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Hi! I'm Delaney Edwards and I am very excited about what this class has in store!

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29 May 2020: Decolonizing Paleoanthropology

Dunsworth, Sterling, and Athreya and Ackermann have done great work at bringing to light the issue of colonial mindsets in modern anthropological research in their respective fields and articles. Athreya and Ackermann specifically mention the concept of "otherization," or the process of marginalizing and devaluing concepts having to due with minority populations. This is a word I had never heard about until their article, Colonialism and Narratives of Human Origins in Asia and Africa, and a word that I think is very helpful in explaining the way that minority, or non-white, populations are treated and more specifically the way that their narratives and experiences are put on the back burner to be ignored and forgotten about.  I also believe that it is incredibly unfortunate that many people in science have retained the colonialist mindset without even knowing it. It is something that can be drilled into people, starting when they are kids and continuing throughout their entir
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If humans evolved from chimps, why are there still chimps?

If humans evolved from chimps, then why are there still chimps? Many people think that this is a dumb question, but it is not, it is actually very valid. This is a question that science has not yet come up with a concrete answer for.  The first thing we must address is the fact that we did not actually evolve from chimpanzees. Humans and chimpanzees both evolved from a common ancestor, so instead of chimps being the "mothers" of humankind so to speak, they are more like cousins to humans. We are closely related, yes, but we have actually been on separate evolutionary paths for around six million years, give or take. Unfortunately, we do not have much information at all on our common ancestor, as fossils have yet to be found. Hopefully, this will change and we will be able to put a face to our ancestor, but for now, we must work with the fossils of early hominids as well as chimpanzee and human DNA.  Although we did not evolve from chimps, the question still remains: why did w
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Provide more funding for human evolution studies

Human evolution is an incredibly important subject to be studying, as it helps modern humans understand why their body is shaped in the way that it is and what purpose the many morphological changes serve. The study can also help to humble modern humans and help them remember their place in the world. Although humans dominate and shape the world currently, it has not always been that way and we are lucky to have evolved in the ways that we have. Not only will the knowledge of human evolution educate us about the reasons why our bodies work the way they do, but it will also satisfy the curiosity that people inherently have. People wonder where they come from and how they have gotten to where we are in societal and biological spheres today.  Although there has been lots of research done on the concept of human evolution and this research has produced fascinating results, there is still much work left to be done in the field. For example, there have been so many finds in Africa, but centr
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