Free Republic

McLEAN, Va. -- An anthropologist has died of burns she got when was set on fire in Afghanistan in an attack that authorities say prompted her fellow contractor, a New Orleans resident, to kill an Afghan man. Greg Caires, a spokesman for military contractor BAE Systems, says Paula Loyd died Wednesday at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio more than two months after she was doused with fuel. The 36-year-old suffered burns over 60 percent of her body. Loyd's job with BAE was to help U.S. soldiers navigate local culture. One of Loyd's colleagues has been charged with second-degree...

An imperfect body might be just what the doctor ordered for women and key to their economic success, an anthropologist now says. While pop culture seems to worship the hourglass figure for females, with a tiny waist, big boobs and curvy hips à la Marilyn Monroe, this may not be optimal, says Elizabeth Cashdan of the University of Utah. That's because the hormones that make women physically stronger, more competitive and better able to deal with stress also tend to redistribute fat from the hips to the waist. So in societies and situations where women are under pressure to procure...

BAGHDAD, Jan. 25, 2008 – With many streets here cluttered with trash and just as many roads bent out of shape, Baghdad can convey an impression of poverty. But something as simple as the produce available here tells a different tale. Marcus Griffin, an anthropologist working for the 101st Airborne Division’s 2nd Brigade Combat Team, inspects a fruit stand in Ghazaliyah, Iraq, while on patrol Jan. 13, 2008. Griffin is helping soldiers better understand the needs of the Iraqi people. Photo by Sgt. James P. Hunter, USA  (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. An anthropologist is helping soldiers and...

Colgate anthropologist discovers ancient tomb in Honduras Wednesday, May 30, 2007 Colgate anthropology professor Allan Maca peers into a section of a tomb in Copan, Honduras, that dates back to the 7th century A.D. (Photo by Raul Mejia) Colgate anthropology professor Allan Maca and a team of researchers have found a previously unknown tomb in Copán, Honduras, dating back to the 7th century A.D. that contained the skeleton of an elite member of ancient Maya society in the city. The unusual characteristics of the tomb’s construction, the human remains, and the artifacts found near the body, according to Maca, paint...

Anthropologists Back Native American Claims The case of Kennewick Man – or the Ancient One – as Native Americans refer to him, dragged through the courts for years before Judge John Jelderks found that he could not be defined Native American under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. A recent case regarding repatriation of even older remains and artifacts from Spirit Cave, Nev., suggests that the Kennewick Man case should be used as a legal precedent and that the remains of Spirit Cave Man are not Native American. Four University of New Mexico anthropologists have written an article...

Florida State University Date: January 29, 2007 Anthropologist Confirms 'Hobbit' Indeed A Separate Species Science Daily — After the skeletal remains of an 18,000-year-old, Hobbit-sized human were discovered on the Indonesian island of Flores in 2003, some scientists thought that the specimen must have been a pygmy or a microcephalic -- a human with an abnormally small skull. Not so, said Dean Falk, a world-renowned paleoneurologist and chair of Florida State University's anthropology department, who along with an international team of experts created detailed maps of imprints left on the ancient hominid's braincase and concluded that the so-called Hobbit was...

An archaeology crew excavated what its members think is a prehistoric skeleton from the banks of Lake Travis on Sunday. Evidence at the site indicates that the skeleton is between 700 and 2,000 years old, most likely dating back about 1,000 years, members of the excavation crew said. The nearly intact skeleton is being donated to the University of Texas for further study. The skeleton was found Aug. 9 by an Austin man riding a personal watercraft on Lake Travis. David Houston had pulled onto the sloped southern bank, admiring a nearby house, when he saw a jawbone, teeth and...

UD anthropologist finds signs of evolution in ancient skeleton Karen Rosenberg, chairperson and associate professor of anthropology at UD 10:03 a.m., March 2, 2006--Recent analysis of a Stone Age skeleton shows that human brain size relative to body size had increased dramatically from ancestors by the Middle Pleistocene, about 260,000 years ago, Karen Rosenberg, chairperson and associate professor of anthropology at the University of Delaware, said. Rosenberg, who analyzed the fossil with Lü Zuné of Peking University in Beijing and Chris B. Ruff, director of the Center for Functional Anatomy and Evolution at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine...

On September 19, 1997, the New York Times announced the discovery of a group of earthen mounds in northeastern Louisiana. The site, known as Watson Brake, includes 11 mounds 26 feet high linked by low ridges into an oval 916 feet long. What is remarkable about this massive complex is that it was built around 3400 B.C., more than 3,000 years before the development of farming communities in eastern North America, by hunter-gatherers, at least partly mobile, who visited the site each spring and summer to fish, hunt, and collect freshwater mussels... Social complexity cannot exist unless I it...

Papers have been flapping with new headlines about the latest in a long line of alleged dinosaur ancestors of birds. This one is claimed to be a sensational dinosaur with feathers on its hind legs, thus four ‘wings’.1 This was named Microraptor gui—the name is derived from words meaning ‘little plunderer of Gu’ after the paleontologist Gu Zhiwei. Like so many of the alleged feathered dinosaurs, it comes from Liaoning province of northeastern China. It was about 3 feet (1 meter) long from its head to the tip of its long tail, but its body was only about the size...

Source: Washington University In St. Louis Date: 2003-06-17 About Face: Washington University Anthropologist Sets The Record Straight Regarding Neandertal Facial Length New scientific evidence challenges a common perception that Neandertals -- a close evolutionary relative to modern humans that lived 230,000 to 30,000 years ago -- possessed exceptionally long faces. Instead, a report authored by Erik Trinkaus, Ph.D., the Mary Tileston Hemenway Professor of Anthropology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, shows that modern humans are really the "odd man out" when it comes to facial lengths, which drop off dramatically compared with their ancestral predecessors....

<p>Eight anthropologists who want to study an ancient skeleton must want until a federal court has heard an appeal of the case by four Northwest tribes that consider the bones sacred.</p> <p>The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals' decision, made last week, prevents any study of the 9,300-year-old skeleton known as Kennewick Man, which scientists have sought to examine since 1996.</p>