Anthropology.net

If you don’t follow or subscribe to our sister blog Primatology.net, I want to make you aware of an anthropological post I just put up on the newly published orangutan genome. Click here to read about some of the findings, but to wet your appetite, it involves the estimated divergence of the two orangutan species at 400,000 years ago, the relative stabilitiy of their genomes compared to human and chimpanzee, and lastly the shared similarities between human and orang, and not orang and chimp.

Sumatran Orangutan (Pongo abelii)

For quick access to the primary sources, the full citations to the papers discussed are below this read more link.

Read the rest of this entry »

Map of Grape Domestication

I got some archaeobotany for you to start your weekend off right with — a new open access study in PNAS announces a genome wide association of 8,000 years of grape domestication, spanning the Eastern Caucasus to Western Europe. Lead author Sean Myles of Cornell University wrote in the abstract,

“support a geographical origin of grape domestication in the Near East. Grape growing and winemaking then expanded westward toward Europe, but the degree to which local wild sylvestris from Western Europe contributed genetically to Western European viniferacultivars remains a contentious issue. Our results … all support a model in which modern Western European cultivars experienced introgression from local wildsylvestris.”

In related wine archaeology, earlier this week, UCLA archaeologist Hans Barnard published the findings of a 6,000 year old uncorked wine barrel in Armenia. The barrel was discovered in the Areni-1 cave near the Iranian border. The results were published in the Journal of Archaeological Science, but you can read a bit more about it here.

Hope you found these two tidbits as interesting as I did. Cheers to a good weekend!

Myles, S., Boyko, A., Owens, C., Brown, P., Grassi, F., Aradhya, M., Prins, B., Reynolds, A., Chia, J., Ware, D., Bustamante, C., & Buckler, E. (2011). Genetic structure and domestication history of the grape Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1009363108

Another video to share with you, this time the trailer to Werner Herzog‘s Cave of Forgotten Dreams. This is a 3D film shot inside Chauvet-Pont-d’Arc Cave in southern France. These are some of the oldest cave paintings known. The film seems to have good reviews on IMDB and is set to be released on March 25th, 2011 in the UK.

What do you think?

Inspired by the Dodecad Ancestry Project by Dienekes Pontikos and Eurogenes Ancestry Project by David Wesolowski, Zack Ajmal (with the help of Razib Khan) has started the Harappa Ancestry Project. Zack explains the motivation behind this project,

“It is a project to analyze (autosomal) genetic data of participants of South Asian origin for the purpose of providing detailed ancestry information. So the focus of the project is on South Asians: Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and Sri Lankans.

The project will collect 23andme raw genetic data from participants to better understand the ancestry relationships of different South Asian ethnicities.

I have named it after Harappa, an archaeological site of the Indus Valley Civilization in Punjab, Pakistan.”

There was a nice deal running on 23andme about a month ago for their ancestry & health kit that worked out to be $160 for 1 year. I hopped on board, got my kit, spat in the tube and sent it off. It is currently being analyzed. My ancestry is one of the populations Zack is looking for — so I’ll be sending my data to him. I can’t wait.

If you have had a 23andme genetic testing, you should consider participating in this project. It looks to be very interesting.

This seems really fascinating.

Razib has done rounded up a nice review of Dienekes‘ Dodecad data to answer some prelim questions on the genetic of Ethiopia. Ethiopia is a very interesting cultural and paleontological area of the world. I had the pleasure of being a part of a field group several years ago and had a wonderful time. A good summary of the ADMIXTURE analysis done by Dienekes, reorganized by Razib, is shown below:

I don’t have much to add to his post, other than to hand you over there and to check it out. You may also wanna read more about the Dodecad Ancestry Project in this Nature News piece.

Do you believe in evolution?  Forty percent of Americans don’t (more on that later).  A student asked me this question on day one of the first introductory anthropology class I ever taught.  I believe that any difficult-to-answer question is a good one, and this one baffled me with its simplicity.

