If you’re interested in Surrealist Photography, this was an excellent article. These women; Jeanne Mandello, Hildegard Rosenthall, and Grete Stern, were profound photographers and I had never heard of before reading this.
This is my masters’ degree in anthropology. I’d show you my BA, but it’s at my parents’ house. I’m three and a half years into a PhD in physical anthropology. I’ve been employed to do physical anthropology at one of the world’s best natural history museums. My area of study? Teeth and diets. I’m not here to argue veganism or vegetarianism, I’m here to tell you, point by point, why you’re devastatingly misinformed about our place in the primate family tree, along with my peer-reviewed sources behind the jump. I know we live in a “post-truth” society so maybe being presented with the overwhelming consensus of the scientists who currently work with this material is meaningless to you, and honestly, this probably isn’t going to make a bit of difference for you, but I can’t let this slide. Not in this house built on blood and honor. And teeth.
1. The evidence for being closely related to chimpanzees is vast and well-understood thanks to advances in DNA analysis. We share a huge amount of DNA with them, and not just repeating patterns in non-coding DNA. We have numerous genes that are identical and likely diverged around 7 million years ago, when Sahelanthropus tschadensis was roaming the earth. S. tschadensis was a woodland species with basal ape and basal human-line traits. The most notable was the positioning of the foramen magnum towards the central base of the skull and not emerging from the back suggests bipedality. This, along with other traits such as small canines worn at the tip, which implies a reduced or absent C/P3 honing complex (the diastema), suggests that this is actually a basal trait and the pronounced diastema we see in other species was a trait that came later. But more on that later- back to chimps and what we mean by sharing DNA. Our chromosomes and chimp chromosomes are structured far more like each other than other mammals. Furthermore, the genes located on these chromosomes are very similar. Chromosome 2, for instance, is nearly identical to two chimpanzee chromosomes. (Chromosome 2 in humans, Neanderthals, and Denisovans is different from Chromosome 2 found in apes and is actually the remnant of an ancient mutation where Chromosome 2 and 3 merged- you can see that from its vestigial centromeres and the genes found on it. We can’t get DNA from fossil material, but Neanderthal and Denisovan subfossils have demonstrated that this reduced chromosome count- we have one fewer pair than apes- is a typical trait of the Homo genus). Here’s a side by side comparison of Human and chimpanzee chromosomes.
Gene coding regions are colored- bands at the same place mean that there’s two identical genes at that locus. Our similarities to lemurs, on the other hand, aren’t on homologous chromosomes. We have similar coding around the centromeres but the genes express themselves differently. The structure of non-ape primate genes is also significantly different; when the first chromosomal comparisons were done between humans and lemurs back in the 1990s, it was discovered that lemurs have much more highly-concentrated heterochromatin at their centromeres, whereas the structure of human and chimpanzee centromeres is similar. The major differences in chimp and human DNA are in the noncoding regions; most of our genes have identical structures.
2. All primates evolved from a lemur-like organism, not just humans. Here’s one of them. I’ve seen her in person. Pretty cool, huh?
Her name is Ida and she’s a member of the genus Darwinius. But that’s just like saying all primates evolved from something that was basically a tree shrew- which is also true. See, one of the main points of evolution is that organisms are continually changing throughout time. We didn’t jump from lemur-like organism to human; changes were slow and gradual and the lineage isn’t really a straight tree. The fossil species we have and know lead to different lines branching out. Some things died off, some things flourished. Heck, look at the Miocene- twelve million years ago, there were hundreds of ape species. Now there’s twenty-three. (Sixteen gibbons, two chimp species, two gorilla species, two orangutan species, and one human species. There’s also some subspecies of gorilla and gibbon, but I’m only counting the primary species.) It’s hard to trace things back, but saying that we evolved from lemur-like species is obtuse and obfuscates the real point, which is that Homo and Pan descended from a relatively recent-in-the-grand-scheme-of-things common ancestor.
3. Our dentition is unique to the extant primates, but not australopithecines. Our teeth look very much like other members of the genus Homo, the extinct ones, as well as many of the australopithecines. We also have very similar enamel proportions to gracile australopithecines; apes have much thinner enamel overall.
But what did australopithecines eat?
Everything. We know they were eating fruits and nuts based on microwear analysis and strontium analysis, but we also know they were eating meat- and in pretty decent quantity, too. We’ve found all kinds of butchering sites dating back millions of years and in association with Australopithecus garhi, the earliest tool user, but we can also see this in tapeworm evolution. There’s many, many species of tapeworm in several genera. But three of them, in the genus Taenia, are only found in humans. And these species diverged from… carnivore tapeworms. Their closest relatives infect African carnivores like hyenas and wild dogs.
