There's a woman who writes about Chinese privilege in Singapore which is described as very much akin to white privilege in the US.
In China there's a related term "Han chauvinism" (大汉族主义) to describe something like Han privilege and the idea that it should exist. This was original a criticism and in many cases still is. But there are plenty of people (see the 汉服 movement) who have a sense of superiority. This would definitely fit in to the idea of Han supremacy, though not with the same sort of militarism of a lot of white supremacy movements.
There's no question that Han enjoy greater benefits than other ethnic groups. I would say that could be called Han privilege in the same sense of white privilege in the West. Uyghurs (to name one example) have a reputation of being criminals, which leads them to have difficulty finding jobs in areas where they're the minority, which leads them to be more likely to turn to other means of making money.
How long have you been in China?
As a side note: There are a lot of people who are Han who might not look Han to you depending on where you live in China. In Shanghai we have a lot of people from Sichuan who still identify as Han but don't look like local Shanghainese. That would be even more striking if you're in a place like Beijing.
edit: I misread "white supremacy" as "white privilege". Still, I think I've also addressed the supremacy part, so I'll leave it. If needed I can clarify points.
If you're interested in a book, I suggest reading After the Ice, which is an account of this transition in places all over the world through the eyes of a time traveler. Written by an archaeologist with some cutaways to modern archaeological digs and such as well.
There's really two questions here: 1, is persistence hunting used as a strategy? Yes, it's well-documented but not actually common. Though we're not sure if that is reflective of the Early Stone Age or if it's an artifact of ethnographic sampling. 2, Was persistence hunting a major factor in evolution? Maybe. Here is a pro and con article.
It seems like humans can experience empathy for all sorts of things. Perhaps as a consequence of our social behavior, we imbue even inanimate objects with emotional importance.
This book seems like a great start, looking at historical pet keeping (for hunting, etc.), and focusing on the relationships people develop with their pets across cultures:
It looks like the whole thing is available, so have at it!
Sex at Dawn is a dubious source. The authors (a psychologist and a physician) had it published by a non-academic press because it failed peer-review, and it's been heavily criticized by anthropologists and evolutionary psychologists for misrepresenting both the evidence and the current state of research on the evolution of human sexuality. See these reviews by Ryan Ellsworth (1, 2), for example, and the book-length rebuttal Sex at Dusk by Lynn Saxon.
I see this sort of reply often (especially when questions have a linguistic slant), and it feels like people aren't aware of the scope of anthropology. It isn't just archaeology and cultural anthropology. This communication between state actor and non-state actor can be analyzed from a psychological perspective, and as some one from within the culture, that is something that we might be tempted to focus on, but it can also be examined from an anthropological lens. I highly recommend diving into political anthropology. I highly recommend diving into political anthropology and you might begin with Sharma and Gupta's <em>The Anthropology of the State: A Reader</em>.
James S Scott speculates that this is actually very common. His main case study is Southeast Asia, where there is a lot of evidence of people fleeing heavily agricultural civilizations for a horticultural life in the highlands both as a result of conflict and simply because the life of the latter is freer and (at least in many ways) richer as compared to the heavily-taxed life of an agricultural serf in a stratified society. Of course, horticulture might not be rice paddy cultivation but it's still agriculture. Nonetheless, he finds signs that this is a worldwide dynamic that shows up where ever you have a geographic or temporal transition between densely settled agriculture and a lower-density space that makes "less civilized" lifeways possible. One space he keeps coming back to is the Eastern/Midwestern US of the 1500s and 1600s, when the post Columbian contact plagues and their associated population collapses gave the survivors plenty of elbow room to make this transition.
I did my undergraduate degrees in Anthropology and Economics, and so while I'm not an authoritative source, I do have an opinion on this. I think it's pretty clear that even gift-giving society are operating under a kind of market condition where what's often being traded is social stature/currency. It seems like this naturally breaks down in larger groups, and so you get the rise of barter and hard currency when you can't "store" wealth in social relationships.
I found this ethnography very helpful for understanding how gift networks really are trade networks: https://www.amazon.com/Marxist-Modern-Donald-L-Donham/dp/0520213297
I believe he even has a large resource where he maps out the exchange of goods within a small group over time to show the flow of resources within the community.
This is one of my favorite topics. Here is a good introductory, but scholarly book. https://www.amazon.com/Last-Hunters-First-Farmers-Perspectives/dp/0933452918
To put it briefly, agriculture started independently in at least six different global locations. There's pretty comprehensive archaeological research into the migration of agriculturalists into Europe and their conflicts with native hunter-gatherers.
There are elements of the Garden of Eden story that we can see in the Sumerian Myth of Enki and Ninhursag. The Flood story can be traced back - practically word for word - through several iterations in southern Mesopotamian history to the third millennium BC, about 2,000 years before it appears in Genesis.
The Book of Genesis, in particular, seems to be a compendium of the mythologies and folklores of Bronze Age herders from the pasturelands on the margins of the great civilizations - the nomadic pastoralists that occupied the space between the Nile, Canaan, and Mesopotamia.
The book Ishmael by Daniel Quinn does a great job addressing the anthropology of Genesis by contextualizing the perspective of its scribes. Highly recommended if the anthropology of Genesis is your thing. Biblical prehistory tends to otherwise fall through the cracks of academia.
Edit: While Ishmael is indeed a work of philosophy from the early 90s, there are chapters in which he has prescient insights about the Neolithic and Bronze Ages of northern Arabia. As an archaeologist who specializes in the Palaeolithic and Neolithic periods of the Arabian Peninsula, I find his work to be among the only valid attempts to understand Biblical/Qur'anic folklore within the context of prehistoric archaeology.
Edit 2: Hard to say whether it's well received or not because I don't think it's on any academic radars. Biblical anthropology - particularly the prehistory of Genesis Chapters 1 to 11 - is not a recognized discipline. Prehistorians consider it shameful to touch the Old Testament, while Biblical scholars consider it way too far outside their discipline to be of interest. I'm doing my best to change that with papers such as this (sorry for the shameless plug, but it's best example I can think of): https://www.academia.edu/386944/New_Light_on_Human_Prehistory_in_the_Arabo-Persian_Gulf_Oasis
> one incident
The scholarly article to go along with that article. A rib puncture wound suspected to be made by a projectile point is found to be made by a projectile point based on comparative studies with pig ribs.
