By Jeffrey Vadala Human relationships with dogs extend into the deep past, just as they strongly endure in myriad forms in the present. New research in Siberia indicates that humans may have established relationships with…
As an organization dedicated to disseminating cultural information and research on human diversity, the Human Relations Area Files greatly values diversity in our membership base. We are therefore proud to present a new scholarship program,…
Jeffrey Vadala Throughout history, humans have collected and buried groups of objects together, whether for ritual purposes (e.g., offerings to the gods) or pragmatic reasons (e.g., for secret stores of food). Today, many cultural groups…
eHRAF’s subject categories of ethnozoology (OCM identifier 825), mythology (773), and religious beliefs (770) were used to explore the topic of crow intelligence. With these OCM identifiers, a large variety of human-animal relationships can be…
Teferi Abate Adem From July 23-27, 2018, a group of scholars specializing in studying people who live, or historically lived, by foraging wild food held their 12th Conference on Hunting and Gathering Societies (CHAGS) in Penang,…
This summer, after a year as our Melvin Ember Intern, Emily has taken on a new role as a grant-supported HRAF researcher. This past year, HRAF was asked to collaborate on an exciting digital humanities project housed…
We are pleased to announce that eHRAF World Cultures now contains cultural collections for Haida, Karajá, Kutenai, Kiribati, and Mormon peoples. Jump straight into the culture collections by clicking on the culture name links below.…
Dear friends and colleagues, At HRAF we are saddened to learn of the death of a cross-cultural pioneer–Robert (Lee) Munroe on May 14, 2018. He will be sorely missed not just by his family and friends,…
Fresh off the presses, eHRAF Archaeology now has two new tradition collections for researchers to dig their teeth into. Over the past year, archaeologist Sara Berry has been meticulously indexing a South Asian Upper Paleolithic…
There is enormous interest in the evolution of cooperation in both the animal kingdom and among humans. This focus on cooperative behavior is a necessary corrective to longstanding emphasis on competition in evolutionary models. Some…