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| {{Image|Lachapskull.jpg|right|220px|Homo neanderthalensis skull from La Chapelle-aux-Saints, France.}} | | {{:{{FeaturedArticleTitle}}}} |
| The '''[[Neanderthal]]s''' are an extinct nonmodern hominid that come chronologically extremely close to the modern era, becoming extinct less than 30,000 years ago. The classic Neanderthal traits are found from about 75,000 to 35,000 years ago, but it is difficult to date the initial appearance of this species. Without great dating techniques, the best early estimate comes from the Moula Guercy site in France dating the earliest appearance of Neanderthals to 120,000 years ago.
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| | | ==Footnotes== |
| For decades the Neanderthals have been viewed as a hunched, hairy, stumbling, stupid cave man that lived tens of thousands of years ago. This image can be highly attributed to Marcellin Boule, a French paleoanthropologist at the beginning of the twentieth century. In 1908, at La Chapelle-aux-Saints in southwestern France a nearly complete male skeleton was excavated and Boule spent the better part of three years examining this specimen. The man was old in terms of Neanderthal standards, aging between 40 and 50 years old and suffered from severe arthritis in his spine. This fact was discovered long after Boule described him as hunched over, practicing an inefficient shuffling gait type of bipedalism. His preconceptions, opposed to scientific objectivity, resulted in the misconception about the genus as a whole. Today this is reflected in not only in normal perception but shown in popular culture, specifically the insurance company that concludes their process is "So Easy, a Caveman Can Do It." Interestingly, these commercials counter react the misconceptions by having offended cavemen be present and engaged in modern, human-like behavior, highlighting the misconception placed by Boule a hundred years ago.
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| ===Discovery=== | |
| Neander Valley, literally translated in German as "Neandertal", in the German Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia, where the river Düssel flows to meet the Rhine. It is here that the first fossil to be recognized as a different kind of human was discovered. It this day in August of 1856 that many claim to be beginning of the field of paleoanthropology. Miners in search of limestone blasted open the entrance to a small cave, Feldhofer Cave (also called Feldhofer Grotto) where an array of fossilized bones were found. The miners mostly discarded the bones, but sat some aside to bring to a local school teacher, believing them to be bones from a cave bear. Included in this group was the skullcap that will eventually become the holotype of Homo neanderthalensis. The fossil displays a long skull joining with very pronounced brow ridges above the orbits. In addition, the miners came across two femora, five arm bones, part of the left ilium, portions of a scapula and multiple ribs. These fossils were delivered to a school teacher and amateur natural historian, Johann Fuhlrott.
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Latest revision as of 09:19, 11 September 2020
The Mathare Valley slum near Nairobi, Kenya, in 2009.
Poverty is deprivation based on lack of material resources. The concept is value-based and political. Hence its definition, causes and remedies (and the possibility of remedies) are highly contentious.[1] The word poverty may also be used figuratively to indicate a lack, instead of material goods or money, of any kind of quality, as in a poverty of imagination.
Definitions
Primary and secondary poverty
The use of the terms primary and secondary poverty dates back to Seebohm Rowntree, who conducted the second British survey to calculate the extent of poverty. This was carried out in York and was published in 1899. He defined primary poverty as having insufficient income to “obtain the minimum necessaries for the maintenance of merely physical efficiency”. In secondary poverty, the income “would be sufficient for the maintenance of merely physical efficiency were it not that some portion of it is absorbed by some other expenditure.” Even with these rigorous criteria he found that 9.9% of the population was in primary poverty and a further 17.9% in secondary.[2]
Absolute and comparative poverty
More recent definitions tend to use the terms absolute and comparative poverty. Absolute is in line with Rowntree's primary poverty, but comparative poverty is usually expressed in terms of ability to play a part in the society in which a person lives. Comparative poverty will thus vary from one country to another.[3] The difficulty of definition is illustrated by the fact that a recession can actually reduce "poverty".
Causes of poverty
The causes of poverty most often considered are:
- Character defects
- An established “culture of poverty”, with low expectations handed down from one generation to another
- Unemployment
- Irregular employment, and/or low pay
- Position in the life cycle (see below) and household size
- Disability
- Structural inequality, both within countries and between countries. (R H Tawney: “What thoughtful rich people call the problem of poverty, thoughtful poor people call with equal justice a problem of riches”)[4]
As noted above, most of these, or the extent to which they can be, or should be changed, are matters of heated controversy.
- ↑ Alcock, P. Understanding poverty. Macmillan. 1997. ch 1.
- ↑ Harris, B. The origins of the British welfare state. Palgrave Macmillan. 2004. Also, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
- ↑ Alcock, Pt II
- ↑ Alcock, Preface to 1st edition and pt III.
