Dept. of ethnologica, kerleone, May 12, 2003 at 10:00:28 PM CEST

UN Recommends Census for Pygmies

The secretary-general of the Commission Nationale pour l'Unesco (CNUNESCO), Abel Koulaninga, told on Friday on a conference in Bangui, that a census of pygmies was vital to allow the planning of activities aimed at their integration, reports this UN news page.

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Dept. of ethnologica, kerleone, May 9, 2003 at 12:17:48 PM CEST

New Online Ethnomusicological Archive founded

A new world of music from around the globe will soon be available to students and scholars. A research team from Indiana University and the University of Michigan has received an $875,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to create an online digital archive of video recordings and a searchable database for research and teaching., reports ascribe.org.

But we have still to wait a little bit to hear and see the first videos. The project will go online about end of 2004.

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Dept. of ethnologica, zephyrin, May 7, 2003 at 10:23:41 AM CEST

Chilean Indigenous People Portal

"We invite you to visit and experience the new Chilean Indigenous People Portal. The main goal is to promote the cultural Indigenous customs and values, showing the spiritual, artistic and cultural production, through articles and features. This project is supported by Chilean Indigenous People Department under The Ministry of Culture of Chile - MINEDUC. In our Portal, available in English and Spanish, we have include useful information, like historical and cultural information about Aymara's, Kolla's, Rapa Nui's, Diaguitas's, Mapuche's, Selknam's etc., Native Languages Dictionaries, Digital Books, Music, Video and a interesting directory of web linkse. It's our special interest to give you any support about Chilean Indigenous People Issues, so do not hesitate to contact us. We have news every month and if you want to stay up dated we suggest you to subscribe to our monthly Newsletter. Thank you for your time and let us send you an hello in different native languages: "Kamisaraki" in Aymara, "Iorana" in Rapa Nui, "Mari Mari" in Mapuche." via Anthro-L

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Dept. of ethnologica, zephyrin, May 7, 2003 at 10:21:22 AM CEST

Lévi-Strauss, Computers, and Simulation

Emeritus Professor of Computer Sciences and Linguistics Sheldon Klein shares some of his work with us: The rather hard to find revised and expanded French language version of "Modelling Propp and Lévi-Strauss in a Meta-symbolic Simulation System." in Patterns in Oral Literature, edited by H. Jason & D. Segal, World Anthropology Series, The Hague: Mouton, 1977, is now available for downloading as a .pdf file, with a new Lévi-Strauss model, a revised Propp model, and 60 new computer generated folktales. The full program is included, and is extensively commented with references to specific pages in V. Propp's "Morphology of the Folktale", University of Texas Press, 1968. via Anthro-L

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Dept. of ethnologica, kerleone, April 29, 2003 at 7:18:40 PM CEST

Tourism Project in Morocco is Awarded for Being 'Socially Acceptable'

The german magazine "Die Zeit" wites about a tourism project in Morocco. Aim of the project is to involve the tourists in the social live of the touareg, and to confront them without shelter to the same problems of the desert the touareg have to accomplish. But also to the nice sides. The project has been awared now with the To-Do-Award from the Studienkreis für Tourismus und Entwicklung e.V. The website of the project, called RENARD BLEU TOUAREG, is available in german and french.

Maybe someone from our workgroup tourism would like to comment on that project?

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Dept. of ethnologica, kerleone, April 28, 2003 at 11:01:34 PM CEST

Why Do Some Societies Make Disastrous Decisions??

