r/AskAnthropology

I’m an anthropology major set to graduate in 2027 with my BA in anthropology and a minor in Spanish. I want to do a MD-PhD dual degree in anthro and do humanitarian medicine and ethnography.

I am interested in dual power approaches to medicine (cultural competency building in Biomedicine while also meaning-making and culture-building*). I want to do fieldwork in South America and the Caribbean and would also like to be pan-African in my approach by not just exploring the Afro-Latin diaspora but the African continent as well.

Considering this, should I pursue Portuguese or French as a third language? I know that Brazil/Brazilian academia has become a more significant funder of the social sciences compared to the declining interest of the West and United States. That being said, the overwhelming number of Francophone countries in Africa may mean more opportunity in those countries.*

Endnote:

1. I say culture-building as a way to separate it from this racist, western idea of cultural “development” or “progress” which assumes linearity.

2. I would love to say where I want to work but, as is the case in most jobs and especially with anthropology, most often you can only do research where the funding is. I wish things were differently.

I just read this: "Originating from archaic African sapiens, there are two theories: 1) European archaic sapiens gave rise to two lineages: the now-extinct Neanderthals and modern sapiens. 2) Homo erectus on each continent evolved into sapiens."

Or is there a third theory that is actually more accepted?

Thanks in advance!

I've read that:
(1) Homo Sapiens came into existence 300,000 (maybe 400,000) years ago; (2) from the very beginning of the species, Homo Sapiens were anatomically identical to the Homo Sapiens of today, and
(3) Homo Sapiens co-existed with at least 4-5 other hominin species until 50,000 years ago or so.

Illustrations of those hominin species look like the drawing in this link:
https://www.britannica.com/science/human-evolution

Some questions come to mind. Were the first Homo Sapiens really anatomically identical to us today? Same size brain and skull shape? How certain is that view?

Why would there be no
evolution within Homo Sapiens over 300,000 years? Didn't racial and geographic characteristics at least develop over time (like skin color)?

How could Homo Sapiens look so different immediately from the other hominin species if they all a common ancestor species?

I watched a video about ghost hominins aka bits of DNA that seem to divergent, archaic or "weird" to be from just homo sapiens or another hominid we have fossils of (like neanderthals and denisovans) but this gave me a question - how do we define a "human genome"? How do we determine the standard for a modern human with so much genetic diversity? And how do we tell it's not just a random mutation of our species but instead a leftover from mixing with another homo species?

Do we have evidence that, in cases of terminal illness, severe birth defects, or fatal injury, prehistoric humans would intentionally kill others (or themselves) to prevent suffering? If so, when did this develop? Is it a known behavior in any hominids besides modern humans?

I don't know if it's the right place to ask this but I was wondering if they needeed to, because today it's important to brush our teeth because our diet change since prehistory. But i was wondering if they had to brush their teeth or they don't "need" it because of their diet

I understand that the Haredi want to practice their Jewish faith, but they believe in such strict adherence that they must spend all their time studying the Torah and not working. In less prosperous times, this would have been even less feasible.

How does a community like this even arise? It's not comparable to, for example, Brahmins because the Haredi are not a priestly caste that the rest of their religion relies on.

I've been thinking about the recent Siders family case in Ohio, along with cases like Genie, Josef Fritzl, and other instances where someone keeps another person (or even an entire family) isolated from society for years or decades.

One thing I'm struggling to understand is whether this represents a recurring historical phenomenon in the same way genocide does.

When we study genocide, historians and anthropologists often point to recurring features of human psychology (tribalism, belonging, in-group/out-group thinking, dehumanization, authoritarianism) that have repeatedly produced similar atrocities across cultures and throughout history.

But these long-term captivity cases seem fundamentally different. In many of them, the perpetrator isn't seeking money, political power, revenge, or even necessarily sexual gratification alone. They aren't trying to fulfill some kind of "manifest destiny" in which they believe they have been ordained to do something. Instead, they create an entirely closed world in which another human being is cut off from society for years. Sometimes they isolate multiple family members. Sometimes they withdraw from society themselves, almost imprisoning themselves alongside their victims.

My questions are:

• Is there a recognized historical or anthropological explanation for why this pattern appears repeatedly across different societies?
• Are these cases actually rare throughout history, or are they simply underdocumented because they happen within private households?
• Is there an underlying human drive or psychological tendency that historians think explains why people independently arrive at this kind of behavior, similar to how humans naturally have an "us vs them" mentality helps explain the recurrence of genocide?
• Why do perpetrators in these cases so often become socially isolated themselves rather than simply controlling the victim while remaining otherwise integrated into society?

