Quotes About Anthropology

When asked why he wrote the book, Freed said: In the 1980s, I joined the small group of anthropologists who were writing about the history of their subject. I believed that I could add some balance to American anthropological history, and that the best place to start was with museums— where the story began. The more I delved into the archives, the more I was fascinated. I was hooked.

The expectation of mutual fidelity is a rather recent invention. Numerous cultures have allowed husbands to seek sexual gratification outside marriage. Less frequently, but often enough to challenge common preconceptions, wives have also been allowed to do this without threatening the marriage. In a study of 109 societies, anthropologists found that only 48 forbade extramarital sex to both husbands and wives.27

Wrangham cites several studies indicating that in fact humans don't do well on raw food: they can't maintain their body weight, and half of the women on a raw-food regimen stop menstruating. Devotees of raw food rely heavily on juicers and blenders, because otherwise they would have to spend as much time chewing as the chimps do. It is difficult, if not impossible, to extract sufficient energy from unprocessed plant matter to power a body with such a big, hungry brain.

there is a school of archaeological thought that contends that the reason humanity turned to agriculture was to secure a more reliable supply of alcohol, not food.

In most, if not quite all, parts of the world, the size, shape and longevity of the human body have changed more substantially, and much more rapidly, during the past three centuries than over many previous millennia.

I guess I just like the idea of digging things up. Although I used to be scared of human skeletons.

No longer do companies study consumers' psyches only by asking people what they think about technology and how they use it. Now they conduct observational research, dispatching anthropologists to employ their ethnographic skills by interviewing, watching and videotaping consumers in their natural habitats.

I would love to study cultures and people.

Since, beginning with the same premise and examining the same body of anthropological evidence, she now arrives at a slightly different sexual role for women, one might seriously question the basis upon which she decides the roles a woman should play -- and finds it so easy to change the rules of the game from one decade to the next.

the adoption of a narrower pelvis to accommodate our new gait brought a huge amount of pain and danger to women in childbirth. Until recent times, no other animal on Earth was more likely to die in childbirth than a human, and perhaps none even now suffers as much.

Our seams don't burst, we don't spontaneously sprout leaks," says Nina Jablonski, professor of anthropology at Penn State University, who is the doyenne of all things cutaneous.

The remote valley of Lake Turkana (formerly Lake Rudolf) in Kenya is now one of the world's most productive sites for early human remains

Felipe Fernández-Armesto, at least thirty-eight theories have been put forward to explain why people took to living in communities: that they were driven to it by climatic change, or by a wish to stay near their dead, or by a powerful desire to brew and drink beer, which could only be indulged by staying in one place.

Trinil skullcap.

Carleton Coon of the University of Pennsylvania suggested that some modern races have different sources of origin, implying that some of us come from superior stock to others.

of all the disciplines in science, paleoanthropology boasts perhaps the largest share of egos

At all events, rather less is known about Lucy than is generally supposed. It isn't even actually known that she was a female.

assumed to be australopithecines because there are no other known candidates. I

the Maoris of New Zealand have thirty-five words for dung (don't ask me why).

at least thirty-eight theories have been put forward to explain why people took to living in communities: that they were driven to it by climatic change, or by a wish to stay near their dead, or by a powerful desire to brew and drink beer, which could only be indulged by staying in one place.

Farming was independently invented at least seven times—in China, the Middle East, New Guinea, the Andes, the Amazon basin, Mexico, and West Africa.

U osvit spoznajne revolucije, ogovaranje je pomoglo Homo sapiens-u da stvori ve?e i stabilnije grupe. Ali, ?ak i ogovaranje ima svoja ograni?enja. Sociološka istraživanja su pokazala da je maksimalna veli?ina grupe povezane ogovaranjem oko 150 pojedinaca. Ve?ina ljudi ne može li?no da poznaje niti uspešno da ogovara više od 150 ljudskih bi?a.

Each new grammar pattern we find sheds light on how the human brain creates language. The loss of even one language may forever close the door to a full understanding of human cognitive capacity.

Anthropology seems so bland and friendly now, but in the early 20th century, Jews could only be dissected badly by these fields. The Jews were extremely assimilated; it's a different world than now.