I mean, first and foremost, criticism based on repeated ethnographic descriptions of the same field. Not specific examples of such works, but attempts to methodologically generalize them

Any Books on the Anthropology of Religion?

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I got a question in my mind.. Why god believe is so strong in human that isn't replaceable at any moment of life or scenario come?

My intentions here are not questions the belief of peoples over any religion of god.

I'm curious here to know why we put are guards down in front of this strong belief of god, why it affects so much on human mind.

I'm not here to argue on anything, just here to listen silently.

In particular, I am interested in whether there are any works about Malinovsky’s A Diary in the Strict Sense of the Term, apart from those that merely draw attention to the obvious discrepancy between his notes and his publications

His writing was so poor that I'm not even sure I understood what he was trying to say correctly, but anyway, these were the genetic arguments he seemed to be making:

1. O-L682 among Koreans underwent a massive star-like expansion through O-A23652, supposedly similar to the “Genghis Khan model,” and the basal lineage of O-A23652 is identified as Japanese.
2. The diversity of O-L682 is higher in Japan. According to him, the Korean O-L682 lineages are mostly just branches resulting from expansion, whereas Japan has both basal and expanded lineages, making the overall diversity of O-L682 higher in Japan.

I seem to find a paradox in the fact that a large population is a consequence of highly fertile land. But on the other hand, the prevalence of malnutrition is also high.

How can this go hand in hand if there is sufficient food available in the land?

If there is not sufficient food available, should it not reflect in the population size too?

How would you resolve this observation?

Question for evolutionary biologists/anthropologists: In models explaining the post-Neolithic Y-chromosome bottleneck via patrilineal clan competition (like Zeng 2018), was there accounting for evolutionary and biological behavior.

I'm trying to understand how these mathematical models handle human sexuality. From what I understand, our intermediate size between large chimps testes and tiny gorillas testicles, suggests humans evolved for moderate sperm competition and pair-bonding. This acts as a natural physiological guardrails against extreme reproductive monopolization. So do these mathematical models assume cultural factors can simply override this human physiology?

And if they don't, did they include comparative primate biology into their mathematical assumptions and models?

Hello all. I recently got my MA in archaeology and am now trying to assemble a post-graduation reading list.

A topic which interests me, but which I never had the time to delve into during my studies is the manner in which pre-industrial polities organize themselves and how power is distributed in different societies.

One particular interest is how hierarchy develops and changes, as well as how some societies maintain more egalitarian structures. I have some names here: Brian Hayden, Timothy Earle, Marshall Sahlins. And I have begun reading this issue responding to The Dawn of Everything. But I would like a wider range of reading on this topic. I would particularly appreciate some modern perspectives that explore how power relates to various patterns of subsistence and economics.

I would also appreciate tips on how to get a sense of the range of types of sociopolitical organisation that are possible given different material condition. I am aware of Elman Service's well-worn model, but it seems overly reductive and so broad as to not be very useful.

The societies that are of most interest to me are those that can loosely be described as hunter-gatherer, pastoralist and agrarian societies.

I am grateful for any and all help.

I just saw a video that said the r1a1a (or r1a1, I can't find the video to check) haplogroup originated in INDIA of all places and that the spread of the haplogroup coincides with the spread of Indo-European language and culture.

That was completely shocking to me as this r1a1a (or r1a1) haplogroup is notorious for being the same as the Aryan gene, something a famous austrian reportedly had an obsession for.

Now as far as proof goes, the video made two claims:

1. The geographic origin of a haplogroup (where that original gene-carrying father lived) is where there is the most variation/mutation of that haplogroup, as populations can migrate, such as the europeans to the americas, and it makes sense that the place with the most mutation is the place that the gene has been the longest, thus had the most time to morph.
2. The place with the most mutation of the r1a1a (or r1a1) haplogroup is North-West India/South Asia. If you look at the map of where the haplogroup is found, a large density is found in that area.

Now the video stated both of these as FACTS, as if their truth was cemented by multiple studies, but I can't find any research that says either, or perhaps I'm too dumb to find any. Does anyone know about this? I want to know if that video was made by some delusional Indian nationalist or if the idea has any merit

Recently I learned in my college archaeology class that the word “prehistoric” simply means that the peoples being described have no written, recorded history. Therefore, a group alive today with no writing system could be rightfully called prehistoric even though they are still here. This makes sense to me, they are indeed “pre” “historic” but it also feels wrong. It seems offensive to refer to a still-living group of people as prehistoric regardless of their technological ability aside from writing down their history. I feel like it connects to the idea of linear human advancement which we know now to not be truthful or accurate. What do you guys think of this?

Forewarning: I am in academia, but in technology. I am not an anthropologically-specialised person.

Dr. Peggy Reeves Sanday's old work on rape-free societies is making the rounds on social media. The way the people on social media were portraying her findings was extremely unbelievable to me, so I dug into her work and the work she cites.

