The oldest bones yet of our species have been found, surprisingly, in an old Moroccan mine. At about 300,000 years old, the new collection of early Homo sapiens bones pushes back the first solid evidence of our species’ presence in Africa by 100,000 years.
“Photography was a license to go wherever I wanted and to do what I wanted to do,” [Diane] Arbus wrote. The camera is a kind of passport that annihilates moral boundaries and social inhibitions, freeing the photographer from any responsibility toward the people photographed. The whole point of photographing people is that you are not intervening in their lives, only visiting them. The photographer is supertourist, an extension of the anthropologist, visiting natives and bringing back news of their exotic doings and strange gear. The photographer is always trying to colonize new experiences or find new ways to look at familiar subjects—to fight against boredom” (Sontag 1977, 33).
The oldest known fossils of homo sapiens have been found in Morocco. The bones date back to ~300,000 years ago, more than 100,000 years earlier than previous fossils found
HuffPost
I cannot provide a fast and facile answer to this profound question, but can sugges that a more anthropological approach to the world of social life and politics is one way of reclaiming our humanity. I’ve been doing anthropology for many decades
This Anthro Life – Savage Minds Crossover Series, part 3
by Adam Gamwell and Ryan Collins
This Anthro Life has teamed up with Savage Minds to bring you a special 5-part podcast and blog crossover series. While thinking together as two anthropological productions that exist for multiple kinds of audiences and publics, we became inspired to have a series of conversations about why anthropology matters today. We’re sitting down with some of the folks behind Savage Minds, SAPIENS, the American Anthropological Association and the Society for American Archaeology to bring you conversations on anthropological thinking and its relevance through an innovative blend of audio and text.
I’ve written on this blog before about the Trump Administration’s recent changes to net neutrality rules. These rules will let your Internet Service Provider — your cable or mobile phone company — pick and chose what parts of the Internet you can view and how quickly video and webpages will load. As part of the campaign to stop these new rules, a massive coalition of non-profits, companies, and activist groups are planning a day of action to black out the net called ‘Battle for the Net’. Anthropology blogs and websites everywhere need to show solidarity and join this day of action.
This article was originally published at Aeon and has been republished under Creative Commons.
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