Tapeworms that are adapted to the specific gut of their host species need a certain environment, as well as a specific cycle of infection so that it can reproduce. A tapeworm that infects hyenas is going to be less successful if it somehow makes the jump to a horse. But if the hyena tapeworm was able to adapt to our gut, that suggests that our stomach was hospitable enough for them chemically to survive- which brings me to the intestines.
4. Our intestines are also unique. Yes, we have longer intestines than carnivores, but we also don’t have cecums like herbivores. We are omnivores and that means we still needed to retain the ability to digest plants.
The key to being omnivores is omni. All. I’m not saying we should only be eating meat, I’m saying our ancestors ate a varied diet that included all kinds of things. If we weren’t omnivores, why would we have lost the cecum’s function? Why is the human appendix only a reservoir for the lymphatic system, as it is in carnivores? The cecum is an extremely important organ in herbivores, as it houses the bacteria needed to break down cellulose and fully utilize fiber from leaves. But we don’t have that. Instead, we compensate with a long gut. Our ancestors absolutely did eat fruits and nuts and berries, but they also ate other stuff. Like scavenged carcasses and bugs and probably anything they could fit in their mouths. Which- actually, primate mouths are interesting. Humans and chimpanzees have enclosed oral cavities, thick tongues, and jaw angles much more like herbivores than carnivores- suggesting a herbivorous ancestor. That’s not something I’m arguing against at all. But again, we have adaptations for eating meat and processing animal protein because we are an extremely opportunistic species.
5. Our canines are true canines. First, semantics: having a diastema does not canine teeth make. We refer to the canine teeth by position- even herbivores, like horses, have them. They’re the teeth that come right after the incisors. All heterodonts have the potential same basic tooth types- incisors, canines, premolars, molars- in various combinations and arrangements. Some species don’t have one type of teeth, others don’t have any- but it’s silly to say that the canine teeth aren’t canine teeth just because they don’t serve the same function as a gorilla’s or a bear’s or some other animal’s. It’s basic derived versus primitive characteristics.
Now that we’ve got semantics out of the way, let’s talk about that diastema. The lost diastema is a derived trait, which means that our ancestors had it and we lost it over time. All other extant non-Homo primates have a canine diastema. All of them. However, when you look at australopithecines, we see that many of them either don’t have it or have it in a reduced capacity. At the earliest known hominin site, Lukeino, we see Orrorin tugenensis with reduced canines compared to ape fossils and modern apes- and… you do know that apes don’t use their canines for eating meat, right? Like, primate canines serve a very different purpose than carnivorans’ canines. It’s suggested that the large canines are for social display moreso than anything dietary- bigger, more threatening teeth are useful if you’re a gorilla or chimpanzee fighting to the top of your group’s social structure.
I’m going to refer you to a blog post written by Dr. John Hawks, a good friend of my advisor and generally a pretty cool guy. He’s got a nice writeup on the evolution of hominin teeth and how the human line’s teeth have changed through time.
Also, of course our teeth are going to be smaller. When we compare archaic Homo sapiens fossils to modern skeletons, their teeth and jaws are much more robust. This is likely related to the introduction of soft foods- and by soft, I mean cooked grain mush- to the diet around the time of domestication, right before the population explosion that happened about 10k years ago. In general, post-domestication human jaws are much smaller and more crowded than any other humans and hominins that came before.
6: Neanderthals did die out, but not in a catastrophic event like we think of with dinosaurs. While there are no living Neanderthals today that we would classify as Homo neanderthalensis, there is plenty of evidence that we interbred and likely outcompeted them as a species due to our overwhelmingly large population size (hypothesized based on number and locations of remains found). While there’s only a small percentage of Neanderthal mitochondrial DNA lines in human populations today, it’s quite likely we lost a lot of that due to genetic drift and population migration- Neanderthals, after all, had a much more limited range than Homo sapiens sapiens. Their eventual extinction is a mosaic of events- outcompetition plus assimilation. The line between Homo sapiens sapiens and Homo neanderthalensis/Homo sapiens neanderthalensis is blurry- there’s some physical anthropologists who actually think we should be including them within our species as a subspecies- but they are extinct in that the specific subset of hominins with distinct karyotypes and potential phenotypes no longer exists.
I love it when the entire argument collapses like soufflé, and what are they going to say to it? Not a damn thing, because the misinformed ideology is exposed for what it is.
“My body, my choice” only makes sense when someone else’s life isn’t at stake.
Fun fact: If my younger sister was in a car accident and desperately needed a blood transfusion to live, and I was the only person on Earth who could donate blood to save her, and even though donating blood is a relatively easy, safe, and quick procedure no one can force me to give blood. Yes, even to save the life of a fully grown person, it would be ILLEGAL to FORCE me to donate blood if I didn’t want to.
