Louis Leakey on the failure of the stage model of human evolution
From Louis Leakey in 1965:
All posts tagged with history of anthropology
Quote: Fay Cooper-Cole on bones and races
In 1945, American Naturalist published a lecture by Fay Cooper-Cole on “Some problems of human racial development and migration”. Cooper-Cole had been a stud...
Working toward more ethical anatomical collections at the University of Cape Town
Victoria Gibbon of the University of Cape Town has written a piece for The Conversation recounting how UCT is addressing some historical wrongs in the develo...
Quote: Darwin on human variation
There is much that could be said about Charles Darwin’s discussion of human races in Descent of Man. In Chapter 7 he embarked on a long discussion of whether...
Quote: ‘Disciplinary integration’ in anthropology is a myth
I’ve been reading a new open access book by the anthropologist Rob Borofsky: An Anthropology of Anthropology: Time to Shift Paradigms?. The book is available...
Will biological anthropologists start publishing in American Anthropologist again?
Adam Van Arsdale and Mary Shenk put out a call in American Anthropologist for more biological anthropologists to submit their work to American Anthropologist...
A new perspective on Homo floresiensis from one of the discoverers
In the South China Morning Post, a great story featuring Indonesian archaeologist Emanuel “Wahyu” Saptomo: “Indonesian archaeologist recalls Flores ‘hobbit’ ...
Link: A plea to think about the ethics of sampling ancient bodies
Chip Colwell writes in The Conversation about the questionable ethics involved in some ancient DNA sampling: “Rights of the dead and the living clash when sc...
Dilemma of the obstetrical dilemma
During the past few years, anthropologists have been questioning the long-held idea that human birth is uniquely risky for mothers and infants because of the...
Link: The discovery story of the LB1 skeleton
Paige Madison pointed me today to her post from 2015 recounting the discovery of the LB1 skeleton, from Liang Bua, Flores: “The Moment the Hobbit was Discove...
Quote: W. W. Howells on naming Homo erectus
W. W. Howells, in the conclusion of the 1980 review, “Homo erectus–Who, When and Where: A Survey”:
Quote: Howells on the pace of description
William. W. Howells (1980), writing on the way that new discoveries have affected the interpretation of Homo erectus:
South African San adopt code of research ethics
By Linda Nordling in Science: “San people of Africa draft code of ethics for researchers”:
Quote: Dobzhansky on borderline cases of species and races
Theodosius Dobzhansky, in his essay, “On species and races of living and fossil man” (1944):
Photo: An early Neandertal life rendering
One of the earliest artist renderings of a Neanderthal (1887), published in a magazine called The Open Court, which was dedicated to the dialogue between rel...
Some early uses of the term ‘missing link’ in anthropology
I’ve been tracing some early uses of the term “missing link”. Paleontologists really hate this term today. It conjures the pre-evolutionary idea of a “Great ...
Link: Embargo-breakers from the dawn of paleoanthropology
From Paige Madison, a historical note on the public revelation of Raymond Dart’s examination of the first australopith: “Announcing the Taung Child to the Wo...
Quote: Franz Boas the pinko
Wilton Krogman, in a footnote to his review, “Fifty years of physical anthropology.”
Quote: Ales Hrdlicka on the future of anthropology
Aleš Hrdlička, in the concluding paragraphs of The Most Ancient Skeletal Remains of Man, his 1914 review of the fossil evidence of human evolution:
Link: Skeletons of the mountain gorillas
The NYCEP blog has a great post by Natalie O’Shea, who has been helping prepare the skeletal remains of gorillas who died natural deaths within the Rwanda Vo...
Link: Homo naledi and digital convergence in paleoanthropology
Todd Hanson comments on whether the Rising Star project may be a sign of a future of digital convergence in paleoanthropology: “From Cave to Rave: What Digit...
A retrospective on the Piltdown doubters
Darren Naish has a very nice post about one aspect of the saga of Piltdown Man: the scientists who never believed that the jaw and calvaria of the specimen a...
Link: William King, namer of Homo neanderthalensis
Paige Madison looks into the history of William King, a nineteenth-century geologist at Queens College in Galway, Ireland, who first published a name for the...
