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Why are we the naked ape?
Infant stump-tailed macaque (source). Other photos showing adults and infants (courtesy of Monte M. Taylor and Christopher H. Taylor).Why do humans have so little body hair? This question is addressed...
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From Slavs to Slaves
The Slave Market, painting (c. 1884) by Jean-Léon Gérôme (source)Can Europeans, and European women in particular, become objects of trade? The idea seems laughable, since the term ‘slave trade’ almost...
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From Slavs to slaves. Part II
St. Adalbert freeing Slavic slaves (source). With the Christianization of Eastern Europe, the trade in fair-skinned women and boys came to an end. The white slave trade played a key role in ending the...
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Brainwashed by a microbe?
Toxoplasma gondii(source: A.J. Cann)It’s long been known that many organisms are parasites, i.e., they survive by living off a host. In recent years we’ve learned that some of them can improve on their...
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French Canadians: The unexplained genetic diversity
Interior of a magasin général (source: photographiquement Frank). Wherever there was less competition from British or American merchants, it was easier for French Canadians to go into business. These...
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The Paekchong of Korea
An outdoor play where a Paekchong is about to kill a bull. In pre-modern Korea, the Paekchong were outcastes whose occupations tended to involve the taking of life, like butchery, leather making, and...
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Japan: A north-south cline in mental and behavioral traits
IQ, height, and homicide rate in Japan (red = lowest value, light blue = highest value) (Kura, 2013). The longer and harsher the winter, the greater the need for cognition and male solidarity?The...
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The cagots
Holy water font reserved for cagots, church in Saint-Savin, France (source). Why were the cagots segregated? The cagots were a caste of people who used to live on both sides of the Pyrenees in...
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What color are Whites?
(source)I’m one of the contributors to a recently published French book De quelle couleur sont les Blancs? The following is an abstract:Within each human population, skin color varies mainly by age and...
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The ancestors with no descendants
Venus of Mal’ta, a figurine from a site in eastern Siberia (source). She comes from a population that was related to modern Europeans and Amerindians but not to modern native Siberians. The Mal’ta...
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The White man has no friends
Togolese representation of a white man (source)In a previous post, I wrote that the recently published book De quelle couleur sont les Blancs ? was originally supposed to provide a new perspective on...
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Cleansing the scientific literature
Morten Østergaard, Danish Minister for Research, Innovation, and Higher Education (source: VicVal). Morten, if you’re reading this post, please reply to my e-mail.I first learned about Danish...
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Does Nyborg's study make sense?
Immigrants to Denmark come largely from the Muslim world, where fertility rates are converging to the European norm. In the future, most immigrants will come from sub-Saharan Africa, where the...
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Not getting the point
Samuel George Morton, an early American anthropologist. He fudged his data to suit his preconceived ideas on race, according to Stephen Jay Gould. It later turned out that Gould was the fudger....
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Still missing the point
Occurrences of ‘Blumenbach’ in published writings. After a peak in the early 19th century, Johann Friedrich Blumenbach faded into the background. He had little influence on the thinking of later...
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White skin privilege
A new arrival (painting by Giuilo Rosati - source). The privilege of white skin …Earlier this year, fashion model Cameron Russell condemned the unbearable whiteness of her industry:[…] I won a genetic...
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The other slave trade
Although the slave raiders usually left infants behind, older girls and boys could be taken, if suitable for immediate sale (Selling a child-slave, painting by Vasily Vereshchagin – source).Europe...
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Trading in fair-skinned women. Did it happen elsewhere?
Austronesian woman (Roekiah Soeara, 1942, Indonesian actress - source). Austronesian and Papuan peoples intermixed in coastal Papua-New Guinea and on the islands to the east. This intermixture seems...
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The origins of Northwest European guilt culture
Ruth Benedict first made the distinction between “shame cultures” and “guilt cultures” (source). Pervasive feelings of guilt are part of a behavioral package that enabled Northwest Europeans to adapt...
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Origins of Northwest European guilt culture. Part II
Reconstructed Mesolithic roundhouse near Northumberland, Great Britain (source: Andrew Curtis) At different times and in different regions, humans have entered larger social environments that are no...
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