Ian Skoggard, research anthropologist with the Human Relations Area Files (HRAF) at Yale University, has been elected to the executive board for the Society for Anthropological Sciences (SAS). As a member of the SAS executive board,…
Our anthropologists and programmers have been hard at work to bring you five new culture collections: Babylonians (MH07) Hadza (FN11) Kanak (OP04) Kimam (OJ82) Mao (MP19) These collections include 46 new documents in total, with…
A few years ago, HRAF anthropologists were involved in a project to help develop an agent-based model of violent conflict in Eastern Africa. As part of the project they mapped the different ethnic groups…
The table below lists 265 subject-indexed ethnographic documents recently added to eHRAF World Cultures. Previously available only on microfiche, these documents augment 44 online culture collections. Several culture collections gained ten or more new documents:…
Jeffrey Vadala Recently, genetic studies have shown that cats have lived as undomesticated alongside human societies for much longer than previously thought. This means that unlike dogs, whose DNA diverged when they were domesticated from…
Jeffrey Vadala Often considered evidence of humanity’s first artistry, prehistoric rock art has captivated people all over the world. Associated with many different cultures, the meaning and purpose of most forms of prehistoric rock art…
Damián Blasi at the University of Zurich and a research associate here at HRAF has just published a paper with colleagues in Science reporting significant differences in the frequency of “F” and “V” sounds in…
Jeffrey Vadala Archaeological and anthropological research shows that many human societies across time and space have used alcohol in religious and ritual contexts. There are often customs and ethics that govern how alcohol is produced,…
Jeffrey Vadala “The shaman is not merely a sick man or a madman; he is a sick man who has healed himself.” -Terence McKenna, The Invisible Landscape: Mind, Hallucinogens & the I Ching During the…
Carol R. Ember, Michele J. Gelfand, Joshua Conrad Jackson, and Tahlisa Brougham All societies have expectations about how people should behave. But some societies appear to have more rules than others, have more people who…