Anthropology.net

Ethnicity, heritage, ancestry… These are all terms that I have had the pleasure of convoluting and deconstructing thanks to my cultural anthropology classes. But really when you get to the biology of it all, it is not as complicated.

If you didn’t quite jump on National Geographic’s Genographic Project train and have been curious about your personal lineage, you can, now, in your own home, test your lineage.

Thanks to Ancestry.com, and them teaming up with Sorenson Genomics, DNA testing is now much more simple. You can now integrate your DNA with the world’s largest online collection of historical records and family trees over at DNA.ancestry.com. Why? Well if you are curious to understand your family tree and understand where your ancestors came from or connect with family across distance and time.

Welcome the age of personal genomics meeting web 2.0.

Albeit, what Ancestry.com is offering is a beta product as of now, I consider the offer and pricing fair given the amount of laborwork involved. the Genetic Geneaologist quotes:

• A Y-DNA test with 33 markers will be $149.
• A Y-DNA test with 46 markers will be $199 (if you look at the sample results page, you’ll see a list of the 46 markers tested).
• mtDNA test will be $179, although the exact testing parameters for the mtDNA test are unclear at this point (the website only states that HVR1 and HVR2 will be sequenced).

A Y-DNA test will trace your paternal line, and is only useful if you wanna test a male since guys got the Y-chromosome… The more markers the more information that will be resolved. Reciprocally, a mtDNA test will trace your maternal line and can be used for both males and females since we all have mitochondria which are inherited from our mother.

So you maybe curious, and wondering, “How do I get in on the action? What do I need to do?” This is what is you gotta do:

1. Purchase a DNA test kit. Your kit will include three collection swabs, an envelope for recording your information and a postmarked return envelope.
2. Swab the inside of your mouth. Follow the instructions provided, rubbing each swab inside both of your cheeks.
3. Mail your kit to our labs. We’ll begin analyzing your DNA sample as soon as we receive it. Results are typically available within 2-3 weeks after the lab receives them.
4. View your results online, which will include:
   • Your personal DNA profile
   • A map displaying the location of participants matching your DNA
   • A table comparing your DNA profile with matching profiles
   • A chart showing the range of generations in which you and another participant may share a common ancestor.
   • Safe, secure, and anonymous, e-mail connections with potential genetic cousins
   • A haplogroup prediction, map and migration history

This post will come off as a cheezy late night TV advertisement but I write for those out there lucky enough to have a anthropology buff in the family or circle of friends, because then you know how hard it is to find a gift for them. Other than books, there’s really not much out there that will entertain the osteologist in your family.

If you have faced such a dilemma, or anticipate facing such a problem, look no further. Thanks to Neatorama and Nerd Approved, I’ve come accross a place to buy these anatomically correct bone socks, from Allheart.com. They are a great gift to give a anthropologist.

Granted they are right under $20 and that makes them a bit expensive for a pair of commodity socks that one can truthfully only sport without shame at a physical anthropologist’s meeting… but they are great gifts to give. I speak from experience. I was given this gift from my good friend Sean, and it was really thoughtful because of my personal interests in bones of the hands and feet.

P.S. – Someone commented on the Neatorama thread that Sock Dreams also sells them.

About two months ago, I wrote a comprehensive review paper on the state of the Neandertal genome project for one of my classes. I didn’t get a chance to put it up on Anthropology.net before I left for my trip. So to summarize, I reviewed many topics related to the project, one of which the great pains both the Rubin group and the Pääbo group went to ensure that there wasn’t much modern human DNA contaminants and the rate of sequencing errors was avoided by creating libraries with overlapping repeats.

In a early online release, Jeffrey D. Wall and Sung K. Ki of UCSF, write in PLOS Genetics on the, “Inconsistencies in Neanderthal genomic DNA sequences.”

Two recently published papers describe nuclear DNA sequences that were obtained from the same Neanderthal fossil. Our reanalyses of the data from these studies show that they are not consistent with each other and point to serious problems with the data quality in one of the studies, possibly due to modern human DNA contaminants and/or a high rate of sequencing errors.

Keep your eyes out for the final release of this paper. It will be an important one.

The first two ‘mummies’ that made TIME magazine’s collection photos of 15 ‘Mummies From Around the World‘ make me raise an eyebrow and wonder, who considers Lucy and Dikika a.k.a. Selam, a mummy? These two are fossilized remains of Australopithecus afarensis.