See, we have this concept called “bodily autonomy.” It’s this….cultural notion that a person’s control over their own body is above all important and must not be infringed upon.
Like, we can’t even take LIFE SAVING organs from CORPSES unless the person whose corpse it is gave consent before their death. Even corpses get bodily autonomy.
To tell people that they MUST sacrifice their bodily autonomy for 9 months against their will in an incredibly expensive, invasive, difficult process to save what YOU view as another human life (a debatable claim in the early stages of pregnancy when the VAST majority of abortions are performed) is desperately unethical. You can’t even ask people to sacrifice bodily autonomy to give up organs they aren’t using anymore after they have died.
You’re asking people who can become pregnant to accept less bodily autonomy than we grant to dead bodies.
reblogging for commentary
But, assuming the mother wasn’t raped, the choice to HAVE a baby and risk sacrificing their “bodily autonomy” is a choice that the mother made. YOu don’t have to have sex with someone. Cases of rape aside, it isn’t ethical to say abortion is justified. The unborn baby has rights, too.
First point: Bodily autonomy can be preserved, even if another life is dependent on it. See again the example about the blood donation.
And here’s another point: When you say that “rape is the exception” you betray something FUNDAMENTALLY BROKEN about your own argument.
Because a fetus produced from sexual assault is biologically NO DIFFERENT than a fetus produced from consensual sex. No difference at all.
If one is alive, so is the other. If one is a person, so is the other. If one has a soul, then so does the other. If one is a little blessing that happened for a reason and must be protected, then so is the other.
When you say that “Rape is the exception” what you betray is this: It isn’t about a life. This isn’t about the little soul sitting inside some person’s womb, because if it was you wouldn’t care about HOW it got there, only that it is a little life that needs protecting.
When you say “rape is the exception” what you say is this: You are treating pregnancy as a punishment. You are PUNISHING people who have had CONSENSUAL SEX but don’t want to go through a pregnancy. People who DARED to have consensual sex without the goal of procreation in mind, and this is their “consequence.”
And that is gross.
^ THIS. This is this this THIS THIS THIS. THIS!!!!!
This is probably the strongest and well worded/supported argument for abortion that I have ever read.
Classic comedy is right-wing slime-creatures complaining about identity politics while insisting that “Western civilization” is a coherent geographical-historical category
“I, a 21st-century American, am primordially connected to Plato because we are both opposed to collectivism and advocate ‘Judeo-Christian values.’ My entire worldview is a house of cards and I’ve never actually read anything I talk about”
For example Frederick Douglas’ wife did so much for his ungrateful ass. She helped him get on his feet, gave him her last name, and supported him financially and took care of house and home. And in return was does this nigga do? He lets white abolitionists tear her down and treat her like a slave in HER HOUSE. Moved two bitches into HER HOUSE over a span of 20 years. Belittles her for being illiterate while using HER MONEY. Not even in death does she get the respect she deserves. His last wife is more recognized as being apart of his life than she was. Just trash. And y’all still normalize that shit as if it’s a black woman’s job to struggle. Fuck that.
Fuck Frederick Douglas.
That negro was a massive hypocrite. How the fuck you wanna abolish slavery and support women’s rights, then treat your own wife like shit?????????????????
^^^^ history left her out of his story too. Claiming his parents have him money to start up when it was her.
Don’t forget MLK and Malcolm X
My heart broke a little but I’m not surprised. What did Malcolm do ?
I don’t know about Malcolm X, but I know that Martin Luther King was in love with a white caferteria lady name Betty that he was seeing while he was attending college. The only reason why he married Coretta and not the cafeteria worker is because his dad frowned upon it. Not only that but his best friend
Ralph Abernathy
and Jackie Onassis exposed him for being a sex craved phony that loved cheating on Coretta. I guarantee that if black women from the civil rights era could talk now, our heads would explode.
Our community has always treated us like shit no matter what. Not to mention Miss Claudette Colvin who was the actually pioneer of the Civil Rights Movement. She was arrested for not giving up her seat on the bus 9 months before Rosa but she was a dark skinned single mother so she wasn’t good enough.
Let’s not forget Black Panther’s leader Eldridge Cleaver and his famous book “Soul On Ice” where he recounts how he practiced raping black women because he knew no one would care and when he “mastered his craft” he starting raping white women. Also let’s never forget that he said that there is no more love left between black women and men and that everytime he embraces a black woman, he embraces slavery. Y’all gon’ get this history lesson today!
Wow… and somehow I’m not even surprised.
I knew all of that. Martin was constantly cheating with white prostitutes even a German exchange student while protesting civil right. Cleaver was the worst. Preying on and raping young black girls in the hood as practice for raping white women. Claudette is still referenced as “the other rosa parks” when the light bright brigade “NAACP” weren’t gonna let her share her story to begin with.
