Entries by Austen Layard, Ph.D.

Anthropology’s Obsession with African Origins

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There is renewed interest in the “Out of Africa” theory of human origins because of a study showing sub-Saharan Africans interbred with an extinct hominid species. This article, originally posted in January, 2014, provides other reasons for being skeptical of African origins and shows how the “Out of Africa” theory has been promoted partly for […]

Racial Forensics in an Age of Race Denial

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What happens when a forensic anthropologist is asked to identify the race of skeletal remains in a politically-charged climate where “race is a social construct”?  A classic case of doublethink: simultaneously accepting two contradictory beliefs as correct.  An article titled Forensic Identification of “Race” published in the journal Current Anthropology states: The identification of the […]