Jared Diamond, Professor of Geography at the University of California, and Pulitzer Prize Winner wrote an excellent, must-read short essay about how it is possbile, that societies can't solve their environmental problems, even if the society will collapse otherwise. The essay is published in one of the most famous intellectual magazines of the internet, edge.org. It's of high anthropological interest, as he accomplishes to proove his theory by a lot of indingeous and ancient cultures like maya and easter islanders as well as western ones like the current USA and last century germany. (Article starts after last headline, so scroll down first) Via Slashdot.org

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Dept. of ethnologica, kerleone, April 27, 2003 at 8:50:39 PM CEST

Hundreds of new dams planned in Central America

"From the Lacandon rainforest of Mexico and Guatemala to the Amazon and La Plata rivers in Brazil and Argentina, governments and multinational companies plan to exploit the hydroelectric potential of the region?s rivers and carve water "highways" through their basins. There are plans for hundreds of dams in the region, including more than 400 in Brazil, 70 in Mexico?s Chiapas state, 100 in Costa Rica, 13 in Nicaragua and 10 in Chile. Virtually all of the proposed projects threaten indigenous communities "... read more at Latin American Press.

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Dept. of ethnologica, h-man8, April 15, 2003 at 11:36:39 PM CEST

The World map of Arno Peters

Ever thought about the eurocentric picture a world map has ? The german Arno Peters did and developed a map of the world, allowing all countries to have equal representation. Unfortunately Peters deceased on 2nd of December last year, but his thoughts remain alive at: projectone.cla.umn.edu

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Dept. of ethnologica, kerleone, April 15, 2003 at 1:38:41 PM CEST

Oldest evidence of Andean religion found

" Archaeologists have found the oldest image yet of an Andean religious icon. The 4,000-year-old carving of the Staff god - a fanged creature with splayed feet, holding a snake and a staff - is on a bowl made from a seed pod.", reports Nature. You can read the story in german at Spiegel Online.

Its a great found, I agree. There are some deities in andean culture, which you can trace thousands of years back through all the different cultures and times. Most popular was the feline, which is alive still today in many religions of south american indians (of course, its appearance is not need to be caused by cultural exchange). Before this newest finding, the earliest appearance of the staff god, not mentioned in the articles, was the Chavin Culture. A impressive stone, Raimondi Stone, clearly shows the staff god. Chavin, and the mentioned Tiwanaku Culture have been very different. Between them have been a lot of other cultures worshipping the staff god, among them Paracas and Ica. So, it`s interesting, that now they have found proof of a culture before Chavin, also worshipping the staff god. Another deity from Chavin was the so called "Smiling God", which is shown on a huge stone called El Lanzon. But this god probably was only from local importance.

For further reading on the Chavin Culture I recommend this paper from one of the most achknowledged scientist reasearching chavin culture, John Rowe.

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Dept. of ethnologica, kerleone, April 11, 2003 at 1:43:12 PM CEST

Genetic Researchers: Cannibalism was widely spread

Human flesh may have been a fairly regular menu item for our prehistoric ancestors, according to researchers. They say it's the most likely explanation for their discovery that genes protecting against prion diseases -- which can be spread by eating contaminated flesh -- have long been widespread throughout the world, reports Science Daily.

The study was originally presented in the Science Magazine (only for subscribers - students from Munich University can access it from our library pc's)

As cannibalism is always worth a headline (the engraving above, used in early newspapers is 500 years old), also NYTimes (free subscription necessary) and Süddeutsche Zeitung (11.4.03, Panorama) are reporting. National Geographic even titles "Cannibalism Normal For Early Humans?". Which is a bit overdrawn, I think, as the whole assumption already seems to be mainly speculation.

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Dept. of ethnologica, kerleone, April 10, 2003 at 4:54:26 PM CEST

Some Historical Maps of Amerika

Small Collection of Historical Maps of Amerika from the Royal Library of Belgium. Most of them online accessible.

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Dept. of ethnologica, kerleone, April 9, 2003 at 12:36:41 PM CEST

African Click Languages May Be Very Old

A study by geneticists and linguists backs the assumption, that the click sounds in some african languages are more than 10.000 years old. A deep genetic divergence between the click-speaking groups is consistent with the hypothesis that clicks are an ancient element of human language. If, in fact, San-Hadzabe separation dates back to a time prior to out-of-Africa expansions of modern humans, clicks may be more than 40,000 years old, reports The Independent. Via Anthropology in the News

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