Anthropology.net

Kenneth Collerson and Marshall Weisler the University of Queensland, Australia have been studying 19 2,000 year old adzes which were excavated in the 1930′s from coral atolls in the Tuamotus, in the Pacific. Adzes are type of stone tool that function like a pick and resemble an axe. Their research, “Stone Adze Compositions and the Extent of Ancient Polynesian Voyaging and Trade” is now published in Science.

The axe part of the adzes are made of basalt, a type of volcanic rock which was not available in the Tuamotus because the Taumotus rose up fro the sea 800 years after these basal adzes were created. The basalt probably originated from Hawaii, one of the few volcanically active islands in the Pacific, around 2,000 years ago.

“Collerson, a geochemist who studies mantle processes, knew that basalts from different types of islands have a distinctive signature in their trace elements and isotope chemistries. So the team took centimetre-wide chunks from the adzes and compared them to a database they had compiled from sites throughout the Pacific.”

What they found out is pretty remarkable. The basalt from the adzes have matching signatures to basalt from the Marquesas, Pitcairn, and the Austral islands. The research confirmed that one adze had been fashioned from hawaiite, a type of basalt specifically from the island of Kaho’olawe. Collerson says commented that hawaiite’s chemical signature matches one other one,

“the only other possible location on the planet where it could have come from is one of the islands in the middle of the Atlantic.”

This indicates that about 2,000 years ago, Polynesians were extensively travel the Pacific. Which is nothing really ground breaking. We already knew that before 2,000 years ago, Samoans and Tongans hauled out eastward. They settled many different islands and archipelagos in the Pacific Ocean, including the Cook Islands, Tahiti, and the Marquesas Islands. Within 1,000 years ago they colonized most of these places.

So the Polynesian people were moving a lot around. The linguistic data supported it, and even so recently, chicken genetics gave us a clue about what Polynesian’s were doing in South America. And now some pretty solid archaeology and geology supports it.

I’m pretty sure anthropologist Geoffrey Irwin from University of Auckland is all happy about this study.

The 24th edition of this blog carnival is now up and running, and with well over a dozen articles contributed by a similar number of people, there’s a very good mix of material covering a wide variety of topics, so head on over to Paddy K’s, and check it out for yourself.

As I mentioned earlier in the week, the 25th and 1st birthday edition of Four Stone Hearth is even now heading in this direction, and will be hosted on Remote Central on October 10th, and we’re hoping for a bumper beanfeast of an edition to celebrate the passing year, and to herald the next 25 editions of the coming year. On that note, I saw that there appear to be no hosts slated from October 24th onwards, and here’s a note from Martin at Aardvarchaeology, who has this to say…

“The next open hosting slot is on 24 October. All bloggers with an interest in the subject are welcome to volunteer to me. You don’t have to be an anthropologist, but bipedalism is encouraged.”

In the meantime, many thanks once again to Paddy K for hosting the current issue, and hope to see you all on October 10th.

A new Nature study will report on the earliest known evidence of rice paddies in China. We’re talking almost 8,000 years ago.

Cheng Zong of Durham University lead the excavation at the Kuahuqiao site in the Zhejiang province. After analyzing sediments of ancient swamp beds at the site the team found signs that the dirt was managed for rice growing. Specifically, the sediments showed that fire was used to clear scrub and modifications to the earth were made to prevent brackish water flooding. By about 7,550 years ago the sea level rose and broke the levies that held back water.

Here’s the kicker for anyone into rice domestication and the origins of agriculture, the team also unearthed unusually large rice pollen grains which indicates people at Kuahuqiao were beginning to domesticate a variety of rice. It is kinda uncertain whether or not the rice was really cultivated. But since these pollen grains have been found out of the normal range where seen wild rice grows, and found in areas where salt water damages fields and preventative measures had to be taken… then it’s pretty conclusive. If this is really the case, then it pushes back the date of rice domestication in Stone Age China almost 2,000 years!

Dorian Fuller of University College London has researched rice domestication before, specifically genetic diversity of rice. She commented on a National Geographic News article covering the new study on how,

“…the genetics of modern rice [show that it] has multiple origins from the wild gene pool right across southern China and northern and eastern India.”

Perhaps one of the centers of rice domestication was at Kuahuqiao?

