Anthropology.net

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…

I love anthropology and, since you’re taking the time to read this, you probably don’t hate it.  When we love something, we want to share our enthusiasm for it with others.  Sharing my passion for the scientific study of humankind has been a driving goal for the past 15 years.  As a result, I ask everyone – anthropologists, students, teachers, writers – for their opinion about what makes good popular science writing.

A few years ago, I had an opportunity to ask that question of Jane Goodall, one of the most successful popularizers of anthropology and primatology ever (please see www.janegoodall.org for more about her life and work).  Dr. Goodall graciously offered three pieces of advice:

1. Get your facts straight.
2. Listen.  Present all sides, particularly of contentious issues.
3. Tell a good story.

The first point about getting your facts straight is obviously important in all forms of communication.  It’s especially critical when writing for the internet, where anyone can say anything.  Bloggers, in particular, are responsible for policing themselves, and each other.  Factual accuracy is the basis of trust.  If an author makes frequent errors, you have good reason to question their trustworthiness and conclusions.  On the other hand, an author with a record of straight facts has earned some level of trust.  I hope to gradually earn your trust with future posts here.  If I get a fact wrong, I know I’m going to hear about it in the comments section – that’s a strong incentive to get it right!

Regarding the second point, I can think of at least two practical reasons that writers should be good listeners:

1. Listening helps ensure fairness in addition to accuracy.
2. Understanding opposing viewpoints helps a writer construct stronger arguments.  Of course, not all contentious issues have equal and opposite sides (evolution vs. intelligent design, for example), but many do, and anthropological authors gain credibility by covering multiple perspectives.  This doesn’t mean that we can’t “tell it like it is,” we just have to show that we’ve evaluated other possibilities before forming conclusions.
3. The third point, telling a good story, requires a special kind of person able to bridge the gap between fact and narrative.  Scientific researchers are often not the best communicators of their own research.  We’re fascinated by our own sub-specialties and research questions, but intimidated by the task of translating it into something that anyone else might possibly want to read.  People like Carl Sagan, Stephen Jay Gould, Jared Diamond, and Jane Goodall excelled as both scholars and popularizers – which is why I was excited to ask Dr. Goodall for her advice, and so thankful for her answers.

These are just some ideas off the top of my head.  What about you?  What would you add to these three points?  Whether you’re a writer, a reader, or both, what do you look for in good popular anthropological (and general science) writing?

I’m happy to introduce another guest blogger to the Anthropology.net family, Jay Fancher. Jay is a recent graduate of Washington State University’s Ph.D. program in anthropology. His doctoral dissertation is an ethnoarchaeological analysis of animal bone assemblages produced by modern Aka and Bofi foragers of the Central African Republic. This research explores how observing hunting and butchering behaviors of modern African pygmies can help us better interpret animal bones discarded by prehistoric hunter-gatherers.

He also holds B.A. degrees in Theatre Arts (Film) and Anthropology at Humboldt State University and an M.A. in Anthropology at Washington State University. Jay’s professional interests include: hunter-gatherer studies, evolutionary ecology, zooarchaeology, vertebrate taphonomy, and sharing anthropological perspectives with non-specialists and the general public. In addition to academic writing, he is also currently interested in the popularization and politicization of science.

My undergraduate focus was in zooarchaeology, and I knew of the doctorate program at WSU back when I was exploring future options. I know it is an excellent program. Suffice to say, I’m very enthusiastic about having Jay on board. I believe he’ll offer a great mix of topics and look forward to reading his posts.

I’m excited to introduce, Matthew Magnani, as a new guest blogger here at Anthropology.net. Matthew is now a junior at Binghamton University, with interests in biological anthropology and archaeology. He plans to pursue a PhD in archaeology or paleoanthropology, revolving in some way around Neandertals.