Even if you hold a fairly loose definition of mummy, it is, in my opinion, a pretty pitiless mistake to call a fossil hominid, a mummy… specially from a source like TIME. To clarify, in archaeology and anthropology, a mummy is defined as,

“A mummy is a corpse whose skin and dried flesh have been preserved by either intentional or accidental exposure to chemicals, extreme cold, very low humidity, or lack of air when bodies are submerged in bogs. “

Furthermore, to add insult to injury, here’s how they caption the Dikika hominid that was revealed last year:

“Hominid Child: The complete skeleton of a hominid child who lived at a key stage in primate evolution more than three million years ago. The child is thought to have died at the age of three.”

Dikika is not a complete skeleton. The Dikika hominid consists of a virtually complete skull, a torso with most of the bones from the upper body such as the scapulae and ribs, and parts of the arms and legs. While the bones that were recovered were remarkably all articulated, it was not a complete skeleton. Many of the vertebrae, the pelvic girdle, and other bones such as the radius and ulna are not in the collection. This sort of yield is expected from a three million year old hominid. But it is not complete skeleton, and a skeleton is not all what a mummy is.

The other twelve that made the cut are what most of the world calls a mummy:

I don’t know too much about this one. People who not only mummify their dead pets but also cast them in bronze are way out there:

One week ago I blogged about ancient gum. And now, thanks to Blaine Bettinger of the Genetic Genealogist, I’ve got some more gummy anthropology news for y’all to chew on… This time with a genetic twist.

In the Summer of 2007 issue of the Journal of Field Archaeology, Steven LeBlanc et al. write on recovering mitochondrial DNA from 2,000 year-old quids (a chewing plant, image to your right), as well as from aprons worn by Western Basketmakers. The Western Basketmakers were a group Native Americans that lived in caves and rock shelters in what is now southern Utah and northern Arizona. Here is the title of the paper, “Quids and Aprons: Ancient DNA from Artifacts from the American Southwest.”

According to ScienceNOW Daily News, LeBlanc had a eureka moment when he was looking at Harvard University’s Peabody Museum collection of quids, and he realized, “Quid … saliva … DNA … DING!”

He then,

“teamed up with Thomas Benjamin, a cancer biologist at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts, and other researchers. They pulled mitochondrial DNA from 48 quids and from 18 aprons that had been stained with what was likely menstrual blood. Then they scanned the DNA for various molecular markers called haplogroups, which appear in different frequencies in different parts of the world.

LeBlanc and his colleagues found that about 14% of these samples contained haplogroup A. This haplogroup is extremely rare in the Southwest, but it occurs in about half of the population of Central America. The intermediate frequency in the sample of Western Basketmakers fits with the idea that they migrated from somewhere in central Mexico, bringing agriculture into the turf of foragers. The results were confirmed by a second laboratory, and LeBlanc says the absence of European haplogroups rules out the possibility of contamination.

The larger conclusion is that museum artifacts can provide a new source of data. Quids are common in collections, notes Connie Mulligan of the University of Florida, Gainesville, although aprons less so. Next, the team hopes to sample other textiles, samples, and cigarettes made from hollow reeds. “It’s a neat and novel application,” says Anne Stone, an ancient DNA expert at Arizona State University in Tempe. She notes that testing artifacts may be especially important when Native American tribes are reluctant to allow sampling of their ancestors’ skeletons.”

I’ve added emphasis to the biggest conclusion drawn from this mtDNA analysis, the statement that the Western Basketmakers were from down south.

NPR’s Joe Palca also covers this news in, “DNA from Spit Helps Decode Lives of Early Settlers.” Check out what he has written too.

Another quickie, I’ve read the Chororapithecus abyssinicus paper and wrote up a blog post again over at Primatology.net since we’re dealing with primate evolution. Even so, this paper has some applications to anthropology, especially since it raises some questions about mistakes in molecular clock calibrations.

If you wanna learn about how enamel-dentin junction is important to paleoanthropology, or how micro-CT scans were used in this study, check out my post and please comment and share your thoughts on the paper.

David of Gene Expression broke the news of a new study of skulls from a Yorkshire village, which ‘deepens’ a

“long-standing mystery over the way men’s skulls changed from long to round during medieval Europe.”

