Anthropology.net

I’m posting this as further food for thought regarding my earlier post concerning rates of mtDNA diversification in humans with regard to the types of climate in which they live. In this linked paper, it’s elephant seals rather than humans who provide the focus of the research, with a look at how changing climate can cause marine mammal populations to move to and and away from habitats over long time-spans, in this case, 7,000 years. Here’s the abstract, whilst the entire paper is freely accessible at PLoS Genetics:

Abstract:

Environmental change drives demographic and evolutionary processes that determine diversity within and among species. Tracking these processes during periods of change reveals mechanisms for the establishment of populations and provides predictive data on response to potential future impacts, including those caused by anthropogenic climate change. Here we show how a highly mobile marine species responded to the gain and loss of new breeding habitat. Southern elephant seal, Mirounga leonina, remains were found along the Victoria Land Coast (VLC) in the Ross Sea, Antarctica, 2,500 km from the nearest extant breeding site on Macquarie Island (MQ). This habitat was released after retreat of the grounded ice sheet in the Ross Sea Embayment 7,500–8,000 cal YBP, and is within the range of modern foraging excursions from the MQ colony.

Using ancient mtDNA and coalescent models, we tracked the population dynamics of the now extinct VLC colony and the connectivity between this and extant breeding sites. We found a clear expansion signal in the VLC population ~8,000 YBP, followed by directional migration away from VLC and the loss of diversity at ~1,000 YBP, when sea ice is thought to have expanded. Our data suggest that VLC seals came initially from MQ and that some returned there once the VLC habitat was lost, ~7,000 years later. We track the founder-extinction dynamics of a population from inception to extinction in the context of Holocene climate change and present evidence that an unexpectedly diverse, differentiated breeding population was founded from a distant source population soon after habitat became available.

Although it’s not possible to make direct comparisons with ancient seal populations and hominids, I think this paper emphasizes how populations need not only to be able to move in response to pulses of climate change in order to avoid extinction due to loss of habitat, but also just how quickly a high degree of diversity can develop within a population of mammals relatively soon after occupying a new habitat.  The idea of seals discovering new shoreline habitats – and returning to old ones – in the course of long distance foraging excursions is reminiscent of how early humans gradually found their way around the world, both by littoral and inland travel. Like the seals in Antarctica, there would have been times when humans too returned to previous habitats as they were pushed and pulled along with other fauna and flora into different refugia as cooling and warming phases waxed and waned. Moreover, I wonder from when, and to what extent human expansions and incursions were mediated by a curiosity to explore the unknown, rather than merely scouring the land for the next meal and somewhere to bed down for the night.

Reference: de Bruyn M, Hall BL, Chauke LF, Baroni C, Koch PL, et al. (2009) Rapid Response of a Marine Mammal Species to Holocene Climate and Habitat Change. PLoS Genet 5(7): e1000554. doi:10.1371/journal.pgen.1000554

Hat tip to Luis, who pointed me towards a website by the name of Las Piedras, on which there are numerous images of stones recovered from fields in southern Spain – although there is no accompanying text, the word is that the author of the site collected a large number of pebbles whilst out field-walking. Her finds exhibit what at first appears to be some sort of mineral inclusion, as all the rocks, which are light in colour, are marked by lines and shapes which in many cases, appear as if they could have been made by human hand, but look as if they could be natural.

There is a distinct linearity in many of the pebbles – wavy lines, straight lines and crosses, for example, whilst still others hint vaguely at what might be human or animal shapes, even a boat, rather in the style of North African rock art panels, or the Iberian Neolithic, whilst yet still others bear shapes which hint at some sort of ancient alphabetic or numeric script.

But rather than dwell on what they might or might not be, I prefer to leave it to readers to decide for themselves – my knowledge of geology is scant, and mineralogy even less, and it may well be the case that someone out there will have an immediate explanation that points to a natural origin for these dark markings. Alternatively someone might have seen a similar type of rock art from elsewhere in the world and offer a clue that might confirm their artificiality – obviously it’s difficult to make any conclusive decision with only images on a web page to make a call, but as far as I understand it, the author has spoken to various people she considered capable of offering further clues, but has thus far come up blank – one opinion was that the markings were caused by ploughing, but that seems unlikely to me.