Quote: Dobzhansky on the taxonomic abuse of hominin systematists
This is a footnote in Theodosius Dobzhansky’s notable 1944 paper, “On species and races of living and fossil man”:
Quote: Bartholomew and Birdsell on introgressive hybridization
I was surprised to find this quote from George Bartholomew, Jr. and Joseph Birdsell (1953:495), explicitly mentioning the possibility that the spread of homi...
Quote: Stanley Garn on the evolution of brain size
Stanley Garn, writing in “Culture and the direction of human evolution” (1963: 222):
Quote: Dreger on heretics
Alice Dreger discusses her new book, Galileo’s Middle Finger: Heretics, Activists, and the Search for Justice in Science in The Scientist: “Stirring the Pot”.
Raymond Dart and the Russian cast connection
I pointed earlier this week to an article by Lydia Pyne about perceptions of Neandertals over the years, and hinted at a second recent article. That article ...
Bernard Wood interviewed in Current Biology
A recent issue of Current Biology has a short interview with paleoanthropologist Bernard Wood: “Bernard Wood”. The interview covers his transition from a tra...
A visit to the world’s largest body farm
Vox writer Joseph Stromberg visited the Forensic Anthropology Center at Texas State University, and has written an in-depth description of his visit: “The sc...
Neandertals inside and outside humanity
The historian of science Lydia Pyne has published a couple of recent articles that detail interesting aspects of the history human evolution. The first is ab...
A Neanderthal memoir
Carl Zimmer reviews Svante Paabo’s new book, Neanderthal Man: In Search of Lost Genomes, in the New York Times: “Missing Links”. Zimmer gives a balanced revi...
Popularity of hominin species names
I was curious about the use of Homo ergaster over time. It seems to me that fewer and fewer paleoanthropologists have been using it over the last few years. ...
Looking back on Mungo
In a recent article, the geologist Jim Bowler gives a retrospective on the 1974 discovery of the “Mungo Man” skeleton in Australia: “Mungo Man is a physical ...
What happened to Michael Rockefeller?
Smithsonian magazine has a long feature article by Carl Hoffman, about the 1961 disappearance of Michael Rockefeller: “What Really Happened to Michael Rockef...
Leakey, Tobias and Napier on the definition of our genus
Leakey, Tobias and Napier (1964) defined the species, Homo habilis. A simple species diagnosis was not enough: Leakey and colleagues had to argue for an expa...
Quote: Phillip Tobias on Sherwood Washburn
I have been reading through Phillip Tobias’ memoir, Into the Past, and ran across this passage about Sherwood Washburn. Washburn was a very influential figur...
The brains behind an exhibition
Sara Perry writing on Savage Minds, this time with an interesting historical story about the Wellcome Collection’s recent “Brains: Mind as Matter” exhibition...
Tim White featured on Science Friday
Last week, Science Friday posted a great video interview with paleoanthropologist Tim White. The interview is part of their “Desktop Diaries” series, in whic...
Quote: Hockett and Ascher on signs and symbols
From “The human revolution”, by Charles Hockett and Robert Ascher, footnote 2 Hockett:1964:
Quote: Phillip Tobias on the study of race
I was doing research on another topic, and ran across an obituary of Phillip Tobias that I hadn’t seen: “Phillip Tobias, SA’s great scientist and human being...
An Australopithecus sediba paean
Kate Wong: “Is Australopithecus sediba the Most Important Human Ancestor Discovery Ever?”
More on the reclamation proclamation
Michael E. Smith comments on the Chagnon/Sahlins flap from the perspective of archaeology: “Chagnon, Sahlins, and science”:
Anthropology's Spinal Tap problem
The Thesis Whisperer brings up the topic of prolonged rudeness in academic culture: “Academic assholes and the circle of niceness”. When I write that it’s ti...
Sahlins and Chagnon
Essential reading today for anthropologists: Serena Golden’s account of how Marshall Sahlins resigned from the National Academy of Sciences: “A Protest Resig...
Napoleon Chagnon profile
The New York Times has a very long and informative profile of Napoleon Chagnon, written by Emily Eakin: “Napoleon Chagnon, America’s Most Controversial Anthr...
