Society and Culture

Behavior of Dominance

2009-10-30T21:52:00.001-07:00

Behavior of Dominance
One of interesting aspect of social behavior among some primates is the evolution of a pattern of behavior called dominance.

Many primate groups are arranged in a hierarchy similar to the “pecking order” of chickens.

In such a group there are strong divisions between dominance males of the group - usually the older, larger, and stronger ones and other members including in descending order, younger and less dominant males, adult females, younger juveniles of both sexes, and infants.

This strict hierarchy of dominance serves a double purpose: It aids on the defense of the group by allowing the strongest males to present a united front against attackers, and it keeps the younger members from straying too far from the protection of the dominant members of the group.

Patterns of dominance are maintained through submission behavior that allows one animal to reaffirm its dominance over another.

A subordinate baboon will “present itself” to a dominant one by going up to it and turning its back in a submissive, nonthreatening posture.

If it did not behave in this way, the dominant animals might take its approach as a challenge to its authority and try tom repel it.

Since the dominant hierarchy of a group is constantly changing, such challenges are part of everyday life, especially among the youngest members.
Behavior of Dominance

Circumstantial Knowledge

2009-10-13T21:47:00.000-07:00

Circumstantial Knowledge
Social and cultural anthropology – the precise name is more of an indication of local intellectual histories than of any substantial difference, despite the fur that flew around the distinction in he 1970s – is above all an empirical discipline.

Whether it is also empiricist is a very different issue.

It is mediation between serious commitments to the evidence of pragmatic, on the spot research on the one hand, and serious engagement with critics of overweening “ethnographic authority” often level against it on the other.

In classic essay 1973 ,: “Thick description: toward an interpretive theory of culture,” Clifford Geertz declared that the analysis of culture – with which he equated anthropology – was “not an experimental science in search of law but an interpretive one on search of meaning”.

This was to ploy one of the polarities that had haunted and still haunts the discipline.

To a greater degree perhaps than any other, anthropology has straddle the divide between the social sciences and the humanities and been stretched uneasily between a broadly positivistic explanatory approach to social and cultural phenomena, and an emphatic exploration of communication and significance.

It may be hard to imagine a synthesis of “experimental” and “interpretive” science, but neither these terms nor the “laws” and “meanings” they sought respectively to reveal appear in the same way today.

Inevitably, then, anthropology must occupy a middle ground that gives the lie to those who would claim that empirical scholarship and relative critique are mutually incompatible.

It occupies a middle ground in yet another sense, and one that must be grasped in any approach to anthropological epistemologies.
Circumstantial Knowledge

Manual Work

2009-09-10T08:32:00.000-07:00

Manual Work
In both theory and popular usage, manual work is distinguished from any other kind of work by its direct relation top physical nature.

What kind the word “direct” excludes here is the human intermediary; the tools and the machines are by no means excluded.

For instance, to till the land with a tractor driven plow is manual work; but the gentlemen farmer who merely gives orders to his farm hands is not a manual worker even though he may a worker in some sense.

The other characteristics features of manual work, which may be less familiar but are no less self-sufficient, are the following:

Manual work is a transitive activity. While this term also means transient, fluid, nonlasting, “transitive” here designates the properties of passing from an agent into a receiver.

Also in some metaphysical contexts a transitive action is defined simply as the production of an effect, and thus an action whose effect remains within the agent is still considered transitive.

Here, transitive activity is understood in a restricted sense to designate only those actions whose effect is external to the agent.

Hammering, shaping, melting, cutting are transitive actions in this restricted and strongest sense.
Manual work is an activity by way change. It belongs to the physical type in sharp opposition to the psychological operations which do, or at least may, exist by way of rest.

To work is to bring about a change in an external matter.

When that change has come to an end the worker’s activity belongs to the past. Like many metaphysical simplicities, this has far-reaching implications.

To make a chair is to bring about a change in the wood, the nails, the straw and the glue of which the chair is made.

