Cities and the Immune System

Denser populations have higher risks for epidemic diseases, but this new study featured on National Geographic argues that the payoff was the evolution of more resilient human populations.

Brahman, the Greeks, and the Scale of the Universe

One of the unifying ideas behind the Indian concept of Brahman and Greek rationalism is the inability of the human senses to perceive reality as it truly exists. For Indians this idea was a gateway into pondering the infinite nature of the universe and compare it to the miniscule role of the individual life in it to put suffering in perspective. For the Greeks it opened the door to metaphysics and their explorations of the world using the mind rather than the senses.

This link is to an interactive website that shows the relative sizes of things from the infinitesimally small to the infinitesimally large. On this scale humans are little past the midpoint towards the large, which is surprising considering the size of the observable universe beyond our solar system. Apparently there is an entire universe below what we are capable of seeing.

This brief piece from NPR is about an extinct civilization in present-day Phoenix AZ. It was a farming civilization that died out because of overpopulation combined with climate change. The remnants have been largely covered up by the modern city, much like past civilizations are so often built on top of one another. It raises some interesting questions about preservation, why humans prefer certain locations for settlement, and the more existential question of how many societies have come and gone without our having ever known about them.

Orientalism in Modern Cinema

Orientalism is a term scholars use to describe the romanticization of the Near and Far East, usually by projecting the desires generated by our disillusionment with the modern Western world onto an exotic, foreign tableau. In this sense, the Orient is viewed as the antithesis of the West, either as a purer, more spiritual, timeless place waiting for Westerners to come and discover themselves, or as a confusing, untamed, and irrational place where Western norms break down. Much like the dichotomy of the Noble Savage/Cannibal in the Western imagination of the New World, both rely on stereotypes and placing the foreign into Western mental categories.

Orientalism arguably goes back to the ancient Greeks, who emphasized the foreignness of their Persian adversaries. Modern orientalism is a product of the Age of Exploration, the Enlightenment, and went hand-in-hand with imperialism. It continues to inform many of our views of the East. It is important to understand it as a cultural process because it so often limits our ability to understand Asia on its own terms. While these misunderstandings aren't always harmful, it is important to realize that they are there, and that just as we approach the foreign with our own mental toolbox, the foreign also approaches us with theirs'.

This article from NPR describes orientalism using examples from modern cinema, including the new film Eat, Pray, Love.

Symbolic Thinking and Human Evolution

Just like the line between human and animal can be very blurry, so too can the line between pre-human and human. This article from NPR argues that an important element in defining humans is the capacity for symbolic thought, which forms the basis for language and culture.

Greco-Roman Technology

This NPR story is about a new book by scholar Vicki Leon on technological innovation in the ancient world. Some of the stories - like the taboos about fava beans - are rather bizarre, but there are other examples of how some of the benefits of ancient memories are being confirmed today.

Human Diet and Evolution

Recent studies suggest that diet was a key component of the mental development of humans. The transition from raw wild foods to a diet that was high in energy and took less energy for the body to process (i.e. meat) allowed more energy to be spent on brain development. Cooking was equally important since it made foods easier to digest. Click here for the full story from NPR.

Turkey and Cuisine

One of the lesser known contributions of the Turks to world civilization is their cuisine, which many consider to be as important as French and Chinese. Turkish cuisine is a product of their lengthy presence at the crossroads of the spice trade, an affluent and enduring society, and cultural influences from the Mediterranean, India, and the Middle East. Turkish cuisine in turn has had an enormous influence over West Asian/Eastern European cooking.

This story from NPR is an interesting example of the relationship between culture and geography.

Interactive Timeline of Human Evolution

This interactive site from the Smithsonian Institution shows the major stages of human evolution alongside the fluctuating climate. You will see how some of the various pre-human species overlapped and some of the gaps in the fossil record.

Marine Archaeology in China

The Silk Road is perhaps the most famous trade route in the pre-modern world, yet its dominance sometimes obscures other routes through which China traded with the outside world. Lately China, whose archaeological tradition has typically focused on terrestrial sites, has turned its interest to the sea. Maritime archaeology has been an essential part of the study of trading civilizations in the Mediterranean and Atlantic Worlds, and so new discoveries in China promise to be valuable additions to our knowledge of its past. This article from National Public Radio describes some recent discoveries, as well as some of China's problems with preserving its past.