I'm not really looking for a true-crime explanation of one individual offender. I'm more interested in whether historians or anthropologists recognize this as a recurring cross-cultural phenomenon, and if so, what broader historical or human patterns they think are responsible.

I have my own sort of kind of theory about this, which ill now dive into so stop reading here if you just want to answer the questions above

I'm not a historian or history buff by any means so this might be WAY of base, but one thought i've had is whether these cases represent an unusually extreme form of what people casually call a "god complex." Not just wanting power over other people, but wanting to create an entire world that exists only because you willed it into existence.

Dictators, cult leaders, and conquerors obviously seek enormous power over other human beings, but they're still operating within the broader society that already exists. Hitler wanted to reshape Germany. Cult leaders create their own communities, but they're still interacting with the outside world.

These long-term family captivity cases feel different to me. In many of them, the perpetrator withdraws from society almost as much as the victims do. They create a sealed off environment where every relationship, every child, every rule, and every aspect of daily life exists only because they made it that way.

That's what makes me think of something closer to creation than conquest. In cases where victims are forced to have child after child in complete isolation, it almost feels as though the perpetrator is trying to build a miniature world from scratch—not to conquer an existing society, but to create a new one over which they are the sole authority.

The closest metaphor I can think of isn't colonialism, because colonialism still involves entering an existing world and imposing rule over it. These cases feel more like an attempt to recreate a kind of private "Genesis" or "dawn of humanity," where the perpetrator imagines themselves as the creator and ultimate authority of an entirely self-contained world.

I don't mean that literally, and I'm not suggesting they're consciously acting out the story of Adam and Eve. I'm wondering whether historians, anthropologists, or psychologists have ever described this pattern before, or whether there's a recognized framework for understanding why some perpetrators seem driven not merely to dominate society, but to withdraw from it and construct their own.

Hi, I’m training as an archaeologist (BC, Canada) and a lot of my coworkers are guardians from the local FNs. One guardian was from Port Hardy in Vancouver Island and I asked him about coastal cultures there and he mentioned (briefly) that there was a long oral history of contact between his community in Port Hardy and Hawaiians. I unfortunately never got his contact information to inquire further and didn’t really press at the time, though I regret it. I’ve been trying to look it up since and I couldn’t find much information on it. I’m super interested to learn more but can’t contact him or find anything about it online so I was wondering if anyone here had heard of this, and know any further information. Thanks :)

Any tips would be great tbh!

I feel a bit estranged of my Mexican and Yaqui roots, but especially my Yaqui roots.

I think it would be cool to learn the language sometime, I’ve heard they have books on how to learn Cahita.

Idk where to start 😅

This question may sound inflammatory, but as a short guy, I'm curious why tallness (given the positive traits that it supposedly represents) has not been selected for more intensely worldwide than it is. For what is said to be a globally desired characteristic, there are only a handful of nations that have what could be considered a substantial average height, most of those being Western (with the exception of some South Sudanese groups etc). Is there a reason for this? It means I can't tell if the height craze is just recent or perennial.

Obviously, this is an extremely broad question, but I was hoping to get a few thoroughly explained examples of how such encounters usually went when people from societies without a writing system, or with a writing system too different from the one being introduced (such as the quipu), reacted to and perceived the newly introduced writing system. I was inspired to ask this after learning about how Atawallpa allegedly reacted to being given the Bible by the Spaniards before the ambush as an ultimatum, although I am not sure how accurate that story is. In any case, it is just one example, whereas I am looking for broader societal responses. How did these encounters generally go from the perspective of the societies encountering the new writing system?

I was recently thinking about the obvious fact that there couldn't have been a Frenchman 20,000 years ago, because there was no such thing as Frenchness as a social construct. This made me question my assumption about atheism. I always assumed that the very first gods must have had their doubters. That is to say, as soon as religiosity and spirituality became part of human culture, so too must have skepticism and disbelief. But I'm now questioning whether that's really correct.

What if atheism is like being French, in the sense that there was no "atheist" 20,000 years ago because it simply didn't exist as a social category, and was therefore outside the range of concepts people had available? Would people in the Paleolithic have simply accepted spirits, deities, or sacred places as being real, like trees, mountains, or rivers, without it being conceivable that they might not be? Or is it more likely that skepticism emerged alongside religious belief from the very beginning?

Obviously this is a highly speculative question, but I'm curious what anthropology tells us about the possibility of a lack of spirituality or religiosity in prehistoric societies, and whether "atheism" is even a meaningful concept to apply to such contexts.