Manual Work

Anthropology in Practice

2009-08-26T19:48:00.000-07:00

Anthropology in Practice
Social and cultural anthropology is “the study of common sense.” Yet common sense is, anthropologically speaking, seriously mis-named: it is neither common to all cultures, not is any version of it particularly sensible from the perspective of anyone outside its particular cultural context.

It is the socially acceptable rendition of culture, and is thus as variable as are both cultural forms an social rules – those wins axes that define the formal objects of anthropological theory.

Whether viewed as “self defense” or as “obviousness,” common sense – the everyday understanding of how works – turns out to be extraordinary diverse, maddeningly inconsistent, and highly resistant to skepticism of any kind.

It is embedded in both sensory experience and practical politics – powerful realities that constraint and shape access to knowledge.

How do we know that human beings have really landed on the moon? We are usually convinced of it – but how do we know that our conviction does not rest on some misplaced confidence in the source of our information?

If we have reason to doubt that others are entirely successful in making sense of the world, how do we know – given that we cannot easily step outside our own frame of reference – that we are doing any better?

To be sure, this challenge to what we might call scientific and rational credulity was not what the earliest anthropologists (in any professionally recognizable sense) had in mind.

To the contrary, they were convinced of their own cultural superiority to the people they studied, and would have reacted with astonishment to any suggestion that science could be studied in the same way as “magic.”

Much recent anthropological work has indeed inspected the claims of modern technology, politics and science. Notably, the entire field of medical anthropology has challenged the claims of a crass scientism that – as Nicholas Thomas observes in a somewhat different context – has failed to keep pace with developments in science itself.
Anthropology in Practice

The Concept of Work

2009-08-05T21:10:00.000-07:00

The Concept of Work
The daily life of man is composed of things whose meaning is hidden in the mystery of their familiarity.

Other examples would be love, companionship, sincerity, honor, sport, ennui and community-feeling.

Many would think that those things of familiarity we experience when we speak of honor or of work is not caused by the kind intelligibility which places an object above definition.

Time needs to be defined. Its familiarity is not that of a primary notion, and “work” is immensely farther than “time” from the condition of primary intelligibility.

Being anterior to any definition, however is only one of two causes of indefinability; the other is the lack of essential unity.

A complex whose components are not compromised within one essence cannot be defined.

For instance, it is possible to define the physician, and it is possible to define the singer, but it is possible to define the singer who is also a physician, or the physician who is also a singer.

Thus our second problem is that right now we cannot be sure whether the term “worker: conveys an essence or a mere aggregate of intelligibilities.

Indeed, as Werner Sombart would have it, the word might be without any real meaning, albeit usable it conversation because meanings may be assigned to it at will.

And so all that can be said at this point, even assuming work to be an essence, is that determining the approach from which the intelligible unity of work may be perceived remains a difficult problem.
The Concept of Work

Higher Primate Behavior

2009-07-02T18:53:00.000-07:00

Higher Primate Behavior
One of the most obvious and important similarities between apes and human is that both engage in social behavior.

One reason for this is the extended period of infant dependent among primates, which promotes learning and other kinds of social behavior.

Another factor is the diet of primates.

Studies have shown that cooperation and movement in group is required when the food supply is scattered, as is the case with the diet of tree dwelling primates.

This is especially true for hunting, and in fact we find cooperative hunting parties not only among primates but also among other predatory animals such as wolves or lions.
Higher Primate Behavior

Latent Function of Funeral

2009-06-02T00:02:00.001-07:00

Latent Function of Funeral
One of latent function of funeral is to provide a break in the routine for those who attend, although most people will argue that they rather have the deceased back among the living than use the funeral as an excuse to have a family reunion.

In the process of bringing people together, a funeral also serves the latent function of reinforcing the solidarity of the group.

Members of the typical American middle-class family often are scattered throughout the city, state, and even the country, making close contact difficult and family gatherings relatively rare occurrence.

However, the funeral offers the family chance to get together (weddings serve the same purpose). A funeral can also have the latent function of raising another person to a higher social position.

