r/AskAnthropology

I began wondering about this following a recent reddit post about Neanderthal cooking. Specifically whether modern humans can actually get away with eating uncooked meat.

I know it is common for Inuit to eat meat and fish raw, usually when it is eaten fresh, or is frozen. And many cultures do have some tradition of eating raw meat dishes, but usually eat meat cooked. But are/were there any known cultures that didn't live in polar regions that seldom or never cooked their meat?

I'm beginning to study Anthropology this Fall, so I've been doing a little digging and studying before then. (Super excited) One of the great mysteries of Anthropology seems to be how a huge chunk of homo sapien societies seem to be more patriarchal than matriarchal. Obviously there are exceptions, and the societies rules for assigned genders are different. (I.e., 100 years ago pants were strictly masculine, whereas today it's seen more gender neutral.) But I was wanting to gather more theories as to why we think that is.

So far, I have the idea that women became 2nd class citizens after agriculture and property began to become a bigger deal, and men felt the need to control women more to have a cleaner inheritance for their offspring,

AND

That while men and women are fairly equal in endurance, men have more upper body strength and was able to dominate women into submission. (Although it's not the strongest and most violent people that lead a group, those are usually the smarter, richer or older ones. And there are no differences in intelligence in male and female homo sapien brains)

I actually have a theory myself, but I'll save that one for college.

.......

(Read if you want to go slightly off topic )

I actually interned at a Plains Indian Museum for a year, and one thing I thought was a little weird was the way women would give their input on important matters. The men would gather together to discuss, and a woman would enter the tipi they were in to voice her opinion. But she wouldn't directly talk to everyone, just her husband, or son or father or brother. But her voice still carried over the group so they could hear her nonetheless. I thought it was so strange hearing this, why wouldn't she just drop the pretenses and talk to the entire group? But then I remembered that I grew up Mormon. Hated it, never want to touch it again. BUT there was something kinda similar. The men leaders of the church wouldn't gather in huge groups, but as three to four. If they needed more people in their meeting, they called upon the women leaders to organize and put together the meeting. Food, location, invitations, who did what and how during the meeting, etc. They referred to the men as the "leaders" in spiritual guidance and direct for their input but they were the ones running the meeting and dictating its direction.

Sorry kinda off topic, but I liked the comparison.

Turkic all clearly sound related. Same with Romance, or Hindi/Urdu. But then languages like Armenian, Korean, Chechen, Lezgin seem to stand almost alone.
• How did Armenian end up with no surviving sister language? Where did the "in-between" relatives go?
• Chechen and Lezgin are technically related
(Northeast Caucasian) but sounds totally different now. Why did the Caucasus end up with something like 40 distinct languages crammed into one small region, instead of one family taking over like happened on the steppe?
• Is Korean actually a full isolate, or does it have real relatives?
• More broadly — how do these languages end up in their current regions? Did speakers migrate into isolated pockets, or did isolation happen after they settled?
Why do some languages spread into big obvious families and others stay alone?
Curious what people who actually study this professionally think.

The authors of a book I'm currently reading (The Cambridge Companion to the Aegean Bronze Age) keep throwing this phrase around without explaining what it means. Can someone please explain to me what "secondary state formation" is? While you're at it, is there a distinction between states and polities in anthropological theory?

Why is the original printout of an ancient document so important to a community's identity?

Hello everyone,

Recently, I’ve been really fixated on this question, but I don't know where to start my research. I know that an original printout doesn't just contain the message passed down from our ancestors—because if that were its only purpose, a digital archive or reprint would suffice. However, none of the answers I've come up with so far have satisfied me.

If anyone here has thought about this question and has their own perspective, I'd love to hear it! Alternatively, could you point me toward existing research or suggest key terms to help me dive deeper into this topic?

Thank you all so much!

Hi, I am wondering how did (do?) hunter-gatherers care for their clothes, especially those made of leather/skin and worn directly against one’s body: can they be washed? are there any techniques used for preserving the materials, or for absorbing sweat?

Thank you!

what do modern anthropologists think about Richard Sorensen’s Preconquest consciousness, particularly claims like 

1.preconquest people live in a “liminal” mind state with no abstractions and in an perpetual present

2. they have basically no hostility or negative emotions and these only emerge when they come in contact with conquering peoples 

3. that children raised in close physical contact with adults develop a tactile language very early and 

4. that there even is such a thing as preconquest peoples that have unifying traits

 

I remember reading at one point that there was an anthropologist who claimed that the Aboriginal Australians (or at least some tribes of them) communicated this way before coming under European influence. However, this was long enough in the past that it might now be difficult to prove either way. Are there other cultures where this is believed (or known) to have been the case?

It actually seems plausible to me, since one time I encountered a man on the public bus system who was like this. He didn’t seem to be directly talking either to me or to the driver (and neither of us was responding back to him) but he just kept rambling on about various things as though he knew there was always someone listening. I’m guessing he had some sort of mental health issue, but it made me wonder if this kind of thing might not always have been outside the norm.

A person who communicated like this would just say whatever comes to mind, even if no other humans are physically present at all. I could see this happening in animistic cultures (since, to an animist, everything is potentially an audience that could listen to what you have to say, not just humans).

Humans have lived in florida and the philippines for a long time. Hurricanes are a regular occurrence for these parts of the world. What did these ancient humans do to survive: did they seek high ground, build a shelter, find a cave, etc? Were hurricanes simply less fatal than now because of modern reliance on fragile infrastructure and supply chains such as electricity and grocery stores?

If you’re interested in human beings, how do you decide on an approach?

