Anthropology.net

Using fancy medical imaging techniques, like computed tomography (CT) scans, Frank Rühli from the Institute of Anatomy at the University of Zurich in Switzerland, reinvestigated the cause of the iceman, Ötzi’s death.

CT scans allow medical professionals, and in this case a multidisciplinary team of investigators, to analyze a body without invasive surgery. CT scans take a whole lot of 2-D X-rays around a single axis and a computer takes these images and compiles them in order to generate a 3-D image of the internals of the object. The image to your right is the 3-D reconstruction of Ötzi’s shoulder girdle and surrounding areas.

Rühli worked in collaboration with Eduard Egarter Vigl of the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology in Bolzano, Italy, as well as Patrizia Pernter and Paul Gostner from the Department of Radiology at General Hospital Bolzano and published their findings in March, when Carl shared this news with us.

The press is just now running the conclusions that the team found and originally published in the Journal of Archaeological Science,

“lesion of a close-to-the-shoulder artery has been found… [the] lesion of the dorsal wall of the left subclavian artery, the artery underneath the clavicle, caused by an earlier, already-detected arrowhead that remains in the back. In addition, a large haematoma [blood clot] could be visualized in the surrounding tissue. By incorporating historic as well as modern data on the survival ship of such a severe lesion, the scientists concluded that the Iceman died within a short time due to this lesion.”

The image of the blood clot they found is also to your right, if you want, click on the image to get an in depth caption describing what you should be seeing. In the abstract, the researchers conclude the following in their own words,

“As the main pathologic finding, the left dorsal subclavian artery contures shows a 13 mm-long part where the vessel wall is damaged and a 3 mm-long irregular pseudo-aneurysm – a typical complication of a laceration of the subclavian artery. In the surrounding soft tissue a large haematoma is visible. Historic records highlight the fatal destiny of subclavian artery injuries e.g. due to massive active bleeding and shock-related cardiac arrest. Therefore, the Iceman’s cause of death by an arrowhead lacerating among others the left subclavian artery and leading to a deadly hemorrhagic shock can be now postulated with almost complete certainty, especially when taking the environmental (3’210 meters above sea level) and historic (5’300 BP) settings into account.”

I consider this another excellent example of a multidisciplinary approach to solving a archaeological mystery. This sorta research brought the best of forensic anthropology, anatomy and medical technology, into good ole archaeology. And to make it all the much better, it was non-invasive!

One last little tid bit of extra information before I let you leave this Sunday morning, Rühli is the project leader of the Swiss Mummy Project. This project aims to,

“use non-invasive methods to gain information on life, death and after-death alterations (e.g., embalming-related changes) on historic mummies. To achieve this, mostly radiological examination techniques such as CT are used. The work of the Swiss Mummy Project is funded by the Forschungskredit (research fund) of the University of Zurich as well as by collaborations with Siemens Medical Solutions, Zuse-Institute Berlin and the Reiss-Engelhorn Museums in Mannheim.”

Also, you may also be interested to read Afarensis‘ take on this, and my 2006 discussion on the iceman’s infertility.

This is a combination of two items in the news this week, and both are concerned with reconstructing the past – the first being an attempt to partially revive a past which can be shown to have existed, the second being an attempt to portray a past that never was, but nevertheless presented as a scientifically researched venture.

The first article over at Scientific American examines a ‘re-wilding’ project slated for Europe, whose aim is to bring back to life some of the mega-fauna that perished here about 50,000 years ago, and reflects a similar proposed venture in the US. As we see…

A few years ago, a group of scientists conceived a “re-wilding” plan aimed at restoring North America’s lost Pleistocene ecosystems. The purpose: to restore lost ecological processes and evolutionary potential as well as provide a safe haven for megafauna barely surviving in conflict-ridden, unstable or densely populated regions elsewhere.

