by david allan van nostrand | Sep 8, 2025 | Anthropology, Human Behavior, Language, Point of view
All of the letters and sounds in the word ask are also in the word aks. When the letters S and K trade places, the word ends up sounding like axe, the woodsman’s sharp-bladed implement for chopping trees. People who say “Axe me” are fortunate that Little...
by david allan van nostrand | Apr 7, 2025 | Anthropology, Human Behavior, Items in the News, The Wayback Machine
This article was written by David Allan Van Nostrand In the news recently was the story of an American tourist arrested for leaving a soft drink can on a remote island 800 miles east of India’s mainland. It doesn’t sound like much of reason to be arrested for until we...
by david allan van nostrand | Mar 18, 2024 | Anthropology, Rituals, The world around us
Recently some old friends and colleagues wrote letters praising my teaching, researching, and writing talents. They wrote things that went far beyond the usual and I was moved by their comments. I felt a bit like Tom Sawyer the time he, Huckleberry Finn, and Joe...
by david allan van nostrand | Jan 1, 2024 | Anthropology, Human Behavior, The Wayback Machine
For centuries, people hollowed out animal horns and cut off the pointy ends. They would blow into the small end to make sounds that came out the big end. The sound traveled farther than human voices and so was used to communicate over longer distances. This was of...
by david allan van nostrand | Dec 18, 2023 | Americana, Anthropology, The Wayback Machine
Who Were the Hell’s Angels? Seven million soldiers, sailors, and flyboys stationed overseas came home from World War II in the late 1940s. Re-integrating into the society they had left years ago to fight wars against Japan and Germany was difficult. They had...
by david allan van nostrand | Nov 6, 2023 | Americana, Anthropology, Human Behavior, Social archaelogy
Who Were the Beats? So many people were killed in World War II that no one knows the exact number. Officials estimated that 50 million military and civilian deaths were directly caused by the war and another 20 million died as a result of famine and war-related...