Quote: Inconsistencies of anthropological theory
Courtesy of a Twitter exchange, I was reading Stanley R. Barrett, who in the introduction to his 1984 book, The Rebirth of Anthropological Theory, considers ...
Phrenology, race and history
The movie Django Unchained includes a scene in which the antagonist (a rich, white, plantation owner) expounds on phrenology as a justification of slavery. J...
Quote: Fossey on Louis Leakey's sense of humor
Dian Fossey, writing in Gorillas in the Mist about her recruitment to study the mountain gorilla:
Hooton's complexity
Eugene Giles has an article in the new Yearbook of Physical Anthropology that will be of great historical interest to many in the field: “Two faces of Earnes...
Quote: H.G. Wells on lacunar reading
From the preface of Mankind in the Making, by H. G. Wells:
Quote: Brub and the Boas Bowl
Michael Brub writes in the Chronicle of Higher Education: “Why I Resigned the Paterno Chair”, with a discussion of academics versus athletics. I’m linking be...
Quote: Ashley-Montagu and his zingers
Ashley Montagu is a unique character from the history of anthropology. I ran across an essay of his yesterday, which I found entertaining for its many zinger...
J. Barnard Davis and the variation within races
Once again, I’m looking through source material for a very different reason, but ran across an interesting piece of history. J. Barnard Davis was a British p...
"Asymmetrical characters"
In case you worry that paleoanthropology never casts off bad ideas, take a look at the intro to a review paper by Ernest Hooton in 1925 Hooton:asymmetrical:1...
Paleoanthropologist Phillip V. Tobias dies
I want to pass along the news that Phillip Tobias, one of the world’s leading paleoanthropologists and anatomists, died earlier this week. The Gauteng Touris...
Quote: Geertz on the variable
From Clifford Geertz’ 1965 essay, “The impact of the concept of culture on the concept of man” Geertz:1965:
Quote: Sapir on the slipshod
From Edward Sapir’s response to Alfred Kroeber’s 1917 essay on “The Superorganic” Sapir:superorganic:1917:
Quote: Malinowski's Metropolis
Bronislaw Malinowski, in his 1936 article, “Culture as a determinant of behavior” Malinowski:determinant:1936:
Quote: Ruth Benedict on pugnacity
From the classic anthropology text Patterns of Culture by Ruth Benedict Benedict:1934, a striking case of the “culture over nature” position:
Quote: E. E. Evans-Pritchard on social anthropology and humanities
From “Social anthropology: Past and present”, a 1950 publication of a lecture by E. E. Evans-Pritchard:
Quote: Johanson and White on comparing samples
Don Johanson and Tim White, writing in their 1979 paper on the phylogeny of early hominins (and introducing Australopithecus afarensis as an ancestor of late...
Quote: Marshall Sahlins on Claude Levi-Strauss
A couple of years ago, the AAA solicited comments about Claude Levi-Strauss from Marshall Sahlins: “On the anthropology of Claude Levi-Strauss”.
Quote: Edward Sapir on language and social reality
Edward Sapir, from “The Status of Linguistics as a Science”:
Quote: Radcliffe-Brown on anthropology as a science
A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, in Structure and Function in Primitive Society, on the role of social anthropology as a science. Radcliffe-Brown has been considered a...
Anthropological theory and ethnography summer course
I am going to be offering a summer course this year that is outside my ordinary teaching rotation, Anthropology 300, “Cultural Anthropology: Theory and Ethno...
New Peking Man report
The South African Journal of Science has a new article by Lee Berger, Wu Liu and Wu Xiujie, reporting on the mystery of the “Peking Man” fossils. The remains...
Mailbag: Boas and "unconventional models" of American prehistory
Re: Solutrean publicity blitz:
Random Scholar: "Plenty of genuine tails"
I was doing some research involving Aleš Hrdlička, and ran across this curious item published in Science in 1926 (“Human tails: a statement and correction”),...
Piltdown and Presapiens
Robin McKie has a feature article about the Piltdown hoax in the Observer today, that makes good reading for those who may not know the history of this case:...