Since that time, much of the discussion about re-wilding has remained focused on North America. Meanwhile, other candidates for re-wilding have been largely overlooked, although there is a major effort underway in Siberia to preserve and extend Pleistocene-like grasslands at northern latitudes as well as initiatives in Europe, the continent that may hold the greatest promise for bringing the Pleistocene back to life.

Bearing in mind that the planet seems to be in the process of gradual and/or sudden climate change, predicting the suitability of areas able to retain long-term viability for any extant animals is going to be difficult, and accommodating guests from yesteryear, even more so. Europe is considered a better candidate than America, mainly because the die-off in America was so extreme, with much of what died leaving no direct genetic descendants.
Read the rest of this entry »

President Bush’s history with the Skull and Bones secret society is not so much a secret anymore, especially since the following public domain photo that shows him with is club mates is on Wikipedia and making the rounds on Digg. The Skull and Bones club obviously has a selective membership to remain a secret society, and other than it keeping Masonic-inspired rituals for 175 years, not much is known about it.

But what still kinda remains a secret about the Skull and Bones is that they are believed have Geronimo, a iconic Native American’s remains. He was a leader of the Chiricahua Apache and spent 25 years of his life rebelling and resisting the encroachment of the United States on his tribal lands and people.

Even though I blogged about how the Skull and Bones have Geronimo’s skull and femur over a year ago — it didn’t make too many waves in the public relations, repatriation, and ethics department in the US. I haven’t heard about what’s going on with this issue until just now, when I was also catching up on Digg headlines. See, Geronimo’s relatives have gotten word that the Skull and Bones have Geronimo’s remains. That coupled with the fact that Bush is a Bonesman, motivated them to appeal to Bush to help return Geronimo’s remains.

Harlyn Geronimo, the great grandson of Geronimo, said in a letter to Bush,

“I am requesting his help in getting the remains – the skull and the femur – returned, if they were taken. According to our traditions the remains of this sort, especially in this state when the grave was desecrated … need to be reburied with the proper rituals. To return the dignity and let his spirits rest in peace … is important in our tradition.”

Unfortunately the White House has not yet returned with a comment nor decision. And Yale can’t even help because the Skull and Bones club is a separate entity from the university. But I urge people to voice their opinion and raise some awareness about this issue. Archaeologists in the US have to abide by federal NAGPRA laws when they conduct excavations on Indian and Native American sites, whether they like too or not, and I do not think the Skull and Bones club are an exception to this law, no matter how secret they are and how much political clout they have with Bush as a member.

I really hope Bush steps up to the plate and personally resolves this issue with Geronimo’s relatives. Descendants of the Apache are deserving of at least this level of response, especially considering their families were obliterated and their graves disgraced and robbed.

Peter Andrews, a research scientist at the Natural History Museum in London and a professor in the department of anthropology at University College London, has reviewed the book, “A New Human: The Startling Discovery and Strange Story of the “Hobbits” of Flores, Indonesia,” by Mike Morwood and Penny van Oosterzee.

Mike Morwood, if you don’t know or remember, is one of the original members of the team that found the Homo floresiensis specimens in Liang Bua back in 2003. Andrews’ writes how the book is a,

“…fascinating account of how the large-scale, multidisciplinary excavation was set up and run shows just how such an investigation should be conducted. They cover everything: the preliminary groundwork to find out who has to be approached to get permissions, with all the politics and administrative matters that are an unavoidable adjunct to such forms of scientific inquiry; the actual business of excavation and the dating of the deposit; and finally, the process of publishing a description of the fossils and their context. Anyone thinking of undertaking such a project would do well to consult this book.”

Pretty strong endorsement if you ask me.

