Anthropology.net

Somewhere in PNAS‘ list of upcoming publications will be a study on the jade trade, specifically an analysis of nephrite jade pieces dating back to 3000 B.C. from Asia.

The study was lead by Hsiao-Chun Hung of the Australian National University. These guys sampled ear pendants spanning around 1,000 years. These earrings were from around the South China Sea: coastal Cambodia and Vietnam, peninsular Thailand, western Philippines, southern Taiwan and Sarawak in Borneo.

Doing some structural and chemical analysis on the mineral composition, the researchers found that most of these earrings were made of jade from one location in eastern Taiwan, Fengtian. They suggest that the jade was distributed as blanks and that itinerant craftsmen may have traveled among the coastal lands, fashioning these decorative pendants for wealthy locals. I don’t know how they know that because the image to the right of earrings for Vietnam and the Phillipines have a remarkably similar style, indicating they may have originated from one source culture.

However the items were made, their distribution from one source across hundreds of miles of ocean represents an extensive trading networks of a single mineral among ancient peoples. It is only rivaled by the stone adzes, I described several months ago.

The web is abuzz over a new publication in PLoS Genetics about a single main migration across Bering Strait. From what I can tell, this new paper, “Genetic Variation and Population Structure,” coincides with a recent publication in PLoS One that sampled mtDNA and figured out people moved in waves, but first they spent some time in Beringia.

Both of these papers use microsattelites or SNPs in genes from native American populations to answer the question, did a small population from Siberia trek across the Bering Strait land bridge some 12,000 years ago and give rise to the native peoples of North and South America? Or did people come from other parts of Asia or Polynesia, arriving in multiple times, at several places on the two continents, by sea as well as by land, in successive migrations that began as early as 30,000 years ago?

To answer this question, the authors picked out 678 markers in the DNA of present-day members of 29 Native American populations across North, Central and South America. They also analyzed data from two Siberian groups. The figure to your right is from the publication, which illustrates who and where the populations sampled are from.

They figured out that a unique genetic variant, which is part of a noncoding region, is widespread in Native Americans across both American continents and it originated in Siberia. This implies that the first populations came into the Americas came from a single migration or multiple waves from a single source. This rules out the possibility that people came in waves of migrations from different sources. The following graph documents this:

Furthermore, the genetic diversity, as well as genetic similarity is very close to the Siberian groups tested. This supplements to existing archaeological and genetic evidence that the ancestors of native North and South Americans came by the northwest route.

Additional findings that are also interesting are that populations in the Andes and Central America are genetically similar. And populations from western South America showed more genetic variation than populations from eastern South America. And to appease the linguists out there, the populations more similar linguistically were also more similar genetically. Pretty cool, huh?

Anyways, please check out Blaine Bettinger, a.k.a, the Genetic Genealogist’s and Yann‘s posts on this, as well as my old post about the waves from Beringia, which collaborates with this finding.

The New York Times is running a profile of Ralph Holloway, a paleoanthropologist that specializes in brain evolution, one of my favorite subtopics in anthropology. The piece is written by Michael Balter, and it overviews his current project research with Homo floresiensis.

In a nutshell, Holloway is on the fence about whether or not Homo floresiensis is a new species, he sees evidence of platycephaly, a flattening of the brain rather than microcephaly, the focus that everyone else is honing in on.

William Kimbel of the IHO over at ASU makes quote that makes me feel as if Holloway’s contributions are done,

“He will be remembered as the major advocate for an early reorganization of the brain in human evolution.”

Maybe I’m reading too much into the quote, but Dr. Holloway is still very much active and continuing some great work. He’s decided not to retire and he’s continued his very lively academic rivalry with Dr. Dean Falk, who respects his position that the evolution of the human brain is not all about size but also about what functional areas were modified. But, Dr. Falk and him are still butting heads over the Homo floresiensis and the Taung child endocasts.

