Anthropology.net

Evolutionary Anthropology has just published a news bit introducing a brand new paleonanthropology group, dubbed the East African Association for Paleoanthropology and Paleontology (EAAPP). The synopsis is written by Kenyan academic Emma Mbua, Ethiopian academic Zeresenay Alemseged (who now works a stone’s throw away, from where I live) and American academic René Bobe from the Unviersity of Georgia. They reported that the EAPP has agreed to:

• hold discussions on how paleontological research can help local communities build ownership, involvement and benefit from research conducted on their lands. This is a critical point that many paleontologists and archaeologists neglect — or think they covered.
• formulation of policies and strategies to efficiently conserve and make fossils available to the public.
• train curatorial staff, technicians, and scientists — which will accelerate the professional infrastructure

Aside from the authors, I see some familiar faces in the group photo, like a Leakey. But I’m even more surprised some big names aren’t photographed. Were they invited? I hope they were. With all the optimistic intentions of this group, I really hope the EAAPP isn’t some sort of exclusive club… One that picks and chooses projects and academics they deem worthy of being in the coalition of the willing.

Aside from this issue, I’m very intrigued about this new association. I think it will bring together academics and projects that have been operating separately. Furthermore, such an organization will build African science, which is a fundamentally positive thing.

Mbua, E., Alemseged, Z., Bobe, R. (2008). A new association for East African paleoanthropology and paleontology. Evolutionary Anthropology: Issues, News, and Reviews, 17(3), 123-124. DOI: 10.1002/evan.20178

I want to introduce you to a new guest blogger here at Anthropology.net, Tasha Spawn. Tasha is currently a student at University of North Dakota. Her primary anthropological interests are on topics like sexuality, gender, identity, the concept of race, equality, and male/female relationships. In our emails, Tasha expressed that she looks forward to sharing her opinions, hosting lively discussions about anything that has to do with anthropology… even if she has not explored it before before.

I’m especially interested in what Tasha has to say about the concept of race. Hopefully a post or two on that will come in due time. In the mean time, I look forward to read whatever Tasha decides to post on. As you may have noticed, the site currently is sparse on cultural posts… And Tasha’s interests are right in line with this gap… So I really welcome her enthusiasm with helping fill out this discrepancy!

I’ve been meaning to blog about the really awesome news that Afarensis first broke on the blogosphere for a couple days now. The news he shared is of an upcoming Journal of Archaeological Science paper authored by R. Lee Lyman, Todd VanPool and Michael O’Brien, all of the University of Missouri Anthropology Department, evaluating the selection and optimization of projectile points.

I’ve tracked down the paper. It is currently more or less an accepted draft and titled, “Variation in North American dart points and arrow points when one, or both, are present.” Yesterday, Afarensis supplemented his news coverage with a little questionnaire he asked one of the authors, Dr. Lyman specifically. Dr. Lyman answered the questions and provided a little bit more information than the initial press release provided.

To give you a quick digest, Lyman, VanPool, and O’Brien analyzed over 1,000 projectile points from three archaeological sites; Verkamp Shelter in Missouri, Gatecliff Shelter in Nevada, and Mummy Cave in Wyoming. The collection of points span at least 3,200 years of time and all include the date the bow and arrow were introduced and used in these regions. Upon the introduction of the bow and arrow about 1,7000 years ago, Lyman et al. were able to see that people experimented to find the optimum point. They did that by synthesizing cladistic analysis, which O’Brien specializes in and concluded that there was

“initial burst[s] of variation in projectile points… and that prehistoric [people] experimentally sought arrow points that worked effectively. Following that initial burst, less-effective projectile models were discarded, causing archaeologists to see a reduction in variation.”

So these people tested many different projectile points. The ones that were functionally more effective were the designs that were selected and further optimized, kinda like punctuated equilibrium. Diversity was lost once the best points were identified. Sounds right in line with other models of cultural selection, such as the 60,000 year old tool kits Sibudu Cave that also showed those people experimented with tool design to accomplish a variety of tasks.

I believe I have a good understanding of the archaeological record and I think it is really safe to say that humans have always experimented with tools, selecting ones that were functionally superior to tools that weren’t. That is optimization, to make the best or most effective use of a tool.

You can see for yourself, some of the first examples of stone tools are classified as Oldowan type. They first appear in the record about 2.5 million years ago, also known as the Lower Paleolithic. They were very simple. About 1.5 million years ago, a new type, Achulean tools appear. They are much more refined and optimized for special tasks compared to Oldowan tools.