In other China related archaeology news, the Fars News Agency reported on unearthing more of an ancient wall in the Golestan Province of Iran that stands second to the Great Wall of China in size. It is a 124-mile-long wall, the second longest such structure in Asia and was made in the 5th and 6th centuries to prevent the Ephthalites from pressing into Persia. It is call the Gorgan Wall.

I wish I had really nice photos or a scholarly article to point you too, but I’ll I got is this rather sparse press release and this really dated set of photos. I guess I could fire up Google Earth and scour the Golestan area for a large wall but I don’t have time right now. Maybe some other time?

P.S. Anyone else see Nature‘s new homepage? Very web 2.0!

The next edition of Four Stone Hearth is due out this Wednesday, courtesy of Paddy K’s Swedish Extravaganza, so there’s still time to get those submissions in, if you haven’t already done so.

The following 4SH will be the 25th, and as far as I can tell, this is, despite a slight calendrical discrepancy, being treated as the one which will mark the first anniversary of the blog carnival, first published last October by Kambiz, here at Anthropology.net.

To mark the occasion, it would be good (as ever) if as many people as possible could submit something, either written by you or someone else, whether you have done so in the past year, or are maybe considering sending in a post for the first time.

According to rumour and random intelligence, there are thoughts of awarding some sort of prize for the best entry, which might well involve ‘c$sh’, though probably not in the sort of quantities for which you’ll need a suitcase to carry it home. It is hoped that readers will be able to vote for their favourite entry by means of free polling software – as Kambiz is the brains behind this, there may well be further clarification from him in the coming days, as the final details are determined.

The anniversary event will be on October 10th at Remote Central, but in the meantime, as mentioned at top, Paddy K is next up this Wednesday the 26th, and he’s waiting to hear from you.

I’ve done so much flip flopping on whether or not Homo floresiensis is in fact a new species of human over the last 3 years that I sometimes forget what opinion I currently hold. The only consistency in my debate has been the call for analysis of the other remains. It seems like I got my wish after catching last week’s Science publication of the The Primitive Wrist of Homo floresiensis and Its Implications for Hominin Evolution. The title is pretty self-explanatory.

H. floresiensis is a hominin found in 2003 from the Ling Bau cave on the island of Flores in Indonesia. The bones found are about 18,000 years old. There’s been a lot of back and forth discussion whether or not H. floresiensis deserves a new species. At first people thought it was a representative of H. erectus, then it was suggested that H. floresiensis is a primitive microcephalic modern human. I like many others held this opinion.

Earlier this year, Dean Falk did a comparison of the endocranial volume of the H. floresiensis skull, LB1, to a number of microcephalic humans, and primates. She found H. floresiensis to be uniquely different in size and morphology. For many that wasn’t enough because, we don’t have many microcephalic human skulls to measure and compare too.

The other bones found at the site are just as diagnostic, especially the bones of the wrist and hand. So what Tocheri et al. did was to use fancy 3-D methods to calculate all the different dimensions, areas, and angles of the trapezoid, scaphoid, and capitate bones and multivariate statistics were used to compare the Flores carpal bones to set of archaic and modern humans, Neandertals, australopithecines, gorillas, chimpanzees, and also OH 7 a.k.a. Olduvai Hominid № 7 or the type specimen for H. habilis. Here’s a quick run down on what they found.

The trapezoid is the main bone where the index finger’s metacarpal articulates with the rest of the wrist. It’s a small bone in modern humans. The Flores trapezoid is wedge shaped like humans but has a different orientation on the ulnar side. Here’s the figure they showed which illustrates LB1, Flores trapezoids, compared to the others.

The Flores scaphoid shape and articular surfaces are more triangular in shape and lacks the larger articular surface on the palmar side which is seen in modern humans and Neandertals. Curiously, the scaphoid also has a fused centrale; a condition seen in H. habilis.

The authors say this fusion is a primitive condition for all hominins, because in modern humans it is separate. But that is not entirely true. The centrale sometimes fuses onto the scaphoid as the tubercle of the scaphoid; but occasionally it stays separate. It is not as definitive as they authors are making it out to be.

Anyways, here’s the line up of the scaphoid comparison.

