them are on the face or palate.

Shape of the eye orbits, viewed from the front. Africans tend to a more rectangular shape, East Asians more circular, Europeans tend to have an ``aviator glasses'' shape.
Nasal sill: Europeans tend to have a pronounced angulation dividing the nasal floor from the anterior surface of the maxilla; Africans tend to lack a sharp angulation, Asians tend to be intermediate.

Nasal bridge: Africans tend to have an arching, ``Quonset hut'' shape, Europeans tend to have high nasal bones with a peaked angle, Asians tend to have low nasal bones with a slight angulation.


Nasal aperture: Africans tend to have wide nasal apertures, Europeans narrow.
Subnasal prognathism: Africans tend to have maxillae that project more anteriorly (prognathic) below the nose, Europeans tend to be less projecting.


Zygomatic form: Asians tend to have anteriorly projecting cheekbones. The border of the frontal process (lateral to the orbit) faces forward. In Europeans and Africans, these face more laterally and the zygomatic recedes more posteriorly.


What to do: This station includes several casts representing skulls of different ancestries, along with one ``mystery skull’’. Examine the features that vary by ancestry in this skull, comparing it with the others. Can you assess the racial origin of the mystery skull?

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http://johnhawks.net/explainer/laboratory/race-cranium/

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Skull:

All sutures are completely closed with obliteration of the sagittal suture indicating that the Queen died well into her 70s. (Figures 1 and 2) This is consistent with the diagnosis of osteoporosis mentioned above. The right zygomatic arch is missing but the left was present. The right side of the occiput is significantly larger that the left, suggesting that Weret was left- handed. The sharp nasal sills indicate a Caucasoid person, and this determination was used in our estimate of height discussed below. The remains of what is probably the brain can be seen through the foramen magnum. Brains were not removed regularly during mummi-fication until the New Kingdom so this is consistent with a Middle Kingdom burial.


Bennett (1993) in his tables for height estimation from long bones gives charts for American white, black, and Mexican females. It is highly unlikely that Queen Weret was Mexican so those tables are not reproduced here. We realize that it is just as unlikely that she was American, but in an attempt to obtain some idea of Weret's stature we reproduce below the chart showing the estimated height for both black and white females aged 70. Because the nasal sills indicated that Weret was Caucasoid, we are taking as our height estimate 156 cm or 61 in.

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Saharan remains may be evidence of first race war, 13,000 years ago


The identity of their killers is however less easy to determine. But it is conceivable that they were people from a totally different racial and ethnic group – part of a North African/ Levantine/European people who lived around much of the Mediterranean Basin.


The two groups – although both part of our species, Homo sapiens – would have looked quite different from each other and were also almost certainly different culturally and linguistically.

The sub-Saharan originating group had long limbs, relatively short torsos and projecting upper and lower jaws along with rounded foreheads and broad noses, while the North African/Levantine/European originating group had shorter limbs, longer torsos and flatter faces. Both groups were very muscular and strongly built.

Certainly the northern Sudan area was a major ethnic interface between these two different groups at around this period. Indeed the remains of the North African/Levantine/European originating population group has even been found 200 miles south of Jebel Sahaba, thus suggesting that the arrow victims were slaughtered in an area where both populations operated.

The skeletons were originally found during UNESCO-funded excavations carried out to investigate archaeological sites that were about to be inundated by the Aswan High Dam. All the Jebel Sahaba material was taken by the excavator Fred Wendorf to his laboratory in Texas, and some 30 years later was transferred to the care of the British Museum which is now working with other scientists to carry out a major new analysis of them.





The skeletons were originally found during UNESCO-funded excavations carried out to investigate archaeological sites that were about to be inundated by the Aswan High Dam. All the Jebel Sahaba material was taken by the excavator Fred Wendorf to his laboratory in Texas, and some 30 years later was transferred to the care of the British Museum which is now working with other scientists to carry out a major new analysis of them.

“The skeletal material is of great importance – not only because of the evidence for conflict, but also because the Jebel Sahaba cemetery is the oldest discovered in the Nile Valley so far,” said Dr. Daniel Antoine, a curator in the British Museum’s Ancient Egypt and Sudan Department.

Of the 59 Jebel Sahaba victims, skeletal material from two has been included in the new Early Egypt gallery. The display includes flint arrowhead fragments and a healed forearm fracture, almost certainly sustained by a victim seeking to defend himself by raising his arm during an episode of conflict.