Following Achulean stone tools, the Levallois, Aurignacian, and Magdalenian techniques succeeded into the Upper Paleolithic becoming more specialized with time than its predecessor. I’ve posted examples of each typology in chronological order, from Oldowan tools to specialized Solutrean blades, for you to see how tools have been refined over time. Optimization of tools did not end with the Neolitihic revolution. In fact, tools have been constantly revised to fit the new tasks that came about as humans began to adopt sedentary lifestyles over nomadic ones.

So I’m really disappointed, shocked even, to read from Martin, an archaeologist… someone who is supposed to specialize in studying material culture, commenting on this topic and writing that cultural selection is irrational, arbitrary, and does not optimize. He cites face painting as an example about how cultural selection is full of ‘null mutations.’ Based off of his choice of comparisons, I don’t think he understands the difference between functional and symbolic traits in cultural memes. And this is alarming.

A very recent paper, authored by two biologists from Stanford, evaluated the differences in the rates of change between functional and symbolic traits in Oceanic canoe design. I recommended Martin read up on it, if he hasn’t already, because in the paper Ehrlich and Rogers clearly distinguish the difference between symbolic and functional traits… Something that Martin did not with his example. Symbolic ones, as Martin pointed out, are highly variable — but functional traits, ones that affect the survivability of the user are rapidly revised and selected.

Adding to his foolish comparison, Martin also stated that once upon a time pre-scientific humans existed. While trained scientists haven’t been around until relatively recently, people have always been experimenters. The inquisitive nature of humans has been a fundamental aspect of our evolution, both biological and cultural. Furthering this idea, he writes that, ‘he is convinced that both people in the lo-tech past and people of the present are largely ignorant non-optimisers who mainly do things with no adaptive significance.’ Without ‘scientific,’ adaptive minded optimizing humans, we would not have had cave art, fire, agriculture and animal domestication… we’d be still eating tubers out of the ground.

I really hope people see beyond Martin’s comparison. Let me remind you that he’s comparing apples to oranges, literally. Symbolic things, like face painting, trinkets on a fishing pole, adornment on a canoe, offer little functionality. Projectile points are functional elements, that directly correlate to a successful hunt and survivability. The are selected in different operant realms. Also, this is not the first time example of Martin’s asininity… in the past he’s spun this mindless mantra and wondered if genetic evidence is relevant in the peopling of the Americas.

LYMAN, R., VANPOOL, T., OBRIEN, M. (2008). Variation in north american dart points and arrow points when one, or both, are present. Journal of Archaeological Science DOI: 10.1016/j.jas.2008.05.008

I’ve been extremely busy this last week. Busy with finals and organizing my graduation ceremonies to keep up with blogging. I finally got some time to catch up, take a deep breath and dive into the backlog of anthropology news. I’ve found some interesting things and will blog about it now that my life isn’t in overdrive.

For those interested in Mesoamerican linguistics, is this interactive exercise in learning how to read and speak in Mayan. I found it off of Digg and it comes from the “Cracking the Code” initiative which I mentioned in April. This exercise is based off of Stela 3, which is currently on found on a pyramid at the Maya site of Piedras Negras in northwestern Guatemala, more information about Stela 3 can be found here. In this excercise, you’ll see ancient Maya glyphs from Stela 3 on the left and to the right are the phonetic transcriptions of the glyph and sound bite (spoken by Barbara MacLeod). Accompanying notes help translate each glyph’s meaning. You’ll get a good taste of how the language sounds and flows, as well as some insight into hieroglyphic languages.

Here’s a screenshot of the interactive Flash application:

This post is intended as a follow-up to Kambiz’s review of the new dates for Toloquilla footprints. Frankly, it’s been very tiring to read and watch all the current and past powwows about the validity and veracity of pre-Clovis sites. Science is currently making a huge methodological mistake by assuming that the early presence of humans in the Americas has to be “proved.” In fact, we need to do the opposite:

1. let’s assume that all continents (America, Africa, Europe, Asia/Australasia) had modern humans (anatomically AND behaviorally) for at least 40-50,000 years ago;
2. then let’s try to demonstrate, using geography, archaeology, paleobiology, odontology, craniology, genetics, kinship systems, ethnology and linguistics and simulating different population scenarios, that all but one of these continents were in fact peopled from an adjacent continent earlier than the set date;
3. whichever continent turns out to be most resistant to this kind of multidisciplinary experiment will be the one from which humans originally radiated to all other places.

