Tag Archives: fireside relaxation
Fire Up Your Hearth: Relax & Stay Warm (While Being Energetically Inefficient)
My lab & I have presented on & written about fireside relaxation so many times by this point that I’m running out of clever titles. However, now that our first paper has finally been published &, as it happens, at … Continue reading
Cognitive Evolution via Campfire Stories
A fantastic analysis of fireside conversations among Ju/’hoansi Bushmen collected over the course of four decades (1970s-2000s) was recently published by Polly Wiessner in PNAS Early Edition (“Embers of society: Firelight talk among the Ju/’hoansi Bushmen“—thanks to Daniel Lende & … Continue reading
Fireside Trance drives Selection for Enhanced Attention & Working Memory via Baldwin Effect
Fireside hypnotizability Following up on a previous post tracking down the original sources for the December Smithsonian piece about hearth fires & cognitive evolution, evolutionary psychologist Matt Rossano’s “Did Meditating Make Us Human?” spins out a model similar to & … Continue reading
Manning a perpetual fire was linked to language & social network development
The December 2012 issues of Smithsonian Magazine had a fire theme, & archaeologist Thomas Wynn contributed a short piece on the influence of fire in the evolution of the human mind. He briefs the work of three researchers doing work … Continue reading
I Turned into a Werewolf: Flickering Firelight & the Strange-Face-in-the-Mirror Illusion
When I did the strange-face-in-the-mirror illusion, I turned into a frickin’ werewolf! How cool is that? I should back up, right? I teach a course called “Primate Religion & Human Consciousness” & require students to come up with activities to … Continue reading
Are Hearth Fires Analogous to Television?
I haven’t found any studies on the psychophysiological effects of fire, but I think they are analogous to those of some forms of media, especially television. At base, they both involve flickering light & sudden sound phenomena. I speculate that natural selection … Continue reading
Hominid Use of Fire is at Least 1MYO
The antiquity of the purposive hominid use of fire continues to be pushed back according to a study released earlier this year by Berna et al. in PNAS. Analyses of material at the Wonderwerk Cave, Northern Cape province, South Africa … Continue reading
The Campfire as a Social Nexus
Wrangham (2009) & McClenon (2006) describe the campfire in evolutionary history as something like a social nexus. Wrangham says it’s where hominids came to & learned to tolerate each other. McClenon says it’s where hominids developed their relaxation skills, by … Continue reading
The Psychophysiology of Fireside Relaxation
Following is a draft of the abstract I am working on for a poster I will propose to present at the 2013 Human Biology Association meeting in Knoxville, TN (yay, I can drive there!). Feedback is welcome. The psychophysiology of … Continue reading
Fireside Trance and the Boob Tube
When I was in my early 20s & wanted to be the next Charles Bukowski, I used to hang out at a bar called Coney Island High on St. Mark’s Place in NYC after work. Consistent with the Bukowski schtick, I … Continue reading