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The reasons for all of this violence most likely comes down to climate. The Ice Age glaciers covering much of Europe and North America at this time made the climate in Egypt and Sudan cold and arid.

Among the most exciting of the new acquisitions are the materials from the site of Jebel Sahaba, now in northern Sudan, which were donated to the Museum by Dr Fred Wendorf in 2002. Excavating here in 1965–66, as part of the UNESCO-funded campaign to salvage sites destined to be flooded by the construction of the Aswan High Dam, Dr Wendorf found a cemetery (site 117) containing at least 61 individuals dating back to about 13,000 years ago.

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Bivariate analyses distinguish Jebel Sahaba from European and circumpolar samples, but do not tend to segregate them from recent North or sub-Saharan African samples

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Queens and Princesses in the Pyramid Complex of Senwosret III, Dahshur

Flanking the pyramid of Senwosret III on the north and south were seven smaller pyramids that primarily belonged to women of the royal family. Beginning with the Dynasty 4 pharaoh Khufu (r. 2551–2528 B.C.), small pyramids for queens and princesses were commonly placed near the pyramid of the king.

The three pyramids to the south of Senwosret III's pyramid are earlier and larger than those to the north. The easternmost pyramid of this group probably did not belong to a royal woman, but rather was intended to house the ka, a part of the king's spirit that played an important role in his afterlife. The center pyramid on the south belonged to a Queen Weret I. Inscriptions found around her pyramid, and also at other monuments in Egypt, tell us that she was the mother of a king, presumably Senwosret III. No burial chamber was discovered under or near Queen Weret I's pyramid, leading to the conclusion that she was interred elsewhere, perhaps at Lahun near the Faiyum oasis with her presumed husband Senwosret II. In this case, Queen Weret I's pyramid at Dahshur would have served as a cenotaph or memorial. The queen mother seems to have played an important role in the king's afterlife.

The westernmost pyramid on the south side belonged to Queen Weret II, the principal wife of Senwosret III. Although her tomb was plundered in antiquity, its entrance remained hidden under the desert sands for centuries until the entrance shaft was found by the Metropolitan Museum excavation in 1994. Queen Weret II's elaborate underground burial complex consists of a shrinelike construction placed under her pyramid and elaborate burial chambers that were actually built beneath the pyramid of the king; the two spaces are connected by a long corridor. Several small objects and pottery that escaped the attention of the tomb robbers were found in her burial chambers. Most surprising was the rare discovery of a cache of the queen's jewelry in a niche at the bottom of the entrance shaft; the unusual placement of the deposit probably led to its being overlooked by the tomb robbers. The objects include two amethyst scarabs inscribed for the pharaoh Amenemhat II, two bracelets with djed-pillar clasps signifying stability, two bracelets with gold lion pendants, a girdle composed of gold cowrie shells, and two anklets with claw pendants. The pieces, now on display in the Egyptian Museum, Cairo, represent the sixth major find of royal Middle Kingdom jewelry. On display in the Metropolitan Museum is another jewelry collection that belonged to the Dynasty 12 princess Sit-Hathor-yunet; this group of objects was excavated by the British at Lahun.

North of Senwosret III's pyramid are four smaller pyramids, built later in the king's reign. The second and third from the east belonged respectively to Princess Itakayet and Queen Nefrethenut; the owners of the other two pyramids remain unknown. Burial chambers with stone sarcophagi were placed beneath each of the four pyramids. To the east of the easternmost pyramid, eight royal women were buried in small chambers hollowed out on either side of a common corridor. In this area, Jacques de Morgan (1857–1924) discovered two caches of jewelry on two successive days in 1894. Both treasures are now displayed in the Egyptian Museum, Cairo.

All of the pyramids belonging to royal women had small chapels dedicated to the cult of the deceased; the four north pyramids seem to have had only east chapels, while the two queens' pyramids on the south had north and east chapels. Fragments of relief decoration recovered from these structures indicate that the decorative program consisted mainly of standard offering scenes: processions of offering bearers carrying food approached the queen or princess, who was seated in front of a table. In front of the woman was a large list enumerating the type and quantity of goods she could expect to receive in the afterlife. Additional spaces were filled with representations of piled foodstuffs. The area around the door included scenes of men butchering cattle for meat offerings. Inscriptions above the figures of the women, at the tops of the walls, and above the entrance listed their names and titles.

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Miguel Botella Lopez

Two skulls excavated from the Qubbet el-Hawa necropolis in Egypt.