Right now, hypothesis 1 cannot be rejected for any of the continents, including America. And it’s not the matter of whether Tom Dillehay mixed up the strata in Monte Verde or Toloquilla footprints may not be 40,000 years old. Clovis-I proponents (as well as the new wave of 16,000-YBP-proponents) should understand that “pre-Clovis” is first of all not found in Siberia/East Asia, and that they need pre-Clovis sites in America in order to make “the peopling of the Americas” empirically demonstrable (Dziebel, G. V. 2000. The Test of a Null Hypothesis for the Origin of American Indians //Current Research in the Pleistocene 17: 125-127. Corvallis, OR: Center for the Study of the First Americans). Once convincing lithic and paleobiologial evidence is presented to show that humans indeed peopled the Americas, then we can move on. As of now, scholars are methodologically confused, hence all the irrational fights around pre-Clovis sites.

It’s true that archaeological finds earlier than 12,000 YBP have been slow in coming in the Americas. Notably, some of the most interesting ones indicate human presence vicariously: scat in Oregon, footprints in Mexico, skin flakes in Pendejo Cave. There are several reasons for this paucity:

1. Looking for the traces of human activity, we apply the standards of the European Paleolithic, thus assuming ad hoc that these standards are universal and will turn up legitimate finds in Africa, Australia, Asia and America. But what if pre-Clovis in the Americas was an adaptation based mostly on soft, perishable technologies? What if humans didn’t utilize stone tools that much? According to Alan Bryant, only 20% of tools collected from a modern tribe are lithic; the rest is bone, fiber, wood. These tools will never be highly visible in the archaeological record;
2. Population size and density were very low;
3. Methodological confusion referred to above regarding what has to be proved and what has to be assumed;
4. Ongoing biases against America as an old continent and the legacy of the conquest. In Transcaucasia, for example, the Azeris and the Armenians have been having land disputes for centuries; not surprisingly, the scholars on both sides have been trying to justify their respective governments’ current land claims by portraying the other party as a “recent” immigrant into the disputed area. By the same token, the colonization of the Americas naturally led to the suppressed estimates of the native populations’ age. And let’s not forget that we’d decided that America was a “new” world long before scientific method has prevailed in the descriptions of nature and culture. America as the New World, i.e. the world not mentioned in the Bible, is a relic of our pre-scientific worldview, and its short Clovis-I chronology is a local survival of the original world short chronology presented in the Bible. As of now, after decades of search, there’s no scientific evidence that indicates that America is a recently populated continent. Only a perverted logic would require a small group of “dissidents” to prove that America is old.

The new dates for the Toloquilla footprints at 40,000 YBP are fully consistent with the fact that Siberia hasn’t furnished the necessary evidence to demonstrate the origin of the earliest American lithic assemblages outside of the Americas. It means that the roots of Clovis, Nenana and other incipient early American archaeological cultures are in America, all the way back to 40-50,000 YBP, unless convincingly demonstrated otherwise.

The peopling of the Americas is one of my favorite subjects in anthropology. Lately, we’ve seen a whole slew of studies that focus on this topic but through a genetic lens, the most impactful of which indicates that people began migrating to the Americas roughly 16,000 years ago.

But there are some inconsistencies with this date, especially the 325 foot-like prints found in Valsequillo Basin’s Toloquilla rock quarry in Mexico. These footprints were within a soft, damp volcanic ash along a lakeshore shortly after a volcanic eruption. This type of volcanic tuff is known as the Xalnene. Samples of the Xalnene tuff were sent off to the Berkeley Geochronology Center for argon-argon and paleomagnetic dating. The results, published in this 2005 Nature study, “Age of Mexican ash with alleged ‘footprints’,” indicated the ash layer to be 1.3 million years old, making many wonder as to whether the indentations were even made by humans.

The team that initially found the prints have revisited the dating of the Xalnene tuff at Toloquilla. They say that the ‘dating of the ash is complicated by the fact that an eruption occurred underwater.’ The team reanalyzed the tuff by optically stimulated luminescence (OSL), a method that requires sampling deep within the tuff and in complete darkness. The samples are then irradiated with an atomic reactor and when ultraviolet light is shone onto the irradiated samples, the resulting fluorescence reveals how long it has been since the rock was last exposed to sunlight—or volcanic heat.