When someone does, the position he or she held is vacated and must be filled by someone else. A son, for example, might be called upon to take an active role in the funeral, or he might at least be mentioned by the clergyman who performs the ceremony – a subtle hint that he has a new role to fill.

Finally, a funeral can help alleviate the fear of death. Those who participate in ceremony become aware of their concern for the decease, and in the process they convinces themselves that, as they have not forgotten the deceased , they will not be forgotten by their friends and relatives when they are gone.

Of course, it might be difficult to get most people to admit they had any of these feelings when they attended a funeral, which is one reason anthropologists stress the importance of studying the latent functions of social behavior as well as its manifest functions.

Only by analyzing what, to the objective and impartial observer, people appear to be doing, as well as what they think or say they are doing, can we get a full and clear picture of how a society work.

The functions of various institutions cannot be limited to those listed by the people involved, for as we have seen in the example funeral, there are many more functions that are obvious to outside observers.

To ignore these functions would be to ignore a large portion of the structure of society.
Latent Function of Funeral

Malay Music for Healing

2009-05-04T18:25:00.000-07:00

Malay Music for Healing
Traditional Malay medicine encompasses various kinds of ritual ceremonies intended to communicate with the world of spirits to determine whether the nature of an illness is physical or psychological.

In such ceremonies, the aim is to summon and exorcise the spirits causing illness.

A ritualist serves as a medium, and a small ensemble often provides the musical component.

Known by different name, healing rituals appear in different forms.

The main saba (a curing ceremony, incorporating dance around a saba tree) and main lukah (a fisherman’s curing ritual performed in Pahang) are regional types using song, dance and drumming.

The main puteri (peteri), another form that extensively uses music, is found in Kelantan and Terengganu.

In the main puteri, a medium (tok puteri, tok teri, bomoh) becomes possessed by the spirit causing an illness.

The performance of vocal and instrumental pieces helps him enter a state of trance.

A trance dance (tarian lupa) is a prominent feature of the ceremony.

An assistant, the tok minduk, plays the rebab as he converses and sings in dialogue with the medium.

The orchestra used in Kelantan is larger, perhaps because of the occasional performance of the main puteri with mak yong.

The contemporary main puteri orchestra of Kelantan includes the core mak yong orchestra (a rebab, a pair of gendang and a pair of tetawak), plus two or more canang, a pair of kesi and sometimes an oboe.

The dialogue between the tok minduk and the tok puteri is sung in a slow tempo, with long gong units, ling rhythmic patterns in the drum part, and a vocal line featuring a basically syllabic style of singing.

The rebab accompanies the vocal lines of both singers by either playing heterophonically with voice or reiterating, short melodic phrases as ostinatos.

The trance dance sections feature the repetition of brief gong units and short drummed rhythms, a fast tempo and the reiteration and emphasis of the running beat by the small gongs and the hand held cymbals.
Malay Music for Healing

Signs and Syllables during Sumerians

2009-04-26T07:26:00.000-07:00

Signs and Syllables during Sumerians
By about 2500 BC, however, the original picture signs were reduce d to such stylized symbolisms that the original objects could hardly be recognized

Scribes also started to use characters to represent t ideas , actions, feelings and soon , rather than concrete objects alone.

Ambiguities sometimes resulted, however.

The picture of image a foot, for example, might mean to come or go or stand and so on.

Thousand of different characters would have to be invented to encompass the full range of words in use.

The eventual solution was to use signs phonetically – that is, to indicate sounds rather than actual objects.

By this method, in English, abstract concepts such as ‘treason’ might be represented by placing the image of ‘tree’ alongside that of, say, the ‘sun’.

Using a fairly limited repertoire of of syllables it was possible to build up any word.

The Sumerian system included some 600 signs which had to be memorized.

The scribes failed to condense the system further by breaking syllables down into the two dozen or so letters that make up the modern alphabet.

Nevertheless, their own method proved remarkably flexible, permitting a rich literature to flourish alongside workaday texts such as legal contracts and bill of sale.

