Humans, Volume 4, Issue 3 (September 2024) – 6 articles

This article discusses collaborative ethnography as a meaningful source for spatial research, in particular, for participatory methodologies in urban planning and placemaking processes. It investigates the experiences with co-creation and co-research in different research projects to gain insight into the performance of collaborative ethnography as a technique to explore and enrich local knowledge. To better understand the possible causal relationships between the experience gained in the projects and the learnt lessons, we also identify recommendations for improving research methodologies to be applied in placemaking. This article concludes that collaborative ethnography is an effective tool for adding value to spatial co-research and co-creation processes. It opens opportunities for the co-production of space, ideas and knowledge, contributing at the same time to better informed decision-making. It also helps improve ideas and gather insights into the spatial needs of focus groups. Full article

Contemporary biopolitical discourse around fundamental rights and societal representations has increasingly weaponized moral-based attitudes and personal feelings, eschewing informed, factual opinions grounded in observation, data analysis, and scientific research. This trend is evident in the treatment of the queer community—used here as an umbrella term for non-cisgender, non-heterosexual individuals. Over recent years, the group has become the primary target of negationist critiques aimed at undermining the very existence of the community and challenging its rights. This article argues that the rise of depersonalized interactions and individualism, particularly through social media (where superficial and sensationalist content thrives, often at the expense of nuanced, data-driven discourse), the cult of the self and power (which prioritizes individual success, sidelining the collective struggles and rights of marginalized groups), and misinformation, is strategically employed by those in power and reverberated through the general public. These elements serve as a translucent veil, enabling the conscious choice to avoid engaging in structured, complex, and informed discussions about queer people’s rights and their existence. Consequently, the strategic deployment of these tactics, with the aim of shaping public opinion based on falsehoods and emotional appeals, undermines the capacity for informed dialog and perpetuates the marginalization of the queer community. Full article

Girsu, the modern site of Tello (southern Iraq), represents one of the earliest known urban centres of the ancient world, along with Uruk, Eridu, and Ur. During the 3rd millennium BCE (3000–2000 BCE), Girsu was revered as the sanctuary of the Sumerian heroic deity Ningirsu, who fought with supernatural beasts and made possible the introduction of irrigation and agriculture in Sumer. While much is known about the gods, their roles, and rituals inside the temples, there is little textual or archaeological evidence concerning the rituals that took place in the large open-air plazas adjacent to the temples. These areas within the sacred precinct were where the general population would gather to participate in festivals and ceremonies to honour the gods. To better understand the ancient cultic realm in southern Mesopotamia, an in-depth investigation of a favissa (ritual pit) discovered within the sacred precinct at Girsu was undertaken. The excavations recovered a large quantity of ceramics and animal remains that had been used for ritual purposes. Through the study of archaeological remains of cultic spaces at Girsu, information on ritual behaviour such as sacrificial animal slaughtering and consumption for the purpose of feasting, the types of libations provided to quench the thirst of the gods, and the distance travelled to take part in the annual festivals to pay homage to the patron god of their sacred city were explored. Analysis of the associated ceramics, cuneiform texts, and zooarchaeological remains (including stable isotope data), allowed a multi-faceted and integrative approach to better understand ceremonial behaviour and ritual feasting in this sacred city. New insights into communal and performative participation in ceremonies, especially by non-elite individuals, are generated. These data increase our knowledge not only of how Girsu’s citizens organised their sacred spaces and religious festivals, but also of how they behaved in order to satisfy the ever-demanding needs of their gods. Full article

Litter size plays an essential role in mammalian evolution and is one of the most important factors determining whether an organism is deemed to have a ‘slow’ or ‘fast’ life history strategy. Humans are distinct in being classified as having slow life history yet bearing singletons who have completed relatively less growth than other ape neonates. Previous work has proposed that the ancestral primate gave birth to singletons. However, primate litter size has not yet been contextualized within a broad phylogenetic assessment of mammalian life history. We performed a comprehensive investigation of primate litter size using life history data for 155 primate species, and litter size data for an additional 791 boreoeutherian mammals. Litter size and life history traits have strong phylogenetic signal in primates (Pagel’s lambda: 0.99, p < 0.001; Blomberg’s K: 0.6311. p < 0.001), and litter size is significantly negatively correlated with gestation length (p < 0.001). Our data support that the last common ancestors of both primates and Haplorhini gave birth to multiples (litter size 1.7 and 1.6, respectively). We also find that singleton-bearing pregnancies evolved convergently in multiple primate lineages, including tarsiers and other haplorhines. This study contributes significantly to our understanding of life history and litter size in mammals, and we emphasize the utility of a callitrichid model for investigating the evolution of human reproduction. Full article

Lion transformation, among San-Bushmen, is arguably the most dramatic and spectacular instance of animal transformation. Transformation is a central component of San curing and initiation ritual and of certain San hunting practices. Moreover, it is a recurrent theme in San mythology, art and cosmology, all of them domains of San expressive and symbolic culture that are pervaded by ontological mutability (manifested most strikingly in the therianthropes of San myth and art). Lion transformation is a phenomenon that has received much mention in the ethnographic literature on Khoisan ritual and belief, through information that is based not on first-hand but second- or third-hand ethnographic and ethno-historical information. In the paper, I describe my own eye-witness account of what San people deemed a lion transformation by a trance dancer, which I observed in my early field work among Ghanzi (Botswana) Naro and = Au//eisi San in the 1970s. This is followed by my own musings on the actuality or reality of lion transformation, from both my own perspective and from what I understand to be the indigenous perspective. In terms of the latter, lion transformation—and animal transformation in general—is a plausible proposition. Indigenous doubt and scepticism, deriving from a rarely if ever fully conclusive witnessing of such transformations, are assuaged in a number of epistemological, cosmological and phenomenological ways. These are not available to a Western cultural outsider with a Cartesian mindset, nor to a Westernized—and perhaps also Christianized—insider, whose cosmos has become “disenchanted” through historical–colonial and contemporary–acculturational influences. Full article