Elsewhere, anthropologists are slightly more conservative with these results:
"Though conclusive evidence for competitive encounters between Neandertals and Homo sapiens remains controversial, many paleoanthropologists believe such encounters occurred (Shea 2003b; Banks et al. 2008; Conard 2006; Finlayson and Carríon 2007). If competition did occur, projectile technology would have conferred decisive advantages."
and
"We do not have evidence for coalitionary violence between Neandertals and humans (cf. Churchill et al. 2009), but if there were such encounters, projectile weaponry would have provided key tactical advantages for populations adept at using it."
From another article.
The evidence is extremely scant to support the idea of conflict and/or war between H. neanderthalensis and H. sapiens. I would not jump to the conclusion that such violence occurred on the basis of the existing evidence.
That is the most thorough documentation. I'd also recommend JJ Shea's Homo sapiens is as Homo sapiens Was. It is shorter and so more manageable and it gives an update on what has been published since McBrearty and Brooks.
Yeah, it's not accurate to equate that type of work with wage labor, which some of my links expand on, but particularly Bird-David. If you've ever done any experimental archaeology with flintknapping, there's frequently chatter and friendly competition to see who can make the best tool and laughing at the horrible ones. You can find this in ethnographic cases, often in addition to some type of ritual. For instance, the Dani are horticulturalists but still rely on stone tools. Their flintknapping process involves anthropomorphic stones that have names, ages, etc.
In general, the concept of communal property is pervasive among egalitarian societies. Most mobile foragers or hunter-gatherers are or were egalitarian, as are many horticultural societies. However, there's a lot of variation. Typically there are complex social leveling mechanisms in place that prevent any individual from collecting too much wealth (including material and social). For example, when a hunter gets a kill, depending on the tool and method used and present company, there may be different culturally proscribed methods for distribution. Egalitarianism, putatively characterized the majority of human evolution but is hardly representative of all human culture. Robert Kelly's new edition of The Foraging Spectrum provides a nice review. Also, Boehm's Hierarchy in the Forest is a good introduction to theories on egalitarianism.
Apparently, they’re not.
E.g., https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/xge-141-1-19.pdf
Lisa Feldman Barrett also writes on this extensively in her book How Emotions Are Made
EDIT: that said, it seems sensible that there are shared physiological constraints on how various affective states get physically expressed — we do have the same bodies, physiologically, so even if everything else is culturally constructed (which I’m not entirely convinced of in this case, evidence cited above notwithstanding), the physical makeup of our shared bodies suggests we’re likely to exhibit at least some shared affect-display pathways (e.g., curling up our nose in disgust, eyes widening in surprise), albeit with the possibility of cultural modification.
You should read the book "Indian Paths of Pennsylvania" by Paul A W Wallace.
Native North Americans did not have pack animals like South Americans, or horses like Europeans, so the trails did not just follow ridge lines, or other easy geological features. They followed deer paths and the paths of other game which the native americans hunted, which would meander around a bit traversing ridges and leading to salt licks most likely. After Europeans arrived the trails were widened to accommodate horses, then after that they were eventually widened again to accommodate wagons. Most likely the paths shifted a bit during this period, because the best walking trails are not always through the best wagon paths, and this was a time before dynamite was invented, so they couldn't just blow up the rocks and make the roads wide enough.
Well, first, people don't die if they don't turn on the AC, it is really mostly a comfort thing. Cold is a different issue though.
But I guess I will take this opportunity to mention my hometown which I always praise for it's weather. Year round it varies from 12 C to 23 C. 12 might be a little cold, but we've survived without chimneys (which have never existed in the city) or heating (Some might have, I don't).
I am not an expert by any means but I think the Poetic Eddas and the Prose Eddas would be a great place to start as far as books go. There are also great books written about the myths, here is one I recommend - From Asgard to Valhalla by Heather O'Donoghue
Absolutely, although that may delve more into psychology and history rather than prehistory. A few quick searches on common databases turned up many results for me, and even a book about studying childhood through archaeology https://www.amazon.com/Archaeology-Childhood-Children-Material-Culture/dp/0759103321 No reviews, but sounds very interesting.
In my methods class, we used Bernard’s Research Methods in Anthropology. It provides a decent overview of different methodologies with good references to other works to learn more. The most recent edition is spendy but older editions are just as good and can be found for cheap.
Wisdom Sits in Places by Keith Basso is my recommendation. The first anthropology book that opened up my mind to just how different another culture can be from my own. Amazing journey through the language and culture of the Apache people.
On Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B007WV9WV8/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1
Robert Heinlein had some interesting possible prediction of future marriage. As men and women become more equal in society and the necessity for survival less apparent that marriage would be an entirely private manner, without purpose beyond the individuals involved. https://www.amazon.com/Us-Living-Comedy-Customs/dp/0743491548
I recently read a book by Elizabeth Barber, "[When They Severed Earth from Sky: How the Human Mind Shapes Myth]," (https://www.amazon.com/When-They-Severed-Earth-Sky/dp/0691127743) which explores how humans use language to pass learning from one generation to the next, and how the learning stories change over time as the circumstances of the given group or tribe change.
She particularly explores Native American myths from the western tribes, where they have lived with active volcanoes for millennia. The stories that have described volcanoes erupting and how to act when they do have remained reasonably true to their origins, in that the imagery is clearly discernible.
She contrasts that to people who have left the land where their learning stories were first created to live in a different environment--for instance, a group that was living near volcanoes that ended up migrating into a flatter area with no volcanoes but different natural forces.
They still tell their original stories, but over time they morph to better reflect the new reality of the landscape they're in.
I'm probably mangling this information, but you might be interested in reading it.
The Mastery and Uses of Fire in Antiquity amazon link A fantastic book from an industrial furnace professor who had a long-time collaboration with an archaeologist. From first principles of how fire works, he explains the parameters of how different levels of pyrotechnology must have been used to produce pottery, quicklime, charcoal, and ultimately smelting metal.
Not quite neolithic farming, but it would give you the basics to take whatever fire technology level currently in use, and likely be able to produce better or new products. If you've seen the Primitive Technology youtube channel, the guy builds his own furnaces for producing a number of incredibly useful pottery items: roofing tiles and pots mainly. This book was apparently one of his major inspirations.
I've been looking for books on the details of neolithic farming, so I hope this question is fruitful for us both.
Petroglyphs are the one of the most exploited resources used by pseudoscientists. They come in such a vast array of shapes, colors, and styles and appear in so many different places at different times that they can really be used to argue whatever anyone wants. They also can be difficult to date, which opens to door for non-specialists to claim it's as old as they want. It's Ancient Aliens style "archaeology" - picking and choosing what parts of the material culture support a theory, or basing a theory on one particular piece of evidence and ignoring everything else. My favorite example is this 2011 article arguing that lucid dreaming is a valid way to interpret petroglyphs.
I don't know much about the "squatter" figures, but petroglyphs commonly feature human figures alongside geometric markings like lines or dots, so it makes sense to me that sometimes they would appear together. Comparing cherry-picked petroglyphs from around the world and using those similarities/differences to argue a point is a perfect example of confirmation bias - searching for evidence to back up a theory and conveniently ignoring all the data which doesn't fit.
I generally am of the opinion that petroglyphs cannot be studied in isolation and that any reasonable research on petroglyphs needs to be based on more than the images themselves. Rjabchikov's "The Bird-man Cult in the Rapanui Rock Art and Oral Literature" (2018) does a nice job using oral history to interpret petroglyphs. It's important that petroglyphs be recognized as culturally constructed - petroglyphs cannot be accurately interpreted without considering the cultures which created them.
Yes, the Inca economy was centered around control of labor rather than markets. Debts were owed to the state in the form of labor instead of tax money and the state directed a command economy, with tasks assigned to certain ayllus (lineages, kin groups, or households -- the translation often depends on context), except for nobility who were exempt from these requirements. The economic structure was enormously successful in creating an imperial state through the mitma system. Conquered peoples were forced into the Inca system of labor but rapidly incorporated through state provision of farmland or other resources necessary for labor and mitma (forced resettlement) that broke up ethnic polities, scattering them far enough to prevent them from uniting and rebelling. Despite the lack of traditional written records, a census and other records were kept using knotted ropes known as khipus.
See The Inca as a nonmarket economy: Supply on command versus supply and demand for more detail.
Have you heard about Ishi? In 1911, he walked down from the mountains where he'd been living because he was starving and the last of his tribe and family had passed. The Yahi, the band he belonged to, had never been huge (~400) but during the California Gold Rush there was a systematic massacre of his people. A handful survived and hid in the wilderness but eventually only Ishi remained. Anthropologists like Kroeber and Waterman worked with Ishi to preserve his language, folkways, and traditions before he passed. He died in 1916 due to complications from TB. UCSF has a decent summary of it all here. There were a couple of documentaries and books written about him for a more popular audience - here is one titled <em>Ishi the last Yahi</em> which you can watch online for free.
The tests can actually give you a pretty good idea of where your ancestors originated from, but they are subject to a few confounding factors. If your heritage is particularly mixed, the rest will be able to tell you so but won’t give you much precise information. This could also be the case if your family lived in the US for a long time, as genetic shift/drift hasn’t really had time to take place here so it will show up as a hodgepodge of European ancestry. They rely on genetic polymorphisms that arise over thousands of years, and are only found in people descended from the people in which they originally occurred. These polymorphisms can be used to track the movements and migrations of humans as we spread out across the planet, as well as give a general idea of genetic ancestry. For example, my family came to the US from Ireland about 100 years ago. My AncestryDNA results indicated a lot of Irish heritage, which means I had lots of genetic polymorphisms that are commonly found in the same combinations in natives of Ireland. That being said, it was still diluted with scattered European ancestries due to the melting pot that is the US. You can read more about AncestryDNA here in their FAQ.
This is a great comment. The Willerslev and Meltzer article is excellent. The ancient Beringians are thought to have been a people that were adapted to the Mammoth Steppe biome. This grassland biome stretched from western Europe to the far north of the New World. The upper paleolithic mammoth steppe peoples of northern Eurasia are now well documented. Take a look at the Yana RHS site. The inhabitants of the Yana RHS site appear to have been well adapted to the far north some 28,000 years ago.
What is writing? If we're using writing to mean symbol representing sound representing language, then there aren't as many examples. If we mean using symbols to represent meaning, then this has been invented tens of thousands of times - including, in fact, by the people who created the Lascaux cave paintings!
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2012/mar/11/cave-painting-symbols-language-evolution
Here's a discussion of the symbols commonly used in cave paintings in the area.
As to why our symbol=sound systems took so long to be invented - well, for starters, there's no reason to think that it wasn't invented other times and simply died out. Literacy has vanished in many cultures over the years, there are modern examples how people have gone from literate to illiterate, and the amazing thing about know inventions of writing is that they stuck around long enough for us to know about them (and remember that the Meso-american systems died off as well). The other reason is that it takes a special type of culture to require writing. In a hunting and gathering culture, to put it bluntly, writing is not an efficient way of transmitting information. Abstract maps, vague gestures and simply taking a person to the location and showing them are far more effective ways of transmitting skills and terrain/resource knowledge than is writing. I use writing to tell stories, to keep records, but not to educate someone about berry or mushroom harvesting, and this is a pattern we see in the development of writing - it's used by bureaucracies and priesthoods, because it's good for those applications, while nomadic people develop effective methods of communicating environmental knowledge which is generally far more integrative.
Having just written this up - caveat - this is my own impression, there are likely other reasons as well.
The divide between narrative writing and anthropology has been contentious, for sure. There is undoubtedly "ethnographic art:" my typical example is Catherine Allen's Condor Qatay. But the jump you're making from "critical social awareness" to "anthropology" is undue.
Anthropology is first and foremost a study. Call it a field science, as I would; call it humanities. In either case it's a systematic, intentional study of people through participant observation, interviews, textual analysis, and an assortment of other methods that leads to a thickly detailed, potentially critical, often interpretive, and inevitably comprehensive product.
A Woody Guthrie song is not anthropology, while Catherine Allen's play is, because Guthrie, to my knowledge, never undertook such a study.
That's not to devalue his insight, or to suggest that it's invalid. It's just not anthropology. I'm an archaeologist with a four-field training who interviews people at my field sites about folktales and I don't even dare call that ethnography. Self-critical, reflexive thought is a prerequisite for both art and any social science; it's not the exclusive territory of anthropology.
Not an anthropologist, but I managed to finish The Horse, the Wheel, and Language; How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World last week so this is still fresh in my mind. The answer seems to be that no one knows how it started, but development of cattle domestication and social ranks in previously egalitarian society goes hand-in-hand. So it is possible that the first cattle herders were reasonably organised with clear leaders, and that would cut down the danger. This is inferred from tombs, graves and bone pits. By the time records were written down there are already mentions of 'dappled cows full of milk' that would have been domesticated for long.
Interestingly as cattle farming spread, it's almost always the long-domesticated cows that were mated with local wild bulls, possibly to make the herd better adjusted to local conditions. In the case of horses there are very few founding stallions, possibly only one stallion ever domesticated while multiple mares were captured from the wild over a long time.
I'd like to recommend The Other Side of History: Daily Life in the Ancient World
This audiobook will make you feel what's it's like to be an ordinary person in ancient times. What was it like to be a Persian or ancient Greek or Roman. What daily life was like.
The Internet Archive tries to make it so. Project Gutenberg uses Plain Vanilla ASCII as a format for its books to keep them as eternal as possible when it comes to software.
It seems likely that some of these or similar archival projects will succeed for a long time. There is the unusual software barrier with digital records, which can make the data inaccessible even if it's preserved perfectly. It's hard to say how high a barrier that is without knowing the future. If our society and its digital activities continue much as they are, the problem is just a different type of archaeological sleuthing. If there's a drastic upheaval and society 500 years from now doesn't know what "digital" is, it's going to be tough.
EDIT: I interpreted the title as "some small records will be preserved" not "few records will be preserved." I do agree that most information will probably be lost. Most of everything is lost, and digital data is a fragile medium even without the format problem.
The Moriori were a tribe so pacifistic they refused to bear arms against Maori invaders. Can’t find a lot of research into them, however; Moriori: A People Rediscovered seems your best bet, but judging from the Amazon page it may be hard to track down.
Two that come to mind are Jacques Soustelle's Daily Life of the Aztecs and Henri Daniel-Rops Daily Life in Palestine at the Time of Christ? Not really ancient, though. There are some more on the Aztecs that focus more on yearly ritual cycles, and some very good ones that are from even later (Qing China) and modern Egypt that are very, very good if you are interested.
Well, a forty-nine is the more social, informal event following a pow wow. Fundamentally, the songs have English lyrics (usually funny, romantic, or both) accompanied by hand drum.
I'm not up on the history of pow wows by any means, but basically they draw most of their deepest roots from the plains (in terms of music, format, regalia, etc.) but became popular across the US and Canada (and Europe, a little bit) as a way to come together and express inter-tribal Indian identity from the mid-20th century onward. They're adapted by every group of people that hold one (tribes, student groups, urban community organizations) and styles of regalia and dance more locally traditional are often worked in.
Basically though, if I were looking for the roots of forty-nine songs in particular, my hunch is that I'd probably be listening to older style social dance songs from the southern plains, and trying to find out when people started to set those melodies to English lyrics.
Edit: Yep, lucky guess: this article suggests it comes from Kiowa and Comanche people.
People outside of societies dominated by Judeo-Christian-Muslim history do eat insects. It's worth thinking about why insects are not considered acceptable food in societies with a history of drawing on the Hebrew bible... There are a lot of different ideas about this but a classic one is Mary Douglas's notion in "Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo" of the status of certain life forms as "liminal" or kind of in an uncertain place between things... so what is in insect? Think about this through the lens of someone's view of the world thousands of years ago. It might fly but it's not a bird. It might crawl on the ground but it's not an animal like a rabbit. It might be on the water but it's not a fish. It doesn't fit the categories well, it is between categories. Douglas argues (massive simplification here!) that this uncertain state makes such creatures taboo. Of course, later she said this was all wrong.
But her analysis is an interesting way to think about creatures that might seem "out of place" and therefore not suitable for eating, depending on the kind of world view you have. This is a good article for getting a summary of Douglas's analysis of Kashrut, the Jewish dietary laws.
Edit: for examples of the widespread eating of insects elsewhere see the following, but there are many others: DeFoliart, Gene R. "Insects as food: why the western attitude is important." Annual review of entomology 44.1 (1999): 21-50.
I posted sources above. If you want more, take a look at the bibliography in Ruhlen's book. This has been a strong hypothesis in comparative/historical linguistics for 50 years, and there's now a lot of interesting in seeing whether particular sound shifts follow the same trails as the Y chromosome (and other) markers.
Here's a specific citation (about clicks). It pretty much takes this new framework as its background:
While some of the academics who tried to pooh pooh the idea of a common ancestral pool at 60,000 years ago are still waving their pens, they have grown increasingly quiet. That's because the genetic research is so specific and so compelling.
So yes, there are a number of published anthropologists who are comfortable with major study into the idea of Proto-World at 60,000 and I'd say, based on reading linguistics not published in English that many linguists around the world agree.
I'd add in this one too:
Konigsberg LW et al (2009) Estimation and evidence in forensic anthropology: sex and race
It's a good read because it walks you through how attributes, including race, are determined. The identifications are not made in a vacuum -- you can't just look at a skull and discern race. The commonly used ForDisc software has to have a database for a reference sample loaded into it. In this study, they show that you can get three different results when three different reference samples are used.
Darrell La Lone's The Inca as a Non-Market Economy: Supply on Command Versus Supply on Demand is a good overview. As a command economy, there have been references to it as socialist or some such as La Lone mentions. I can't see how anyone can come away with this view with any familiarity of the Incan political system. Despite lacking money and markets, it was a hereditary monarchy with said centralized economy propping up a massive army for imperial conquest.
Actually, I dug a little further into the Male revolt in Bahia, and Joao Jose Reis says that the rebels did have these talismans.
That said, if anyone knows of any other examples of these talismans turning up in other places, I am all ears.
Well the Vinča culture is one component. There's also the Tiszapolgar (Hungary), Gumelniţa–Karanovo (Romania & Bulgaria) and Cucuteni–Trypillia (Romania & Ukraine) cultures and a few more I've probably forgotten. They all share the traits I outlined above, and Gimbutas would have said they were all part of Old Europe, but it's important to realise they're also distinct traditions spread over a very large area and a long span of time.
Aegean Spondylus, copper and gold were exchanged across much of the region, which is suggestive of cultural links. But we're talking about objects that were most likely valued for aesthetic and social reasons, not economic ones. Anthropologists have long recognised that the exchange of material things comes in many more forms than what we would recognise as "trade" (e.g. the Kula ring). A shared language wouldn't be required. And I don't buy into the so-called "Vinča signs" at all, nor do many archaeologists.
> Anyway, Chapman (1981) would argue their decline was more due to intensive farming and the loss of soil fertility.
He may have written it 35+ years ago, but I doubt that's what John would argue now! I think it's only recently that people have been able to put together the pieces and form a picture of what happened in the fourth millennium. Kristiansen (2015) is a good outline.
The britannica link you supplied is a page dedicated to debunking crab selection theory you advocate.
Connecting Worlds of Water - An Ethnography of Environmental Change on Tarawa, Kiribati by Maria Robertson
Kiribati is an island nation that is succumbing to rising ocean levels due to global warming. They're in the process of moving the population completely off the island. I imagine losing your entire country and having to start anew would qualify as "drastic cultural change".
"More recently, in an attempt to overturn prejudices of the past, some influential anthropologists argued that cannibalism perhaps never occurred at all. On the contrary, Conklin describes how Europeans long practiced cannibalism themselves, usually for medicinal purposes." Basically Conklin argues europeans had practiced cannibalism before and during their contact with the 'uncivilized cannibals', you could go to a shop and buy some crushed up bone for your old lady or perhaps you were epileptic and had a hankering for the blood of criminals to cure your ails. Other examples include imported mummy! There were competing schools of thought in the medical community at this time as whether to use animal material or human material for medicines. We know which one ended up on top.
Conklin argues then that to be a cannibal was to be an 'other', and this distinction colored european opinions of the practice and it began to fade from their collective memory as generations passed.
Edit* in the case of kuru, it has been speculated that the disease is a relatively new occurrence in the communities it came in contact with, through on the ground conversations they were able to trace kuru to its likely geographic origin. It has been found that kuru can have an extremely long incubation time and and sit in an infected individual's brain for a very long time without signs. This was from a documentary that i can not remember the name of and im currently mobile.
Edit** I found the documentary, provided a link.
Kuru: The Science and the Sorcery (52 minutes) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vw_tClcS6To
R is probably the best place to start. As /u/seriouswork says, the things you learn in R - how to use syntax, which tests to use when etc etc, can be easily carried over into SPSS without much difficulty (SPSS generally uses an easier graphical user interface whereas R is just code).
R also has the advantage of being completely free. You can download R and R Studio today and start fiddling around with it. There's a good free book aimed at psychology students called 'Learning Statistics with R' which you can download for free. Or if you want to spend money you might try Andy Field.
Also worth learning to use ggplot2, rather than the default graphing software, as the ggplot graphs look mighty fine.
Best of luck.
Pottery shows evidence of repair since its introduction in the Neolithic period (c. 7000 BCE). Here's an example from 6500 BCE.
Not my field, but stone tools have been around for at least two million years (e.g. the oldest ones), and presumably these would be repaired as needed. Not sure how one would find the oldest with evidence of repair, but there must be plenty to choose from. Just not sure how well-published these would be.
My apologies if this breaks the rules but I was just reading a great book about this subject that details some of the ideas behind procreation across cultures and time that would be perfect for OP.
If linking to amazon is not allowed, please just let me know and I'll link to goodreads or something like that!
I’ve read Stringer’s book The Complete World of Human Evolution a while back and enjoyed it a lot as an overview (great photos and a highly-attractive book as well), I’ll have to check out Our Human Story. Is the Adam Rutherford book that you mentioned entitled Humanimal: How Homo sapiens Became Nature’s Most Paradoxical Creature―A New Evolutionary History? Looks like it comes out later this month, but it sounds intriguing - might have to get it after it comes out.
Given that there has been the largest population explosion in human history in the last few hundred years, probably a very tiny percentage. It's hard to get solid numbers especially for the Paleolithic. Here is an article on how some estimates have been produced. The estimates I've seen are typically regionally or continentally delimited and reported in relative proportions. If anyone has something on global population density, I'd be interested.
I'm an archaeologist, so I can relate to the material evidence and I don't believe we have single shred of hard evidence of rape during the Paleolithic. So, how can we know or assume if the Paleolithic "cave man" ever indulged in sexual violence? Normally in these kinds of questions we turn to the ethnographic analogies we can observe in modern societies living under similar circumstances as the Paleolithic men and women.
It seems that rape is a universal trait in basically all cultures, whether they are nomadic hunter-gatherers, sedentary pastoralists or live in the West today. Without going into a large analysis, it would be a fair assumption that rape was committed during the Paleolithic. Also, how could we say that it didn't? Speaking in probabilities I' think it's much more probable that it did rather than it didn't.
How it evolved and came to be is a much harder question to answer, most probably with more than one answer. And it is something I am not able to do.
But maybe you'll find the links above interesting and worth a quick read.
Also, there is seldom anything like a 'fucked up' question.
This is the exact book you just described. I actually read a fairly large portion of it standing in the Getty museum store. It's incredibly engrossing.
I can't think of a professional field less competitive than software engineering. You might not get that job at Google, but if you can code you'll land on your feet.
(This is why programming is my backup plan to anthropology ;))
Don't worry, I really am not very knowledgable on anthropology, so I am usually just lurking on this subreddit. I am very interested in history, though.
Excerpt from the first paragraph or two from this webpage:
> While the Sumerian city of Uruk is held to be the oldest city in the world, the ancient Mesopotamians believed that it was Eridu and that it was here that order was established and civilization began.
I will let someone with more experience and more knowledge in this subject take over for me from here.
I'm glad you think so! If you wanna know more, I can really recommend reading What Is Techno-Anthropology?, and I'm happy to answer any questions you might have - I love talking about my studies
Red Sands by Caroline Eden sounds like the sort of thing you’re after: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Red-Sands-Reportage-Hinterland-Heartland/dp/1787134822 Its part travel writing, part ethnography, part recipe book, based around central Asian cuisine. It may not be detailed enough for exactly the sort of thing you’re after, but could be a good starting point at least.
Good luck with the new job, it sounds fascinating!
I think this question leans a bit more to sociological. But it's an interesting topic. I don't know if it is entirely what you are looking for, but Others in Mind: Social Origins of Self-Consciousness is an interesting read.
As the title suggests, deals with the self-awareness, and consciousness. It doesnt deal directly with social constructionism, but I I would argue self awareness is the essential first step to advanced inter-personal cooperation. Early humans must have had a sense of self in order to do long-term group planning.
Relevant chapters from it's table of contents:
Self-conscious species
Giving and sharing
Social construction of identity
You might check out Mark Nichter's edited volume on ethnomedicine. It's old and out of print, but there's cheap-ish used copies on Amazon. Pamela Erickson also has an introductory text that is worth checking out.
Some reputable journals where you could find more information include: Medical Anthropology Quarterly, Medical Anthropology, Medical Anthropology Theory (open-access), and Social Science & Medicine.
I'd recommend <em>Manwatching: A Field Guide to Human Behavior</em> by the evolutionary psychologist Desmond Morris. It's basically an encyclopedia that tries to track down or theorize the origins of almost every aspect of human body language, from handshaking to head nodding to giving the finger. It inherently relies on a lot of speculation but I think most of his arguments are really reasonable and thought provoking.
Rather than edit, I thought I'd just add two I just saw on my bookshelf: David Carrasco's Daily Life of the Aztecs and Lionel Casson's Everyday Life in Ancient Rome. Sorry!
Erickson and Murphy. A History of Anthropological Theory
A long time ago in a land far away I read in a book that womens period blood can contain heavy metals; that one theory for the unusual heavy bleeding in humans is because it allows us to shed heavy metals that would otherwise be shed in milk production, which causes a lot of problems in growing babies. If this is true, then menstrual blood can be full of poisons. As someone who has produced a lot of it my life time, menstrual blood looks and feels unclean. It smells bad. It is different then a cut. It is darker, full of clots. It makes a lot of sense why individuals and whole cultures would respond to it negatively, because yes, it can be really gross, even with modern plumbing.
I have found a few sources for some of this info, I'll be looking for more and adding as possible.
The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson is one of my favorite books. It has so many great imaginings of how the world might have been, and it places a high value on the beauty of different cultures. You might think it is a period piece or an alternative history when you start, but it turns out to be something more/else. There are still some quintessentially American viewpoints in the book, but I loved it.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000FBFNPG/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_709R055QKKH7KYTW1XN2
Not exactly short but this is a book written by an old professor of mine. Its a fascinating look at Kenyan economics and entrepreneurship. You'll never look at soapstone the same way again! lol
Not necessarily an ethnography and it's very political so maybe not the best choice for a HS class but Michelle Alexander's book titled "the new jim crow" is a book that will totally re-contextualize how you look at systemic oppression in America
https://www.amazon.com/New-Jim-Crow-Incarceration-Colorblindness/dp/1595586431
There was a documented 1542 Spanish expedition from peru across the Andes, down the Amazon, and out from the amazons mouth in Brazil:
https://www.amazon.com/The-Discovery-Amazon-According-Documents/dp/1163155969
>For over four centuries, scholars dismissed its reports of large cities, well developed roads, monumental construction, fortified towns, and dense populations. It was thought that the acidic soils of Amazonia could not support the level of agriculture necessary to sustain such a civilization. His writings were largely dismissed as fabrications and propaganda. However, research by Prümers et al., published in Nature (2022) shows that his reporting is very likely to be correct.
One of my anthropology classes had a whole unit on it! Yes, this is absolutely a field of study—“fidelity”, “promiscuity”, and “extra-pair partnerships” would be good search terms if you want to continue looking into it.
The Himba are a well-studied group for this, because the rate of “extra-pair paternity” (the rate of children with fathers other than their mother’s partner) is known and is quite high. This study is a good one on the topic, and the introduction has lots of references to other relevant and interesting papers on the subject. The intro also breaks down some background on female promiscuity, which is that it can be an evolutionarily advantageous study in communities with high paternal investment (aka: communities where fathers help a lot in reading children) because a woman can find one man with good genes to contribute genetically, and another with good status to contribute to rearing. This is not to say that women are compelled to cheat or anything, just explains how it can be productive.
Some of the findings that directly address questions you’ve asked: in the Himba study, extra-pair paternity was relatively common among arranged marriages, and totally absent in “love matches”. Also, although some of the verbiage suggests promiscuity is still considered immoral by the Himba, it’s at the very least not punished and appears significantly less taboo than in other cultures.
A fun book to read on the subject, if you’re interested, is Promiscuity: an Evolutionary History of Sperm Competition. It’s biology in general, not specifically anthropology, but it contains a lot of really interesting little tidbits.
His claim wasn't that some grain growing was caused by a centralized state. His claim was that it was in the state's interest to drive a higher and higher percentage of food production into a form that was easy to steal.
Anyway, I'm not a scholar with the relative skills to critique Scott's argument. I just found his ideas fascinating.
He wrote another book called Seeing Like a State that was also very insightful.
You might enjoy the book Against the Grain. The author argues that early people got their food in many different ways. Hunting, trapping, fishing, small scale agriculture, small scale aquaculture (growing fish in enclosures) and so on.
He said that what makes grain special is that it all becomes ready to harvest at the same time which makes it easier to steal. It's hard to steal potatoes because there's more flexibility in when you dig them up, so you'd have to come and force people to dig the up for you at spear point. But grain all comes ripe and needs to be collected and stored, so it's easy for a thief (aka tax collector sent by a nearby king) to come and take some percentage.
He argues that the big transition was that centralized states could emerge that forced nearby populations to raise grain, instead of all of those other foodstuffs, because the grain was easier to steal. In fact, he makes a very interesting argument that the Great Wall of China may have been as much about keeping the peasants in as it was about keeping the barbarians out. Read the very oldest law codes and some of the provisions are about the right of the lord to hunt down and bring back peasants who have run away.
I have no idea how well accepted these theories are, but for me the book was definitely mind-blowing.
I think in some ways people are taking a more critical view of paleoanthropology and colonial influences, see: https://www.amazon.com/Interrogating-Human-Origins-Decolonisation-Archaeological-ebook/dp/B082FR685H/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=Interrogating+Human+Origins&qid=1655840330&sr=8-1
Look into “Greasy Grimy Gopher Guts, the Subversive Folklore of Childhood” by TKF Weisskopf and Josepha Sherman. Greasy Grimy Gopher Guts: The Subversive Folklore of Childhood (American Stor... https://www.amazon.com/dp/0874834449/ref=cm_sw_r_sms_api_i_35J3EBTP08HSE409AA3Z
This may not answer your question, but I think it provides some understanding to the topic. Indigenous cultures are inseparable from their territories. The market economy, or capitalism, is of the understanding that humans can manipulate nature for their own personal gain. In contrast, Indigenous cultures are representative of the territory and aim to live harmoniously with nature.
If we look to the coastal peoples of B.C., for example, then you can see the importance of seafood, such as halibut, salmon, shellfish, seaweed, etc, as well as resources such as oolichan grease, cedar bark for weaving, and traditional medicines found on the territory, such as devil's club. All of which are common symbols found in their culture. The clan animals also represent important local wildlife, with animals such as the orca, eagle, raven, and wolf being commonplace.
If the coastal people's were moved inland, then much of their culture would not apply in a practical sense. Indigenous cultures are living cultures and are represented heavily by their place of origin. "Living" or harvesting in nature is quintessential to understanding and practising Indigenous cultures.
Check out the novel 'Monkey Beach' by Eden Robinson, it is a great book that blends contemporary and traditional concepts of the Haisla.
https://www.amazon.ca/Monkey-Beach-Eden-Robinson/dp/0676973221
Heartwood: The First Generation of Theravada Buddhism in America (Morality and Society Series) https://smile.amazon.com/dp/0226089002/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_DEFSGPKC09J62S78AP49
I’m not an academic but I found this really interesting when I was a Theravada practitioner.
Not sure if this is what you're looking for, but I enjoyed <em>Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States</em> by James C. Scott.
It explores the long shift away from gathering, hunting, and the type of farming that doesn't require fixed fields of monoculture plants such as grains (e.g., maintaining nut trees or tuber plantations, which can be done on a sweep through the area, toward the type of civilization that requires fixed fields and enforced labor to support an elite.
James C. Scott also has a number of youtube videos exploring the theme of his book further.
I'm not sure if this is what you're looking for, but Alexander the Great is mentioned a bunch of times in the Epic of Sundiata, which is oral history from Mali.
https://www.amazon.com/Sundiata-Revised-Longman-African-Writers/dp/1405849428/
I haven’t read this personally and reports say it’s a bit out of date today, but reviews are good and it was written by an anthropologist.
I would suggest looking at Franz Boas' study of Baffin Island if you want to get a perspective on the origins of the field. I read some of his original diaries but you could probably also find a more modern book like maybe this one that would be a bit more readable.
You really can't find any solid evidence? The issue is essentially considered settled these days. Check out The Horse, The Wheel, and Language for starters.
>I was offering examples for my reasoning.
You weren't offering examples of reasoning, you were offering examples of assumptions, and given randomly at that. Even if either of those examples were actually based on the flimsy hypotheses you had given, what would that say about the origins of stories about fire breathing dragons?
>Offer sources about your position. Anyone can talk out the backside.
Sure. The Horse, The Wheel, and Language is an extremely highly regarded text that summarizes the past few decades of archaeological studies about the origins of the Proto-Indo-Europeans. It's commonly cited in discussions about settling their origins and providing significant evidence for the Steppe Theory (the theory that the Proto-Indo-Europeans were the archaeological culture known as the Yamnaya). As the title implies, there's also a significant discussion about horse evolution.
There is a subfield of anthropology called "applied anthropology." You could take a look at Alan Holmberg's work. There are many others. I was lucky enough to get a year of applied anthropology in graduate school (medical research mostly).
Anthropological ethics actually require us to document certain things (without intervention) but if a community calls upon us for help, we can work in an applied capacity. So, in my own graduate work, the heart transplant team wanted an outsider perspective on the ways they worked as a team, including who saw the patients the most frequently and what kinds of interactions those were.
Then, two psychiatrists invited me to join in research at an inpatient unit (tertiary care unit), which led me to several years of research in medical genetics and recruitment of human subjects into such research. While I was not directly affecting the patients, the work I did was definitely applied and had an impact on patients. Patients of course gave consent when they entered that inpatient unit, as it was a research unit. Indeed, the VA Hospital system allows and encourages this kind of research, and I worked at a total of 5 VA Hospitals to expand the research we'd begun.
This is going to be fun for you. I forgot to mention that I've also used the F1 for phone interviews, although I had to do it in a funny way (have it record a separate phone that was conferenced in and on mute, so it could pick up both me and the interviewee). All interviews pose some kind of challenge, and I'm always happy when there's an easy technological solution in my bag that can solve it.
I'm trying to think of things I wish I knew when I got my first mic. You learn things as you go. For instance, be careful leaving a mic just sitting on the table, because someone tapping their foot or moving things on the table might make it sound like the interview was recorded during an earthquake. I solved that problem by always having my mic mounted on this kind of tripod: https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B077PNS1L1
Similarly, one of the problems with lavs is people tend to touch them or flick them, which ruins the audio. Ultimately, you'll figure out the quirks and limitations of whatever you end up with and you'll learn to work with it.
My anthropology professor spent time with the Mardu people in Australia. We learned a lot about their concept of Dreaming and Dreamtime and it was really fascinating. I would recommend reading The Mardu Aborigines: Living the Dream in Australia's Desert because it has exactly what your looking for.
Karl kerenyi Marie Louise von Franz Carl Jung Joseph Campbell Elaine pagels Nietzsche Jan assmann Gerald Massey Wilhelm Wundt Ludwig Klages Leo frobenius Henry Corbin Jan fries Alvin Boyd khun
All have really interesting ideas but are not considered good anthropology
For anthro I've been intrigued by
Victor Turner Claude Levi Strauss Maurice godelier Paul radin Dell hymes Jerome rothenberg Gananath obeyesekere
For Yoruba stuff
The Architects of Existence: Aje in Yoruba Cosmology, Ontology, and Orature https://www.amazon.com/dp/0991073010/ref=cm_sw_r_apan_glt_i_7WCK2SDKSBXQK5A9Y7FB
By Teresa washington
And this book for Igbo water goddess
The Water Goddess in Igbo Cosmology: Ogbuide of Oguta Lake https://www.amazon.com/dp/1592214835/ref=cm_sw_r_apan_glt_i_J9YR0VKP0Z0T3MXZ2XDE
I would highly, highly recommend this book to get to grips with how to apply qualitative research fundamentals (UK link soz):
Not to call into question your teaching abilities or your students intellect but I would imagine if you can take the two photos below and spend one or two hours explaining how evolution is not a linear process and that species spread in space and time, get wiped out, interbreed etc you have done your job. Really if you get them to understand why evolution is real and that is why monkeys still exist I think that is a win which will prep them for high school biology etc... Maybe a third part can discuss populating of the world/americas... I think that would also help prepare students to understand First Nations etc for future history classes and set the stage for Egypt/Greece/Rome and so on as you will not necessarily be able to continue with them into high school
Just my two cents...