This last summer he did field work at an Upper Paleolithic site in France, and will return this year to continue excavating. In May and June of this upcoming year also plans on conducting research at the American Museum of Natural History, working with fossil casts from Zhoukoudian. Matthew also writes for Pipedream, Binghamton University’s main paper, as an opinion columnist. Lastly he has recently founded an undergraduate research journal, which is due to come out for the first time this spring.

Matthew seems like an outstanding budding academic and I look forward to the voice and insight he provides to Anthropology.net. Be sure to keep an eye out for his upcoming posts!

The American Anthropological Association (AAA) is a strange organization. I often wonder how it operates, but then I realize I don’t even wanna know because there’s often no real logic to their madness. Take into consideration these cases:

Case 1: About 4 years ago the AAA decided to close access to almost all their journals, directly against the Federal Research Publication Access Act. This spurned a lot of discussion regarding ownership of publication, author’s rights and the AAA’s motivation behind it. Most of us wondered how could the AAA, who didn’t fund the research, produce the data, and write up the analysis, close off the information to the world? Here was a bit of my outcry over the matter, archived by afarensis in June of 2006,

“The hypocrisy that surrounds the AAA when it begged for anthropologists to protest to the US government to not cut funding but their recent resiliency to not give back is outstanding in this matter. I don’t get why the AAA won’t open their eyes and see that this form of publishing helps to ensure long-term access to scholarly articles. Unlike articles that are licensed in traditional article databases, like their closed AnthroSource, public libraries and institutions of the people (like universities) can create local copies and repositories of these resources. People, by working together to make repositories of open access literature, can ensure continued access to these scholarly publications into the distant future.”

From this idiocy, a nice project spun off but hasn’t in my opinion been a viable alternative. Unfortunate.

Case 2: Once upon a time the AAA was an organization that scoffed at social media and Web 2.0, specifically blogs. It’s hard to dig up exact references since many links have died… But I do distinctly remember them issuing a statement saying blogs are useless forms of communication, with a little wink wink nod nod to this said blog.

When they redesigned their homepage a couple of years ago, they deployed several blogs. They even sent me emails asking for link exchange. Sure people are allowed to change their minds, but I wondered what’s with the change in heart? Suffice to say, I didn’t add them back.

Case 3: The AAA just had their annual meeting and yes, everyone’s reporting that decided to do away with science. It’s true, Peter Wood of the Chronicle, writes on them actively deciding to nix science out of the Mission Statement. I’ve copied and pasted the presumed edits to the mission statement he provided below the read more link.  Another related decision made is defining the role of AAA, away from ethnography and scientific experiments and observations to anecdotal and subjective journalism… Again without ethnology and ethnography — what is cultural anthropology?

Alice Dreger of Fetishes I Don’t Get, writes on some of the anger she experienced from other scientific anthropologists,

“The primatologist Sarah Hrdy (a member of the National Academy of Sciences) wrote, “My reaction is one of dismay-actually, even more visceral and stronger than that-albeit not surprise.” The scientists I talked to want to know (as I do) exactly what is the AAA Executive Board’s justification for all this. They are confused about whether they should bother to fight, or just give up and depart the AAA already.”

The Society for Anthropological Sciences, a division of the AAA, objected to these changes, I am sure most do. I don’t understand why this change is being done. In a time and age when we need to strive to objective data to make informed decisions, this organization is moving away from that, and consciously. Why?

Could it because anthropology is largely not considered a science outside of the discipline — so the AAA chooses embrace what most think of us?

Again it is hard to get into the minds of such a dysfunctional organization. They seem to never make the right decision. An analogy that works in my mind is the AAA is to anthropologists as the Clerical Theocracy of the Islamic Republic are to Iranian population. As many governments help make decisions to move forward and advance their society, both the AAA and the mullahs regress their organizations further back in time.

Read the rest of this entry »

Well, I feel somewhat vindicated. Remember the post where I criticized hominin cut marks from over 3 million years ago? Others have also had an eye of suspicion and have published their concerns in PNAS this week.

