Ethnography
Category archives for Ethnography
Meat Eating in Human Prehistory
Posted by Greg Laden on April 20, 2013 
All human hunter-gatherer groups that have been studied incorporate meat in their diets. Studies have shown that the total dietary contribution of meat varies a great deal, and seems to increase with latitude so that foragers in subarctic and arctic regions eat a lot of meat while those living near the equator eat less. It…
The Feast (A Thanksgiving Day Story)
Posted by Greg Laden on November 22, 2012 Today is Thanksgiving in the US. Happy Thanksgiving. Let us being with a word of advice: TAKE THE TURKEY OUT OF THE FREEZER NAO!!! And now … a feast.
“Excuse me, there’s some food in my bugs!”
Posted by Greg Laden on August 22, 2011 Speaking of people eating insects … as we were … I do have this fun story from the Ituri Forest.
“We Live In Little Houses Made of Beans”
Posted by Greg Laden on August 19, 2011 I have written before of insects in the Ituri Forest. (Oh, and here too.) When it comes up that I’ve spent time there, certain questions often come up, and one of them is: “Did you eat bugs.”
The reason the Efe won’t normally kill an insect …
Posted by Greg Laden on August 18, 2011 that has wandered into their camp if they don’t know anything about it a priori is … according to what they told me when that happened once … is …
No place to sit down
Posted by Greg Laden on August 18, 2011 I knew a couple who had spent a lot of time in the Congo in the 1950s. He was doing primatology, and she was the wife of a primatologist. And when she spoke of the Congo or Uganda, where they spent most of the time, she always said two things that always put me off…
Among Cannibals
Posted by Greg Laden on August 7, 2011 I have lived among Cannibals, according to a lot of people who claim to know. The number of times that the “tribal” people of the Congo have been called cannibals is too great to be counted, most notably in great literature like The Heart of Darkness but most commonly, I suspect, from the pulpit or…
The Apocalypse really is happening and the Rapture went off without a hitch
Posted by Greg Laden on May 22, 2011 It’s all just a matter of calibration. Let me ‘splain.
How to carry your monkey home once you’ve killed it
Posted by Greg Laden on February 2, 2011 Once you’ve killed the monkey, you need to carry it back to camp. Slit the tail, near the end, and poke the head through the slit, so the tail makes a handy strap. Here’s a detail:
Falsehoods: Human Universals
Posted by Greg Laden on January 26, 2011 There are human universals. There, I said it. Now give me about a half hour to explain why this is both correct and a Falsehood. But first, some background and definition.