The Visible Ape Project: A free, comprehensive, web-based anatomical atlas for scientists and veterinarians designed to raise public awareness about apes.

The Visible Ape Project (VAP) is a free online platform providing unprecedented access to a suite of resources designed to comprehensively illustrate and educate about the anatomy of our closest relatives, the apes. It contains photographs, magnetic resonance images, and computed tomography scans, as well as three-dimensional models that can be manipulated to explore homologies and variations in soft and hard tissues in hylobatids, orangutans, gorillas, chimpanzees, and bonobos. Based at Howard University, a historically black university, it aims to reach communities underrepresented in anthropology and evolutionary biology, providing educational materials appropriate for K-12 and college classrooms in both English and Spanish. Accordingly, VAP incorporates outreach activities to disseminate science and promote awareness of apes, forming partnerships with veterinarians and conservationists in Africa and Asia. In this paper, we present an introduction to the website to illustrate how this accessible, evolving resource can support evolutionary anthropology and related disciplines.

Accepting, understanding, teaching, and learning (human) evolution: Obstacles and opportunities.

Questions about our origin as a species are universal and compelling. Evolution-and in particular human evolution-is a subject that generates intense interest across the world, evidenced by the fact that fossil and DNA discoveries grace the covers of major science journals and magazines as well as other popular print and online media. However, virtually all national polls indicate that the majority of Americans strongly reject biological evolution as a fact-based, well-tested, and robust understanding of the history of life. In the popular mind, no topic in all of science is more contentious or polarizing than evolution and media sources often only serve to magnify this polarization by covering challenges to the teaching of evolution. In the realm of teaching, debates about evolution have shaped textbooks, curricula, standards, and policy. Challenges to accepting and understanding evolution include mistrust and denial of science, cognitive obstacles and misconceptions, language and terminology, and a religious worldview, among others. Teachers, who are on the front lines of these challenges, must be armed with the tools and techniques to teach evolution in formal education settings across grades K-16 in a straightforward, thorough, and sensitive way. Despite the potentially controversial topic of human evolution, growing research is demonstrating that a pedagogical focus on human examples is an effective and engaging way to teach core concepts of evolutionary biology.

Education science and biological anthropology.

This contribution states deficits and makes proposals in order to overcome them. First there is the question as to why the Biological Anthropology--despite all its diversifications--hardly ever deals with educational aspects of its subject. Second it is the question as to why Educational Science neglects or even ignores data of Biological Anthropology which are recognizably important for its subject. It is postulated that the stated deficits are caused by several adverse influences such as, the individual identity of each of the involved single sciences; aspects of the recent history of the German Anthropology; a lack of conceptual understanding of each other; methodological differences and, last but not least, the structure of the universities. The necessity to remedy this situation was deduced from two groups of facts. First, more recent data of the Biological Anthropology (e.g. brain functions and learning, sex specificity and education) are of substantial relevance for the Educational Science. Second, the epistemological requirements of complex subjects like education need interdisciplinary approaches. Finally, a few suggestions of concrete topics are given which are related to both, Educational Science and Biological Anthropology.

Sherwood Washburn's New physical anthropology: rejecting the "religion of taxonomy".

Many physical anthropologists and nearly all of those studying primatology today can trace their academic genealogy to Sherwood Larned Washburn. His New physical anthropology, fully articulated in a 1951 paper, proposed that the study of hominid evolution must link understandings of form, function, and behavior along with the environment in order most accurately to reconstruct the evolution of our ancestors. This shift of concentration from strictly analyzing fossil remains to what Washburn termed adaptive complexes challenged not only Washburn's predecessors, but also led Washburn to critique the very system of academia within which he worked. Collaboration across multiple disciplines, linking the four fields of anthropology in order to understand humans and application of our understandings of human evolution to the betterment of society, are the hallmarks of Washburnian anthropology. In this paper I will explore how Washburn's New physical anthropology led him to not only change the research direction in physical anthropology, but also to challenge the academia within which he worked. I will conclude by reflecting on the prospects of continuing to practice Washburnian Anthropology.

[Physical anthropology and human "zoos": the exhibition of natives as a scientific popularization practice on the threshold of the 20th century]. / La antropología física y los "zoológicos humanos": exhibiciones de indígenas como práctica de popularización científica en el umbral del siglo XX.

All along the nineteenth century different anthropological exhibitions were held in many countries, in which people from a number of indigenous communities, especially transported from their homeland for the occasion, were exhibited publicly, both for citizenship's instruction and for specialists's "in vivo" studies on human biology. This paper presents a brief description of some of these scientific shows, and tries to relate them to contemporary human biology theories.

La antropología en el deporte / Sports anthropology

No disponible

No disponible

Role of physical anthropology in intermediate and secondary education.

The role of physical anthropology in precollegiate education has been limited, but has the potential to play a vital and integral role in promoting students' understanding of themselves and others. This study describes the development, implementation, and results of a program constructed on an inquiry-based learning model that introduces middle and high school students to the content of physical anthropology. Demonstrated student learning indicates that intermediate and secondary students are capable of acquiring and applying complex content about human evolution and diversity. Program findings indicate that students frequently had previous knowledge about the hominid fossil record but little information about the significance of human biological diversity. Teaching intermediate and high school students about our common evolutionary heritage and the fact that humans exhibit clinal variation were found to be both powerful and effective content material. The fact that program participants lacked previous knowledge about the relationship between human biological diversity (illustrated in this program by light and dark skin color) and the erroneous sociocultural construction of this diversity confirmed the suspicion that this content is not being addressed in precollegiate education. Traditionally, intermediate and secondary students are taught about human variation within the context of social studies, reading, communication, and fine-arts classes. This program identifies a new paradigm for teaching about human variation. Providing students with scientific knowledge about human origins and diversity provides a constructive starting point, creating a common platform and knowledge base on which to then frame discussions about cultural variation.

Modern sport, modernism and the cultural manifesto: de Coubertin's Revue Olympique.

This article studies the Modern Olympic Movement within the cultural framework of early twentieth-century aesthetics. By examining the first 13 years of the Revue Olympique, the bond between sport and ideals of beauty emerges as a powerful indicator of a broader socio-cultural discourse. Discourse analysis exposes the Revue Olympique as homogeneous and coherent device of praxis that located the Olympic Movement and the genre of sport festival it promoted among the dominant ideas about beauty, art and culture of this era. It functioned as a type of cultural manifesto for Pierre de Coubertin's international Olympic Movement.