Anthropologist Pascal Boyer thinks he knows what all supernatural beings — gods, ghosts, witches, fairies, and so on — have in common: They are optimal compromises between the interesting and the expected.
Anthropology
Photo by Francisco Ghisletti on Unsplash
Modern reconstruction of a Neanderthal • ©2021 Neanderthal Museum—Holger Neumann
Rewriting history
Pity the poor Neanderthals, who had the misfortune of being discovered at the time Darwin was evoking the outrage of his contemporaries by suggesting that humans, apes, and gorillas have a common ancestry.
An Daingean • Photo by Craig (CC BY-SA 2.0)
What’s in a name?
Ireland is divided into four provinces and thirty-two counties, and these are further divided into some 60,000 townlands. Names lay thick upon this land.
Mursi Tribe stick fighters • Photo by Rod Waddington (CC BY-SA 2.0)
On aggression
Two weeks ago [in 2005], The Sunday Times Magazine published a photo essay by the distinguished photographer Don McCullin on the tribes of the Omo valley in southern Ethiopia.
A facial reconstruction of Homo floresiensis • Cicero Moraes et al (CC BY 4.0)
What makes us human?
About fifty years ago, a “stone age” tribe was discovered living in an isolated valley of Papua New Guinea. These people had virtually no contact with the outside world, no metal, no cooking vessels, no hearths.
Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash
Krispy Kreme nation
I’ve recently returned from the heartland, and I have one thing to report. Middle Americans are fat. Hugely, jeans-bustingly, roly-poly fat. The Bible Belt has busted its buckle.
Columbus landing in the West Indies, as depicted by John Vanderlyn
The Columbus myth
My favorite picture book when I was a kid told the story of Christopher Columbus.
Reconstruction of Homo neanderthalensis by John Gurche • Photo by Chip Clark (Public Domain)
Are we what we eat?
A shiver went up our spines when we read about the recent discoveries at Moula-Guercy cave in France. Archeologists found a treasure trove of 100,000-year-old bones of Neanderthals — our nearest cousins on the human family tree — along with the bones of deer and other animals.
A bone flute from Jiahu • Image by Cangminzho (CC BY-SA 4.0)
A recently found 9,000-year-old flute still plays haunting melodies
My computer has just been playing a 9,000-year-old seven-holed flute, the oldest playable musical instrument ever discovered.
“Pizarro Seizing the Inca of Peru” by John Everett Millais (1846)
Two diplomats of the IQ wars
Some nations are rich, others are poor.