Of the 8.7 million species on Earth, why are human beings the only one that paints self-portraits, walks on the Moon and worships gods? For decades, many scholars have argued that the difference stems from our ability to learn from each other. But extensive data has emerged suggesting that other animals, including bees, chimpanzees and crows, can also generate cultural complexity through social learning.
How do pilgrimages and rituals arise? How do people become convinced to try something new? What makes a place so special that it persists through time, drawing people to it again and again? UC Davis anthropologists Cristina Moya and Nicolas Restrepo Ochoa are answering these questions at the ground floor.
From a first-generation college student to a doctoral candidate and Fulbright Graduate Scholar, Christina Dawa Kutsmana Thomas has become a role model for other "little rez kids." She's working to save her Indigenous language as well as pass on her family's culture to younger generations.
A new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows that there is an association between how songs sound and their place in our emotional lives. Sourcing songs from across the globe, Manvir Singh and his fellow researchers found that people from different types of societies can successfully identify a song’s type by how it sounds, regardless of the language of its words.
