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Savage Minds is a collective web log devoted to both bringing anthropology to a wider audience as well as providing an online forum for discussing the latest developments in the field. We are a group of Ph.D. students and professors teaching and studying anthropology and are excited to share it with you. Savage Minds was founded in 2005 and has been going strong ever since. In 2006 Nature ranked Savage Minds 17th out of the 50 top science blogs across all scientific disciplines. In 2010, American Anthropologist has called Savage Minds "the central online site of the North American anthropological community" whose "value is found in the quality of the posts by the site's central contributors, a cadre of bright, engaged, young anthropology professors." The title of our blog comes from Lévi-Strauss's book Pensée Sauvage. And yes: that is a pansy on the mast head.

I heard this on NPR as I was driving and couldn't help but think of this week's reading from Smart Mobs. The text discusses the role that cooperation plays in human society, that if we were designed to spread out genes without regard to others, that cooperation would have been "bred out" generations ago. This story shows that cooperation, or at least social interaction based on valuing the needs and goals of others, does seem to be uniquely human. Networked collaboration isn't the result of technology - it's the result of basic humanity.