Last but not least, is the sweet capitate. The capitate is the largest bone in the wrist and it falls smack dab in the center. Aside from the size, I remember the capitate because it has a rounded head which reminds me of Captain Picard’s bald head. And no, I’m not a Star Trek fan… it just that this bone has a remarkable resemblance to his unforgettable head.

Parts of the capitate, like the head, look like a chimpanzee’s capitate. Check out the light blue part below. But others, such as the proximal surface (green part) resemble modern humans. All in all the authors say the articular facets and shapes are more primitive than not because of a “waisted neck” characteristic that I don’t know about.

Can you see it?

I must admit they have a pretty complete line up of capitates, and the images let us all see for ourselves how these three bones compare…

…But I wonder why they didn’t include microcephalic or even dwarf humans into the mix?

That’s my biggest complaint with this study. You’d think that they’d include them, considering the biggest competing hypothesis is the whether or not H. floresiensis was a bunch of small humans. I’ve never seen bones from a microcephalic’s or dwarf’s hand to say that their bones would be more primitive than not… but I would assume since dwarf skeletons are much more distorted they would have different morphological features.

Coming up in the September 2007 issue of PLoS Genetics will be a unique study that reports on using a new computer algorithm to help trace the genetic ancestry of thousands of individuals in minutes, without any prior knowledge of their background. I reported on how Ancestry.com will be providing DNA tests for sale last month.

This study does not need an individual’s ancestry and background to narrow down the scope for specific DNA markers known as single nucleotide polymorphisms, or SNPs. The new algorithm needs nothing more than a DNA sample. Previous genetic data collected is used to perform and confirm the research.

Just how accurate is the study? It was 99% accurate in correctly identifying hundreds of people’s ancestry from similar and complex background, such as Chinese, Japanese, and Puerto Ricans. Petros Drineas, one of authors of the paper from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute discusses expanding the study,

“Now that we have found that the program works well, we hope to implement it on a much larger scale, using hundreds of thousands of SNPs and thousands of individuals.”

Algorithms are not only useful to help people understand their personal heritage, anthropologists benefit form these large scale screens to help understand where and when different populations originated and how humans evolved into such a diverse, global society.

I’ll report more on this once the paper comes out, in the mean time this was adapted from this press release.

In preparation for today’s Nature paper on Dmanisi, yesterday I went over some of the hot Homo fossils that have come from Dmanisi. But I focused only on remains of the head. And of those remains, what I went over was a whole range of features, proportions, and sizes, that showed a lot of variation in early Homo cranium from Dmanisi. Size-wise, the fossils have been more in the range of H. habilis than erectus, but feature by feature each one seemed to have bits and pieces of what we acknowledge as H. erectus.

The paper that I’ve been waiting for, “Postcranial evidence from early Homo from Dmanisi, Georgia,” reminds me that there are other fossils than ones from the head, to analyze. Especially from such a rich site.

In this new paper, David Lordkipanidze and all the other authors, describe new fossils of the postcranial, of a teenager that is associated with D2700 cranium and 2735 mandible as well as three adults who are also associated with other fossils. The elements analyzed are pictured to the right. This last section of the abstract is the most important,

“This material shows that the postcranial anatomy of the Dmanisi hominins has a surprising mosaic of primitive and derived features. The primitive features include a small body size, a low encephalization quotient and absence of humeral torsion; the derived features include modern-human-like body proportions and lower limb morphology indicative of the capability for long-distance travel. Thus, the earliest known hominins to have lived outside of Africa in the temperate zones of Eurasia did not yet display the full set of derived skeletal features.”

So we’re looking at at least four people in this collection of bones. As I mentioned, the authors think they have the teenager’s skull and mandible. The other parts, such as a left clavicle, some ribs, a set of cervical and thoracic vertebrae with one lumbar vertebrae, both humeri but one is broken, a left femur, and several bones of the hands and feet, of this youngin’ are the seen in “a”, all the bones in the left half of the above image.

So how do they know that these are the bones from the same individual? Well, I’m pretty sure they don’t know for sure because they did say a minimum of four people… But because the bones were found in the same stratigraphic layer, in close proximity to one another…. And that the cranial and postcranial bones both show similar developmental stages, such as fusion patterns in the sutures of the skull and fusion patterns of the epiphysis (ends) of long bones to the shaft, or diaphysis, they can make this claim with some confidence.

