Anthropology // Current TV

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I just came across a History Channel tv show called Ancient Monster Hunters, which... more

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Abraham's Quest: The Journey Towards Peace

Abraham's Quest: The Common Link Between Judaism, Christianity, And Islam in the... more

stopnoise
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End of The World, Part I

A visual study of Wall Street, New York, USA by filmmaker Amelia Bryne + music video... more

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Rainmaker ritual helps date ancient droughts

Traces of ancient rainmaking fires may give hints to droughts that plagues Iron Age... more

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What did I do in school today? Create my own culture!

This RULES! Why didn't they have this course at my college?! I mean, Evolution... more

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anton kusters - sugar at burn magazine

Check out this newly launched magazine, curated by Magnum Photo's David Alan... more

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To School...

A short, hectic, stop motion freecording of me and my sons going to school. Shot... more

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I suppose there's a little colonialist in all us Westerners.......

I notice a little colonialism in me towards the language of Papiamento when I first... more

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Woofers: Dogs & Their People

The newer, lovelier version of my 2006 book. Lovers of street photography, visual wit... more

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Ancient lost city discovered in Amazonian rainforest

A lost city discovered deep in the Amazon rainforest could unlock the secrets of a... more

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Humans 80,000 years older than previously thought?

Modern humans may have evolved more than 80,000 years earlier than previously thought,... more

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End of the Hourglass Figure

In the past few years, scientists who study the eternal signs of beauty have concluded... more

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Bible Speaks of Giants Upon The Land

What are we to believe? This video helps to stir the imagination. It provokes thought... more

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Indigenous tribes reject land sale

A filmmaker's dream of building a Hollywood-style studio in the northern part of South Africa has been blocked after a passionate campaign by the local Khoi-San community, tribes commonly known in the West as Bushmen.

But the filmmakers underestimated the will of the local 5,000-strong population who put the spiritual value of the land over any potential economic gain and nixed the plan last month.

"No money in the world can buy this land," says Ina Basson, secretary of the Pella Community Forum. "It is ours and has sentimental value. Our forefathers fought the Germans for this land and had to battle to keep it. They have spilled blood for the land and for us, and it is not for sale.

"[The producers] said Mel Gibson and Halle Berry would fly in to do movies, and that Tiger Woods would design the golf course," adds Ms. Basson. "We don't care about them. We want to live here."

The Rev. Cyril Smith, whose cathedral would have been made into a Mexican village film set, says the consortium miscalculated the level of opposition and the legal status of the land. "They should have consulted the residents first but they didn't, which made them very angry," he says. "The government, as trustees, aren't allowed to sell this land without their consent, so the film studios will not happen."

"Not even a handful will I sell to them," says farmer Piet Eiman, one of the area's oldest residents, holding pieces of soil in his hands. "We are part of the land, it can support you from a baby, to a young child, to a man. It is part of us."

Rudolf Markgraaff, chief executive at Charis Productions, one of the companies looking to purchase or lease the tribal land, says he was surprised at the opposition. "This area is desperately poor with 70 percent unemployment, high rates of AIDS, and limited facilities like hospitals and schools.

"We had letters of support from the [African National Congress] Youth League, the ANC Women's League, and another group begging us to make it happen," Markgraaff says. "They're not doing anything with this land."

But Mr. Markgraaff is wrong. The local population is preserving their culture, with some families practicing the traditional hunting and gathering lifestyle, and others herding cattle and goats, or farming desert crops. These ways of life would be threatened or destroyed by the presence of such large-scale commercial development. A filmmaker's dream of building a Hollywood-style studio in the northern part... more

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Humans made fire 790,000 years ago: study

A study in Israel has revealed that humans made fires almost a million years ago,... more

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3 Weeks on T, Changes, and a little life update

Witness my transformation from female to male

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How I Found Utopia

Imagine a society where the surreal was normal. A place where people could live in... more

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Something inside of me shifted

My ideas about sex have changed and I wanted to sahre that shift with other people.

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Rewriting LA History

For many Los Angelenos, even natives, a common effect of the urban sprawl is a feeling... more

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Is Religion a Figment of our Imagination?

"A leading anthropologist has questioned the popular idea that religion developed and spread because it encouraged social bonding, by arguing that faith and belief is nothing but a figment of human imagination.

Maurice Bloch of the London School of Economics argues that humans are the only species to practice religion because they're the sole creatures to have evolved imagination. According to Bloch"s theory, initially humans had to develop the essential brain architecture to imagine things and beings that don't subsist physically, and the likelihood that people somehow survive on after their death.

Once this was done, they had access to a form of social interaction unavailable to any other creatures on the planet. Exclusively, humans could use what Bloch calls the "transcendental social" to unite with groups, such as nations and clans, or even with imaginary groups such as the dead.

He explained that the transcendental social also permits humans to follow the idealised codes of conduct linked with religion. "What the transcendental social requires is the ability to live very largely in the imagination," New Scientist magazine quoted him, as saying.

"One can be a member of a transcendental group, or a nation, even though one never comes in contact with the other members of it. Moreover, the composition of such groups, whether they are clans or nations, may equally include the living and the dead," he added.

He argues that no animals, not even our nearest relatives the chimpanzees, can do this. Instead, he says, they're restricted to the routine and Machiavellian social interactions of everyday life. The reason for this, he says, is that they can't imagine beyond this immediate social circle, or backwards and forwards in time, in the same way that humans can.

Bloch believes our ancestors evolved the essential neural architecture to imagine before or around 40-50,000 years ago, at a time called the Upper Palaeological Revolution, the final sub-division of the Stone Age. "The transcendental network can, with no problem, include the dead, ancestors and gods, as well as living role holders and members of essentialised groups," he said.

"Ancestors and gods are compatible with living elders or members of nations because all are equally mysterious invisible, in other words transcendental," he added. But Bloch argues that religion is only one expression of this exceptional ability to form bonds with non-existent or distant people or value-systems.

"Religious-like phenomena in general are an inseparable part of a key adaptation unique to modern humans, and this is the capacity to imagine other worlds, an adaptation that I argue is the very foundation of the sociality of modern human society," he said.

"Once we realise this omnipresence of the imaginary in the everyday, nothing special is left to explain concerning religion," he added. Bloch has detailed his findings in the journal of Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B.""A leading anthropologist has questioned the popular idea that religion developed... more

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