Aleut origins and relationships
Michael Balter last week had a news article in Science reviewing archaeological and genetic research into the origins and relationships of Aleut populations ...
Quote: Marshall Sahlins on relevance
Marshall Sahlins writing in the pamphlet, Waiting for Foucault, p. 18:
When anthropological and geological facts collide
This passage is the first paragraph of the introduction to Franz Weidenreich’s monograph, The Skull of Sinanthropus pekinensis</em> Weidenreich:ZKD:194...
White on books
The Browser has up an interview with paleoanthropologist Tim White, focused around his choice of five books to recommend: (“Tim White on prehistoric man”). A...
Florida: Anthropologists not wanted
Last week I linked to my essay, “What’s wrong with anthropology?” My theme was that anthropology has been a failure over the past two decades at engaging wit...
What's wrong with anthropology?
Anthropologies is an online project organized by Ryan Anderson that brings together voices reflecting the state of the discipline today. The current volume h...
The great world CT-scanning tour
The international version of Der Spiegel is running an English-language profile of the traveling CT-scan project from Jean-Jacques Hublin and the Max-Planck ...
A Lucy remembrance
The CNN medical blog (associated with Sanjay Gupta) is running a short piece by Don Johanson, which may be of interest: “‘Lucy’ discoverer: Why I study human...
Charles Knight Neandertals
A piece of historical reconstruction:
Gould's "Unconscious Manipulation of Data"
OK, so I can’t say it’s not “brain science” because measuring skulls is as close to brain science as anthropology ever gets. But it just shouldn’t be that ha...
Narrow anthro
Archaeologist (and blogger) Michael E. Smith writes some thoughts about “Why anthropology is too narrow an intellectual context for archaeology.”
AMNH Leakey-Johanson event
The American Museum of Natural History has arranged an event featuring Richard Leakey and Don Johanson, which is happening tomorrow evening: “Human Evolution...
Quote: Hrdlicka's blackboard
Here’s a quote from Ales Hrdlicka’s report on “Lansing Man” – a skeleton found near Lansing, Kansas in 1902, which was proposed as extremely early evidence o...
Weidenreich and the Hittite Goddess
By chance I ran across an 2009 post by Rachel Martin of NYU Museum Studies, which investigates a mystery related to one of my scientific heroes, Franz Weiden...
Quote: Barbara J. King on anthropology
Barbara J. King has written a short essay about why she loves anthropology:
Dreger into Darkness
A reader pointed me to a new paper by Alice Dreger Dreger:2011, focusing on the “Darkness in El Dorado” scandal in the American Anthropological Association. ...
Milford and Razib on bloggingheads.tv
It’s Milford Wolpoff and Razib Khan on bloggingheads.tv!
Going Draper
Last week, Nature ran a commentary by Adam Kuper and Jonathan Marks, titled, “Anthropologists unite!”
Boas goes low
While researching another question, I have been reviewing some Franz Boas. In 1936, American Anthropologist ran a piece by Alfred Kroeber which reviewed some...
Mailbag: Loren Eiseley
Re: The ‘amazing’ Boskops:
Kerfufflists or kerfufflers?
Anthropologist Hugh Gusterson writes about the #AAAfail controversy in the Chronicle of Higher Education, from his perspective as one of the board members wh...
Quote: Washburn on early theories of human evolution
Sherwood Washburn, in a lecture published in 1982 Washburn:fifty:1982
Quote: Peter Wood on anthropology
Peter Wood, in a review of Paul Shankman’s book, The Trashing of Margaret Mead: Anatomy of an Anthropological Controversy:
Mailbag: Anthropology in transition
Re: Anthropology in transition:
Anthropology in transition
My Wisconsin colleague Herb Lewis wrote a piece in 2005 about the development of anthropology across the 1960’s, as academics became more politically radical...
Morris Goodman obituary
A reader forwards the news that Morris Goodman has died. Goodman was among the first to demonstrate molecular similarity between humans and chimpanzees; he b...
Heyerdahl hyperdiffusion
Martin Rundkvist has been giving a series of lectures about pseudoarchaeologists. Today he writes about Thor Heyerdahl, setting his ideas into the mid-20th-c...