Short answer: yes, I believe in evolution…but why was a modern college student in the United States asking me this?  The student was intelligent, curious, and friendly.  If anyone was naive, it was me for not expecting the question.  He’d simply been shaped by our culture to see evolution as a divisive matter of public opinion – and he wanted to know where I stood on the issue.  It would have been easiest to take his question at face value, answer yes, and move on to discussing the details of human evolution.  But, like so many idealistic teachers, I grasped the “teachable moment” and ran with it (annoying the many students who already believed in evolution and wanted to get into the good stuff):

• Science is an empirical method that (at least ideally) is not based on belief.  All scientific conclusions are tentative.  Scientific knowledge is evidence-based, ever-growing, and self-correcting since new or contrary evidence can be discovered at any time.  When asked what evidence would convince him that evolution was false, biologist J.B.S. Haldane remarked “Fossil rabbits in the Precambrian.”  Like all scientifically-testable ideas, evolution is falsifiable.  If rabbit fossils are found in Precambrian layers of rock (millions of years too early), I’ll be happy to explore alternative theories!
• There is also a major difference between the general and scientific uses of the word theory.  In everyday usage, theory means a guess or speculation.  In science, a hypothesis does not rise to the level of a theory without overwhelming evidence and explanatory power.  Anti-evolutionists dismiss evolution as “just a theory,” but scientifically-speaking, this is a gracious compliment.  Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection has survived 150 years of rigorous challenges in every field from geology to genetics.
• Evolution may be politically, culturally, and emotionally controversial.  In the 19th Century, Darwin’s “dangerous idea” caused spiritual crises for many.  However, in the 21st Century, biological evolution is not scientifically controversial.  It’s an understatement to say that the evidence for evolution is overwhelming.
• Finally, scientific inquiry has revealed other phenomena that I “believe” in.  I believe in a round earth, though my senses tell me it’s flat.  I believe that the earth orbits the sun, not the other way around.  I believe in sexual reproduction, not the stork theory of baby origins.  I believe in particles like quarks, though I can’t see them directly.  And I do believe in evolution.

That’s a pretty long preamble, and one that most of my students had heard in middle school or high school biology classes.  Still, I thought “Do you believe in evolution?” deserved a thoughtful answer.  These days, I might answer “Yes.  Please read Jerry Coyne‘s Why Evolution is True” to save time.  After that, we were able to move into the actual evidence for evolution, all the cool hominid skulls, etc.

Assuming that Precambrian rabbits, or comparable out-of-place fossils, aren’t found anytime soon, the reality of evolution has been scientifically proven beyond a reasonable doubt.  So, it’s no longer necessary for anthropologists to summarize the scientific method before discussing human evolution, right?  Unfortunately, in the United States, evolution is still presented as if it was a political issue and, in some cases, it does enter the political arena (e.g., school board decisions).  Informed people can have differences of opinion over political issues.  In fact, one thing that ties Americans together is the core belief that political issues should be decided democratically.  But evolution is a scientific theory, subject to empirical evidence, not public opinion…and that may be a good thing.

Gallup poll results from December 17, 2010 show that 40% of Americans believe that “God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so.”  Make no mistake, the last 10,000 years have been a fascinating part of the human story – but they’re not the whole story!  Poll results like these make me feel both discouraged and reflective.  How is this possible in a developed country with educational opportunities like ours?  What can I do to better explain the human past (ALL of it)?  There is some truth to the argument that more and better education would help.  The same Gallup poll divides anti-evolution respondents by education level:

Gallup Poll on Evolution vs. Education

So education helps, but education alone cannot overcome the cultural/religious impediments that prevent more widespread understanding of biological evolution in the U.S.  Undoubtedly, many of the survey respondents took biology or anthropology as part of their education and still hold the belief that humans are new and separate from all other forms of animal life.  One hopeful sign is that 40% is the lowest percentage of “creationists” in Gallup’s history of asking this question – down from a high of 47% in 1993 and 1999.  There will probably always be a percentage of the population that is beyond the reach of evidence, especially with an emotionally-charged subject like evolution (after all, no one is freaking out about teaching gravity in public schools).

For cultural and historical reasons too numerous to go into here, Americans are not yet ready to embrace Darwin’s grand view of life – a view that has become so much grander and more elegant over the last 150 years.  It might take another 150 years for the culture to catch up with the science.  Those of us who love the science of humanity will keep doing our part to share the evidence for evolution and its role in shaping our species.

Do you believe in evolution?

Neandertals have long been touted as a species with “hyperarctic” adaptations. Their stout proportions and shortened distal limb segments are often explained to conserve heat. Similarly, the Neandertal cranium is traditionally said to be cold adapted. An article released on December 22^nd in the Journal of Human Evolution challenges these traditional notions, specifically those about Neandertal nasal adaptations.