This appears to be the primary paper referenced, and was the only one I dug into:

Sanday, P.R. (1981), The Socio-Cultural Context of Rape: A Cross-Cultural Study. Journal of Social Issues, 37: 5-27. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4560.1981.tb01068.x

From my un-anthropologically educated perspective, I see several problems. Here are a few:

1) This work relies on a lot of colonial-era male ethnographer accounts. I don't even need to state the problems here.

2) Findings haven't been replicated. In fact I found recent work & articles on the Minangkabau society documenting ongoing sexual violence.

3) The coding appears to be unblinded.

4) This 1989 paper on the topic points out some problems with her work. I couldn't find any papers that supported her findings.

Palmer, C. (1989). Is Rape a Cultural Universal? A Re-examination of the Ethnographic Data. Ethnology, 28(1), 1–16. https://doi.org/10.2307/3773639

Can anyone please shed light on this, perhaps give context I am missing, and information on more recent research.

Thank you!

Hi y'all! I'm reading Durkheim for a cultural seminar and it has got me thinking about ascetic religious practices like fasting, monasticism, theosis, etc. Why do ascetic practices seem to be so common across religions? What purpose do these practices serve? Are these practices more dominant in Abrahamic religions than others?

If anyone had further reading on this topic I'd love to see it!

I'm not a scholar of religion, so this is a complete shot in the dark - my guess is that these practices promote group cohesion by showing that someone has buy-in to the group. If someone is willing to fast or abstain from sex or whatever they are more likely to be committed members of the group.

Thank you!

I am writing a story, where I want the community to take care of everyone's kids. I know of the saying "it takes a village" when talking about child care, but its hard to imagine it, when I grew up in just a two parent family, rarely with grandparental help. Can someone give an example of how a mother with about 5 kids and a fresh newborn was supported by a village or neighbrous? Or maybe give a good source where I can look more into it.

Hi everyone,

(Note: I am an independent reader and enthusiastic researcher outside of formal anthropological training, so I am very interested in how professional researchers view these behavioral models.)

I am working on a narrative and conceptual framework exploring the evolutionary pressures that drove early hominins down from the trees and subsequently toward obligate bipedalism. I wanted to run a specific behavioral sequence past this community to see how well it holds up against current paleoanthropological data and ecological models.

My working hypothesis proposes a step-by-step outward migration driven strictly by density-dependent competition, structured around the following four phases:

Phase 1: Arboreal Saturation and Social Friction. High population density within the canopy, combined with intense competition for proximal fruit and complex intra-group social friction, created a marginalized sub-population. These individuals began descending to the forest floor to exploit dropped, ripe fruit—accepting terrestrial risks to bypass direct canopy dominance hierarchies.

Phase 2: The Canopy-Anchor Zone. Once the immediate ground beneath the trees was colonized, these primates operated within a strict tethered radius defined by their climbing reach and immediate safety. The tree remained an essential vertical refuge against large terrestrial predators, meaning they did not yet venture into open, unprotected spaces.

Phase 3: Radial Exhaustion. As the immediate floor area surrounding the safety trees reached carrying capacity, foragers were forced to push the boundaries of their safe operational radius. However, remaining close to the structural anchor of the forest edge stayed critical for survival.

Phase 4: Postural Elevation for Horizon Scanning. With the immediate radial zone fully saturated and movement restricted by predator vulnerability in tall grasses or open patches, natural selection favored individuals capable of temporary or sustained bipedal posture. Standing upright served primarily as a visual surveillance tool—allowing early hominins to scan over tall vegetation, spot distant predators, and safely map out the next patch before committing to travel across exposed terrain.

Questions for the Community:

1. How does this sequential model (canopy crowding \rightarrow marginal ground foraging \rightarrow tethered radial expansion \rightarrow bipedal surveillance) align with current theories of mosaic habitats and the ecological drivers behind taxa like Ardipithecus?

2. From a behavioral ecology standpoint, does the transition from predator-avoidance tethers to upright scanning adequately address the energetic and mechanical trade-offs of early bipedalism, or are we missing critical biomechanical pressures (such as thermoregulation or carrying efficiency)?

I would love to hear your critiques, reading recommendations, or insights on where this narrative model fits within established hominin evolution frameworks. Thanks!

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Something I noticed while doing research on various religions that their ethic view heavily center on labeling actions as as either good or bad with level degrees of goodness vs badness. Take Indian religions with the concept of good and bad Karma is as an example or Abrahamic and Iranian religions with concept of Sins and good, is there religions that doesn’t label actions as bad or good? Or religions that suggest excess nor deficiency of x is wrong and humans should stay in middle (Golden mean) like how Aristotelian ethics claims that courage is virtue, but excessive courage (recklessness) or deficiency of courage is bad.

Jainism is the only religion I found to be different and rejects ethic dualism, it has ethic system where they argue that every action that produce karma whether bad or good karma should be discouraged and the main goal is to be karma free. Judaism has golden mean adopted later during Islamic spain from greek philosphy but from what I read most Jewss don't fellowm it

As far as I understand, animals that are capable of eating meat generally eat dead animals when they find them, including dead members of their own species in some cases.

