The Anthropology of Everyday Life

Why Numbers Matter

    Numbers are drawn symbols, or figures, that represent something else. The sign 2 is not just a slinky line; it is a collectively recognized and agreed upon symbol for two of something. Throughout history, that representation has made life a lot easier for transactions among people — it’s a lot easier if I write “I owe you 2 cows” than bringing the cows physically into the conversation and parading them around and forcing you to see that there are indeed 2 cows. Numbers are also the symbols used in counting, a numerical…

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Chimpanzee Moms are Cool

If you think it’s been a hot summer in America, try living in southeast Senegal, especially in the dry savannah area of Fongoli where temperatures rise to 110 degrees Fahrenheit. Then try being a chimpanzee, an animal covered in hair but one that is smart enough to turn on a cold shower if only there was any running water around. But researchers have observed that Senegalese chimps do have a natural way to beat the heat — they duck into a series of cool caves when the temperature is unbearably hot. The…

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The Most Selfish Culture on Earth-Or Maybe Not

Once Considered Unkind, the Ik Turn out to Be Nice When anthropologist Colin Turnbull lived among the Ik people of Uganda between 1964 and 1967, he found a bleak, loveless, unkind society where everyone was only out for themselves. Turnbull wrote about his experience in the best-selling 1972 book The Mountain People, an ethnographic follow up to his highly acclaimed The Forest People about the cooperative and socially entwined Mbuti pygmies of the Republic of Congo. The contrast between the two cultures couldn’t have been more shocking. The Ik were held up as evidence that…

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I Was Once a Revolutionary

Exposed in Print, I Now Tell My Story I was recently exposed for my previous revolutionary activities.Everything they said about me and my fellow activists is true. And that time was one of the most interesting and intellectually engaging periods of my life. That’s because this particular revolution was not about governance or politics; there was no civil war involved. Instead, it was a scientific revolution that changed the very foundations of the discipline of evolutionary biology. The reveal, with my work cited several times, wasn’t posted on Facebook or Twitter. Nor was…

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