The site is divided into various sections, with one gallery, Las Piedras giving a glimpse of some of the stones and the context in which they were found, whilst the second, Los Lugares gives a map of the general area, with highlighted areas which link to images of stones found in those places.

The final section, Los Signos, takes us through a series of images where many of the stones appear to have designs or abstract figures, amongst which are to be found some of the more compelling markings – although as I mentioned earlier, I have no real way of confirming artefactual authenticity, any idea of how old such humanly modified rocks might be, or indeed whether they just appear to be artificial to eyes that automatically make graphic assumptions based on past visual experience.

The author professes to be just as puzzled by these stones as myself and Luis, and I’m told she has posted the images online with the express purpose of discovering more about them via an online response from someone out there who might know one way or the other. At the very least, there are many fascinating images that might just spark the curiosity, so feel free to head on over and check them out.

This looks like a pretty interesting paper, postulating that mtDNA diversity is lower in populations residing in cooler climates – it’s free to access here, and in the meantime, here’s the abstract:

There is an ongoing discussion in the literature on whether human mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) evolves neutrally. There have been previous claims for natural selection on human mtDNA based on an excess of non-synonymous mutations and higher evolutionary persistence of specific mitochondrial mutations in Arctic populations. However, these findings were not supported by the reanalysis of larger datasets.

Using a geographical framework, we perform the first direct test of the relative extent to which climate and past demography have shaped the current spatial distribution of mtDNA sequences worldwide. We show that populations living in colder environments have lower mitochondrial diversity and that the genetic differentiation between pairs of populations correlates with difference in temperature.

These associations were unique to mtDNA; we could not find a similar pattern in any other genetic marker. We were able to identify two correlated non-synonymous point mutations in the ND3 and ATP6 genes characterized by a clear association with temperature, which appear to be plausible targets of natural selection producing the association with climate. The same mutations have been previously shown to be associated with variation in mitochondrial pH and calcium dynamics. Our results indicate that natural selection mediated by climate has contributed to shape the current distribution of mtDNA.

posted via Yann Klimentidis’ Weblog.

Reference: Climate shaped the worldwide distribution of human mitochondrial DNA sequence variation François Balloux, Lori-Jayne Lawson Handley, Thibaut Jombart, Hua Liu and Andrea Manica.

Published online before print July 8, 2009, doi: 10.1098/rspb.2009.0752

As readers of my posts here and at remote central will doubtless be aware, I tend not to write too much in the way of analysing genetic data as reported in the academic journals, but as I’m aware that there is a keen interest in this aspect of anthropology, I’ll probably adopt a policy of posting links and abstracts to recent papers I’d consider to be of interest to readers here. As time goes by it’s quite possible I’ll enter into more discussion, especially where more of the original text is available to comment upon. But for the time being, I’ll be following the examples of Mathilda’s Anthropology Blog and Dieneke’s Anthropology Blog, wherein such items are posted but not always commented upon in depth by the authors of the blogs, with most of the comment often coming from readers.

This time round, I’ve selected three posts that have appeared recently at The Spittoon, who make a point of lending an air of accessibility  to the general reader who might have difficulty extracting some of the more salient points from the data. In these three posts, only the linked abstracts are freely available, although in the future I’ll endeavour to include more in the way of papers that are free to access, from resources such as PLoS ONE.

Here are my choices from The Spittoon this time round:

People of the Veil: New Study Reveals Clues to Origins of the Nomadic Tuaregs, by AnneH, the abstract of which reads:

The Tuaregs are a semi-nomadic pastoralist people of northwest Africa. Their origins are still a matter of debate due to the scarcity of genetic and historical data. Here we report the first data on the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) genetic characterization of a Tuareg sample from Fezzan (Libyan Sahara). A total of 129 individuals from two villages in the Acacus region were genetically analysed. Both the hypervariable regions and the coding region of mtDNA were investigated. Phylogeographic investigation was carried out in order to reconstruct human migratory shifts in central Sahara, and to shed light on the origin of the Libyan Tuaregs.

Our results clearly show low genetic diversity in the sample, possibly due to genetic drift and founder effect associated with the separation of Libyan Tuaregs from an ancestral population. Furthermore, the maternal genetic pool of the Libyan Tuaregs is characterized by a major „European” component shared with the Berbers that could be traced to the Iberian Peninsula, as well as a minor ‘south Saharan’ contribution possibly linked to both Eastern African and Near Eastern populations.