Andrews goes on to document the significance of the Homo floresiensis remains, which if you are a follower of paleoanthropology and human evolutionary studies… you should be well aware of its importance. He then turns to gingerly document the controversies that happened between the team that excavated the fossils and

“Teuku Jacob, an Indonesian anthropologist who was not a member of the team, precipitously removed the skull, lower jaw and femur of the Flores woman, along with another lower jaw found at Liang Bua, from the lab where they were being kept. He then restricted access to the specimens and dismissed them as the remains of modern humans with the pathological condition known as microcephaly… Jacob essentially hijacked the remains, claiming falsely that Morwood had agreed to their transfer. The authors also complain that when Jacob finally returned the fossils, the bones had been mishandled and irreparably damaged.”

If Jacob really do this, then I don’t understand why he did. It seems so unethical and immature to jeopardize a critical hominin fossil. As Andrews explains, Morwood and team went thru all the proper channels and got permits to do the excavation. It’s not like they were digging illegally.

What has happened, the bickering between these two camps, has not only seriously damaged the fossils but also the reputation of paleoanthropology. As an someone with an outsider’s perspective on this whole situation, I see how the academic rigor and standards of the discipline are not shared in all places and cultures. People really do have egos larger than the problems and questions about human evolution they are trying to answer. While Andrews claims this book is a,

“well-written, entertaining book is both scholarly and accessible to the general public. Morwood and Oosterzee make the case that the Flores hominins occupy a unique position in human evolution,”

I see this book as another jab at Jacob. Jacob deserves to be reprimanded but there also needs to be some professionalism here. I hope that followers of this blog and future students in paleoanthropology can agree that this type of back and forth finger pointing does not help out our discipline. I really don’t know how Jacob and others who do this to the field should be dealt with but I don’t think it should be taken to this level. So I ask you, should we really be taking the time to write in our books and papers about how some colleagues did us wrong? Feel free to chime in what you think about all this and how to avoid this in the future.

In case you have forgotten, humans have relatively hairless bodies when compared to our other great ape relatives, even to the 5,000 or so other mammalian species out there. This is curious phenomenon — we seem to defy the very classification of being a mammal.

Sure, there’s a lot of variation among human populations. Some of us are hairier than the others, while others of us aren’t. There are even known genetic ‘mutations’ that reverse our hairlessness into a ‘werewolf syndrome’ which is known in science as hypertrichosis. Fajardo Aceves Jesus Manuel of Mexico is a modern day example of someone with hypertrichosis. This condition is caused by a genetic defect that,

“causes the hair growth cycle in victims of this rare disease to run amok. The follicles from which the body hair grows are apparently incapable of switching from the growth phase to the dormant phase, which normally ends in the new hair falling out and the cycle begining again.”

Hypertrichosis is considered an atavism — or an evolutionary throwback. An atavism is a trait that reappears which had once disappeared generations ago. This happens mostly likely thru a backward mutation but it can also happen thru transposable elements within the genome, i.e., the ‘hairy gene’ was locked away in a region of the genome that was not expressed but then was shuffled and inserted into an expressable region. Other known atavisms occur thru this mechanism. Genes that coded for a previously existing phenotype are often preserved in DNA, even though the genes are not expressed in some or most of the organisms possessing them.

But hypertrichosis is a rare genetic disorder, actually it is very rare. Only about 50 cases of the condition have been documented since the Middle Ages. That indicates there has been a strong positive selection to keep us hairless. But why? Are there any evolutionary explainations as to why humans are hairless?

Well, there are three main stories explanations (?) for why humans lack fur. Scientific American has asked an expert, Mark Pagel, head of the evolutionary biology group at the University of Reading, and he summarizes these hypotheses for us. These hypotheses vary in evidence but they all revolve around the idea of a positive selective pressure to not be hairy. In other words, it may have been advantageous for the human lineage to have become less and less hairy during the six million years since we shared a common ancestor with our closest living relative, the chimpanzee.