Human Sacrifices in China

This article from National Geographic is about a recent excavation in China that includes human sacrifices from the Zhou Dynasty. While human sacrifice is common to many early cultures, many scholars had been inclined to think that it was on the wane in the Zhou period. This new discovery will certainly cause people to rethink this era in Chinese history.

Neanderthal Tools Found in England

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science_and_environment/10206677.stm

Neanderthals and Us

It has long been known that Neanderthals lived alongside early humans and that they exhibited some of the same cultural characteristics. However the reasons for the extinction of this hominid species is still a mystery. It has been suggested that Neanderthals and early humans interbred, and that perhaps they were even absorbed into the human population. An impressive new study now suggests that many modern humans share DNA with Neanderthals.

Editorial by Dr. Henry Louis Gates on the Slave Trade

The slave trade is one of the last subjects we cover in History 14. It was part of a "triangular" system of trade whereby manufactured goods from Europe were traded with West African kingdoms for slaves who were shipped to the New World to produce raw materials for European consumption. While we as Americans are often accustomed to thinking of slavery only in terms of our own unfortunate history in the United States, in reality North America was only a small part of a much bigger picture. Only a small fraction of slaves were every brought to North America, the vast majority were brought to plantations in the Caribbean. However slavery is still an open wound in our national consciousness in ways that differ greatly from other states involved with the slave trade.

One of the big contemporary issues in US race relations is slave reparations, the idea that the descendants of slaves should receive compensation for the suffering their ancestors endured. In this article by Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, we see that this controversial issue is more complex than simply giving payouts to African Americans. For one thing the class divide between Blacks and Whites in America is arguably derived more from the generations of institutionalized racism that came after Abolition. For another, it was not just white plantation owners who were complicit in this inhuman institution. As Dr. Gates argues, many powerful African kingdoms were direct participants in the slave trade, knowing full well that the conditions they sent their captives into were very different from their indigenous institutions of slavery. This article is an interesting object lesson on the interconnectedness of world civilizations.

Inca Skeletons from the Time of the Spaniards

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/04/inca-skeletons/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+wired%2Findex+%28Wired%3A+Index+3+%28Top+Stories+2%29%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

Human Culture and Evolution

Our class places great emphasis on the human capacity to adapt the natural world to suit our needs in ways that other animals are incapable of. Out of all the animal species out there, ours' can live in a broader range of environment than any other, mainly because of technological culture. One could argue that we have modified the environment we live in faster than we have physiologically evolved. However there is also evidence that we have also evolved to adapt to our culture. This article from the NYT is about the complex relationship between human physiology and culture.

South African Symbolic Art from 60k y/a

Symbolic thought is one of the key distinctions between animal and human intelligence. The artifacts from South Africa described in this BBC article are not the oldest examples of symbolic art found by archaeologists, and the meaning of the inscriptions on these ostrich shells is debatable. However they are older than most cave paintings and suggest the very ancient origins of the human psyche.

New Theory on King Tut's Death

The revolution in genetic science over the past few decades continues to contribute to our understanding of the past. New techniques of analysis suggest that King Tut may have died from malaria. Click here for the full NYT article.

Pre-Inca Discovery in Peru

This new discovery has changed how archaeologists think about pre-Columbian civilizations in the Andes. Click here to read more.

When the Sahara was Green

The Sahara is the largest hot desert in the world, covering an area that is about as large as the United States and growing (an environmental phenomenon that is contributing to the Darfur Crisis and religious extremism). However the area covered by the desert has gone through numerous fluctuations over the millennia. Even today, despite the Sahara's reputation as a vast, parched wasteland it actually contains a number of oases that allow those who know how to read the signs to safely traverse the desert. This allowed the civilizations of Mali and Ghana to trade with the Mediterranean World.

In the past the Sahara was much smaller and areas that are now barren were grasslands similar to the regions we today call the Sahel. Early humans lived in this region, and apparently domesticated some plants and animals. This article from National Geographic is about an ancient burial ground from one of these civilizations that was accidentally discovered by scientists searching for dinosaur fossils. This story shows how much the environment has changed over time, and how we continue to be dependent on it.