The other three individuals, two small folk and one larger person, weren’t anywhere close to the teenager. The large adult is represented by a big right femur, whole tibia, and a patella… which all articulate snuggly. That’s how they figured out this was one individual. The other two small ones are represented by metatarsals and bones of the feet from different stratigraphic layers.

This is an impressive collection of bones. Having more than one individual from the same place and time helps paint a much better picture of what was going on with early Homo than would a single skeleton. In the following paragraphs, I’m gonna summarize the analysis of each element.

D4166 – The Adult Right Scapula
This element has a short and wide coracoid process and a narrow glenocoracoid angle, which are primitive, great-ape like traits. But the position of the glenoid to the spine as well as the breadth of the spine fall right at the bottom of modern human variation and resemble Turkana Boy.

D2724, D4161 & D4162 – The Clavicles

These clavicles represent the right and left sides. As you can see, both D4161 and D4162 are missing the sternal and acromial ends. D2724 is a bit better and is similar to modern day teenagers in shaft length. Since all of these clavicles have a middle portion, the cross sectional shape was analyzed. That feature resembles H. habilis.

D2680, D2715, D4507 – The Humeri

The Dmanisi have straight humeri but a lot of torsion and lateral epicondyles that are higher than the lateral condyles which are all seen in most great apes, and other ancient hominin humeri. Modern humans do not have as much torsion.

D2673, D2674, D26721, D2713, D2672 – The Vertebrae

These vertebrae, such as the slope of the articular processes, represent primitive australopithecine-like or even great-ape like form. But since the spinal process is short, narrow, and the canal shapes of all the vertebrae are wider side to side, these bones represent more modern traits.

D4167 – The Femur

This is the most complete femur of an early Homo individual. It has a defined linea aspera, a ridge on the femur that serves as an attachment for the adductors and the intermuscular septa. It is very robust, straight. The neck of the femur, where the leg is attached to the hip, is similar to the autralopithecines and the bicondylar angle, a measurement of how the femur rests on the tibia, is similar to australopithecines too.

D3901 – The Tibia

This is the first complete fossil hominin tibia, pretty cool. It too is robust, and the joint surfaces on the top and bottom are large. The mid-shaft, though, is less robust and the degree of torsion is similar to modern humans…. something not seen that much in other great apes.

There are other bones, such as the the patella, the talus, and metatarsals which I’m not gonna review for several reasons, one of which is that this post has gotten long enough already. The second reason is that I think you can see that Lordkipanidze et al., have been really thorough in documenting how these specimens are a hodgepodge of archaic and modern traits. Very indicative of some sort of transition going on.

In their conclusion, the authors say, the most definitive, ancestral trait is the torsion seen in the humerus. And since the Dmanisi postcranial remains and endocranial volumes are awfully close in size to H. habilis that suggests the first hominis out of Africa weren’t completely like the H. erectus originating in Africa. What does that mean really? That means a wave of more primitive Homo fled Africa, all the while African hominins were doing their own thing. Does this mean once the African H. erectus figured it out and moved out of Africa, that these primitive Homo were replaced? This study certainly suggests that.

Tommorrow, Nature will be publishing a new study of the Dmanisi fossil specimens. In preparation, I’m gonna introduce you to the importance of the Dmanisi site, overview the human fossils that have come out of it, and the related debates.

Firstly, Dmanisi is a rich paleoanthropological and archaeological site in Georgia. Multiple lines of evidence date the human occupation at Dmanisi as early as 1.85 million years ago, putting it in the Pleistocene. You ask, “What sort of data?” Layers of ash and sandy sediment, which contain remains along with numerous crude stone tools and flakes, have been dated radiometrically at 1.7 to 1.85 million years old.

Other dating techniques, such as isotopic potassium-argon (K-Ar) and argon-argon (⁴⁰Ar/³⁹Ar) dating give an age of 1.8 million years ago. Paleomagnetic analysis of the units around the fossil layer, hold a record of change in magnetic polarity about 1.77 million year ago, which correlates to other dated sites, most notably Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania. All of these dating techniques help place Dmanisi as one of the most ancient human habitation sites in Eurasia. Dmanisi is approximately equivalent in age to the oldest H. erectus localities in eastern Africa. The remains found from Dmanisi have become crucial, and at the same time very controversial, to the study of human evolution.

