The science of studying man with regard to place in the animal kingdom as well as human origins, development, social habits, cultural development and related topics.
Questions tagged [anthropology]
33 questions
57
votes
3 answers
Are human beings naturally predisposed to believe in God?
My girlfriend sent me this article from the Telegraph. This is an excerpt:
Led by two academics at Oxford University, the £1.9 million study found that human thought processes were “rooted” to religious concepts.
Photo from the article
Not having…
Sklivvz
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Is the "Tribe meets White Man for the First Time" video fake?
Is this video fake?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FyHYbsXt05k
Most of the links according this video have no information besides the video itself and are very recent. How should I proceed to get more information about this expedition?
blurec
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Was there a giant red-haired race in North America?
The other day, I saw a show on the History channel about "giant skeletons" being found in North America. It also said that, for some reason, these findings have been hidden from people, maybe due to them being hoaxes or something else.
According to…
isJustMe
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Is the story of a divine miracle at Mt. Sinai, witnessed by a national audience, unique among cultures or religions?
There is a claim, made by Rabbi Lawrence Kelemen in his books (such as Permission to Receive) and lectures (such as this "The Veracity of Torah" lecture on TorahCafé), that the story of a divine miracle at Mt. Sinai (the revelation of God) taking…
A L
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Do any people in South Africa traditionally spend two days together praising wrong-doers to help them?
I have seen variations on the following meme posted by many of my friends on Facebook:
https://me.me/i/ubuntu-in-certain-regions-of-south-africa-when-someone-does-4931579
In certain regions of South Africa, when someone does something wrong, he is…
Steven Gubkin
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22
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Did native americans ever used the practice of a "Rain Dance" in order to encourage rains?
In popular culture there is a claim that Native American used a ritual dance in order to encourage rains.
For example, in the How I Met Your Mother episode "Come On" Ted does a rain dance in order to make rain fall (video clip).
Tim Minchin uses…
SIMEL
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Did some cultures believe that photography can steal your soul?
Some westerners think that people from pre-modern cultures considered photography "stealing somebody's soul". (Comment on Travel.SE, article by a photographer). Was this the case?
Andrew Grimm
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Are there no matriarchal societies?
In a recent Art of Manliness podcast titled "Demonic Males with Dr. Richard Wrangham", Richard Wrangham makes the claim, starting about 28 minutes into the podcast that,
If there was ever a clash between what men wanted to do and women
wanted to…
rjzii
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19
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Is a large percentage of human communication non-verbal?
The claim that 60, or 80, or 90 or 93 percent of all communication is non-verbal is endlessly repeated, not only in pop culture but in the professional worlds of education, business, and in some less rigorous social science disciplines like…
Evan Harper
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17
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Of all humans ever born, did most men not become fathers?
I quote in full a passage from the book Is There Anything Good About Men?: How Cultures Flourish by Exploiting Men by Roy Baumeister, pages 63 – 64:
Counting Ancestors
Let’s return now to the question of what percentage of our ancestors were…
Ystar
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14
votes
3 answers
Is prostitution the oldest profession?
The Oxford Dictionary describes "Prostitution" as
the practice or occupation of engaging in sexual activity with someone
for payment
It is often referred to as "the oldest profession", e.g.
when you search for "Oldest Profession " on Wikipedia…
Oliver_C
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14
votes
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Did Margaret Mead say that a healed femur is the earliest sign of civilization?
A 1997 issue of the Bulletin of the American College of Surgeons, in an article I could not identify, contains the following story:
The noted, late anthropologist, Margaret Mead, was once asked, "What was the first sign of human civilization?" The…
Avery
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Does swearing give people the impression that you are from a lower social class?
Kinja.com published an article called Swearing and Its Socioeconomic Baggage:
One of the most common complaint against swearing was the socio-economic baggage attached to it — simply put, that swearing often gives people the impression that you are…
Christian
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Was there ever a universal human language or mother-tongue?
In "Is this how Eve spoke? Every human language evolved from 'single prehistoric African mother tongue'" from the UK Daily Mail:
Every language in the world - from English to Mandarin - evolved from
a prehistoric 'mother tongue' first spoken in…
Paul
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11
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Were hunter-gatherers peaceful egalitarians?
Peter Gray Ph.D. writes in How Hunter-Gatherers Maintained Their Egalitarian Ways:
Is it true that hunter-gatherers were peaceful egalitarians? The
answer is yes.
During the twentieth century, anthropologists discovered and studied
dozens of…
Christian
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