The Sumerian system of arithmetic was based on the unit of 10 – and has survived through the centuries in our hour of 60 minutes and circle of 360 degrees.
Signs and Syllables during Sumerians

The Evolution of Primates (part II)

2009-03-20T21:42:00.000-07:00

The Evolution of Primates (part II)
Life in the trees also led to changes in patterns of bearing and raising offspring, making the infant more dependent on its mother.

Lacking a permanent and protected home for raising children, primates were under selective pressure to have one or at most just a few offspring at a time.

And to ensure the survival of these species under such conditions, a large proportion of the offspring must survive.

Whereas a fish may lay thousands of eggs to yield one offspring that survived t0 reproduce, a primate that bears only one baby must take care of it is order to increase its chances of surviving.

Over time this pressure led to greater dependency in primate offspring, both before and after birth.

One way to ensure higher survival rate is to increase the amount of maternal care during pregnancy and after the birth of the child.

One a fish has laid its eggs, it duties are over. Among mammals, the period of care is extended by the fact that the mother must nurse the infant for some time. But in the higher primates the period of dependency becomes even longer.

Yet another change that was brought about by early primate life was greater intelligence. All of the previous changes, such as better eyesight or more nerves in the hands required an increase in the size of the brain.

The reduction on the number of offspring placed a premium on a longer life span and this provided more chances to learn through experience.

Learning as opposed to instinctual response, is clearly a superior means of adapting to the environmental, since it allows the individual to meet changes with new techniques, more important, it allows one to adjust one’s behaviors on the basis of ones experiences (success or failures).

But the greater role of learning, the more pressure there was for increase brain size to allow for the memory of past experience.
The Evolution of Primates (part II)

Sumerians: Words and figures

2009-02-12T00:33:00.001-08:00

Sumerians: Words and figures
The Sumerians were the first people to develop a system of arithmetic.

Adding subtracting and multiplying were important skills when handling goods such as sacks of grain or heads of cattle in quantities.

The Sumerians also developed an efficient system of weights and measures and their supreme invention – that of writing – arose from the practical need to keep records of goods for the purposes of trade, or tax collection.

Those records began in the simplest way with picture images of the item - an ox head for example – and a number of dots to indicate the quantity.

Symbols were drawn on a soft clay tablet using a sharpened reed. The tablet was then baked in a kiln to harden it.

Originally list of items were arranged in vertical columns starting from the top right hand side.

Around the 3000 BC, however, scribes found that they could write better by turning the tablets and writing from left to right, in horizontal rows.

At the same times, the original pointed stylus was abandoned in favor of one with a wedge shaped tip.

Scratching with a point was prone to leave untidy ridges: the new wedge shaped stylus could be pressed into clay to leave a crisper impression.

Stylized images, composed entirely of cuneiform, or ‘wedge-shaped’, marks made up the writing system used in Mesopotamia.
Sumerians: Words and figures

The Evolution of Primates

2009-01-22T00:36:00.000-08:00

The Evolution of Primates
The earliest primates began to appear after the time that dinosaurs had become extinct beginning almost 50 to 60 millions years ago. They differed from other mammals in a number of ways, all of which can be traced directly to the biological makeup of modern human.

They tended to be larger and they had larger brain on proportion to their body size.

Perhaps the most important feature of the early primates is that they were arboreal; that is, while they exploited food sources on the ground as well as those in trees, for the most part they lived in the trees.

Because they lived in trees, early primates were subject to selective pressures that brought about a number of other changes. Moving through the trees required improved eyesight and motor coordination.

This led not only to the evolution of stereoscope sight with greater depth perception, which was needed for jumping from one branch to another, but also to color vision, which is useful in telling live branches from dead ones or ripe from unripe fruit.

Other senses changed along with eyesight. The sense of touch became more important, since the precision required for moving in the trees had life-or-dead meaning for primates. An animal that is running along on the ground can make a mistake in judgment, fall, get up, and be on its way again, but a slight mistake in the treetops can be fatal.