Reference: First Genetic Insight into Libyan Tuaregs: A Maternal Perspective, Claudio  Ottoni et al, Annals of Human Genetics, Volume 73 Issue 4, Pages 438 – 448  Published Online: 20 May 2009.

Next up, we have another post, also by AnneH, under the title ‘Ancient DNA Analysis Reveals Family Ties in Ruins of Pompeii’ , and for which this is the abstract:

Archaeological, anthropological and pathological data suggest that thirteen skeletons found in a house at the Pompeii archaeological site, dated to 79 A.D., belong to one family. To verify this and to identify the relationships between these individuals, we analyzed DNA extracted from bone specimens. Specifically, hypervariable segment 1 (HVS1) of the human mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) control region was amplified in two overlapping polymerase chain reactions and the sequences were compared to the revised Cambridge Reference Sequence. As independent controls, other polymorphic sites in HVS1, HVS2 and in the coding region were analyzed. We also amplified some short tandem repeats of the thirteen specimens. This study revealed that six of the thirteen individuals are indeed closely related.

Reference: Ancient DNA and Family Relationships in a Pompeian House, by Giovanni  Di Bernardo et al, Annals of Human Genetics Volume 73 Issue 4, Pages 429 – 437  Published Online: 28 May 2009.

And to round off this post, ErinC discusses Malaria Has Driven Evolution In Humans And Baboons Alike, and here’s the abstract from Nature:

The ecology, behaviour and genetics of our closest living relatives, the nonhuman primates, should help us to understand the evolution of our own lineage. Although a large amount of data has been amassed on primate ecology and behaviour, much less is known about the functional and evolutionary genetic aspects of primate biology, especially in wild primates. As a result, even in well-studied populations in which nongenetic factors that influence adaptively important characteristics have been identified, we have almost no understanding of the underlying genetic basis for such traits. Here, we report on the functional consequences of genetic variation at the malaria-related FY (DARC) gene in a well-studied population of yellow baboons (Papio cynocephalus) living in Amboseli National Park in Kenya. FY codes for a chemokine receptor normally expressed on the erythrocyte surface that is the known entry point for the malarial parasite Plasmodium vivax1, 2, 3.

We identified variation in the cis-regulatory region of the baboon FY gene that was associated with phenotypic variation in susceptibility to Hepatocystis, a malaria-like pathogen that is common in baboons4, 5. Genetic variation in this region also influenced gene expression in vivo in wild individuals, a result we confirmed using in vitro reporter gene assays. The patterns of genetic variation in and around this locus were also suggestive of non-neutral evolution, raising the possibility that the evolution of the FY cis-regulatory region in baboons has exhibited both mechanistic and selective parallels with the homologous region in humans6, 7, 8. Together, our results represent the first reported association and functional characterization linking genetic variation and a complex trait in a natural population of nonhuman primates.

Reference: Evolution of a Malaria Resistance Gene in Wild Primates, by Jenny Tung et al, Nature advance online publication 24 June 2009 | doi:10.1038/nature08149; Received 4 March 2009; Accepted 15 May 2009; Published online 24 June 2009

In a previous post, the hunting strategies of Neanderthals 125,000 years by were discussed, and in this post we’ll be taking a look at a paper published in the Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, by Dr. Ana Belén Marín Arroyo, partly because she too cites an interest in discerning why Neanderthals became extinct, and partly because the paper is fully accessible, thus enabling a greater breadth of discussion than just the abstract alone would permit:

Abstract:

By defining the area of economic influence associated with a given archaeological site, valuable information can be obtained about human occupation patterns, whilst differentiation of the surrounding biotopes facilitates research into the adaptive relationship between subsistence strategy and resource availability. Despite the inherent potential of this type of analysis, its development comes up against important conceptual and methodological limitations.

The present article analyses the possibility of using optimal foraging theory, as representative of the hunting behaviour of hunter–gatherer groups, in the accurate objective estimation of the catchment areas of a site. The obtained results are applied to the study of the reasons behind the geographical site specialisations observed in eastern Cantabria, Spain during the Magdalenian.