The remains I want to segue into have consistently brought up a heated debate. And since we’re talking early Pleistocene, i.e. 1.8 mya, we are in the Homo lineage. For anyone not in the know, the fossils record for early Homo is spotty. Trying to make sense of the spottiness, many anthropologists have been butting heads about what has been happening to Homo erectus and Homo habilis during a 2 to 1 million year ago time frame. John Hawks reviewed Brown’s revised chronology in 2006. And the most recent debate, the Ilert hominids, have complicated our understandings of what was going with these two taxa in Africa. So to say that H. erectus has a problematical heritage is to grossly simplify matters.

The best Dmanisi fossils from this time frame haven’t, as of yet, clarified the conundrum outside of Africa for us. The first hominid fossil from Dmanisi was a mandible, was found on the last day of the 1991 field season, by Antje Justus. This mandible was assigned as D211.

While the H. erectus versus H. ergaster debate is largely settled in favor of calling everything that was once ergaster synonymous with erectus, at the time, D211 opened a Pandora’s box of sorts because it differs from known H. erectus specimens. D211 has certain similarities to ER992 (pictured) and ER730, both assigned as H. ergaster from Africa. D211 shares the following similarities:

• General form and robustness of the jaw
• Anterior position of the ascending ramus, including the edge of the retromolar space
• The absence of a trigonum mentale

D211 differs from ER992 and ER730 because it has smaller molars and premolars as well as a less receding anterior surface of symphysis. Despite these differences in size, and Brauer and Schulz’s contention that D211 is a representative of H. erectus, D211 was placed closer to H. ergaster group.

Even though the debate over classifying D211 was between calling it H. ergaster and H. erectus, and not H. habilis vs. H. erectus, it did set the tone for agreeing about future hominid finds from Dmanisi.

Fast forward to 1999, when D2280 and D2282 surfaced from the same stratigraphic level as D221. D2280 is an almost complete calvaria. It includes most of the left mandibular fossa of the temporal, a partial cranial base with a damaged occipital, and parts of the greater wing of the sphenoid. It is pictured in the photographs to your right.

You can see it is rounded, and doesn’t have such an angular posterior side, traits seen in H. habilis. The endocranial volume for D2280 is about 775 cm³, making it small… closer to the size of H. habilis than H. erectus. But because D2280 included a supraorbital torus, and shared some proportional similarities to H. ergaster (like WT15000 and ER3733), it was assigned as such.

D2282 is a much more complete specimen. As you can see, it is a cranium with many of the bones of the face and cranial vault. The major problem with D2282 is that it has been kinda deformed throughout the ages, the occipital and temporal ares are crushed on the left side, as are the zygomatic bones making a lot of the measurements and proportions convoluted.

To complicate it, much of the median upper facial skeleton is missing including the supraorbital torus at glabella, nasal bones, and frontal processes of the maxillae. Which makes it even harder to compare feature to feature to D2280.

However, all hope was not lost with our friend D2280. With a well persevered maxillae that still holds the right P⁴-M² and the left M¹ and M², as well as the alveoli of all other adult teeth including those of M³, a more thorough comparison was done. The comparison of the teeth lead to the conclusion that D2282 represents H. erectus. One example, the presence of singler roots in the upper premolar teeth is a H. erectus trait that.

D2282 is still small; the smaller of the two crania; 650 cm³ small; small like habilis.

Right above the tuff that locked away D211, D2280, and D2282, came another set of findings in 2001 and 2005, the D2700 cranium and the D2735 mandible, and the D3444 cranium and D3900 mandible.

The cool thing about D3444 cranium is that he was an old guy, completely toothless. His toothlessness was not something new, he had been toothless for several years before death, judging by the complete resorption of the tooth sockets. The implications of how he was cared for in his old age, were outstanding.

And about the D2700 cranium. It is even smaller than D2282, at 600 cm³. D2700 has many characteristics which resemble H. ergaster but also a handful that resembles the ER1813 H. habilis skull. Vekua et al., write in their 2002 paper that,

“In overall shape, D2700 is similar to D2280 and D2282, and D2735 resembles D211. Despite certain differences among these Dmanisi individuals, we do not see sufficient grounds for assigning them to more than one hominid taxon. We view the new specimen as a member of the same population as the other fossils, and we here assign the new skull provisionally to Homo erectus.”