Since I just posted on the topic of repatriation issues in the Bay Area, I got a tip to a current column running in a local news source, SF Weekly on this issue. Ron Russell, the author of the piece, published it under a week ago and it documents the almost incestuous situation caused by one particular individual here in the Bay. This piece ties really well into what I was writing about the other day. It documents a situation how natives are taking advantage of the laws and ethics that relate to NAGPRA and human remains.

The person that Russell documents is Andrew Galvan. He’s got ties to a native American, named Liberato that was baptized at Mission Delores over 200 years ago. He’s a curator of the Mission now, but also a MLD. MLD stands for Most Likely Descendant, and since he claims Ohlone identity, he is one of the people that oversees situations where human remains are found in an archaeological context.

He also works with his father, maintaining and operating a Ohlone cemetery in Fremont, California. This operation is run under Ohlone Indian Tribe, Inc. But don’t confuse that with his other company, Archaeor Archaeological Consultants located in Ohlone College. Archaeor is a company that serves tangentially to Galvan’s role as a MLD. In otherwords, if human remains of probable Ohlone descent are found at a construction or archaeological site, Galvan offers services on behalf of Archaeor to remove, clean, and rebury the remains.

Most of the remains are reburied at the Fremont, California cemetery site operated by his other company, Ohlone Indian Tribe, Inc. And while he claims the cemetery is a nonprofit operation, he does charge an exorbitant amount which raised my eyebrow. Some of his clients claim he charges $60 an hour to clean the skeletons and each skeleton takes about 12 hours. That’s around $720 a skeleton.

Here are some prices that he has charged in the past. He’s quoted the East Bay Regional Park District $58,000 to do his thing on 12 skeletal remains recovered from a regional shoreline park in 2002. In the ’90′s he quoted Stanford University ‘several thousand dollars’ to relocate 2 skeletons found on the campus.

I’ve explained how as an undergraduate I worked on an archaeological site and some field experience in Ethiopia. During these experiences, I’ve done a lot of washing of bones and artifacts. And let me tell you, it doesn’t cost that much. It is not a very high tech operation. All it requires is a bucket of water and a old used tooth brush, and some menial labor. I’ve spent lots of my life washing bones and artifacts and do not understand why it costs Galvan so much to do this. Maybe he’s using some magical water? Who knows.

I even question if it needs to be done. If any Ohlone read this blog, please explain to us why it is culturally ethical to wash bones that are exhumed only to be reburied? It seems over the top and unnecessary. Andrew, if you read this, feel free to tell us why you do this because I want to know about this practice.

And also correct me if I’m wrong, but my understanding of Ohlone, and almost all other repatriation and reburial tradition is that they dictate the remains be reburied as close as the original burial site as possible. So why then is Galvan reburying these remains at his cemetery in Fremont? Could it be that he wants to milk out some more cash?

The article quotes Galvan a couple times stating there’s not charge to use the space at the cemetery, but clients disagree. Al Kaplan, a pizza owner in my old hometown of Danville, said Galvan charged him to rebury the bones found on his restaurant property into an Indian cemetery in Fremont. Fishy business practice if you ask me. I think this is why Stanford decided to reject Galvan’s quote for several thousand dollars, and proceed to rebury the remains in an undisclosed area close to the site they were discovered.

Galvan is also very selective about who he lets into his cemetery. In 1999, Lawrence Thompson, an Ohlone and a barber died. His son, a truck driver, expressed that his father’s wishes were to be buried at the Ohlone Cemetery. But Galven denied him. Yeah that’s right, he denied him. Galven told Thompson junior that the cemetery was full… but then somehow he found room to charge Kaplan with the remains found at his pizza parlor 6 years later. I’m really disappointed that Galvan’s rejected Thomspon’s father’s wishes. Very strange, and very self serving if you ask me. Galvan shows that he’s not really interested in fully serving Ohlone interests if he’s going to reject barbers, father’s of truck drivers but then accept business from property owners, the government, academic institution, and the like.

