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Showing posts with label anthropologist. Show all posts
Showing posts with label anthropologist. Show all posts

Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Culture

If we discuss culture and other socially transmitted happenings, we may profit by using the culturally transmitted designation BC. With the use of BC we can begin to approach the year zero with all appropriate caution. If BC ends with the year -1 and AD begins with+1, shouldn't those ones be divided by a zero?


Let me here unequivocally state that the transmission of technology, like the domestication gourds, squash, and peppers in the South America 8500 B.C., is not directly related to VD. Still,in our world, it is true that VD and culture have long been associated.


Remains of lakeside dwellings in central Oregon, buried and preserved beneath lava from the eruption of mount Mazama about 8000 BC, showed that people there probably included in their diet sag, bison, rabbit, bear, sheep, deer, elk, hazelnuts, and blackberries. Poor backward souls! They used baskets, wore sandles, and allowed their children to lean to do likewise. What can I say: it's all culture.


At about the same time people in Nevada hunted many species of large game, including great ground sloth and mammoth. We could probably find an anthropologist, interested in the ethnology of later day aboriginal North Americans, who would tells that those North Americans told stories of hunting that sloth into very recent times. I seem to remember having heard the term 'atlatl' sung a 'stomp dance' not very long ago.


Why were there no mega-fauna found at the Mazama site?

Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Agri Culture vs Teenage Culture

As a young man visiting the land of the Hondurans, I was impressed by a visiting, auburn-haired, teenaged, Spanish cutie. When I heard her say of the Hondurans, that the only culture the had was agriculture, I was further impressed. I think she added something about slash and burn.


I thought that it was remarkable for a girl younger than I to come out with a thing like that. I did not believe what she said and she probably didn't believe it either. It did show some wit, some pride in her own culture and that she had some education. It also showed a stunning lack of regard for the point of view of the Hondurans.


What do you think she meant by culture? What do you think about pride of culture? What do you understand about education? What's the good of pride? What is your culture? What is the content of culture? What does culture mean to an anthropologist? What's an anthropologist?