When learning about the various subfields of biological anthropology, the field of paleoanthropology caught my interest. I find fossils and evolution very interesting so I thought this was the perfect thing to research.
The website that I found was for an organization called the Paleoanthropology society. Their mission statement on their home page states that they seek to not only bring together anthropologists, but geologists and others who research similar things. They have a scientific journal that seems to be recently updated.
One of the articles I found was called “Neandertals and the Black Swan” by David Frayer. This article presents research done on the black swan phenomenon in Neandertals and how they are more similar to us than different. The article presents a fossil found in 1973 in Kenya that had much larger brain size and much smaller teeth size than many other hominids at its time.
Another instance was when ornaments were discovered in a Neandertal area that was very surprising to the researchers. They seemed to be much more modern tools than they thought possible for Nerandertals to use.
I think this concept of a “black swan” or something surprising that kind of comes out of nowhere is very important for anthropologists. It is important to remember that we do not know everything, and to keep an open mind to new discoveries. I know a lot of people get stuck in a rut about their research because they think it should be one way, but an open mind is key for new discoveries and learning more about our ancient earth.
Another review article I found from the journal on the website was about violence in past lives. I was actually surprised to find an article like this on this website, I figured this would be something more likely to be researched by someone in a criminal justice field, looking back on violent behaviors. There is a section speaking about cultural norms with violence. This connects back to our discussion about culture and its norms in the first lecture from this week. This article also talks about burial practices, which can show the empathy level of a culture. I think that violence is a very insightful way to look at a culture that I had not previously considered.
The last part of the article was reviewing a chapter about recording injuries. She speaks about how it is important to include these in archaeological records because injuries can change peoples lives and their experiences. It also mentions the bioarcheology of care model which I had not previously learned about.
I think that this article shows that taking a different perspective when looking at a culture can give us more insight. Yes, we can look at cultural norms like rituals, food, clothing, etc. But looking at something such as the violence and injury within a culture, I think is very important to getting the full picture. I hadn’t even thought of looking at burial practices. Maybe we can look at other things outside the box in a culture such as how they care for their ill and elders.
Websites for Reference
http://paleoanthro.org/media/journal/content/PA20180001.pdf
Hello!
I also was interested in paleoanthropology! I like the way that you went into the journal on the Paleoanthropology Society’s website and talked about some of their findings, as I think these details help put both the Society’s goals and the importance of the study of paleoanthropology into perspective!
I found the discovers from the article about paleoanthropology to be very interesting. I had never really found fossils that interesting, besides the fact that it’s cool things can be preserved. However, when you brought up the ” Black Swan” effect it made me start to think. When we think of our histories, there are honestly so many things we still don’t know about our past, and many things we will never know as well.
I also liked how in the article the researches didn’t follow usual norms for discovery, they looked at things such as violence and injuries. It has never before occurred to me to look at common things in this perceptive before. I agree with them however that injury and burial traditional all are important factors which tell about culture norms and what things were like back then as well.