The forelimbs, or hands of primates therefore became more sensitive, and the fingers became more mobile. Claws were replaced by flat nails and most important the thumb and big toe became opposable, which means that they could be moved opposite to some or all of the fingers or toes.

This means that primates could manipulate objects with their hands, rather than grasping them with their teeth, as other mammals do. Later on, the arms, grew distinct from the legs and became able to rotate, flex, and extend.

All of these changes are important in terms of the way early primates gathered food and caught small animals both in trees and on the ground.
The Evolution of Primates

The Evolution of Mammals

2009-01-10T19:01:00.001-08:00

The Evolution of Mammals
Early mammals evolved from reptiles some 200 million years ago. For one thing, reptiles are cold blooded, which means that their body temperatures changes with the temperature around them.

In many cases this means that during the winter reptiles remain dormant because their body temperature is reduced to a point that precludes much activity. But even in warmer climates most reptiles must feed during the daylight hours, when it is warmer, and are less active during the night, when the temperature drops.

In contrast to reptiles, early mammals had the advantage of being warm-blooded. Because they have a constant body temperature regardless of their environment, mammals can compete with reptiles by remaining active throughout the night and throughout the year.

Thus it is probable that the earliest mammals were nocturnal – that is, were most active during the night, when they would not be in danger from reptilian predators and in some cases would be able to obtain food with littlie if any competition.

Of course, being warm blooded, they could also function during the daytime hours, and this gave them an even greater advantage.

This change toward warm-bloodedness also gave mammals a geographic advantage in that they could exploit a wider range of climates and spread out over a wider territory. If climate change, either from one season to another or over a period of years, they were in a better position to survive by adapting to a new climate.

Thus mammals could adapt to a wider range of environmental conditions and yet compete successfully with reptiles in the same environment. Over many millions of years, mammals spread throughout the world, while many less adaptable reptilian species became instinct.
The Evolution of Mammals

The Evolution

2008-12-22T23:43:00.000-08:00

The Evolution
Modern scientists estimate that the earth is 5 to 6 billion years old. Life is thought to have begun 3 to 4 billion years ago. By comparison, most of the evolution of human like creatures has taken place in a very short time – the first mammals began to evolve from reptiles perhaps 200 million years ago, and the first placental mammals (i.e., that give birth to live young.

As opposed to the egg bearing platypus or marsupials such as kangaroo) date back about 130 millions years.

Monkey like mammals with relatively large brains and tendencies toward social behavior have existed for roughly 30 million years, while terrestrial primates who engage in some hunting as well as gathering have been around only about 15 million years.

The first human like animals appeared some 3 million years ago, around the beginning of the epoch known as the Pleistocene. This was the time of the great ice ages, when drastic changes in climate affected life throughout the world.

This climate change may account for more rapid evolution that produced modern human beings in such a short period; that is the pace of natural selection may have been quickened because of environmental changes and the resulting pressures on our ancestors.
The Evolution

Dani Culture

2008-12-11T01:34:00.000-08:00

Dani Culture
The Dani are well known because of the excitement that accompanied the discovery of their complex culture, terraced gardens, and densely populated communities in the mountainous region previously thought to be uninhibited. In 1938, and American pilot spotted from the air the valley’s tracts of symmetrical gardens and circular dwellings. Excitement over this New Guinea discovery was intense and the press dubbed the valley “Shangri La.” In the early 1960s, Harvard University organized a large expedition to the region.

The outside world may not have known of the Baliem valley, but people have settled there and cultivated gardens for at least 7,000 years.

For food staple, the Dani rely on root crops such as the sweet potato, introduced about 300 years ago, and the indigenous taro, which women cultivate in gardens in the valley floor and mountainsides. Women also raise pig, which men strategically exchange to promote their status, and to strengthen their political alliance. People identify themselves by membership in a totemic clan. In the past, clans groups into multi layered political units, and large scale pre contact war dominated political activities.

