anthropology

Study: How environment may have affected ancient societies

PULLMAN, Wash. – A new study in PLOS ONE shows for the first time that epigenetic marks on DNA can be detected in a large number of ancient human remains. This could improve understanding about the effects of famine and disease in the ancient world.

Rock Doc: Climate change and population collapse

By E. Kirsten Peters, College of Agricultural, Human & Natural Resource Sciences PULLMAN, Wash. – Climate is always changing. That’s one truth that stands out from the record around the world of natural samples of Earth materials, tree rings, ice layers and so much more. But how much has past climate change influenced human affairs?

Archaeologist earns award for research in American Southwest

By Will Ferguson, College of Arts & Sciences PULLMAN, Wash. – Tim Kohler, regents professor of archaeology and evolutionary anthropology, fell in love with the pinion juniper forests and rugged terrain of the American Southwest’s Four Corners region almost 40 years ago. His research paints a vivid picture of what life was like for the […]

WSU geneticist helps solve mystery of Arctic peoples

By Eric Sorensen, WSU science writer PULLMAN, Wash. – With help from a Washington State University population geneticist, Danish researchers have concluded that North America and the Arctic were settled in at least three pulses of migration from Siberia. First came the ancestors of today’s Native Americans, then Paleo-Eskimos – the first to settle in […]

Anthropologists aid in the Ebola epidemic

VANCOUVER, Wash. – Barry Hewlett, a medical anthropologist at Washington State University Vancouver, states that efforts to contain outbreaks such as Ebola must be “culturally sensitive and appropriate…otherwise people are running away from actual care that is intended to help them.”