Sociology studies humans as part of society, psychology as individuals, but there’s also social psychology. And anthropology seeks to study human beings in their full context.

But I don’t know, an anthropologist or sociologist might always be missing the psychological perspective. And perhaps a psychologist lacks the social context and is too biased toward the clinical ideas and biases of their time.

But the other day, for example, I asked a question here on AskAnthropology about the process of dehumanization, and the moderator and users themselves redirected me to AskPsychology. So, can psychology contribute something that anthropology cannot?

For someone who wants to pursue research, which discipline would you recommend?

Hi,

I hope it's ok that I ask this here. I recently visited an archaeology museum in El Paso, TX and there was a panel explaining how the swastika was not originally a symbol of hatred and was appropriated from numerous cultures native to the area. There was a collection of different versions of the swastika, which of course is all fine, but one caught my eye and left me concerned. It appeared to be a swastika inside a Star of David. I've seen the same symbol alongside antisemitic graffiti in NYC. Does anyone know if a local culture happened to use a swastika inside a six pointed triangle? Or am I going to have to call the museum and make a complaint?

Thanks

You know, I’m often wondering about enormous amounts of random stuff around anthropology topic. And I have a cheeky question.
Is there a data about masturbation in more „primitive” cultures? Modern hunter-gatherers or cultures that are nor far from the most ancient lifestyle.

Why am I asking this? I get a lot of inspiration and existential answers from nature and human societies that live as close as possible with nature, like we intended to and have been for millennia. So I’m just wondering is jerking off often is a biological/natural act or cultural.

If you know something or also interested in a topic of natural human sxual behaviour vs modern s*x culture and its influence on overall wellbeing - share something please.

I'm looking for creators who produce short-form content, street interviews similar to the formatting of Subway Takes, where people share controversial/eye opening takes, but the content is focused on anthro, history, or the sciences. I need these as inspiration and exemplars so that my students can try and recreate this content format for an assignment. This might be a long shot, but if anyone knows of something of the likes, it would really help!

I feel like there theoretically should be but havent come across any solely focusing on them.

While some societies are more direct in their speech, others tend to play down their feelings or what they truly think. Is this a result of particular historical event or cultural norms? How does one society tend to lean toward bluntness, while others deem more covert ways of communicating safer?

Personal example: coming from Russia and having lived in the UK for 16 years, I've often found myself guessing what people here truly mean behind their words. Historically, I can see the association of indirectness linked to feeling unsafe, due to the way people have been snitched on by their own neighbours, family and others during the USSR period and getting into the Gulags. Hence, any sort of indirectness might feel more strange and borderline traitorous (harsh word, but think it makes sense in this context!). Sometimes such effects as confusion and anxiety are valid responses to such ambiguity in speech.

Hi, folks! I did anthropology in undergrad but have been out of school for a couple years, and am returning to some anthro books to try and ground in perspectives beyond the human as a way of processing/deferring some of my climate angst. (I'm also a poet & interested in how my poetics might interweave other-than-human perspectives in a responsible way).

Would love stuff like: How Forests Think (which I'm just finishing up), Geontologies, & The Mushroom at the End of the World. I did a course on the "ontological turn," object oriented ontology, Latour, Haraway etc in undergrad - are there more contemporary books on this? And, things on the anthropocene, the apocalypse, and anthropological perspectives on climate change / climate doomerism / climate adaptation are all welcome too :)

Hi all!

So so eons ago humans were inhabiting Africa. Then something (overpopulation, diminishing resurces, other) pushed some of them outside the continent. Not all survived the trip (the famous bottleneck), but once established on the new pastures, they started to multiply and spread, bringing us to the modern 8+ billions. Now comes my question. In the modern era there is still enough pastures for everyone (some may argue, but still), and in the age of world spreading the population was much-much-much smaller. So seeking the fertile lands across rivers is understandable. But what kept pushing humans to populate the hostile unforgiving environments like deserts or tundra or high frost mountains, or to traverse wide spaces to establish on some remote land masses?

It's fascinating how this something pushed humans from Africa all across the eurasian continent up to Australia or high in the Andes. But what and why?

As I said the resources should have been somewhat abundant compared to the population size at the time, so it should be something extra, some factor stimulating the explore itch.

Hiya, I wanted to ask if you guys have any recommendations of books on forensic or physical anthropology which are NOT for beginners/students? I'm soon getting a masters in this field and I want to expand my collection of physical copies instead of pdfs from college.

EDIT bc of bad wording: I have copies of what I read in college and asked my professors for recommendations. I have books on sex, age, those standard metrics. I'd like to have something on trauma, bone pathologies, specific cases, past populations, maybe archeozoology. I hope that clears it up a little.

The title is pretty self explanatory. I’m a masters student in anthropology and I’m starting to explore PhD options. I would love to begin a career in Bioarchaeology (preferably in the Mediterranean but bioarch is applicable everywhere) and would also love to eventually become a professor. However, the US is very limited when it comes to bioarch studies. I have experience in bioarch field schools, but I’m looking to expand my research and am just having a pretty difficult time finding programs that fit the bill. Would it be better if I looked into classical/Mediterranean archaeology programs and leave the bioarch experience to the field schools? Or are there programs out there that can appeal to both?

Thank you!

How early in human evolution did the ability to say what was not true develop ? Google said it had to happen gradually but do any other animal societies have the ability? How would one test that? The best I could come up with was that it had to have been beneficial to avoid danger, or was it more of a resource gaining thing that theoretically would have been more reasonable? Are there any good books you can recommend on the subject that I can look for?