Mead off
Does anybody read Margaret Mead anymore?
"Neandertal stimulation": Weckler and biogeography
I’m reviewing some old viewpoints about the relationships of Neandertals and other peoples. These include mainstream opinions that persisted over decades as ...
An ape by any other name
As usual, I was looking for something else – this time in the writing of Henry Fairfield Osborn – and came across an interesting paper that he delivered as a...
Quote: Louis Leakey and the destruction of mankind
From the Popular Science archive, June 1963 (p. 24):
Quote: Popular Science on 1929
More from the Popular Science archive, in the January 1929 issue: “What the World Owes to 1929.” Writing the short “Anthropology” summary was Ales Hrdlička.
Quote: Popular Science on Taung (1924)
A reader passes along a link to the Popular Science archive, now available free.
Quote: Coon on Boskop
From p. 641 of Carleton Coon’s Origin of Races (1963):
"They've learned nothing"
Charles C. Mann reports in this week’s Science about the American Anthropological Association’s revisitation of the sorry Darkness in El Dorado affair (“Chag...
Levi-Strauss, RIP
Claude Lévi-Strauss has died, and the obituary tells me this:
Coon hunts the yeti
I was looking through Carleton Coon’s The Origin of Races, hunting down some old references to ABO variation in primates (more on that later).
Quote: Earnest Hooton on Piltdown
I’ve been flipping through Earnest Hooton’s Up From the Ape (1946 edition). It’s a remarkable book for many reasons. I’m almost transfixed by his discussion ...
Quote: Earnest Hooton on the trouble with teeth
Earnest Hooton, on p. 170 of Up From the Ape:
The end of four-field anthropology at Harvard
The Harvard University Gazette reports cheeringly on the breakup of the anthropology department.
Hesperopithecus
Worth reading: Laelaps on “Hesperopithecus”, “The ‘Million-Dollar Pig’s Tooth Mystery’”.
Polly Wiessner profile
The New York Times’ Claudia Dreifus interviews anthropologist Polly Wiessner, known for her pathbreaking work on Hxaro exchange among the !Kung and other soc...
Archaeology informing the modern
The Economist runs a little article about Sir Arthur Evans and Knossos:
Grover Krantz on exhibit
Earlier this year, I pointed to a Washington Post profile of Grover Krantz. Now the Post follows up with the news that Grover’s skeleton is on exhibit. And h...
P. T. Barnum's gorilla
In the course of my research for the ape strength article, I ran across an old piece from The Atlantic Monthly, in which Alexander Young gives a long satire ...
Gorilla snippets from the 1800's
I’m skipping around the net doing some historical research today, and I’ve been running across stories that try to describe apes to the general public, aroun...
Grover Krantz profile
A reader forwards this article from the Washington Post:
Ashley Montagu on recent evolution
Ashley Montagu was a British anthropologist, born under the name Israel Ehrenberg. He moved to the United States for work at Columbia for his Ph.D work, afte...
Plain statements on race, from Earnest Hooton (1936)
This seems to be “Race Month” on the internet. I thought some history might be enlightening, since most people seem to be just writing off the tops of their ...
Kulturkreise of the Paleolithic Era
I’m reading through the English translation of The Culture Historical Method of Ethnology by Wilhelm Schmidt – one of the practitioners of the Vienna School ...
Julian Steward and the logic of diffusion
I’ve had a tremendous response to the last entry in the diffusion series, which discussed the treatment of cultural diffusion by the Boasian school. I really...
Early concepts of cultural diffusion: the Boasians
I went looking for Lowie, because I was curious about the introduction of the diffusion concept into cultural anthropology. The mathematical description of d...
Robert Lowie on anthropology and psychology
It is hard to find a better discussion of how anthropology relates to culture than the first chapter of Robert Lowie’s 1917 book, Culture and Ethnology. For ...
Ten fossils
MSNBC is featuring a tour of “ten fossils that evolved the tale of our origins.” You may find it interesting which ten they chose, and in any event it raises...
Sahlins on Leslie White
Marshall Sahlins contributed a short three-paragraph reflection on Leslie White for the NY Times Magazine: