I have a degree in Anthropology from the University of Illinois at Chicago. Now that’s not exactly a phrase that I have an occasion to utter very often in my daily life as an internet consultant & failed poet, but it is a part of my identity that informs everything else.
One of the great joys of the daily roulette of reading the New York TImes is the appearance of a John Noble Wilford story. The guy’s a genius at explaining complex science concepts in plain language. Here’s his lead from a story in yesterday’s paper, Extinct and With Tiny Brain, but a Clever Little Relative?:
One of the extinct little people of the Indonesian island of Flores, who were accorded a separate status in the early human family after their discovery was announced last October, has undergone its first intelligence test.
In a study of the shape and contours of its tiny braincase, the 18,000-year-old adult female, who was barely three feet tall, was found to have anatomical attributes suggesting a capacity for higher thinking processes, a significant memory bank and ability to plan. Not bad for a species with a brain one-third the size of a contemporary human’s.