Galvan’s not really loved in his Ohlone but at the same time he’s treated with deference. Most Ohlone are submissive, or at least they seem to be. It seems like they’ve reserved their rights to Galvan, since he’s got a history degree, ties to a baptized Indian, a archaeology consultancy, and effectively a lot of their ancestors in his graveyard. His cousin, Rosemary Cambra expressed some contention in the piece but it wasn’t really charged enough.

I’m actually really concerned about this. While there are more MLDs than Galvan, his triple play… his archaeology consultancy, his position as an MLD and spokesperson of the Ohlone, as well as his cemetery gives him a lot of power. One person does not need so much control over repatriation issues in the Bay Area. One person should not be charging this much to effectively wash bones…. a job that undergraduate students are given school credit to do.

Several other clients also claimed they were morally persuaded by Galvan to take up his services. The author of the piece, Russell, subliminally paints Galvan as a sleaze bag… and I’m beginning to think he is. It seems like he’s doing little to serve the Ohlone, damaging the academic potential, and taking advantage of business owners and people in construction. Like I indicated above and in my previous post, these are the types of people that there should be checks and balances against.

Afarensis shared a link to a Nature News piece on a new twist in the NAGPRA issue, which I didn’t catch. So kudos to him for picking that up. The piece, by Rex Dalton, got me to think about another thing I just recently read on the web, a blog post by a person who goes by ‘Bay Radical’ about the issues surrounding some shellmounds made by native Americans that inhabited the San Francisco Bay Area. The two issues have tangents but aren’t directly related.

That’s beside the point. As noted by Bay Radical, the shellmounds were made by Ohlone natives… or so we think. The two most prominent mounds were in Emeryville, California and Alameda, California. I currently live in Alameda, California, just down the street from one of the sites of the old mounds. I bike over the sites when I do my cycling rounds. And have been to Emeryville more times than I’d like to admit. Since I live in the Bay Area and am interested in past human life, I’m very aware of what these sites were and what they are now.

At times, Bay Radical describes what happened to the shellmounds in an a realistic tone. At other times Bay Radical describes the shellmounds in exotified manner. That’s expected. The writer does go by the nom de plume of radical. So here’s a bit of reclarification…

Shellmounds are a form of midden. Midden is known as a dump for domestic waste. In archaeology, midden provides a lot of information. I spent two years sorting thru midden from a site in Moss Landing, California. saw how native Americans did not live harmoniously with nature as often glorified in popular culture. These people obliterated populations of norther fur seals to the point of extinction.

Like all middens, shell middens contain the debris of human activity and remains of their meals. They contain information on how people lived, what they ate, how they ate. As people who study material culture, we can figure out how they processed remains, if they left any tools or artifacts in the debris, etc.

Some middens are tiny, representing a single household’s waste. In the case of the Emeryville and Alameda shellmounds, they were monumental. Bay Radical makes the case that the Emeryville shellmound was largely obliterated in an ignorant and capitalistic manner to pave the way for an amusment park, several factories, and ultimately to what it is now an outdoor shopping mall.

What the hell? The shellmounds were phenomenal. I won’t say they weren’t, they were one of the largest structures known to be made by Californian natives. But they were trash.

Some descendants of natives claim that human remains were or are in the midden piles and that the archaeologists who excavated the mounds as well as the engineers who paved over the mounds caused them great disrespect. They completely skirt over the issue that their ancestors buried their dead in what’s the equivalent of modern day landfills. If their reburial so detrimental to their spiritual well being then why were they buried in trash mounds in the first place? There’s a potential to use science to understand why these people from the past dumped their loved ones in their community trash mounds. I also do not understand how and why archaeologists and engineers who are attempting to make the sites into informative and economically viable areas are now vilified for transforming trash?