So, other than showing you how bountiful Dmanisi has been in yielding Homo fossils, what else is going on here? We have a lot of small habilis-like skulls coming out from Dmanisi which have erectus-like features.

Do we go with size or do we go with morphology? As of right now, we’ve gone with morphology, but that’s problematic, especially dealing with heavily fragmented remains. Better yet, do the Dmanisi fossils represent a transitional species, one were humans were similar in size to habilis but similar in shape and form to erectus?

I think that will be answered in tomorrow’s Nature.

I don’t know really, but I’d like that to be answered because I’m pretty sure all you see right now is the great flaw in understanding evolutionary relationships and ancestors from fossil remains; when determining taxonomies with many traits, measurements, and damages to consider, it seems to be nothing more than a big pissing match between respective paleoanthropological groups.

References:

• Taxonomy of the Dmanisi Crania
• The morphological affinities of the Plio-Pleistocene mandible from Dmanisi, Georgia
• Earliest Pleistocene Hominid Cranial Remains from Dmanisi, Republic of Georgia: Taxonomy, Geological Setting, and Age
• Anthropology: The earliest toothless hominin skull

The University of California Press is holding their annual book sale. There are some awesome books offered for really cheap. The range of selection is pretty impressive as well, everything from anthropology to wine and viticulture. Here’s a round up of books I want to buy.

• Frans de Waal’s “My Family Album: Thirty Years of Primate Photography” $14.95 hardcover on sale.
• Frans de Waal and Frans Lanting’s “Bonobo: The Forgotten Ape“$19.95 paperback on sale.
• Goodman, Alan Goodman, Deborah Heath, and M. Susan Lindee, editors of “Genetic Nature/Culture: Anthropology and Science beyond the Two-Culture Divide” $8.95 paperback on sale.
• Chris Beard’s “The Hunt for the Dawn Monkey: Unearthing the Origins of Monkeys, Apes, and Humans” $12.95 hardcover on sale & $9.95 paperback on sale.
• Nina Jablonski’s “Skin: A Natural History” $16.95 hardcover on sale.
• Jonathan Marks’ “What It Means to Be 98% Chimpanzee: Apes, People, and Their Genes“$17.95 hardcover on sale & $9.95 paperback on sale.
• Eugenie Scott’s “Evolution vs. Creationism: An Introduction” $9.95 paperback on sale.
• Lewis Binford’s “In Pursuit of the Past: Decoding the Archaeological Record” $9.95 paperback on sale.
• Nina Jablonski, editor of “The First Americans: The Pleistocene Colonization of the New World” $49.95 hardcover on sale.

The sale ends in well over a month, on October 31st to be exact. But that doesn’t mean you should hold off… because they have a limited stock on the books, so once they sell out, you’re outta luck.

According to the the New York Times and National Geographic, there is an alarming report on the rate of extinction of languages,

“Every 14 days a language dies. By 2100, more than half of the more than 7,000 languages spoken on Earth—many of them never yet recorded—will likely disappear, taking with them a wealth of knowledge about history, culture, the natural environment, and how the human brain works.”

The news is all base off of research conducted by the National Geographic Society and the Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages. David Harrison and David Anderson lead the project. What they found are five hotspots where languages are vanishing faster than other regions.

• Northern Australia
• Central South America
• North America’s upper Pacific coastal zone
• Eastern Siberia
• Oklahoma and the southwestern United States

The map to below better documents the hotspots and you can explore the interactive map by clicking it to goto languagehotspots.org.

Here are some interesting facts:

• In the last 500 years, an estimated half of the world’s languages, from Etruscan to Tasmanian, have become extinct.
• More than 500 languages may be spoken by fewer than ten people.
• Of the 50 native languages remaining in California, none is taught to schoolchildren today.

Also there is an interesting video clip of Anderson and Harrison’s work, where they find the only known speaker of a language long thought to be extinct. The video will air in its entirity on PBS’ “Wild Chronicles.”

For linguistic anthropology, the study of human languages throughout time and place, this news is devastating. The quote above, the one which talks about the wealth of knowledge on human history and culture locked away in the languages around the world barely captures the severity of this situation. As the world becomes more globalized, and more cultures become assimilated and this seems like an inevitable consequence.