By Stephanie Pappas

LiveScience






Even the best-off ancient Egyptians suffered from malnutrition and preventable disease, a new analysis of mummies and skeletons finds.

The bodies come from the Qubbet el-Hawa necropolis, which is near the modern city of Aswan in southern Egypt. Constructed in the 12th dynasty (between 1939 B.C. and 1760 B.C.) and reused in later periods, the necropolis contains remains of people from across the social spectrum.

An analysis of more than 200 of these bodies, which has not yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal, finds that wealth did not necessarily buy health in ancient Egypt.

"Although the cultural level of the age was extraordinary, the anthropological analysis of the human remains reveals the population in general, and the governors — the highest social class — lived in conditions in which their health was very precarious, on the edge of survival," study researcher Miquel Botella Lopez of the University of Granada said in a statement.

Life expectancy was only about 30 years, the researchers found, thanks to a high infant mortality rate, malnutrition and gastrointestinal infections caused by drinking polluted Nile waters. A great many of the dead in the necropolis were between 17 and 25 years old, the researchers announced Wednesday.

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http://science.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/03/06/17213691-ancient-mummies-show-even-rich-egyptians-could-be-in-poor-health?lite


UNIVERSITY OF GRANADA


http://www.ujaen.es/investiga/qubbetelhawa/en/index.php

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When did war begin? Does war have deep roots, or is it a modern invention? A new analysis of ancient human remains by anthropologists Jonathan Haas and Matthew Piscitelli of Chicago's Field Museum provides strong evidence for the latter view. [*See also next post, "Survey of Earliest Human Settlements Undermines Claims That War Has Deep Evolutionary Roots."]


But before I get to the work of Haas and Piscitelli, I'd like to return briefly to my last post, which describes a study of modern-day foragers (also called hunter gatherers), whose behavior is assumed to be similar to that of our Stone Age ancestors. The study found that modern foragers have engaged in little or no warfare, defined as a lethal attack by two or more people in one group against another group. This finding contradicts the claim that war emerged hundreds of thousands or even millions of years ago.

Defenders of the Deep Roots Theory have leveled various criticisms at the forager study. [*See Clarification below.] They complain that foragers examined in the studyand modern foragers in general--have been pacified by nearby states. Or the foragers are "isolated," living in remote regions where they rarely come into contact with other groups. In other words, these foraging societies are atypical.

But you could argue that all modern tribal societies are atypical, including those cited by Deep Rooters as evidence for their position. Take, for example, the infamous Yanomamo, an Amazonian society that is extremely warlike, according to anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon, who began observing them in the 1960s.

The Yanomamo practice horticulture, which makes them a poor proxy for nomadic Stone Age hunter gatherers. Atypical. Moreover, even Chagnon acknowledges that some Yanomamo are much violent than others. Of course, Deep Rooters assert that these relatively peaceful Yanomamo are atypical.

When Deep Rooters complain that a society is atypical, they really mean that the society is not as violent as predicted by the Deep Roots theory. They are guilty of egregious confirmation bias, and circular reasoning.

Deep Rooters display this same trait when it comes to Pan troglodytes, our closest genetic relative. Since the mid-1970s, researchers have observed chimpanzees from one troop killing members of another troop--proving, Deep Rooters claim, that the roots of intergroup violence are even older than the Homo genus.

Deep Rooters conveniently overlook the fact some Pan troglodytes communities have been observed for years without carrying out a lethal raid. Moreover, researchers have never observed a deadly attack by the chimpanzee species Pan paniscus, also known as Bonobos. Deep Rooters insist that only the most violent chimps are representative of our primordial ancestry, even though Pan paniscus is just as genetically related to us as Pan troglodytes.

To be fair, proponents of the view that war is a recent cultural inventionI'll call them Inventors--also play this game. They find reasons to discount extremely violent behavior--by either chimps or humansas atypical. For example, both chimp raids and Yanomamo warfare may be responses to recent encroachment on their habitat by outside societies.

But Inventors can also point to a far more persuasive source of data supporting their position: the archaeological record. The most ancient clear-cut evidence of deadly group violence is a mass grave, estimated to be 13,000 years old, found in the Jebel Sahaba region of the Sudan, near the Nile River. Of the 59 skeletons in the grave, 24 bear marks of violence, such as hack marks and embedded stone points.

Even this site is an outlier. The vast majority of archaeological evidence for warfarewhich consists of skeletons marked by violence, art depicting battles, defensive fortifications, and weapons clearly designed for war rather than huntingis less than 10,000 years old.

