Human Anthropology

For centuries, we have walked with the certainty of a singular path—that humanity evolved in a straight line, one species outlasting the rest. But what if that story was never complete? What if the truth had been buried, not by time, but by intention? In the darkest corners of the earth, where sunlight seldom touches, remnants of forgotten peoples lie hidden beneath layers of stone and silence. These were not myth, nor were they monsters. They were our brothers. Our sisters. Our reflections fractured across time. This is the journey of one woman who dared to follow those shadows into the ...

Ethiopia is a mixed environment for exploration... and survival. It has had its grand moments, tied in with Jewish history, temples, world wide travel and such. But there are far too many pockets where none of that reached and had not for centuries. Verona Romero is an established archaeologist with a second doctorate in anthropology and Ethiopia calls to her to prove her worth beyond the constant search for treasure. No, the promise, this time, was fame, finding the very beginning of humanity on the dark continent, following in the footsteps of giants like world-renowned ...

How can Christian men and women live faithfully in a world confused over sexuality and gender? Surely we must be reminded of what Scripture teaches. Yet as God’s design for sexuality is being suppressed and denied in the modern world, we need to hear it articulated in a fresh and accessible way. God’s Good Design presents the historic, biblical view of sexuality in a manner that is appealing even to those who have been conditioned to believe it is scary or oppressive.

St. Augustine is a principle founder of many of Christianity's theological assertions. Among the more popular thriving today is his understanding of humans' nature. In this treatise of Theological Threads the origins of a contemporary Christian theological misconception are uncovered. Here his theological anthropology is scrutinized. Special attention is given to its relationship to sin, heaven, and salvation. Looking at this aspect of his theology, we find that his deep roots in platonic philosophy often fed the wrong nuances of the biblical texts, leading him down the less correct path! ...

Bronislaw Malinowski's seminal work, Sex and Repression in Savage Society, delves into the intricate dynamics of sexuality and societal control within primitive cultures. Published in 1927, this ethnographic study challenges prevailing Victorian notions of sexuality and sheds light on the nuanced ways in which indigenous societies navigate and regulate sexual behaviors. Malinowski's immersive fieldwork in the Trobriand Islands enables him to provide a rich anthropological account, exploring the role of rituals, customs, and taboos in shaping sexual practices.

Scientists' understanding of life is progressing more rapidly than at any point in human history, from the extraordinary decoding of DNA to the controversial emergence of biotechnology. Featuring pioneering biologists, geneticists, physicists, and science writers, Life explains just how far we've come - and takes a brilliantly educated guess at where we're heading.

This provocative and panoramic book shows listeners what they can learn from their ancestors, and how the unwavering ability of prehistoric people to survive and thrive can continue into the present.

The human body is an amazing gift, yet today, many people downplay its importance and fail to understand what Christianity teaches about our bodies and their God-given purposes. Many people misunderstand how the body was designed, its role in relating to others; and we lack awareness of the dangers of objectifying the body, divorcing it from its intended purpose.

In this book, E. Fuller Torrey draws on cutting-edge neuroscience research to propose a startling answer to the ultimate question. Evolving Brains, Emerging Gods locates the origin of gods within the human brain, arguing that religious belief is a by-product of evolution. Based on an idea originally proposed by Charles Darwin, Torrey marshals evidence that the emergence of gods was an incidental consequence of several evolutionary factors.

A brief essay by James J. Caterino, the author of Reviews and Essays, 50 Films, Watch the Skies, Why I Don't Drink, and much more.

The Mind of the Market will change the way we think about the economics of everyday life. Drawing on research from neuroeconomics, Michael Shermer explores what brain scans reveal about bargaining, snap purchases, and how trust is established in business. Utilizing experiments in behavioral economics, Shermer shows why people hang on to losing stocks and failing companies, why business negotiations often disintegrate into emotional tit-for-tat disputes, and why money does not make us happy.

This sweeping account confronts and upends old fantasies, revealing the far more startling reality of our world's largest hot desert. Drawing on decades of research, and years spent living in the region, anthropologist Judith Scheele takes us from Libya to Mali, Algeria to Chad, from the ancient Roman Empire to the bloody colonial era to contemporary regional battles and fraught international diplomacy, questioning every easy cliché and exposing fascinating truths along the way.

In its 4.5 billion–year history, life on Earth has been almost erased at least half a dozen times: shattered by asteroid impacts, entombed in ice, smothered by methane, and torn apart by unfathomably powerful megavolcanoes. And we know that another global disaster is eventually headed our way. Can we survive it? How?