Predators, fish, birds and even many insects do this. There are some exceptions like some monkeys but generally if an animal has the ability to eat meat, it seems to be capable of eating a dead member of its own species too.

So why is this so different with humans? Humans are capable of eating meat and we don't even have to hunt or take any risk to get it if a person from our own species is already dead. Yet instead of eating the body, humans generally bury it, burn it, put it in the sea, leave it in nature, mourn the person, etc.

From an evolutionary perspective, wouldn't eating our own dead actually make more sense? Why did humans develop such strong taboos and rituals around the bodies of dead members of our own species instead?

I understand that nowadays religion and culture have made this kind of thing taboo but what I'm wondering is why our cultures and religions developed in that direction in the first place.

If eating our own dead could have provided calories without the risks involved in hunting, wouldn't it have made more sense for cultures and religions to develop rituals around eating the dead instead?

I do not know exactly how water-capable archaic hominins were, but none of them ever seem to have matched us when it comes to oceanic expansion. Humans seem to have repeatedly developed and refined ocean-going craft such as boats and canoes, navigational knowledge, and strategies for long-distance voyaging and colonization in ways that archaic hominins seemingly didn't.

On land, the difference does not seem nearly as vast: archaic hominins such as Homo erectus spread across enormous parts of Eurasia. I don't know of any archaic hominin species that has done anything remotely as astonishing as Sahul at 50–65 kya, the Lapita expansion in ~500 years, or East Polynesia from 1000 to 1300 CE. At varying times in our species' history, and with very different technological toolkits, we have achieved feats of oceanic colonization that no archaic species seemingly matched.

What accounts for this difference? What is it about Homo sapiens, or about the societies we form, that made us so much better at rapid oceanic expansion, especially when the difference isn't so stark on land?

I dont mean that humans have the biggest penis in absolute terms obviously animals like horses or elephants can be way bigger. I mean relative to our body size humans seem unusually large and especially compared to other primates and our closest relatives it feels like the difference is pretty extreme.

So why did the human penis evolve this way? Was it mainly sexual selection and female preference or was there some other evolutionary advantage that made it gradually get bigger?

Hello there so I'm curious, would paleolithic societies have gender expression and gender roles? This question came about, because I stated that while I do believe sex and gender are different, I do think they are intrinsically linked, and one influences the understanding of the other. This is of course inaccurate of our oldest ancestors didn't have this understanding.

So did our ancestors have gender expression and identities linked to biology? I would love if you present studies and papers saying why or why not.

(Just some clarifications: I do agree men and woman, both did hunting, child rearing, foraging and were largely egalitarian, I'm just curious on scholarly opinion on this)

I’ve been thinking about how some real or fictional characters become much more than just a person or a character. They can become symbols of certain ideas, values, movements, or even parts of a culture.

For example, people like Che Guevara, Gandhi, George Washington, Mao, and Kim Il-sung became strongly associated with certain ideas and historical identities.

What I find especially interesting is that fictional characters can sometimes have a similar cultural impact. Joe Yabuki from Ashita no Joe, for example, is an interesting case of a fictional character who became culturally significant in Japan.

So I’m curious: How does this process happen?

What makes a real person or fictional character become a symbol in a society’s collective memory? Why do people connect certain characters with specific ideas, values, or identities? And why do some characters remain important for generations, even long after the original story or the person’s death?

I’d be interested in the anthropological, cultural, and psychological explanations for this.

Hello, I’m currently writing a short story, and I would love to include a segment of an Anthropologist doing research in Native American country in Wyoming. Thing is, i’m having a segment where they’re researching the clothes of Ancient Native Americans in the Northern Great Plains before contact. I want to delve into alot of clothing subjects during the segment, but I just know nothing about Native American clothing. Before contact, in Wyoming, i’m thinking the Shoshone, how did they dress? What did they look like? What would an Anthropologist think about it.
I’m trying to collect all kinds of bits. Like, I know it would be Nomadic, but how is that designed?
Thanks!

Specifically as related to their own voyages of discovery, rather than sailing as such.

So I have this doubt...I know people with a degree in Archaeology in spanish universities (240 creds, 120 would be equivalent to a bachelor of science and 120 to a bachelor of arts).

In Europe, they are considered only an archaeologist or an historian & archaeologist at most. But here, I see cultural anthropology & linguistics blended with archaeology & bioarchaeology. Cultural anthropology well, it depends on your personal tastes, as an archaeology graduatee you might also be somewhat knowledgeable, but linguistics, literally no way, not even the most basic.

So the question would be: an european archaeology graduatee (which means basically historian + archaeology + bioanthropology + some very basic knowledge of cultural anthropology) should be considered an anthropologist the moment he/she crosses the atlantic?

I'm finding it very interesting as to how there are records of mass hysteria happening over almost every culture past and present. some of the more insane stories happening furthest in the past. the one thing I'm curious to though is what could cause such an event like this?

It seems like sometimes its triggered by a real, traumatising event where people don't have the knowledge to understand why its happening to them so they en mass have a crazy reaction?

Although sometimes it seems there is no triggering event and its some sort of religious thing happening?