Check this out. Although, as the article states, these skeletons were a sort of proto-Neanderthal relative, Sima de los huesos (or "pit of bones") is thought to be a mass burial site. The coolest thing, in my opinion, is the presence of the acheulean handaxe (in some literature the handaxe has been dubbed "Excalibur" for its locally rare mineral make-up and mastercraft). It is speculated that the handaxe was created purely as a symbol or offering to the dead, and not for use. That is to say, that the proto-neanderthals may have held a capacity for humanity in the use of symbolism. There is speculation that the material for the handaxe was found elsewhere, and saved for a specific use later, that is to say these homo recognized it's rare quality (coloration most likely) and utilized forethought to craft a "special handaxe."
Yes, they do. The siberian chukchi practise voluntary death as described by Willerslev in American Ethnologist (2009):
As far as I know, abandonment of the elderly is still practised in some parts of Southeast Asia.
The book on Kennewick Man can help you out. Obviously it mainly deals with one skeleton in particular, but it lists and discusses other Paleoindian remains found in the Americas.
As for facial reconstruction, aside from Kennewick Man, the Paleoindian burial from the Wilson-Leonard site in Texas also had facial reconstruction. Keep in mind that there is as much art as there is science in facial reconstructions though...
Connie Willis has a series of books involving time travelling historians/archaeologists which tackle ideas like how much it's possible for someone from the 21st century to go back in time and gain insight into the past. Her novel Doomsday Book is really powerful.
I feel pretty ridiculous adding this to a thread with such incredible, masterful works of fiction, but I create a webcomic called Earth in a Pocket which is my attempt at exploring some of my favourite anthropology topics through fiction in a way that is easily accessible to everyone. It features an anthropologist who crash lands on an alien planet who ends up explaining how humans work using only the contents of her pockets. You can find it here - http://earthinapocket.spiderforest.com/ Or here for mobile - https://tapas.io/series/Earth-in-a-Pocket
On top of what /u/StegDoc said, don't forget to look at raw numbers.
According to an industry study there are 1.2 billion people (17% of the global population) in the world playing video games. 700 million are playing video games online.
So if you look at a game like Grand Theft Auto V, it sold 54 million units. So that basically means that if all 54 million units went to separate users (one copy per person), approximately 4.5% of total game-players bought GTA-V.
If you look at the global population (7 billion), that means less than 1% are playing GTA-V.
Even after 20+ years, Tetris has only sold 125 million units.
So while the numbers sound really large, looking at the big picture puts things in perspective.
If you start looking into movie demographics, Action/Adventure movies still hold the majority of viewership, while horror films are aimed at a specific element of the entire movie-going demographic.
If you look at the highest grossing movies of 2015 the bulk of those movies are action/adventure (Marvel movies, Star Wars), dramas and comedies.
Horror movies are usually aimed at a specific demographic, lower or low budget and make a quick run for increased profit.
It basically means that not everyone is consuming violence. The expected demographic is obviously consuming it, and the really good products are getting people outside the expected demographic to dabble into it.
One of the key points of marketing is to make it seem like everyone is using or buying your product. Presenting percentages and numbers in certain ways makes your product sound like everyone is buying or using it, is a pretty common practice.
(Disclaimer: I just chose GTA-V as an example because the entire GTA series is usually scrutinized for being violent)
>Even if all of Earth's languages descend from one parent language is it even worthwhile comparing because since then languages have diverged so far in terms of vocab, structure, and writing that they literally share nothing in common.
Can you think of a language that lacks nouns and verbs?
​
>We aren't that different but yet languages around the world when compared share very little or almost nothing in common, why is that?
Languages around the world have plenty of features in common. Here is an introductory article on what all languages share.
​
>...language could've arisen independently and that could've happened after behavioral modernity had spread. Maybe two tribes very closely related split up and they attained behavioral modernity and independently "invented" language?
How do you define behavioural modernity? I doubt you will find a definition of behavioural modernity that does not presuppose language as an essential condition.
Furthermore, you would have to explain the independent emergence of Broca's area in a very short period of time (in an evolutionary scale).
I'm not sure about judicial executions, but the first chapter of Sacred Killing has a table for the criteria of different types of sacrifice, see p. 10 for animals, p. 13 for humans.
Like I said, I excavated the evidence myself. This was at the Gault site in central Texas. It has not been written up yet because we are still working on the analysis/reporting, but one of my colleagues did present a poster of Clovis dietary evidence based on our findings at the Society for American Archaeology conference in 2014. Evidence for the co-occurrence of horse and humans comes in the form of associated skeletal elements, as well as protein residues on stone tools.
When citing radiocarbon ranges, you need to specify whether you are using calibrated or uncalibrated ages. The range you provide seems a little off for Clovis, either way. Calibrated, Clovis ranged around 13,300 to 12,800. Uncalibrated, it was more like 11,500 to 10,900. I'm reciting this from memory though, so published ranges may vary slightly (on the order of 100 or 200 years either way).
I like the topic of migration and my advisor co-wrote a paper with another researcher on Mesoamerican migrations that may have been triggered due to drought
Perhaps these might interest you?
There are also migrations that occurred in the Southwest. I know a recent book came out by/edited by Tammy Stone on migrations in the Southwest that may also be worth checking out.
You know what, I figured it out. It was this however https://books.google.com/books?id=kQXazw63UHoC&pg=PA38&lpg=PA38&dq=Schiffer%27s+discard+rate&source=bl&ots=-GZ5BPrFn5&sig=k2qDAiSi30P2PXeRyGQmCH_5Rcg&hl=en&sa=X&ei=xISOVLZJjN2gBLzFgNAF&ved=0CCgQ6AEwAg#v=onep...
I use z library.
I am pretty sure this is a legal site. It has some articles but I’ve had the most luck using this website for textbooks/books. I use it quite frequently and have found quite a few great sources that I wasn’t even looking for specifically because it pulls up items that are “close” to the search parameters. Hope this helps!