The Neandertal nasal apparatus has conventionally been cited as cold adapted mainly because of the enlarged sinuses. The authors of this article, among them Chris Stringer, cite evidence that larger sinuses are not in fact typical of cold weather mammalian species.

Through observation of human populations and studies on other mammals, cold weather is more highly correlated with smaller sinuses. That is, animals from more northerly locations typically have smaller sinus cavities. As an example taken from lab studies, rats raised in colder conditions also show smaller sinus cavities.

But are Neandertal sinuses even large, as is typically maintained? The authors of this paper argue that there is nothing large about them. Through examination of Neandertal remains, the sizes of the frontal and maxillary sinuses actually fell within the range of Homo sapiens from temperate climates.

The Forbes’ Quarry Neandertal (left) and H. sapiens skulls. Frontal sinus in purple, maxillary sinus in red. Photo from Rae et al., 2010.

This study is very suggestive that Neandertal nasal anatomy is not due to cold weather adaptation. To be cold weather adapted, the sinuses would be smaller and not larger, as many anthropologists have maintained since the first remains were discovered. Not only are the sinuses not small, they are not large- which speaks to a larger problem. How many other basic assumptions do we take as fact just because they have been around for so long?

If not cold weather, what could have caused the differences in facial anatomy between H. neanderthalensis and H. sapiens? The authors of this paper do not offer many answers, but offer a couple of possibilities. Differences in masticatory stress (utilizing teeth as a tool, for example), or genetic drift are two potential reasons discussed.

This paper may be taking another step in overturning traditional understanding of Neandertals as a cold weather species. Generations of anthropologists have passed knowing that Neandertals differed in facial anatomy due to cold weather adaptation, unsubstantiated by data.

Rae, T.C., Koppe, T., Stringer, C.B. (2010).  The Neanderthal face is not cold adapted.  The Journal of Human Evolution. Article in Press.

Image via Wikipedia

A Homo floresiensis premolar will be drilled, and DNA extracted, according to a Nature News piece passed on by Razib, John Hawks, and Dienekes. This is not the first attempt at extracting hobbit DNA, the news article explains,

“Five years ago, two teams, one from ACAD and one from the Max Planck Institute of Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, attempted to recover DNA from another H. floresiensis tooth excavated in 2003. Both attempts failed.

Now, a team led by Christina Adler, a geneticist at ACAD, has found that standard sampling procedures could be responsible for the failure to get DNA from the hobbit and some other ancient specimens.”

I’ve been out of the loop for a couple years and have lost track on the advances made in ancient DNA studies. I do remember there was a big hub-bub regarding contamination from excavators and degradation of DNA. Maybe some of the new techniques overcomes these problems.

The lead, Adler, recently published a paper on the advances, titled, “Survival and recovery of DNA from ancient teeth and bones.” Again, I don’t have time to read it and give you a summary because I am studying for my board exams. It seems like the paper advises extracting DNA from the cementum of teeth which has way more DNA than the normal source of aDNA, dentin… But if you’re curious about ancient DNA sequencing, this should be an interesting read.

Nonetheless, it should be very interesting to see what comes from this attempt. I wish the team the best of luck and eagerly await the results.

A quick bit of linguistic anthropology to round off your Wednesday afternoon. Greek linguist, Ioanna Sitaridou, located a population of people in Northeastern Turkish villages, near the Black Sea (or Pontus), speaking the Romeyka dialect of ancient Greek. Ancient Greek has not been in use for thousands of years, so a finding like this can give us a bit of insight into how the language sounded. The reason the language has survived is a bit confusing to me, she explains it is due to religion,

The Romeyka speakers are devout Muslims and were therefore exempt from the large-scale population exchange between Greece and Turkey that took place in 1923, she said.

She’s been mapping the grammatical structures and variations in use as well as recording audio and video of the villagers telling stories. The ultimate aim of the research is to explain how Pontic Greek evolved. According to this source, she gave a talk last year about here research. Did anyone attend? What was it like? Like most of the world’s dialects, they are at risk of extinction especially due to emigration from Trabzon and the Turkish majority.

Hat tip to Stephen Chrisomalis, who blogged about this on Glossographia. You can read more about this language re-discovery at the Independent…