The focus of this paper is on the post-Last Glacial Maximum era known as the Magdalenian, defined in this paper as 14–10 kya BP, many thousands of years after the last traces of European Neanderthals appear in the fossil or artefactual record, but in common with Professor Bent Sørensen’s paper, account is taken of the energy expended by hunters in pursuit of specific animals in distinct ecological niches, balanced against the amount of calorific energy that could be physically transported back to a centralised camp, where the non-hunting contingent of the forager communities would be waiting. As far as I can tell, however, this paper takes no account of other resources from hunted animals that would have been of calorific benefit to these Magdalenian people, such as hides and fur, sinew and other body parts, which amongst other considerations, would have been essential to keep them clothed in the day, and warm at night.

But as a study based purely on how Magdalenian people might have serviced various carnivorous elements of their diet, in this case red deer and ibex whose butchered remains appear in the archaeological record, this paper is very well worth reading, especially as rather than merely impose imagined hunting tactics on extinct people living in the mountainous regions of Palaeolithic Eastern Cantabria, northern Iberia, ethnographic studies involving the modern-day Hadza people of Tanzania have also been employed. Obviously, the two scenarios cannot be direct parallels of one another, particularly when the different climatic conditions are factored in, but we are at least afforded potential insights into hunting strategies, butchery and transport of meat. Key to this study is the Central Place Foraging Prey Choice Model, which is discussed here:

Based on the principles established in the Central Place Foraging Patch Choice Model ((Orians and Pearson, 1979) and (Cannon, 2003) formulated his Central Place Foraging Prey Choice Model, which aimed to solve the problem of which species should be hunted and in what order, and which anatomical parts should be transported to base camps to maximise the output: input ratios of energy, usually measured usually in Kcal. Thus, in addition to a logical preference for species providing a higher caloric yield in relation to calories expended in their acquisition, which usually results in larger catchment areas for large prey, the model can also predict aspects of the butchery process at kill sites, taking into account the type of prey obtained and the distance from the base camp. The greater the distance to the kill site, the more intense the butchery will be, in order to maximise the energetic contribution of the load being transported.

In order to assess how profitable it is to invest time in butchering an animal, Cannon (2003) defines a theoretical processing function that relates the additional time used to butcher the carcass once the prey is in an appropriate condition for its transport (i.e., after handling time) with the energy that can be transported to the base camp. In all cases, it is assumed that a physical limit for transport exists where the animal cannot be carried away whole, and therefore the more useful parts must be chosen.

This function begins with an initial value, equal to the maximum energy that can be transported without any butchering, decreasing monotonically afterwards, because the butchery process will commence with the most productive parts, those that offer the greatest amount of meat for the least processing time ([Bunn et al., 1988], [Monahan, 1998], [O’Connell et al., 1988], [O’Connell et al., 1989] and [O’Connell et al., 1990]), and will finish with the high cost/low yield extraction of bone marrow. In the case of small prey, however, the processing function is reduced to a single point, equivalent to the total caloric yield of the animal, which can be carried whole to the camp. In summary, this is basically an up-date for ungulate-hunting of the model developed by Metcalfe and Barlow (1992) for nut-gathering.Bunn et al., 1988 H.T. Bunn, L.E. Bartram and E.M. Kroll, Variability in bone assemblage formation from Hadza hunting, scavenging, and carcass processing, Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 7 (4) (1988), pp. 412–457. Abstract | Article | PDF (6019 K) | View Record in Scopus | Cited By in Scopus (74)

As I mentioned earlier, I think this study would have benefited by at least referring to other energy benefits derived from prey animals such as maintenance of optimal body heat to further conserve energy in humans, but what I liked about this paper was the exploration of the bio-geographical context in which the Magdalenian hunters would have mounted their expeditions, with particular reference made to steepness of slopes, vegetation and tree cover, and calculations that would have determined over what distances it would have been more profitable to hunt ibex instead of red deer. Interesting too to note that there was probably a seasonal divide between coastal and mountain areas as the foragers of eastern Cantabria were at the mercy of the elements and the effect they took on the floral and faunal resources available to them at different times of the year.