The PIE invasions (or migrations) seem to be a pretty profound historical chapter for enormous tracts of Eurasia. Yet, it seems as though there is very little oral or written stories regarding it. Have any survived? Or was the PIE displacement so comprehensive and complete that all was erased or highly modified to fit evolving PIE cultural norms and beliefs?

Basically the title. I know empathy is a crucial evolutionary development; I know that human are omnivores; I also know that humans hunted (and still do hunt) animals to extinction and that we were persistence hunters, which already seems pretty terrifying and like empathy could mess with the process. However, I also know that humans who kill animals tend to develop mental manifestations such as PTSD and potential desensitization. So what’s the deal here? Why do we have such conflicting needs?

So basically I'm studying this point to try to figure out some things:

1 - At which point did the scientific community start talking about the ability to compare cultures and atribute polar ranking systems to any set culture?

2 - Is it even possible to compare culture?

3 - What is the conception of culture we would be using in this sort of perspective?

4 - How do we separate culture from cultural identity?

5 - How unbiased can these types of comparations be?

6 - At what point does morality and comparative status intertwine to rank a culture favorably or not?

7 - How can we claim a certain culture be superior?

I got a few books on anthropology, either from friends or my own budget. I want to know if the books make sense as a collection, or direction for a social anthropology masters. Is my collection directionless, or is it a valuable archive? Anything you would add? I really love the large regional monographs and ethnographies. Christopher Carr's books are probably some of my favorite. I love the format of Zuni Origins. Large monographs are the most fun for me. I want to know about decentralized gift economies without coercive leadership, and why sometimes that doesn't happen. I talked with an anthropologist and he said I should read more overview stuff. I am unsure of the difference in value between old and new anthropological works. I have not read all of this! I love anarchist anthropologists. I don't know what an anthropologists library usually looks like.

Against His-Story, Against Leviathan! - Fredy Perlman

A Pueblo Social History - Ware

A Spirit of Resistance - Dowd

Against the Grain - Scott

Ancient Maya: The Rise and Fall of a Rainforest Civilization - Arthur Demarest

Anthropology and Ethics - Edel and Edel

Archeologies of Sexuality - Schmidt and Voss

Becoming Hopi: A History - Wesley Bernardini, Stewart B. Koyiyumptewa, Gregson Schachner, and Leigh J. Kuwanwisiwma

Both Sides of the Bullpen - McPherson

Breaking the Maya Code - Coe

Bullshit Jobs - David Graeber

Changing Ones - Roscoe

Collapse - Jared Diamond

Conquest of Mexico - Prescott

Contributions to Anthropology: Interior Peoples of N. Alaska - Robert Hall (ed.)

Cortez and Montezuma - Collis

Crooked Deals and Broken Treaties - John Tully.

Debt: The First 5,000 Years - David Graeber

Direct Action: An Ethnography - David Graeber

Encountering Hopewell - Brian G. Redmond and Bret J. Ruby (eds.)

Environmental and Cultural Behavior - Vayda

Ethnography of Santa Clara Pueblo - W.W. Hill

Europe and the People Without History - Wolf

Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology - David Graeber

From Child To Adult - Middleton

Gathering Hopewell: Society, Ritual, and Ritual Interaction - Christopher Carr and D. Troy Case

Gods and Rituals - Middleton

History Manner and Customs of the Indian Nations - Heckweleder

Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks - Hancock (2026)

Images and Symbols - Eliade

Incindents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas and Yukatan - Stephens

Indian Givers - Jack Weatherford

Isha - Kroeber

Law and Warfare - Bohannan

Mambu - Burridge

Man and Time - J.B. Priestley

Many Faces of Gender - Frink

Many Faces of Gender - Sandra E. Hollimon (ed.)

Maya Archeology - Peabody Museum Museum Papers volume 61

Maya Explorer - Hagen

Mutual Aid - Kropotkin

Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution - Peter Kropotkin

Myth and Cosmos - Middleton

Myth and Reality - Eliade

Native Americans of the Cuyahoga Valley - Bobel and Whitman

New Perspectives on the Pueblos - Ortiz

Ohio Archeology - Lepper

Patterns in Comparative Religion - Eliade

Patterns of Culture - Benedict

Personal Narrative of a Journey to the Equinoctial Regions - Humbolt

Personalities and Cultures - Hunt

Perspectives in Marxist Anthropology - Maurice Godelier

Political Anthropology - Kurtz

Popol Vuh - Tedlock

Prescott - The Portable Viking Library

Primate Visions - Haraway

Reclaiming Two-Spirits - Gregory D. Smithers

Seeing Like a State - Scott

Shamanism - Eliade

Smoke From Their Fires: Life of a Kwakiutl Chief - Clellan S. Ford

Social Process In Maya Prehistory - Norman Hammond (ed.)

