Hi Jammer!

Actually, I picked all that up with a masters' in anthropology (finished 2 months ago. For my next trick, it's a PhD in information sciences.) I had a lot of fun courses and some fun profs and had a lot of my ideas challenged and rearranged! There was one archaeology prof who introduced us to paleoclimates and so forth. It was so much fun (well, maybe not the "read two papers every week and write a coherent 3-page paper about the topic)

It's hard to say what a favorite book is, but my current "Love It!" book is TIMEWALKERS [www.hup.harvard.edu] . I had never actually stopped to realize that by the 1500's or so (and earlier), homo sapiens was on every inhabitable island and landplace on Earth.

I also got a lot of this by being a moderator in "ancient history" topics on a very large conspiracy board. People show up with the darndest ideas there (really really really weird ones) and I have learned a lot in fact-checking their ideas.

I'm also enjoying reading up on ancient astronomy sites.

Oh heck, I'm just an anthro geek. If it's on cultures and so forth, I'm ready to read it!