Mention too is made of territoriality, and there must have been occasions when hunting groups from different areas came into contact, and even conflict with one another, a point that is crucial for understanding the pressures brought to bear on the existing Neanderthal population of Europe, when they for the first time began to experience direct and increasing competition for their resources at the time of the Middle to Upper Palaeolithic transition around 40 kya BP , a topic which will be the subject of a forthcoming post regarding competitive exclusion.

On a final note, I’d like to point readers towards the references at the end of this paper, some of which are also free to access – I imagine for example, that The Molecular Dissection of mtDNA Haplogroup H Confirms That the Franco-Cantabrian Glacial Refuge Was a Major Source for the European Gene Pool (PDF) byAchilli et al 2004,  would be a case in point.

Reference: The Use of Optimal Foraging Theory to Estimate Late Glacial Site Catchment Areas from a Central Place: The Case of eastern Cantabria, Spain by Ana Belén Marín Arroyo, Leverhulme Centre for Human Evolutionary Studies, University of Cambridge, The Henry Wellcome Building, Fitzwilliam Street, CB2 1QH Cambridge, United Kingdom.

Journal of Anthropological Archaeology
Volume 28, Issue 1, March 2009, Pages 27-36,

doi:10.1016/j.jaa.2008.11.001

Here’s the introduction to the latest offering from TAC, as described by Rick Pettigrew:

In January of 1887 the Austria, one of the first Down-Easters built to compete with steel and steam, struck shore on Washington State’s Olympic Peninsula.  Her remains, scattered in the intertidal zone at Cape Alava, were recorded by field school participants under the direction of archaeologist Faith Haney.  This documentary – filmed in part by the students – illustrates the importance of foreshore shipwreck sites, tells of the adventures of a sea-going vessel, and takes the viewer on a melodious journey from the Pacific Coast of Washington State to the ports of Bath, Maine.

And here’s Part 1, made available by Faith Haney, who produced and directed the film, via the Lithic Creative Media YouTube portal:

To watch this very well made, informative and thoughtful production in its entirety just head over to the Archaeology Channel front page, and follow the links.

Cooking and Human Origins, Big Kangaroos, Little Dinosaurs | PRI’s The World: Science

Summer, has by fits and starts finally arrived, and for the park-dwelling communities of some Londoners, this means as I observed during a recent visit, that the green open spaces are now dotted here and there with the smouldering contents – or remains-  of disposable barbecue kits. But rather than complain about this unseemly blight on the parkscapes of the metropolis, it’s worth instead taking a look at exactly how long humanity’s culinary efforts have been sending smoke billowing forth into the atmosphere.

Harvard anthropologist Professor Richard Wrangham has recently published a book, ‘Catching Fire – How Cooking Made Us Human’, (NYT review) and although I haven’t read the contents, it appears he has plenty of interesting thoughts on how our archaic ancestors turned their hands to cooking their food, in one stroke increasing the calorific value of their menu, freeing up vast amounts of time for other activities including ground-breaking innovations such as lithic technology, as well as altering the way in which people began to interact with one another on a social basis.

However, as we’ll see later in this post, the advent of cooking and the abundance in certain eras and areas of fruits and plants that could supplement the human diet, were no guarantee of gastronomic pleasure, and there must have been many times when prehistoric humans wished they had retained an exclusively carnivorous menu, such were the grim prospects of some of the fare that might have been on offer. Moreover, the sweetness of a succulent berry that hides cyanide within, reminds us of the potential health hazards posed by unguardedly helping oneself to nature’s brimming basket, more of which later.

In the first link at PRI’s ‘The World Science’, we hear from Wrangham as he discusses how eating processed cooked meat for example greatly reduces the required digestion time – he cites the example of chimps who have to spend hours each day chewing plant foods and fruits just to maintain their daily regimen. They eat raw meat, but they spend a huge amount of time chewing it – in stark contrast to humans who tend to wolf down enough food for a whole days energy in a matter of minutes.