Society Against the State - Clastres

Society Against the State - Pierre Clastres

Southwest Indian Ritual Drama - Frisbie

Stone Age Economics - Marshall Sahlins

Tecumseh and the Prophet - Cozzens

The Annals of the Cakchiquels - Recinos and Goetz

The Art of Not Being Governed - Scott

The Aztecs - Rise and Fall of an Empire

The Beautiful and the Dangerous - Barbara Tedlock

The Beautiful and the Dangerous - Tedlock

The Cheyenne Way - Llewellyn and E. Hoebel

The Chorti Indians of Guatemala - Charles Wisdom

The Cliff Dwellers of the Mesa Verde - Gustaf Nordenskiöld

The Colonizer and the Colonized - Albert Memmi

The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity - David Graeber and David Wengrow

The Discover and Conquest of Mexico - Castillo

The Great Law and the Longhouse - William N. Fenton

The Great Temple of Tenochtitlan - Broda

The History of Money - Jack Weatherford

The Indians of Texas in 1830 - Jean-Louis Berlandier

The Interpretation of Culture - Geertz

The Last of the Incas - Hyams and Ordish

The Life of the Indigenous Mind - Martinez

The Livelihood of Man - Karl Polanyi

The Mexican National Museum of Anthropology - Bernal

The Mysterious Maya - National Geographic

The Myth of the Eternal Return - Eliade

The Mythology of Mexico and Central America - Bierhorst

The Netsilik Eskimo - Balikci

The Nuer - E.E. Evans-Pritchard

The Other Trail of Tears - Mary Stockwell

The Raw and the Cooked - Strauss

The Savage Mind - Strauss

The Scioto Hopewell and Their Neighbors - D. Troy Case and Christopher Carr

The Spirit and the Flesh - Walter L. Williams

The Story of a Tlingit Community - Laguna

The Story of Decipherment - Pope

The Tewa World - Alfonso Ortiz

The True History of the Conquest of Mexico - Castillo

The Two and the One - Eliade

The Ultimate Hidden Truth of the World - David Graeber

The World of Goods: Towards an Anthropology of Consumption - Douglass and Isherwood

The World of the Maya - Hagen

The World Until Yesterday - Jared Diamond

The Zuni Man-Woman - Will Roscoe

To Make My Name Good: A Reexamination of the Southern Kwakiutl Potlatch - Philip Drucker and Robert F. Heizer

Trade and Market in Early Empire - Karl Polanyi

Tribal and Peasant Economies - Dalton

Tristes Tropiques - Claude Lévi-Strauss

Tsimshian Texts - Franz Boas

We Talk, You Listen - Deloria

Yoga - Eliade

Yuman Tribes of the Gila River - Leslie Spier

Zinacantan: A Maya Community - Evon Z. Vogt

Zuni Origins: Toward a New Synthesis of Southwestern Archaeology

autopsy refers to humans while necropsy refers to animals/non-humans

australopithecus is not in genus homo, so would a post-mortem dissection to determine the cause of death performed on one be an autopsy or necropsy?

I have had a joke argument running with a friend for nearly a decade now. I initially proposed, merely to annoy him, that there must be at least one person (in Ireland, seeing as we are Irish) who does not understand what a fridge is. The point is that the assertion is stupid, but that there is no way to disprove it. But over the years we have refined it because it (at least to me) infers an interesting question about development and cognition. We stand today at:

"How many people are there, alive, in Ireland who have the capacity to understand what a fridge is and what its function is, yet do not?".

There are many proposed explanations for why such a person may exist. They simply have not been exposed to a fridge (unlikely), they may not have had the opportunity yet, and others. Recently I listened to a podcast episode about a man who fled from Somalia to the United States and upon arrival in the mid 2010s was fascinated and surprised by the concept of a dishwasher. Such people are likely rare, but the second concept interests me.

It concerns the segment of the population that is developing (infants) who experience the world and learn. They are surrounded by objects that they have no concept of, until they do. They might not understand how something works, but what it does. I propose that there is probably a reasonable number of children at any given time who exist in the latent period between developing the ability to understand such an object and actually understanding it. So I guess we have:

"At any given time, even for concepts that are nearly universal, there is a nonzero population who could understand them immediately if exposed, but who simply haven't been exposed yet."

Do we have any idea how long this "latent period" tends to be for common cultural concepts? Is there research on how knowledge of ubiquitous objects spreads through developing children or through a population more generally? Or is this the wrong way to think about concept acquisition?

Forgive me if I have chosen the wrong subreddit (I read the rules and this seems to obey them).