Tag: Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology

  • Campus & Community

    Evolving ideas

    Is the problem with evolution A) people don’t believe in it; B) people believe in it but don’t understand it; or C) evolution comes packaged with troubling implications that we don’t want to accept? According to speakers at a spirited Askwith Education Forum – “How Do We Teach Evolution” – on Feb. 22 at the…

    2–3 minutes
  • Campus & Community

    Three weeks in tiny tunnel pay off

    After three weeks in a tiny tunnel 50 feet below an ancient Maya pyramid in the Guatemalan jungle, Peabody Museum researcher Bill Saturno finally got to view his prize. Fine lines and dramatic colors emerged from the tunnel’s gloom, depicting a story of the gods who created the Maya world. “It’s really like a Mayan…

    1–2 minutes
  • Science & Tech

    Human skull is 7 million years old

    When a 7-million-year-old skull was first found, Daniel Lieberman, a professor of anthropology at Harvard, called it “one of the greatest discoveries of the past 100 years.” After studying new evidence including teeth and jaw fragments, Lieberman stands by that statement. “The next oldest, reasonably complete humanlike skull we have is just over 3 million…

    1–2 minutes
  • Campus & Community

    The accidental ‘best friend’

    Harvard researchers studying Siberian foxes have uncovered evidence that the ability to interpret human expressions and gestures that helped transform the wild wolf into humankind’s cooperative “best friend” may have occurred by accident. The research casts doubt onto a previous theory that domestic dogs’ ability to interpret human communication results from generations of selection for…

    1–2 minutes
  • Science & Tech

    Reading ancient campfires

    Ofer Bar-Yosef, Harvard’s MacCurdy Professor of Prehistoric Archaeology and head of the Peabody Museum’s Stone Age Laboratory, is working in the New Stone Age, known as the Neolithic, when Homo sapiens first domesticated plants. He’s particularly interested in the rise of agriculture, dubbed the Neolithic Revolution, a transforming event in human history that set the…

    1–2 minutes
  • Science & Tech

    Cooking up a story of apes and humans

    For humans, cooking played a major role in the development of smaller jaws and teeth, bigger brains, smaller guts, shorter arms, and longer legs, according to Richard Wrangham, professor of biological anthropology at Harvard University. He also believes that cooking is associated with females getting heavier and more fertile. That, in turn, changed mating and…

    1–2 minutes
  • Science & Tech

    Jungle ordeal leads to surprise treasure

    William Saturno was hot, frustrated, low on food, low on water, and low on patience when he sought shade in a trench dug by looters at the San Bartolo archaeological site deep inside the Guatemalan jungle. The arduous two-day trip there to document carved Mayan hieroglyphics had been in vain. The palace complex held 80-foot-tall…

    1–2 minutes