The first hypothesis, named the ‘aquatic-ape hypothesis’ considers that way back in the day, like 8 million year ago an apelike ancestor of modern humans had,

“a semiaquatic lifestyle based on foraging for food in shallow waters. Fur is not an effective insulator in water, and so the theory asserts that we evolved to lose our fur, replacing it, as other aquatic mammals have, with relatively high levels of body fat. Imaginative as this explanation is—and helpful in providing us with an excuse for being overweight—paleontological evidence for an aquatic phase of human existence has proven elusive.“

I was taught that our hairlessness initially came about from an adaptation that occurred as apes moved down from the jungles and into the hot savanna. Hairlessness helped control our body temperature when hominids made the transition to a new ecosystem.

“Our ape ancestors spent most of their time in cool forests, but a furry, upright hominid walking around in the sun would have overheated.”

This theory seemed to make a lot of sense, when I was taught this by my professors. However, it had one major flaw. The lack of fur,

“might have made it easier for us to lose heat during the day, [but] we also would have lost more heat at night, when we needed to retain it.”

A recent theory, one that I briefly introduced on Primatology.net back in March, considers that ancestors to modern humans were selected be hairless as a means,

“to reduce the prevalence of external parasites that routinely infest fur. A furry coat provides an attractive and safe haven for insects such as ticks, lice, biting flies and other “ectoparasites.” These creatures not only bring irritation and annoyance but carry viral, bacterial and protozoan-based diseases such as malaria, sleeping sickness, West Nile and Lyme disease, all of which can cause chronic medical problems and, in some cases, death. Humans, by virtue of being able to build fires, construct shelters and produce clothes, would have been able to lose their fur and thereby reduce the numbers of parasites they were carrying without suffering from the cold at night or in colder climates.

Human lice infections, which are confined to the hairy areas of our bodies, seem to support the parasite hypothesis. Naked mole rats, animals that can be described as resembling “overcooked sausages with buck teeth,” also seem to support the theory: They live underground in large colonies, in which parasites would be readily transmitted. But the combined warmth of their bodies and the confined underground space probably negate the problem of losing heat to cold air for these animals, allowing them also to become naked.

Once hairlessness had evolved this way, it may have become subject to sexual selection—being a feature in one sex that appealed to another. Smooth, clear skin may have become a signal of health, like a peacock’s tail, and could explain why women are naturally less hairy than men and why they put more effort into removing body hair. Despite exposing us to head lice, humans probably retained head hair for protection from the sun and to provide warmth when the air is cold. Pubic hair may have been retained for its role in enhancing pheromones or the airborne odors of sexual attraction.”

Will we ever know why hairlessness was selected for in our lineage?

No, just like we may never really know why bipedalism was selected for in our lineage.

But the problem with hairlessness versus bipedalism, is that hairlessness is one of those wild witch hunts that we embark on, one that relies on story telling and a whole lot of what-if’s. It is full of conjecture and not much scientific evidence. Regardless of its flaws, this question remains a very thought-provoking one to me, as someone interested in physical anthropology.

After writing this, I consider hairlessness could have been due to a founder-type effect. Since no supportable physiological significance can be drawn at this time, what if hairlessness became dominant a dominant allele because people who carried the hairless recessive mutant allele replaced people carrying the dominant hairy allele after a population bottleneck?

Again another what-if, however it is a plausible evolutionary possibility… But is it supportable?

No, not at this time… unless we figure out when this allele was really prevalent in our populations after a certain time and correlate its switch from recessive mutant to a dominant after some bottleneck inducing phenomenon, like an epidemic that targeted hairy people more. Until we sequence more paleoDNA from other hominids (mind you we can only extract nuclear DNA from Neanderthals, as of now) this hypothesis is also just as outlandish & unsupported as the aquatic ape one.

Here’s a report on recent research which proposes the spread of the first Americans coming in from Asia via a supposed ice-free corridor ca. 12,000 bp, can be traced through the distribution of Clovis technology across North America, and the way in which it appears to vary at a regional level.

The study included 216 stone arrowheads found in a number of states, including Montana, New Mexico, Arizona, Maine and Texas.

The researchers analyzed variations in angles, base size, tips, stone flaking and more. They then studied how the differences, and similarities, related to where the arrowheads were excavated.

