Around the Web Digest: Week of October 11

OK, who else hate-watched Eli Roth’s new “retro” cannibal horror film The Green Inferno? It can’t just have been me. Send me any thoughts about the movie (or links to anthro blogs) at rebecca.nelson.jacobs@gmail.com.

This National Geographic article on a tribe that has had limited contact with outsiders annoyed me by continuing to use the word Mashco (“savage”) to refer to them, rather than what the author acknowledges to be their preferred term, Nomole (“countrymen”): An Isolated Tribe Is Emerging From Peru’s Amazonian Wilderness

According to IFL Science, anatomically modern humans were living in China 80,000-120,000 years ago, which suggests they may have gone there before they went to Europe (perhaps due to the presence of Neanderthals): Fossils Reveal That Modern Humans Were Living In China 20,000 Years Before We Thought They Left Africa

While environmental conditions in Africa rarely allow for the preservation of genetic material, Science Magazine reports that DNA from the inner ear bones of a 4,500 year old Ethiopian man reveal extensive mixing with migrant populations from Europe and Asia: First DNA Extracted from an Ancient African Skeleton Shows Widespread Mixing with Eurasians

The Guardian reveals that some West African women have an incredibly strong immune response to ebola: Ebola Study Finds Women in Guinea Who Appear Immune to the Virus

This post on Somatosphere, Summer Roundup: Bioculturalism, features a number of researchers wondering aloud why cultural anthropologists dismiss biology and biomarkers as “reductionist.”

The Geek Anthropologist Damsels and Demons: Women in Horror Part I

The CASTAC blog presents an intriguing course connecting STEM students to anthropology through Carl Sagan and cosmonauts’ ritual practices: Teaching the Anthropology of Outer Space

In another course described on the STU AnthroBlog, students wrote haikus about Trobriand yam exchanges: Social Anthropology in the Classroom

Transformations features this post on Chinese Pediasure advertisements that incite parents’ anxieties for their children:  Are You Sure?

Food Anthropology reviews the book Eating in the Side Room: Food, Archaeology and African-American Identity

This NPR story looks at the Nepalese tradition of isolating women in menstrual huts: A Girl Gets Her Period And Is Banished To The Shed: #15Girls

In this Verge of Discovery podcast, a UCONN anthropology graduate student describes his research, in which he places students in situations of high or low anxiety and using motion detectors to determine how ritualized their movements were: Anxiety, Rituals and Religion with Martin Lang

See you next week!

Rebecca Nelson

Rebecca Nelson is the executive director of América Solidaria U.S. She recently graduated with a Ph.D. in cultural anthropology from the University of Connecticut. Her research focuses on volunteer tourism in Guatemala and how it is opening up new avenues for tourists and hosts to develop more cosmopolitan understandings of the world (as well as opening up new forms of friction over the circulation of knowledge).