It seems like the archaeologists are the ones who completely get screwed over in situations like this, not the natives. I understand that I am taking a completely different change of tone. To many of you this maybe a big surprise. It is not that I’m flip flopping on the issues that come up with research, repatriation, cultural sensitivity and government bureaucracy. But there needs to be a balance.

Sometimes the archaeologists are to blame. In cases where archaeologists mess up, I point them out. Most notably are the issues around Yale’s stealing of Peruvian cultural heritage. In other cases, the natives are to blame. In other words, no one party is completely innocent.

Rex Dalton points out a current event, descendants of natives want to empty scientific institutions of about 120,000 human skeletons currently stored for research purposes. Anyone can claim some remain is their ancestor and remove them even if the remains are not identifiable. What purpose does this serve?

I’ve been at a meeting where academics at UC Berkeley, in charge of the Phoebe A. Hearst Musuem, raised concerns about what will happen to their collection if such a change should occur. The museum has over 10,000 human remains and is in compliance with NAGPRA. But now with discussion that any old Joe with a feather in his head can come and claim such and such humerus and such and such tooth is from their great great great grandmother and take them away raises some serious issues. If this happens it would be counter active to protecting the remains. The remains are under great care and security at institutions such as the Hearst Museum. They are also very useful to understand how humans varied as well as investigating osetopathology. If they are removed, who’s to know that they’d be returned to the rightful relatives?

Furthermore, this may come off as completely naive but I really can’t find a way to phrase it any other way… I don’t understand why it’s so important that remains from people’s ancestors from several hundred to thousand years ago has any impact on their current well being. It seems so far removed, so far detached. Of course that’s awfully ethnocentric, and I admit my athiest upbringing is why I just simply don’t fully understand this problem. But we live in the now, we need to understand how people lived, what they were like, how they varied to figure out how we all got here. That, to me, is more important than whether or not my great great cousin twice removed from 200 years ago is buried according to my cultural traditions or not.

How do you feel about these issues? In the US this is a big problem. For readers outside of the US, do you see similar issues? Also, please feel free to tell me how ignorant I am about the statements in the last paragraphs… or if I am at all.

Several of my colleagues and I need your help in downloading a digital copy of the following paper. Neither of our university libraries have access to this journal and we really need the paper.

I wanted to ask if you can try downloading the paper for us and sending me a copy. Thanks, here’s the information:

Middle Miocene Dispersals of Apes
Peter Andrews, Jay Kelley
Folia Primatologica 2007;78:328-343 (DOI: 10.1159/00010514)

Apologies to all for my tardiness in posting this, but the latest and 28th edition of Four Stone Hearth is up and running, courtesy of Carl Feagans at Hot Cup of Joe, and on that note here’s a word from Carl…

If you’re new to blogging, a carnival is an event much like a magazine in that it is usually a regular event that has a common theme and includes articles by many different authors. The difference being that this magazine has editors who take turns “hosting” the event and by publishing it on their own blog. That makes the host’s blog a hub to the articles. The benefit to the host and those that submit articles is increased web traffic and the opportunity to get your writing noticed by people who share their interests. If you would like to host an upcoming 4SH or if you’re interested in sending articles and posts please send an email to host@fourstonehearth.net (hosting), or submit@fourstonehearth.net (article/post submission).

So without further ado, please feel free to wend your way over to his site, and check out the cornucopia of content on which to feast your eyes – many thanks to Carl for hosting another great edition, and I’ve just learnt from Martin at Aardvarchaeology that I’m due to host the next one on December 5th at Remote Central – there appears to be something of a hosting crisis on at the moment, so if you’re up for a hosting spot yourself, please make yourself known, sooner rather than later – many thanks.

I’ve just read that Teuku Jacob has died a little over a month ago. Both John Hawks and Tim Jones have covered the news in their blogs. I find some conflicting reports on how old he was, Hawks says he was 76 and Jones says he was 77. When I do the math he was just about month shy of 78. Either way, he was a student of G. H. R. von Koenigswald, and many important specimens, particularly of Homo erectus were under his watch.