The results of the OSL redating were shared at last week’s meeting of the American Geophysical Union in Florida. Right below the ash, the sediments date to 70,000 and 100,000 years old. The sediments above, date to 9,000 to 40,000 years old. With this time range, it is possible to confer the OSL dates with carbon-14. The team did just that, radio-carbon dating the ages of shells in the sediments above and below the ash layer. The dates of all three layers therefore suggest the footprints were made about 40,000 years ago.

This date indicates humans were in the Americas 25,000 years before the coalescence dates from the most recent genetic studies, and 27,000 years before the Clovis culture. So it begs one to ask if the foot prints are even made by humans? The team scanned the foot prints with a laser scanner and constructed images to compare to footprints made by volunteers trotting on a beach in the United Kingdom.

Ultimately, this study challenges argon-argon and paleomagnetic dating. Paul Renne, of the University of California, Berkeley’s Geochronology Center and Rafael Suárez of the Museo Nacional de Historia Natural y Antropología in Montevideo, Uruguay both are critical… they wonder why there isn’t an archaeological record for 27,000 years.

Renne, P.R., Feinberg, J.M., Waters, M.R., Arroyo-Cabrales, J., Ochoa-Castillo, P., Perez-Campa, M., Knight, K.B. (2005). Geochronology: Age of Mexican ash with alleged ‘footprints’. Nature, 438(7068), E7-E8. DOI: 10.1038/nature04425

John Hawks blogged about a very real threat to the rich caves at Pinnacle Point near Mossel Bay, South Africa. See the run off from the Pinnacle Point Golf and Country Club is leaking into the caves and will affect the soil chemistry and dating. The problems are outlined in more depth in this news bit, published in the latest issue of Science, “Runoff Threatens Early Human Site.”

The caves at Pinnacle Point are pretty remarkable sites. Just this past year we read how important they are in a Nature paper, which outlined early humans harvested food from the sea, employed complex bladelet tools and used red pigments in symbolic behavior 164,000 years ago. This research behind this paper, “Early human use of marine resources and pigment in South Africa during the Middle Pleistocene,” was lead by Curtis Marean, pictured to the right.

Kris Hirst, of archaeology.about.com put up an informative breakdown on one of the caves at Pinnacle Point, PP13B.

“The oldest level, dated by OSL to 164,000 years ago, includes both Levallois and bladelet (Howiesons Poort-like) technologies, and 57 pieces of pigment (red ochre). Ten of the pieces were definitely used (ground or scraped). The faunal assemblage is limited to shellfish, collected primarily from nearby tidal pools.

If the 164,000 year old date proves correct, Pinnacle Point represents the oldest known use of shellfish and an early use of ochre. Most interesting are the bladelet technologies–Howiesons Poort are dated to ca 70,000 years old; the Pinnacle Point assemblage is not Howiesons Poort, but shares some technological characteristics. All of these features indicate a sophisticated level of human behaviors thought until recently to have been associated with the Upper Paleolithic.”

A judge recently declined to protect the archaeological site. I hope the $2.5 million grant from the National Science Foundation’s Human Origins program that Marean secured will factor in some level of conservation effort, or emergency recovery before anymore damage is done.

Koenig, R. (2008). ARCHAEOLOGY: Runoff Threatens Early Human Site. Science, 320(5881), 1273a-1273a. DOI: 10.1126/science.320.5881.1273a

On Primatology.net, I just blogged about some unethical marketing tactics by Palabea.com that I want you to be aware of. Palabea is a startup social networking site with something like 50,000 users. There are some press reports circulating the wires promising Palabea will provide users with an opportunity to talk with “Albert,” a cyber chimp who has a Facebook profile. They are using the “Albert, the CyberChimp” fanbase to leverage growth in their site and generate revenue.

In that post, I address how the principle investigator, John Marlowe is fake. I also talk about how the institutions and publications are also fake. A founder of Palabea is the registered owner of CyberChimps.org, the online platform of the Cyber Chimp spin machine. Furthermore, the photos of “Albert” are doctored images of Ayumu, a real chimp, who is studied to understand primate cognition. Here are two examples:

I have no interest in slamming down Palabea. But I do not want misleading marketing to affect the public’s understanding of primatology. There is some honest primate cognition research out there, experiments that explore non-human language capabilities. This sort of hyped up fake stuff jeopardizes the scientific process and the integrity of primatology; it needs to be regulated… Palabea’s marketing will confuse the public by establishing fake institutions, projects, individuals, and “information.” I really don’t want this misinformation to spread to the mainstream press.