Why men? I’ve never heard of the claim that male bones are more sensitive to environmental change during their development than those of women, which is what this the Guardian article quotes. Does anyone out there have a paper which studies this? I have, however, been taught that rounder skulls have less surface area, a common physiological adaptation seen in all animals.

The data of 700 skeletons from the Wharram Percy sites complicates what and how changes in skull shape happened during the 11th and 13th century. Currently there are two hypotheses, one where round skulls are due to gene flow from immigrant populations and the other is one that suggest round skulls were selected and influenced by climate change. But,

“neither [hypotheses] makes sense of the 700 Yorkshire skeletons…

The leading theory, that Scandinavian incomers brought new racial characteristics to the rest of Europe, does not make sense at Wharram, a lonely valley in the Wolds near Malton. Its natural isolation was reinforced during the 200 years of the skull change by plague and sheep blight which soon after led to its abandonment.

The skulls also show that only men were affected, which would not have applied if its cause was new genetic stock. Simon Mays, the human skeletal biologist in charge of the English Heritage study, said: “If immigration was responsible we would expect both sexes to be affected. There’s also the puzzle of why male skull shapes eventually reverted back, becoming similar to those we have today… But the climate at Wharram during the critical period rose by 0.5C and was actually warmer than it is today,” said Mr Mays. “Further, as the weather got much colder in the later medieval period skulls started to become longer and narrower again.”

Because neither gene flow nor climate change can explain why humans skulls became rounder during this time period, people are considering the effects of plague on selecting round skulls. The plague,

“repeatedly devastated Wharram along with many other parts of western Europe. Villagers finally called it a day around 1500, leaving only mounds and the ruined St Martin’s church today.

The study, the latest of 14 volumes on 40 years of excavation at Wharram, also shows that left-handedness was much more common in medieval times, at 15% compared with 8% today. Infant mortality was also unexpectedly low, possibly because illness and poor diet set in only after weaning off breast milk.”

But as David of Gene Expression, “the change between the 11th and 13th centuries precedes the Black Death.”

So what’s going on with these skulls? I wish I had a photo to see just how round these skulls. In my forensic anthropology education, white people, like Europeans, are generally characterized by a doliocephalic shape, which is a fancy way of saying the skull is long. The doliocephalic shape is calculated by taking a ratio of the breadth of the head to its length. Sure there is a lot of variation in populations, but the consensus is that Europeans have longer skulls than round, broad ones as compared to other humans.

I guess the jury is still out on what happened at Wharram Percy and the round skull phenomenon.

Following yesterday’s introduction to Suwa et al.‘s new Miocene ape, here is a high(er) resolution photo of three of the 10 million year old teeth compared to a modern female gorilla’s teeth.

In this view, you see lower dentition of C. abyssinicus, speficially the canine, the first molar, M1, and M3, or the last molar. I’m still waiting to get my hands on the Nature paper, but in this view I think you guys can all see how similar these three teeth are to that of a gorillas, in size and morphology.

Since Anthropology.net has been getting all the lovin’ recently, I figure I’d post an introduction to the controversy surrounding a new paleoanthropological find from Suwa et al. and their new gorilla like Miocene great ape over at our sister blog, Primatology.net.

Please, jump on over there and chime in what you think of this study.

A neat little study from the University of South Carolina touches on both linguistic anthropology and neuroscience, specifically the importance of pronouns in keeping the brain from becoming overloaded.

From Science Daily,

“The brain responds to proper names by creating a representation of the person in the mind, drawing from various parts of the brain to construct complex visual, sound and other information associated with that person. Every time the name is repeated, the brain responds by activating a process that creates a new representation of the person.

The brain initially holds each created representation in memory. The integration of these multiple representations requires effort that can disrupt the brain’s ongoing processing of what it hears during spoken conversation.

Pronouns, while faulty for their potential ambiguity, don’t cause the same disruptions in the brain that proper names do when used in the right context. In fact, they allow the brain to move easily from one thought or sentence to another. This seamless transition allows a person to digest more fully the meaning or intent of the thought being conveyed without the neural circuitry interference that proper names cause, said Almor.”

The paper published, in NeuroReport, is “What is in a name? Spatial brain circuits are used to track discourse references.”