It has been a while since I blogged anything on paleoanthropology. But once I saw John Hawks‘ post where he pointed out Elizabeth Culotta’s news piece in the latest Science on a new hominin femur from Galili, Ethiopia, I was excited. The femur was presented by Bence Viola to the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, which [...]
Entries from October 2008
October 31, 2008
On The Genetic Similarities & Linguistic Diversity Of The People From The Bismarck Archipelago & Bougainville, Melanesia
A new paper in the open access journal PLoS Genetics reports on a comparison of genetic, geographic, and linguistic patterns of the diverse populations found on the major islands of the Bismarck Archipelago and Bougainville, Melanesia. The paper is titled, “Genetic and Linguistic Coevolution in Northern Island Melanesia.” I think that Simon Greenhill of HENRY [...]
October 30, 2008
The Y-Chromosomal Footprint Of Phoenicians Throughout The Mediterranean
The Phoenician civilization is understood to be the dominant maritime trading culture between the period of 1550 BC to 300 BC. While they were based out of the Levant, their city-states were spread all across the Mediterranean. The golden age of Phoenician culture and seapower is usually placed around 1200–800 BC. When Cyrus the Great [...]
October 30, 2008
The Mitochondrial Lineage Of Ötzi Is Not Like Other Europeans
Last month I was excited to share some research about the chemical composition of Ötzi, the 5,000 year old Tyrolean Iceman that has captured my attention for quite sometime. Today, I’m even more excited to share that the complete mitochondrial genome of Ötzi has been sequenced using a combination of PCR amplification and 454 sequencing. [...]
October 29, 2008
Are Rapidly Evolving Human Promoter Regions Due To Higher Rates Of Neutral Substitution Or Positive Selection?
Nature Genetics just published a brief correspondence on the evolution of promoter regions in the human genome. The basis of this study relies on the observation that 46% of promoter regions in the human genome have a higher number of nucleotide substitutions than corresponding introns. The authors don’t make the distinction that positive selection, relaxed [...]
October 18, 2008
A Possible Domestication Of Dogs During The Aurignacian: 31,700 Years Ago
Both Dienkes and John Hawks have shared news about the latest research on the domestication of dogs. The researchers analyze 117 skulls of prehistoric canids from sites in Belgium, Ukraine and Russia. They conclude that a 31,700 year old canid from Belgium is ‘clearly different from the recent wolves, resembling most closely the prehistoric dogs.’
The [...]
October 17, 2008
Neandertal Broad Noses Due To Lower Face Prognathism
Bergmann’s rule is an observation that body mass of endotherms increases with altitude and colder climate. Neandertals fit this rule, their barrel chests and wide hips, indicate they had large bodies, and thus smaller surface area relative to their body mass. This feature made them comparatively inefficient at radiating their body heat off into the [...]
October 16, 2008
Agriculture Reduced The Periodicity & Amplitude Of Nutritional Stress
Razib has responded to my disagreement with his statement that any given hunter-gatherer infant is far more likely to reach reproductive age than any given offspring of peasants. And he’s confident with his standing. I’ve done some reviewing of the literature and I still think that the probability that a child of an agriculturalist will [...]
October 16, 2008
Does Being Altruistic Or Being A “Bad-Boy” May Make You More Attractive?
Dienekes shared the abstract to a paper that seems to completely contradict an earlier study. It is pretty evident from the title of newer study, “Do humans prefer altruistic mates? Testing a link between sexual selection and altruism towards non-relatives,” what the authors tested. And they confirm that there is a linkage between the propensity [...]