Dani used their influence in the public arena to try to regulate the live of women. The Dani are polygynous and most men seek to acquire more than one wife. Dani society is divided into two moieties, weto and waya. A person may not marry within his or her moiety. Marriage occurs ideally within a six to seven year cycle, culminating in a big pig feast, the ‘ebe akho’. In this feast, young girls either choose their marriage partner or have their partner arranged by their parents. The big pig feast is the climax of several ceremonial cycles which also include funerals and boy’s initiation.
Dani Culture

Survival of the Fittest

2008-11-28T08:00:00.000-08:00

Survival of the Fittest
Survival of the fittest, meaning not the strongest but those best suited to a particular environment. This leads to the third point in Darwin’s scheme.

Those individuals whose variations enable them to survive at a higher rate will pass on their traits to a larger proportion of the next generation through the process of inheritance. Thus from one generation to the next the population will change in response to changes in the environment. This is the process by which evolution takes place. It operates on the level of the population, not the individual and it entails the selection of traits and changes in the distribution of those traits in a population over time. It has nothing to do with a plant or animal’s becoming “better” or “higher”. It means becoming better adapted to a particular set of conditions, that is, better able to survive.

You might ask what place Darwin’s theory of biological evolution has in the study of cultural anthropology. The importance lies in the answer to the question: Why do we look the way we do? We might just as well have asked why we behave the way we do. The concept that provides the answer to these questions is natural selection. For million of years there were no humans on earth and there was no such thing as culture. Darwin helps us understand why culture evolved and why our physical appearance and biological make-up are the way they are.

We can assume that the early ancestor of human beings were engaged in a struggle to get a living from their environment, just as all forms of life have been since the beginning of time. In some setting this was fairly easy and there was little pressure to change. In other settings, perhaps as a result of population growth or a change of environment, there was a greater competition for a limited supply of food.
Survival of the Fittest

Darwin Evolutionary Scheme

2008-11-25T08:00:00.000-08:00

Darwin Evolutionary Scheme
There are several points in Darwin evolutionary scheme. Two of the main points are:

There are variations among individual of a given species. Some are obvious, and you can see them if you look around a roomful of people – they differ in height, hair color, facial features, bodily structure and so forth. Other differences are less obvious and may not even be visible. They include differences in blood type, running speed, and eyesight or hearing. Darwin’s point was that variation occurs naturally among all the populations.

As long as the environment is stable and there is enough food, most variation will not have much meaning for the survival of the individual. But when environmental pressures arise because of population growth, climate change, the disappearance of a major food source, or a number of other things, some of the variations in the population will become more important for the survival of individuals who have those qualities. For example, if we look at a population of birds of the same species, we will note that some have longer beaks than others. Now, as long as there is enough food for all, the length of the beaks not important, but if food becomes scarce it is possible that those birds with longer beaks will be able to dig deeper into the ground or into the bark of the trees for food, and therefore will have a greater chance and therefore will have a greater chance of survival. This notion is commonly called survival of the fittest, meaning not the strongest but those best suited to a particular environment. The key to natural selection is not just the fact that individuals with certain variations may survive at a greater rate than the rest of the population, but they will produce a larger proportion of the next generation.

Darwin Evolutionary Scheme

Understanding Ethnocentrism

2008-11-07T00:07:00.001-08:00

Understanding Ethnocentrism
Culture shock can be an excellent lesson to relative values and in understanding human differences. The reason culture shock occurs is that we are not prepared for these differences. Because of the way we are taught our culture, to some degree we are all “ethnocentric”. This term comes from Greek root ethnos, meaning a people or group. Thus it refers to the fact that our outlook or world view is centered on our own way of life. Ethnocentrism is the belief that one’s own patterns of behavior are the best: the most natural, beautiful, right or important. Therefore other people, to the extent that they live differently live by standards that the inhuman, irrigational, unnatural, or wrong.