Researchers Briggs Buchanan and Mark Collard propose a model that explains the spread of Clovis through humans arriving from the North, who then quickly inhabited an unpopulated North America; other models suggest there was already a pre-Clovis population present, and that Clovis spread through it, rather than with an expanding population that had only recently arrived. Moreover, other research has been conducted which has prompted suggestions that Clovis spread from the South – which again would indicate an extant population that preceded the purported Beringian intrusion event. For example, the site of Taima-taima in Venzuela, dating to around 13,000 bp, has yielded these El Jobo points with a decidedly leaf-like appearance, itself suggestive of Clovis, and as others have claimed, Solutrean as well. Read the rest of this entry »

Many moons ago, I shared with you news on how new tools like Google Earth are being used in archaeology to not only to map known sites but also to survey for new ones. So when I was digging thru my RSS feeds and found a news article on how Sarah Parcak of the University of Alabama at Birmingham has been using satellite imagery to find several previously undiscovered Egyptian settlements, I was definately interested to read more.

Parack has found several tells in just weeks by using this technology. Normally it woulda took years. She became the first Egyptologist to use the methodology in 2003-2004, when she located 132 sites, some dating as far back at 3,000 B.C. Among the sites she located:

• A major town in the East Delta dating to the time of the pyramids
• A large monastery from 400 A.D. in Middle Egypt
• A massive, largely buried city beneath the field on the East Delta dating to 600 B.C.

In her latest study, Parcak tested several different types of satellite imagery to determine which ones are most effective in locating tells under various environmental conditions. It’s the first step toward the general use of satellite remote sensing in Egyptology. Her findings appear in this month’s issue of the Journal of Field Archaeology, which is not out yet. But this press release seems informative,

Images captured from space pinpoint telltale signs of previous habitation in the swatch of land 200 miles south of Cairo, which digging recently confirmed as an ancient settlement dating from about 400 A.D…

“It is the biggest site discovered so far,” said project leader Sarah Parcak of the University of Alabama at Birmingham. “Based on the coins and pottery we found, it appears to be a massive regional center that traded with Greece, Turkey and Libya.”

Another large city dating to 600 B.C. and a monastery from 400 A.D. are some of the four hundred or so sites that Parcak has located during her work with the satellites. The oldest dates back over 5,000 years.

Egypt contains a wealth of already identified archaeological tells like these, but even they represent only about 0.01 percent of what is out there still uncovered, Parcak said.
“There are thousands of settlements that Egyptians don’t even know are there,” Parcak told LiveScience…

“Basically, I’m trying to distinguish the ancient remains from the modern landscape,” she said. “A site is going to appear very differently from space.” Archaeological sites absorb moisture in a different way, she explained, and tend to be covered with specific types of soil and vegetation.”

Since I am a technology buff, I highly advocate using these emerging technologies and methodologies to find new archaeological sites. Anyone can download a free copy of Google Earth and begin to survey the Earth for archaeological sites — you’ll know when you see something.

Chances are you’ll find something that hasn’t been found yet. And the more eyes we have on the look out for sites the more chance there is that these valuable assets can be protected and researched. But on the flip side of that is that these technologies also bring sometimes unwanted exposure to archaeological sites — by that I mean looters and vandals that end up destroying cultural heritage and removing artifacts.

Archaeologist Christina Conlee, of the Texas State University, found a remarkable finding in 2004. She was digging at a site called La Tiza, in the Nasca region of Peru and unearthed a headless skeleton in a tomb.  The tomb is dated to be from around 450-550 AD. The man was found without his head and sitting cross-legged. A ceramic “head jar” was placed to the left of the body.

This was the third skeleton of its kind to be found in Nasca this way. Here’s how Conlee interprets the finding,

“The age and condition of both the body and the jar, which is painted with two inverted human faces, suggests that the victim was killed in a rite of ancestral worship.”