He describes how our mouths, teeth and digestive tracts are tiny compared to other primates, something he notes that came about at the time of Homo erectus, whose reduced features we can see in the fossil record – no flared ribs, smaller mouth, reduced dentition and masticatory processes. He compares the calorific value of a pound of raw steak and its cooked counterpart; they might weigh the same, but if the body is digesting something soft and further shredded or ground, the digestive energy consumption required is significantly less than needed for chomping one’s way through a raw steak – the prolonged chewing process alone would burn up many more calories than a few quick chews of the Palaeolithic equivalent of a hamburger. Although there is no evidence as yet in the guise of hearths for cooking beyond around 500, 000 years, Wrangham points to the Homo erectus remains going all the way back to 1.8 or 1.9 million years – this may seem a very advanced behaviour for such archaic humans, and the sudden appearance of this gracile form suggests that other factors besides cooking might account for this dramatic decline in hominid robusticity.

It probably helped too that cooked meat tastes a lot better than raw meat, and whether it was this factor that helped seal the deal into cooked meals from the Lower Palaeolithic onwards, rather than the energy gains derived from cookery isn’t known, but we can imagine then as now, the smell of food cooking as one approached camp in the evening, would have raised the spirits of even the earliest of our Homo erectus forebears, thus helping to forge bonds with the community and fostering ideas of the welcome smells of home, however temporary or seasonal those homes may have been.

Following his observations of chimpanzees as they went about their daily eating schedule, he noted how they sometimes add a leaf – dead or alive – to their occasional meals of fresh meat – which by all accounts they scoff down with gusto – and he believes the added leaf gives the slippery meat traction and thus making it easier for them to chew. As it is, they spend around 6 hours a day just chewing, and as these hours are interspersed with hour-long naps, that’s the equivalent of what used to be the normal eight hour day worked by employed modern humans.

As a brief aside, some might wonder whether all that progress, whereby we’ve evolved from spending 8 hours a day eating and napping to, one where billions of our species are obliged to work gruelling 8-16 hour days most days of the week, just to pay for food and shelter, was a good trade-off for humankind.

Wrangham proposes that males and females originally cooked their own food, but believes that opportunistic males worked out how they could exploit females, first by forcing them to cook for them, and then offering protection against other males who were similarly disinclined to cook for themselves – he contends, a female cooking food for herself and mate could deter would-be thieves by threatening retaliatory action when her man returned – presumably from hunting. I daresay there will be objections to this somewhat stereotypical depiction of gender divided labour, but Wrangham makes the point that wherever he’s encountered foraging tribes-people, and even those wherein women share a more egalitarian platform within a given society, it’s still invariably the women who get lumped not only with all the cooking, but the general cleaning chores as well.

There is a brief discussion as to how the origins of this arrangement may have begun, partly as a protection racket by males – if she feeds her man, he offers protection against other males who might have considered stealing her food for themselves, and so on.

In common with some theories of why bipedalism evolved is the notion that cooking freed up the human to invest a great deal more time in making stone tools, processing animal carcasses and hides, and probably more onerous tasks such as chopping and gathering fire-wood to fuel the fires on which the food was to be cooked – so we can see that although cooking may have freed up more time, much of that extra time was immediately consumed, because it was essential to spend many hours per Palaeo-day engaged in life’s many labours.

Before switching our attention to the woodlands of England and an ultimately fruitless quest to peer into the culinary past of our Mesolithic forebears, there’s just time to say it’s worth listening to the remaining items in the PRI podcast, as well of course to the other points raised by Wrangham that I haven’t mentioned here. There’s a reference to the 11,000 year-old granaries recently discovered in Jordan, and an interesting snippet on why dinosaurs may not have been as big as once thought.

In his PRI discussion, Wrangham made brief reference something termed the darker side of cooking, and although this next video feature probably isn’t precisely what he had in mind, some of images conjured within certainly makes me understand why Neanderthals for example – and climate notwithstanding – stuck to eating reindeer every day for thousands of years on end. As we see from this clip, which is at YouTube, and commented upon by weekend anthropologist and full-time TV comedian Harry Hill, it’s as well in this day and age to take with you a good packed lunch as a bare minimum, if you’re planning on spending any more than a few hours away from your normal food sources, as life in the wilds can soon become somewhat unappetising.

Despite the somewhat irreverent depiction of Ray Mears  – and his companion Gordon – in this clip, there are nevertheless a couple of things worth pointing out. We know for example that from at least the Bronze Age and probably earlier, hot rocks and heated stones were used in the preparation of food, a departure from the camp-fire derived spit-roast, kebabs and cinders that we might normally associate with prehistoric cookery.