Let this post never die. Black women were NEVER respected back in the day, and we’re STILL getting disrespected every minute.
Wow….
[reasons why I think most Black dudes r performative when it comes to being *proBlack* n only know how to mirror yt ally theater/chase yt validation. n nonBlack ppl better back the fuck off this post and start combatting the antiBlackness before they even think of comment.]
Just a reminder that Claudette Colvin didn’t get pregnant until 3 months after refusing her seat on the bus. She was a poor dark skinned girl. In her words “they wanted someone PEOPLE would sympathize with and I didn’t look like that.” Colorism AND Classism waaaay before Instagram 🙂
Bruh I learned all of this and more in my civil rights history class last semester. My professor actually got her doctorate in black women in the black power movement. Even though two black men from California started the radical group as we know it, black women did most of the work and kept the group afloat. By the 80s it was largely female led. Also, elderidge cleaver wrote an essay after getting out of prison where he recanted everything he said in soul on ice and this was largely due to the fact that women were running the bpp and told him he couldn’t join if he was to co tibie to perpetuate this rape nonsense.
Also also claudette Colvin wasn’t the only one who was forgotten during the Montgomery bus boycott. Do y’all know who Jo Ann Robinson is? Home girl was the backbone to the whole movement tbh. Yeah rosa (a trained activist btw) was the igniting flame and yes in her documents and Jo Ann’s Claudette was credited as the inspiration, but jo Ann really kept the movement running. She organized car pools for all the black folks in Montgomery. Y’all the Montgomery bus boycott lasted for a year! People still had to get to work and shit. Jo Ann was on it! Plus she had a whole committee that was pushing for regulation changes and the end of segregation in busing. And hell, Montgomery buses were damn near reliant on black commuters so they eventually had to give.
Plus my all time fave is the homie Ella baker. Home girl ensured the founding of sncc when fuckboy Mlk tried to make them the youth chapter of the sclc. SNCC is the group that made sit ins a popular form of protest during the early civil rights movement. They founding students had their first sit in in 1960. Ella baker was like these students need their own separate movement and the sclc ain’t it. Plus she was a true proponent of self determination which was clear in everything that sncc did.
Basically what I’m trying to say is black women been the backbone of society and they still are.
Let’s also talk about how Huey P Newton, the founder of the BPP ordered the severe beating of Regina Davis. Regina Davis was an administrator at a BP school and was literally jumped for reprimanding a male BP member. She was beaten so bad that she was in the hospital for a broken jaw and had to flee to LA for her own safety. Her attack was a deliberate message to all female BP because the men were getting upset with the increasing power black women had in the party and wanted to put them in their place.
In 1974 Huey P Newton also shot and killed a 17 year old sex worker in Oakland named Kathleen Smith in the face for calling him “baby” and because she didn’t give him the “respect” he wanted (x)
and who could forget good ol’ Harry Belafonte and how he treated Ertha Kitt way back when
Ellen Holly was a super light skin soap opera actress who claimed to have a similar experience with Harry Belafonte before he married a white woman and called him out in her autobiography about his behavior towards black women
That’s why no men have no place in feminism
Liberal feminism has been known to erase moc misogyny
no, listen, when I say I want to integrate more specific solarpunk stuff in my life, i don’t mean to ask for yet again new “aesthetic” clothes that now you have to buy or make to show your support of the movement (screw that i’m consuming enough as it is), or more posts about impossible house goals, or whatever, I’m asking you what my options to build a portable and eco friendly phone charger are, im asking you viable tiny-appartment edible plants growing tricks on a budget, im asking tips to slow down when my mind and society tell me im not fast enough, i don’t need more rich art nouveau amateurs aesthetics or pristine but cold venus project, okay, i know i should joins associations where I am tho i’m constantly on the move, thanks for that, just, you know, can we get a bit more practical ??? how do I hack my temporary flat into going off the grid for the time i’m here
Hello! ☀️ Here are a few practical suggestions for stuff you can do:
This is an ultimate masterlist of many resources that could be helpful for writers. I apologize in advance for any not working links. Check out the ultimate writing resource masterlist here (x) and my “novel” tag here (x).
I had to physically tell myself no! after this started turning epically long. A few women of color poets to consider and some of their poems and books that I’ve enjoyed or wish I had right now.
Women of color poets that will be published in 2019
Mama Wata (Siren Songs / Civil Coping Mechanisms) is forthcoming and 2018′s Daughter Tongue(New-Generation African Poets) (Akashic Books) was one of the main reasons I bought the chapbook box set
so metropolitan museum of art has a register of books they’ve published that are out of print and that you can download for free! they’re mostly books on art, archeology, architecture, fashion and history and i just think that’s super useful and interesting so i wanted to share! you can find all of the books available here!
medusa-avenging-squad 