Conlee has published her findings in Current Anthropology, titled, “Decapitation and Rebirth,” and has summariezed her findings and analysis in an interview with National Geographic News,

“This placement suggests that the killing was an act of ancestral worship and that the sacrifice was meant to honor the forebears buried in the cemetery, Conlee said.

“This man may have been sacrificed in order to appease the ancestors of the community and therefore ensure continuation of life at the villages,” she explained.

“This person was sacrificed during Middle Nasca, which was a time of great change,” Conlee added. “It is known that throughout the Andes human sacrifice was performed in times of change to give gods an important gift to allow the people to continue.”

The archaeologist also noted that the head jar is painted with the reversible image of a human face that can be seen right-side up or upside down, suggesting that the jar might have been meant as a substitute for the victim’s missing head.

“The La Tiza head jar was a rather literal replacement and reflects the Nasca belief that a person needed to have a head when he entered the afterlife,” Conlee said.

The jar also bears evidence of having been used before the burial. Conlee said that decorations on head jars suggest they were used for both human- and crop-fertility rituals.

“Head jars often have images of plants growing out of them, suggesting a direct link to agriculture fertility, as well as a desire to continue the fertility of the people in the community,” she said.

This headless skeleton has rekindled the debate over human sacrifice in the ancient Andes. The Moche are well known to have practiced decapitation, bloodletting, and human sacrifice. Symbols of death are found everywhere. For example, decapitation, and more importantly, ritual sacrifice, is the theme in their pottery, textiles, and metallurgy. The image below is of a Moche sacrifice ceremony made from a rollout of Moche Pottery.

So sacrifice is found throughout the Moche iconography, and it seemed to have been a fundamental element of this culture. But the Nasca didn’t necessarily exhibit this to the extent the Moche did. Makes me wonder if three headless skeletons and their head jars mean that the Nasca also sacrificed people or just that they had a unique way of burying their dead?

Related Content:

• Archaeologists study headless body in Peru – Science Daily

Guys, I hate to break it to you but I have been misinforming you all along. I have been giving you an uninformed summary of human evolution. I have been wrong, John Hawks has been wrong, Afarensis and the guys of Gene Expression have been wrong — your professors have also been wrong and you have been wrong… everyone except for the enlightened people of North Korea have been wrong when it comes to understanding human evolution.

North Korea (maybe just Kim Jong Il? has rewritten history and stated that Pyongyang is the birthplace of man,

“Ever since humanity originated, it was centered around Pyongyang. The Korean people have lived for centuries around the Teh Don Gan Basin. Korean people did not migrate from other regions to the Peninsula. Evolving through several anthropoids … Humanity finally reached the ancestors of modern Koreans: “The Black Mountain Grape Humanoids.”

Don’t believe me?

Well please, inform yourself of the correct version of human evolution by watching the following public service announcement kindly provided to you by communist DPRK:

The most mysterious aspect of the Roman burial found recently at St. Martin-in-the-Fields, the church that dominates the eastern side of Trafalgar Square, is not that it was headless, but that it should have come to be buried so far from home, in what was to become Saxon Lundenwic, which was situated a good mile or so the west from Roman Londinium, whose own remains now lie below the modern City of London, with a few sections of the old wall still visible just off Moorgate.

The good news for archaeologists investigating the burial is that in addition to the Roman era skeleton, they have found fragments of early Saxon pottery in the near vicinity, providing them with evidence that instead of there being a 200-year gap between the Romans and Saxons, it now appears that there was a more rapid transition from one set of rulers to their successors.

Rome pulled out of Londinium in 410 AD, and the carbon-14 dating applied to a fragment of bone from the skeleton indicated that its owner had died between 390 and 430 AD, suggesting that he was one of the very last Roman citizens to have been buried in, or near, Londinium – although whether he hailed from Rome, elsewhere in the Roman empire, or was a Romano-Brit, is as yet undetermined. Read the rest of this entry »