Ethnocentrism is the view that one’s own culture is better than all other; it is the way all people feel about themselves as compared to outsiders, no matter how liberal and open minded they might claim to be. People will find aspect of another culture distasteful, be it sexual practices, a way of treating friends or relatives, or simply a food that they cannot manage to get down with a smile. This is not something we should ashamed of, because it is natural outcome of growing up in the society. However as if we study other cultures, it is something we should constantly be aware of, so that when we are tempted to make value of judgment about another way of life we can look at the situation objectively and take our bias into account.
Understanding Ethnocentrism

Conspicuous Consumption –Reveal the Wealth during the Funeral

2008-10-24T03:15:00.000-07:00

Conspicuous Consumption –Reveal the Wealth during the Funeral
One of the aspects of the funeral reveals the wealth and social position of the members of the family which have left behind. The car at the head of the funeral procession is a good example. The car at the head of the funeral procession is a good example. The head car is usually a Cadillac limousine, not because it gives a smoother ride than a Ford or a Chevy, although it might, but because it is a high prestige car, other ways of exhibiting wealth include the type of funeral home used, the way it is decorated, and the number and type of floral arrangement displayed.

In addition, there is the cemetery itself, which offers another chance for conspicuous consumption, the location of the grave the neighborhood in which the cemetery is located, even the view from the grave site - all the examples of how the family uses the funerals to exhibit its wealth. Finally the tombstone will vary in size and quality according to how much the size and quality according to how much the family wishes to spend.
Conspicuous Consumption –Reveal the Wealth during the Funeral

Society of Sumerian in Mesopotamian: Death of Kings

2008-10-09T00:05:00.001-07:00

Society of Sumerian in Mesopotamian: Death of Kings
When a king of the Sumerian city state of Ur died he did not go alone to his tomb. His entire household of some 70 people was buried with him, having taken poison in order to follow their sovereign into the next life – where they would continue to serve him loyally as before. The preparation for this mass burial was meticulous. First along, sloping shaft was dug down to a pit that would serve as the tomb chamber. This was filled with rich offerings, and the king’s corpse was placed in it. The chamber was then sealed, and a great procession of attendants moves down into the shaft. These included court ladies in resplendent golden headdresses, guard with sheathed daggers, musicians strumming bulls’ head lyres, grooms with ox-drawn chariots, and soldiers wearing coppers spears.

All carried small cup from which they drank a lethal drug before lying down by the tomb chamber to prepare for the eternity. The musicians continued to play their lyres until the end, when they took poison and succumbed. The shaft was then filled in with several layers of earth and clay, amid further ritual offerings and libations. The lack of resistance on the part of the attendants indicated a fatalistic obedience both of their sovereign and to their gods. Certainly all the evidences suggest that religion was very importance to the Sumerians. They believe that gods ruled the earth and that men were created to be their servants. Each city was regarded as belonging to a particular god and goddess, whose earthly home was the city’s temple, the scene of elaborate rituals conducted by a hierarchy priests.
Society of Sumerian in Mesopotamian: Death of Kings

Cro-Magnon Culture: Respect for the Dead

2008-09-22T23:01:00.001-07:00

Cro-Magnon Culture: Respect for the Dead
When a Cro-Magnon died the body was not simply abandoned and left to rot in the open. Even the Neanderthals seem to have had some concept that death was not the end, and that care must be taken of the body. The Cro-Magnons buried their dead in or near the caves and huts in which they lived. Clearly they were anticipating a new life in the world beyond this one, because they were buried in their beaded clothes, along with their tools, weapons, jewelry and favorite possessions. In many burials, red ochre has been found scattered over the corpse. Possibly this was to give the deceased a more lifelike appearance, or else to represent birth blood, as the deceased was reborn, through Mother Earth, into eternal life.
Cro-Magnon Culture: Respect for the Dead

Darwin and his Theory

2008-09-07T16:53:00.000-07:00

Darwin and his Theory
Although the theory of evolution is commonly linked with Charles Darwin’s publication of The Origin of Species’ in 1859, many of his idea that Darwin put forth in his book had been discussed for at least a century. In fact, Darwin’s grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, argued for evolutionary theory before Charles was even born. What The Origin of Species contributed to the theory was a clear statement of the process by which evolution occurs, which we call natural selection.