Aside from his role as a paleoanthropologist, he was also an activist.

I’m not gonna bad mouth him at this time. If you know anything about his involvement in the Flores hominid debacle, then you know what sort of reputation he has. Here’s how Science remembers him,

“As Indonesia’s “king of paleoanthropology,” Teuku Jacob ruled over a vital collection of hominid fossils. He was a formidable skeptic of the 1-meter-tall “hobbit” remains from the Indonesian island of Flores, arguing that they instead represented a diseased modern human.”

He will be remembered for his work in building the field of paleoanthropology in Indonesia.

Adam Siepel, Brona Brejova and colleagues at several other institutions will report in an upcoming issue of the the journal Genome Research on their discoveries. They’ve found about 300 previously unidentified human genes, and found extensions of several hundred genes already known using computers to compare portions of the human genome with those of other mammals.

Our current understanding is that the human genome contains about 20,000 protein encoding genes. When such a low number came out, many people were shocked. This new method to compare genomes and scan for genes by Sipela and crew shows there still could be many more genes that have been missed using previous methods. These methods are very effective at finding genes that are widely expressed but may miss those that are expressed only in certain tissues or at early stages of embryonic development.

Siepel and colleagues method differed in that they,

“…set out to find genes that have been “conserved” — that are fundamental to all life and that have stayed the same, or nearly so, over millions of years of evolution.

The researchers started with “alignments” discovered by other workers — stretches up to several thousand bases long that are mostly alike across two or more species. Using large-scale computer clusters, including an 850-node cluster at the Cornell Center for Advanced Computing, the researchers ran three different algorithms, or computing designs — one of which Siepel created — to compare these alignments between human, mouse, rat and chicken in various combinations.

After eliminating predictions that matched already known genes, the researchers tested the remainder in the laboratory, proving that many of the genes could in fact be found in samples of human tissue and could code for proteins. The researchers were sometimes able to identify the proteins by comparison with databases of known proteins. The discovered genes mainly have to do with motor activity, cell adhesion, connective tissue and central nervous system development, functions that might be expected to be common to many different creatures.

The entire project, from building and testing the mathematical models to running final laboratory tests, took about three years, Siepel said. “

So just how did they do it? One of the genes that was used to train the algorithm was, GRIA2, a gene that makes a receptor for neurotransmitters,

“The portions of the gene that code for amino acids that make up a protein change in different ways from other parts of the genome, so computer algorithms can use these distinctive patterns of evolutionary change to identify new genes that have been missed by other methods. A portion of GRIA2 is shown here in an alignment of the genomes of several species, beneath a graph of the computer analysis. Peaks in the graph identify exons (regions that are expressed), separated by introns (non-coding regions). When a cell reads the gene to make a protein the introns are edited out.”

The paper is available in advance under this title, “Targeted discovery of novel human exons by comparative genomics.” Comparative genomics is so cool, I’d like to see this study replicated when with gorilla, Neandertal, chimpanzee, macaque and human genomes. But we gotta wait until several of those are completed.

Tim Jones, of Remote Central, is on top of the ball. He’s been nailing down some awesome anthropology news lately. This is one of the ones that caught my eye recently. You know of Wushan Man? Wushan Man is the name given to a lower jawbone fragment and an incisor as well as more than 230 pieces of stone tools excavated from Wushan county in the Chongqing municipality.

Excavations started in 1985, and in the last 10 years or so, Huang Banbo of the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and his team have been redating the site. Their preliminary reports have made the news. So far the evidences corroborates the geological layer containing the Wushan Man fossils to be as old as 2 million to 2.04 million years,

“They found more stone tools and animal fossils dating back 2 million years in the same stratigraphic interval in which Wushan Man fossils were found before, and also in the upper layers.”

If this is true, that means Wushan is currently the oldest hominin in Asia. The new date puts it 300,000 years older than Yuanmou Man.