In order to prevent this poor attempt at viral marketing from spreading further, I’ve submitted my Primatology.net post to Digg. Please digg this news up and let others know about it.

One other way to help out is to add Albert the CyberChimp as a friend on Facebook and report the fake profile. I would do it myself, but “Albert” banned me from being his friend after I published the Primatology.net post! It is against Facebook’s Terms of Service (under the User Conduct section) to have fake profiles, and Albert’s is no-where-close to real.

“In addition, you agree not to use the Service or the Site to: … impersonate any person or entity, or falsely state or otherwise misrepresent yourself, your age or your affiliation with any person or entity;”

A new paper in the journal Antiquity interprets the remains of 34 found buried in the village of Talheim, in south-west of Germany as evidence that Neolithic men fought to secure women. The paper is titled, “Isotopic signatures and hereditary traits: snapshot of a Neolithic community in Germany.”

The remains were excavated in the 1980s and dated by carbon-14 to be 7,000 years old. The majority had been killed by a blow to the left side of the head. This suggests most of the victims were bound and executed, probably with a stone axe. The other remains that show signs of arrow-wounds from behind, as if the victims had tried to flee.

Using isotopic analysis, the authors were able to determine the different origins of the people. The three isotopic (strontium, oxygen and carbon) signatures indicated there are distinct groups of people in the burial. The isotope signatures also correlate with the hereditary dental traits of each group.

One group, with isotope signatures derived from upland areas, includes two men, which as I understand it are two of the attackers that died. Another group, the local group, includes many local children among the adult male remains. But there were no adult women, suggesting they had been selectively taken alive at the time of the massacre. The researchers conclude the absence of local females indicates that they were spared execution and captured instead which may have indeed been the primary motivation for the attack.

The basis of this paper supports a common concept in sexual selection, where the limited reproductive capacity of females compared to males drives male–male competition. Males, the less limited sex, compete aggressively among themselves for access to the limiting sex. Lead author, Alex Bentley summarizes,

“Our analysis points to the local women being regarded as somehow special and were therefore kept alive.”

What do you think about the conclusions?

PNAS has just published a back and forth discussion between John Skoyles and Deborah Rogers and Paul Ehrlich. John Skoyles expressed beef with the paper Deborah Rogers and Paul Ehrlich recently put out. The jog your memories, Roger and Ehrlich wrote, “Natural selection and cultural rates of change.” I covered that paper in a February post, raising some questions.

I was not alone in my criticisms, Skoyles also had a set. In his letter, “Natural selection does not explain cultural rates of change,” he wonders two things. First, Skolyes addresses whether or not Rogers and Ehrlich established enough of an argument to inferring that natural selection was at play in how canoes design changed. Secondly, Skoyles takes a shot at how Rogers and Ehrlich use the term cultural evolution. Cultural evolution can be used analogous to cultural change or it can be under the principles of natural selection.

Rogers and Ehrlich defended their work in their response, “Reply to Skoyles: Natural selection does appear to explain some cultural rates of change.” Their response is pretty conservative. They write, “although it does not prove that natural selection was at work, it certainly supports that inference.” I still don’t fully see how differences in the rates of change in frequencies of various cultural traits over time infers natural selection, especially when people are the selectors. It seems like another level of selection is at play.

On that note, the University of British Columbia put out a press release on the work of Liane Gabora, who is making a computer model that will piece together the process by which human culture evolves. She’s made some comments that are directly tangential to the discussion between Skoyles, Rogers, and Ehrlich. She says,

“For one thing, artifacts do not change solely through random, ‘mutation-like’ processes. Humans innovate strategically and intuitively, taking advantage of the ability to group items that go together, like mortar and pestle, or use analogies…

…The underlying mechanisms by which culture evolves are superficially similar yet profoundly different from those through which living things evolve. A symptom of this profound difference is that biological evolution prohibits inheritance of acquired characteristics.”

Skoyles, J.R. (2008). Natural selection does not explain cultural rates of change. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 105(22), E27-E27. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0802586105

Rogers, D.S., Ehrlich, P.R. (2008). Reply to Skoyles: Natural selection does appear to explain some cultural rates of change. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 105(22), E28-E28. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0803570105