In 1831 Darwin set out on a round the world voyage on the ship H.M.S Beagle, serving as the ship’s naturalist. Over the next five years he made detailed observations of plants and animals, noting their similarities and differences and comparing them with fossils of extinct species. From his study of the similarities among existing species around the world, together with the similarities between living and fossil species, he gradually came to the conclusion that some species were related to one another through common lines of descent, a view that clearly challenged the biblical notion of a single Creation of all the various life forms in the world. It remained for Darwin to pull together loose ends of various theories of evolution that had been discussed in scientific circles for some time and to support his own version with evidence gathered during his voyage on the Beagle.
Darwin and his Theory

Culture and Definition

2008-08-29T19:59:00.000-07:00

Culture and Definition
As anthropologist use the term, culture is the way of life shared by a group of people. It is what makes people similar to one another and unites them as a group, overcoming individual differences in personality. Culture is acquired behavior; it is learned rather than inherited genetically.

Culture is passed on from one generation to the next through the process known as socialization. Although the methods of teaching children the appropriate behavior patterns may vary from one society to another, all societies engage in some form of child training. It is assume that early childhood experiences will last effect on an individual, and insofar as the same basic experiences are shared by most children in a society, a general personality pattern will be shared among most adults in that society.
Culture and Definition

Kalervo Oberg (1901 -1973) – anthropologist who introduced the term ‘culture shock’

2008-08-12T02:43:00.000-07:00

Kalervo Oberg (1901 -1973) – anthropologist who introduced the term ‘culture shock’
He was born in British Columbia to Finnish parents in 1901. Kalervo Oberg was known as a world renowned anthropologist. He was a civil servant and a teacher.

He graduated from University of British Columbia with Bachelor of Economics before proceed to Master of Economics from University of Pittsburgh. He earned his doctorate from University of Chicago with dissertation, the Social Economy of the Tlingit Indians of Alaska.

He loved with his fieldwork and his extensive and wide ranging fieldwork was his biggest accomplishment. Oberg then worked in various government postings overseas, including the Institute of Inter-American Affairs, forerunner of the U.S. Agency for International Development, with assignments including Ecuador, Peru, Brazil, and Surinam.

He traveled the world and wrote about the experiences so others could enjoy them as well. He was a world-renowned applied anthropologist. He was the first to introduce the term "Culture shock" and he was the best known coined for the idea in 1954. He found that all human beings experience the same feelings when they travel to or live in a different country or culture.

He found that culture shock is almost like a disease: it has a cause, symptoms and a cure. Kalervo Oberg died in 1973.
Kalervo Oberg (1901 -1973) – anthropologist who introduced the term ‘culture shock’

Culture shock

2008-07-31T00:46:00.000-07:00

Culture shock
Living and working in a foreign culture can be lonely and frustrating; we must disregard much of our own cultural background in order to get along in the new situation. In the process of shedding our cultural preferences, we often experience what is called culture shock. This is not limited to anthropologists; if you have ever spent much time outside your own country, or even in a different subculture within your country, you have probably had a taste of it. Culture shock is the feeling of depression and frustration that overcome people when they first begin to comprehend the tremendous difference between the way of life they are used to and the way of life in the new setting. It happens to all people, not just anthropologists but immigrants, tourists and anyone else who must get used to different way of life.

Why does culture shock occur? In the process of being brought up in a society, every person is trained to accept the values of the group and to follow its unwritten rules of behavior. But it does not stop, for acceptance if a particular way of life is not based simply on fear of punishment or social isolation. As part of the process of learning a culture, we are taught to believe in that culture, to feel that it is the right way and the best way to live. Its value are not merely seen as the ones that fit that particular way of life; they are thought to be the best ones for all people. Any way of doing things that does follow the same value system is wrong, if not repugnant.
Culture shock