Anthropology

Dante Alighieri, traditionally portrayed as a stern figure with a large hooked nose, is now showing a softer side, thanks to a reconstruction of his face by Italian scientists. In most artistic Renaissance renditions, the most distinguishing features of the author of "The Divine Comedy" were a prominent nose and lower lip and a generally severe expression.

The tiny woman dubbed the Hobbit, who lived 18,000 years ago on an Indonesian island, should be deemed a new human species and not a deformed modern human as skeptics assert, researchers reported this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. A team led by Florida State University anthropologist Dean Falk compared the Hobbit's skull with those of nine people with microcephaly, a condition in which the head is abnormally small.

Toddlers as young as 2? have better social skills than humans' nearest primate relatives, chimpanzees, and display an innate "cultural intelligence" unique to humans, according to a study published today in the journal Science.

By the time you reach 13,000 or so, you'd figure that the people closest to you would know some fundamental personal details -- like your sex. But consider the plight of the oldest person yet found in North America. All that remains of him -- or is it her? -- are a couple of thigh bones, which were discovered on Santa Rosa Island in 1959. At the time, scientists thought they belonged to a man of a certain age -- perhaps 10,000.

Claude Levi-Strauss, the French philosopher widely considered the father of modern anthropology because of his then-revolutionary conclusion that so-called primitive societies did not differ greatly intellectually from modern ones, died Friday at his home in Paris from natural causes. He was 100. Part philosopher, part sociologist and entirely humanist, he studied tribes in Brazil and North America, concluding that virtually all societies shared powerful commonalities of behavior and thought, often expressing them in myths.

Museum chief: Johnnetta Cole, a former college president and anthropology professor, has been named director of the Smithsonian's National Museum of African Art.

The National Geographic Society is launching a massive project today to trace the migratory history of humans, a five-year effort that will involve the collection and analysis of DNA from more than 100,000 people around the world. "We already have a general view of the very early Paleolithic migrations," said geneticist Spencer Wells, a National Geographic explorer-in-residence who will lead the project. "Humans spread out of Africa, then moved out of Eurasia, but it gets very hazy after that.

For athletes seeking a performance enhancer, two British anthropologists recommend an entirely legal stimulant: red uniforms. An analysis of four events at the 2004 Olympics showed that competitors wearing red were more likely to emerge victorious, the researchers reported today in the journal Nature. "We were pretty bowled over when we looked at the data," said Robert Barton, who wrote the paper with Russell Hill, his colleague at the University of Durham in England.

It was a boy, about 13 years old, whose family had some money. That's all scientists at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History know for sure about the body they discovered this month when they opened a cast-iron coffin dating from before the Civil War. But it's a starting point for an exploration that they hope will give them a greater understanding of the customs of mid-19th century America.

Australian scientists said Tuesday that they had discovered more remains of hobbit-sized humans that belong to a previously unknown species from the end of the last Ice Age. Professor Mike Morwood of the University of New England in Armidale, Australia, stunned the science world last year when he and his team announced the discovery of 18,000-year-old remains of a new human species called \o7Homo floresiensis\f7.