The drying of fruit – as well as the drying of meat, (and even freezing) as mentioned in my earlier post on Neanderthals – and storage thereof, doubtless played significant roles in the Palaeolithic cuisine. Of note too was the basketry item in which the brown mush was prepared – as I’ll be noting in a forthcoming post, basketry is another overlooked technology that also played a huge part in our past, as indeed it does in the present, as illustrated by the Hopi kachina tradition.

But the final item on this post is something Professor Wrangham mentioned, in which he related how the origin of the word ‘companion’ is derived from the act of sharing bread with one or more other humans, or indeed their household pets, and even pigeons in the park.

image from Kibale Chimpanzee Project

Following hard on the heels of an excellent edition of Four Stone Hearth #70 which has been published over at Afarensis, comes news of the latest edition of Current Anthropology, for which a subscription is required.

• Table of Contents
• 411
  Anthropological Currents

  Citation-Full Text-PDF Version (112 kB)
• 413
  Current Applications

  Y. A. Orr

  Citation-Full Text-PDF Version (83 kB)
• Articles
  415
  Language, Asylum, and the National Order

  Jan Blommaert

  Abstract-Full Text-PDF Version (340 kB)
• 443
  “We Drew What We Imagined” Participatory Mapping, Performance, and the Arts of Landscape Making

  Bjørn Ingmunn Sletto

  Abstract-Full Text-PDF Version (1645 kB)
• 477
  Hybrid Bodyscapes: A Visual History of Yanesha Patterns of Cultural Change

  Fernando Santos‐Granero

  Abstract-Full Text-PDF Version (1452 kB)
• 513
  When Is Housing an Environmental Problem? Reforming Informality in Kathmandu

  Anne Rademacher

  Abstract-Full Text-PDF Version (284 kB)
• Reports
  535
  Maize and Sociopolitical Complexity in the Ayacucho Valley, Peru

  Brian Clifton Finucane

  Abstract-Full Text with Enhancements-PDF Version (543 kB)
• 547
  Nuvatukya’ovi, San Francisco Peaks: Balancing Western Economies with Native American Spiritualities

  Maria Glowacka, Dorothy Washburn, and Justin Richland

  Abstract-Full Text-PDF Version (205 kB)
• 563
  Moving beyond a Snapshot to Understand Changes in the Well‐Being of Native Amazonians: Panel Evidence (2002–2006) from Bolivia

  Ricardo Godoy, Victoria Reyes‐García, Clarence C. Gravlee, Tomás Huanca, William R. Leonard, Thomas W. McDade, Susan Tanner, and the TAPS Bolivia Study Team

  Abstract-Full Text-PDF Version (219 kB)

The table of contents listed above gives a good idea of how this particular issue is themed, and time permitting, I’ll add a note on one or two of the papers listed, which this time round have more of a contemporary focus as opposed to a prehistoric context. For example, this abstract from the paper  ‘Hybrid Bodyscapes: A Visual History of Yanesha Patterns of Cultural Change’ by Fernando Santos‐Granero, reads thus:

This paper examines cultural change and hybridity through a visual history of the alterations in dress, ornamentation, and body treatment experienced by the Yanesha of Peruvian Amazonia in postcolonial times. Such transformations often appear to be fluctuations between tradition and modernity explained alternatively as instances of “acculturation” or as expressions of “invented traditions” and “postmodern identity politics.” By focusing mainly on external factors, these theoretical approaches pay insufficient attention to the role of native perceptions and practices in promoting cultural change. Approaches that do take into consideration these perceptions, such as those centered on the notions of “passing” and “mimesis,” do not apply to this particular case.

Adopting a Yanesha perspective as a departure point, I argue that what appear to be expressions of acculturative processes are the result of a long‐standing indigenous openness to the Other—particularly the white and mestizo Others—and the native conviction that the Self is possible only through the incorporation of the Other. Such incorporation always finds expression in bodily transformations, hybrid bodyscapes that change throughout time according to the shifting relationships between Self and Other.

Check this link for a fuller listing which includes several reviewed books.

Reference: Current Anthropology, Volume 50, Number 4 (August 2009)

image: Yanesha tribespeople from Crónica Viva