Articles tagged with Physical Anthropology
Biological anthropologists use skeletal remains to understand how earlier peoples lived, while forensic experts decipher skeletal evidence to solve crimes. Researchers at North Carolina State University have published guidance on analyzing child-abuse victims to shed light on past cultures' treatment of children.
A new article by Melissa Melby and colleagues highlights the need for cultural humility and specialized cross-cultural training in short-term global health programs. The authors propose four core principles to guide program development and participant evaluation, aiming to improve outcomes for both students and communities.
A new report documents harassment, abuse, or assaults of young researchers in biological anthropology fieldwork. Larger research sites tend to have fewer incidents than smaller ones.
A team of researchers has uncovered well-dated human fossils in southern China, pushing back the known emergence of modern humans by at least 60,000 years. The discovery indicates that early modern humans co-existed with late archaic humans for tens of millennia across Eurasia.
Research suggests that physical prowess was the key factor in human mate competition, with men competing for dominance and access to mates. Men are stronger than 99.9% of women, despite average differences in size, due to increased muscle mass.
The discovery of Ardipithecus ramidus provides new information on human evolution, suggesting that humans did not evolve from apes but rather that apes evolved from humans. The 4.4 million-year-old skeleton is more informative than the famous 'Lucy' fossil and sheds light on human behavior and anatomy.
A team of researchers has determined that human ancestors outside of Africa were more primitive than previously thought, based on analysis of 1.8 million-year-old fossils found in Dmanisi, Georgia. The species had a small stature and brain size similar to earlier African species, with some modern aspects of lower limb morphology.
A recent study published in The Journal of Experimental Biology suggests that longer legs are more efficient due to reduced force production and lower energy cost. According to the LiMB model developed by Herman Pontzer, this is because longer limbs require less force to move, resulting in decreased energy expenditure.
Robert Trivers, a Rutgers University professor, has been awarded the prestigious Crafoord Prize in Biosciences for his groundbreaking research on social evolution and conflict. The prize recognizes his foundational analysis of social behavior patterns in animals, which has inspired significant behavioral ecologists' work.
A study by Kermyt G. Anderson investigated the correlation between men's perceptions of fatherhood and actual paternity rates worldwide. The results show that men with high paternity confidence are indeed the biological fathers over 98% of the time, while those with low confidence are incorrect in more than 70% of cases.
A new study examines the role of the 'showoff hypothesis' in social decisions among Hadza hunter-gatherers. Most participants chose to live with good hunters to gain access to more food and better nutrients, despite some men preferring poorer hunters to showcase their hunting prowess.
A study on non-Western folk beliefs found that partible paternity is a common concept among indigenous groups in South America and New Guinea. This ancient tradition suggests that every man who contributes sperm during pregnancy biologically contributes to the child, challenging the long-held assumption of a single biological father.