Jared Diamond is not impressed by modern social sciences, like psychology and anthropology, because of the need to try and make claims about human nature by doing surveys or visiting a place and then framing the results through their own - not to invoke the most overused cliché of 2012 but just this once it fits - motivated reasoning.The reaction from the social sciences and the mainstream media...
read moreMedieval clerics did not like the prospect of giving up sex - heck, every man getting getting married dreads the part about giving up sex - so even when they had to do so by Papal decree there was resistance to it. You think changing from a Latin to local language Mass was controversial? Genitalia are a lot more personal. Priests, of course, used to be married but that changed hundreds...
read moreIf you want to find out what people really think of your culture, present or past, you need only go to Facebook. That’s what ScienceNordic’s Danish partner site, videnskab.dk, did to find out from the audience what the Vikings were like. And a small Danish site is not polling Americans, it is mostly Danish people. It [...]
read moreNew York University cultural anthropologist and Associate Professor Allen Feldman is visiting the University of Sydney, notes the blog site of the School of Philosophical and Historical Inquiry (SOPHI) - they named the site SOPHIstry, which may be a little too clever, since sophists in ancient times were the people real philosophers made fun of because they were trying to be too clever and...
read more5,000 years ago, Stonehenge was built. Beyond that, not much is known. Why it was a built - as a a temple of healing, a calendar, or even a royal cemetery - and how, has been a matter of speculation.Researchers say they are closer to cracking one aspect of the mysteries after working out the exact spot where some of the rocks came from - an outcrop 150 miles away in north...
read moreA ceramic stamp has been found in Acre, northern Israel, during excavations at Horbat Uza - but and it dates to the Byzantine Era.The tiny seal has the image of a seven-branch menorah and was used to stamp the kosher sign on bread 1,500 years ago. It has Greek letters that spell out what the researchers believe to be the name of the baker, Launtius."The presence of a Jewish settlement so...
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