Dept. of ethnologica, kerlone, October 30, 2002 at 11:26:20 AM CET

Portrait of Alexander von Humboldt

Science (online only accesible for subscribers and/or from universities) has in the edition of the 4 Oct 2002 an interesting short portrait about Alexander von Humboldt, the great scientist who is also famous for his travel journals about his journey through latin america.

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Dept. of ethnologica, kerlone, October 30, 2002 at 12:17:46 AM CET

Voodoo a Legitimate Religion

National Geographic comes with an article claiming that voodoo is a legitimate religion. My comment: In case this is really a new insight, the question is, whether it's really the assigned task of anthropology to judge about the legitimation of religions.

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Dept. of ethnologica, zephyrin, October 29, 2002 at 1:09:06 PM CET

Once upon a time in the Atacama desert

Prehistoric research in Chile's Atacama-desert sheds new light on the origins of the Americas' first population.

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Dept. of ethnologica, kerlone, October 29, 2002 at 11:58:53 AM CET

Witch Trials in Massachusetts

Salon about some famous and heavy witch trials in Massachusetts in 1692. Interesting is the fact, that a whole city falls in some kind of paranoia.

A interesting assumption is, that the english wars against indian tribes in this region are responsible for the afraid mood in this time: "Norton (...) offers the theory that the Trials were a displaced response to the trauma of the Indian Wars on the frontiers of the British settlements in New England. She traces the connections the various participants had to Maine, the location of some especially bloody conflicts with the Wabanaki tribes and their French allies. Today, knowing as we do that the Indians would ultimately lose everything, it's easy to forget how fragile those early British settlements felt to their residents, especially in 1692, when it seemed that the Indians and French were enjoying "continued and seemingly unstoppable successes," and the Indians were boasting that they'd soon have the continent to themselves again."

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