As a species, Homo sapiens is at a crossroads. Study of our planet’s turbulent past suggests that we are overdue for a catastrophic disaster, whether caused by nature or by human interference.
It’s a frightening prospect, as each of the Earth’s past major disasters—from meteor strikes to bombardment by cosmic radiation—resulted in a mass extinction, where more than 75 percent of the planet’s species died out. But in Scatter, Adapt, and Remember, Annalee Newitz, science journalist and editor of the science Web site io9.com explains that although global disaster is all but inevitable, our chances of long-term species survival are better than ever. Life on Earth has come close to annihilation—humans have, more than once, narrowly avoided extinction just
during the last million years—but every single time a few creatures survived, evolving to adapt to the harshest of conditions.
This brilliantly speculative work of popular science focuses on humanity’s long history of dodging the bullet, as well as on new threats that we may face in years to come. Most important, it explores how scientific breakthroughs today will help us avoid disasters tomorrow. From simulating tsunamis to studying central Turkey’s ancient underground cities; from cultivating cyanobacteria for “living cities” to designing space elevators to make space colonies cost-effective; from using math to stop pandemics to studying the remarkable survival strategies of gray whales, scientists and researchers the world over are discovering the keys to long-term resilience and learning how humans can choose life over death.
Newitz’s remarkable and fascinating journey through the science of mass extinctions is a powerful argument about human ingenuity and our ability to change. In a world populated by doomsday preppers and media commentators obsessively forecasting our demise, Scatter, Adapt, and Remember is a compelling voice of hope. It leads us away from apocalyptic thinking into a future where we live to build a better world—on this planet and perhaps on others. Readers of this book will be equipped scientifically, intellectually, and emotionally to face whatever the future holds.

How do we conceptualize the human being? Are we a spirit? Are we a soul? Are we a body? Are we a combination of some or all of these? If so, what are their relationships? What are the practical implications of the Hebraic view of human nature? Volume 6 of Theological Threads addresses these questions from a Biblical perspective focusing on the Hebraic understanding of humans. Special attention is paid to the influences of Greek philosophy and popular culture on Christian understanding of the subject.

What does it mean to be a body behind a screen, lost in the hustle of an online world? In our age of digital hyper-connection, Athena Dixon invites us to consider this question with depth, heart, and ferocity, investigating the gaps that technology cannot fill and confronting a lifetime of loneliness.

The Intertwined Legacies of Adam and Mitochondrial Eve Out of Africa Theory of Human Evolution. Explore Humanity's Greatest Story: The Journey That Connects Us All! Dive into the origins of humanity with The Intertwined Legacies of Adam and Mitochondrial Eve. This groundbreaking exploration of the Out of Africa Theory of Human Evolution will challenge your perceptions, spark your curiosity, and leave you in awe of the journey that unites us all. From the discovery of our shared genetic heritage to the breathtaking story of migration, adaptation, and survival, this book connects the dots ...

What is consciousness? Is the mind a machine? What makes us persons? How can we find the path to human maturity? These are among the fundamental questions that Rowan Williams helps us to think about in this deeply engaging exploration of what it means to be human.

"Love is the deepest and truest aspect of life; only through it can any enigma in the world be solved." (Albert Möser) If you have ever asked yourself, “What does it mean to love?” you are holding the book that will help you find some answers. The author—a distinguished university professor and prolific writer—has pondered the same question and confesses: “I have written these pages with the hope that love may exist among us. I have written them because I believe in love. I am one of those who still firmly believe that utopias can become reality.” "Today, as we witness a true ...

For all that science knows about the living world, notes David P. Barash, there are even more things we don't know, genuine evolutionary mysteries that perplex the best minds in biology. Paradoxically, many of these mysteries are very close to home, involving some of the most personal aspects of being human. Homo Mysterious examines a number of these evolutionary mysteries, exploring things we don't yet know about ourselves, laying out the best current hypotheses, and pointing toward insights that scientists are just beginning to glimpse.

We are experiencing an era of unprecedented cognitive dissonance. Despite incredible advances in our capacity to access information and “truth”, we have reached a terrifying all-time high for apathy. The planet’s existential-level catastrophe is systematically edited out of the news, even as it spirals out of control. This counterintuitive phenomenon, which has taken even the most extreme pessimists by surprise, deserves more than the usual conspiracy explanation of “them” against “us”. A Great Silence appears to have taken hold not only in the media, but in a general ...