Deep Rooters try to dismiss these facts by resorting to the old argument that absence of evidence does not equal evidence of absence. They allege, in other words, that there is not significant evidence of any human activity prior to 10,000 years ago.

To rebut this charge, Haas and Piscitelli recently carried out an exhaustive survey of human remains more than 10,000 years old described in the scientific literature. They counted more than 2,900 skeletons from over 400 different sites. Not counting the Jebel Sahaba skeletons, Haas and Piscitelli found four separate skeletons bearing signs of violence, consistent with homicide, not warfare.

This "dearth of evidence," Haas continued, "is in contrast with later periods when warfare clearly appears in this historical record of specific societies and is marked by skeletal markers of violence, weapons of war, defensive sites and architecture, etc."

Haas and Piscitelli present their data in "The Prehistory of Warfare: Misled by Ethnography," a chapter in War, Peace, and Human Nature, a collection of essays published this year by Oxford University Press. The book was edited by anthropologist Douglas Fry, co-author of the forager study I described in my last post.

"Declaring that warfare is rampant amongst almost all hunters and gatherers (as well as those cunning and aggressive chimpanzees) fits well with a common public perception of the deep historical and biological roots of warfare," Haas and Piscitelli write. "The presumed universality of warfare in human history and ancestry may be satisfying to popular sentiment; however, such universality lacks empirical support."

Many people think that war, if ancient and innate, must also be inevitable. President Barack Obama seemed to be expressing this notion in 2009 when he accepted the Nobel Peace Prize, just nine days after he announced a major escalation of the U.S. war in Afghanistan.

"War, in one form or another, appeared with the first man," Obama said. He added, "We must begin by acknowledging the hard truth: we will not eradicate violent conflict in our lifetimes."

When will Deep Rooters acknowledge that they are wrong?

Clarification: Some readers might conclude based on my criticism of Deep Rooters that they are all hawks, warmongers, who think that war, because it is innate, is inevitable and perhaps even beneficial in some sense. Such views were once quite common, especially in the era of social Darwinism. President Teddy Roosevelt once said, for example, "All the great masterful races have been fighting races. No triumph of peace is quite so great as the supreme triumph of war." None of the Deep Rooters I have cited subscribe to such odious balderdash. All fervently hope that humanity can eradicate or at least greatly reduce the frequency of war. Deep Rooters believe that we will be better equipped to solve the problem of war if we accept the Deep Roots theory. Of course, I disagree with them on this point. As indicated by the above comments of President Barack Obamaas well as comments on my blog--the Deep Roots Theory leads many people to be pessimistic about the prospects for ending war, a view that can be self-fulfilling. I would nonetheless accept the Deep Roots theory if the evidence supported it, but the evidence points in the other direction. That is my main source of disagreement with Deep Rooters. In the interests of constructive dialogue, however, I'm providing a link, sent to me by anthropologist and prominent Deep Rooter Richard Wrangham, to a column supporting his position. In the column, political scientist and self-described "conservative Darwinian" Larry Arnhart asserts that "explaining the evolutionary propensity to war in human nature is not to affirm this as a necessity that cannot be changed. In fact, understanding war as a natural propensity can be a precondition for understanding how best to promote peace." Okay, so we all want peace. We just disagree on how to get there. More to come.



13,000 year old skeletons in mass grave near Nile are oldest evidence of group violence.


Photo of Jebel Sahaba grave by Fred Wendorf, http://www.chaz.org.

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"I suspect there was no outside enemy, these were tribes mounting regular and ferocious raids amongst themselves for scarce resources," curator Renee Friedman said. "Nobody was spared: there were many women and children among the dead, a very unusual composition for any cemetery, and almost half bore the marks of violent death. Many more may have died of flesh wounds which left no marks."

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The purpose of this thread is to show/ expose modern day prejudice notions, stemming from a traditional (racist) point of view. (willing or unwillingly)

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Originally posted by lamin:

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The purpose of this thread is to show/ expose modern day prejudice notions, stemming from a traditional (racist) point of view. (willing or unwillingly)

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Diop was a firm critic of erroneous theories of race. He should be on the list as you according to your criteria. Wikipedia would not include him. Arguably, W.E.B Dubois could be on that list too. He was editor of Phylon for many years and his "The World and Africa" did make some useful anthropological points. Wikepida authors would not want to include him. That's why African/black writers should edit that list.

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