I was wrong in considering the croc marking differential to the cut marks. But I was not wrong in thinking they author of the original paper made the wrong conclusions. The authors of this new paper raise up an even more logical explanation, and carried out a more thorough analysis. Here’s part of their argument from the abstract,

“The Dikika research group focused its analysis on the morphology of the marks in question but failed to demonstrate, through recovery of similarly marked in situ fossils, the exact provenience of the published fossils, and failed to note occurrences of random striae on the cortices of the published fossils (incurred through incidental movement of the defleshed specimens across and/or within their abrasive encasing sediments). The occurrence of such random striae (sometimes called collectively “trampling” damage) on the two fossils provide the configurational context for rejection of the claimed butchery marks. The earliest best evidence for hominin butchery thus remains at 2.6 to 2.5 Ma, presumably associated with more derived species than A. afarensis.”

Trampling vs. Cut Marks (The image in A is courtesy of R. Blasco and J. Rosell. The images in B, D, and F are modified from McPherron et al.)

Looking back at the comment thread, I got a lot of flak. Aside from being wrong about the croc markings, I won’t deny that my post was inflammatory and incited a lot of the response. But many who know just a bit about the fossil and archaeological record, may find it extraordinary to believe australopithecines were using stone tools to extract food from flesh and bone from ‘indirect’ evidence. Of more concern was the lack of exhaustive exploration into other possibilities.

I remember as an anthropology undergrad one of my professors designed a hands-on experiment for us. If memory serves me correctly, this was for a zooarchaeology class. She acquired some beef bones from the local butcher and gave us stone tools. We were instructed to extract the marrow from the bones. We hammered the afternoon away.

Part of our assignment was to use different techniques and tools. We could cut, saw, abrade, chisel, etc. After the mess was done we compared our extractions from prehistoric samples. This comparative approach allowed use to systematically compare how we modified the bone to how possibly prehistoric individuals modified bone.

The authors of the current PNAS paper did something similar. The hypothesized that trampling could have created similar modifications as seen on the 3.39 million year old Dikika bones. And what did they do? Well they got some bone and experimentally setup some trampling experiments. As one would expect, cut marks would have a \/ shaped incision. Incidentally, the bones from Dikika show a \_/ flat bottom morphology. The authors write,

“Ninety-six percent of experimental trampling grooves display a broad-based, open cross-section with the aforementioned shape, versus just 4% of experimental grooves inflicted by simple (i.e., unmodified) stone flakes used to cut meat from bones. In addition, curvy and sinuous groove trajectories characterize nearly 70% of experimental trampling marks,compared with just 10% of experimental cut marks created with simple flakes (11). Together, these experimental results provide a robust actualistic context to evaluate illustrated marks F, G, H2,and I on DK-55–3 as high-probability trampling damage and not stone tool cut or percussion marks…”

I wonder what happened to good science?

What happened to the scientific method?

Did we not learn how to set up experiments and carry out analysis?

How can a paper make all the way into Nature and not exhaust all the possibilities?

These are not rhetorical questions. I am seriously asking it. I honestly feel that there is something rife in paleoanthropological studies lately. I must sound like a broken record to say yet again, too often are papers published in haste and for fortune and glory… All which compromise the validity & ethical responsibility of the science.

Domínguez-Rodrigo M, Pickering TR, & Bunn HT (2010). Configurational approach to identifying the earliest hominin butchers. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America PMID: 21078985

Several views of a human jawbone and molars found in a Chinese cave.

National Geographic is running news that Erik Trinkhaus and others have published the findings of the oldest modern human outside of Africa, specifically in China. Not much is given on the locality and specifics of the fossil, but the article does state that the fossil mandible fragment and teeth are 60,000 years older than any other modern human fossil. That leads to some curious questions of interbreeding with other Homo species and curiosities about the presence of modern humans that did not ‘act’ modern… In other words, the archaeological record isn’t quite on the same page.

Hawks hasn’t posted on the paper and find yet, but he is quoted in the National Geographic article saying the mandible dimensions are within range of both Neandertals and modern human. Unsurprisingly, the Out of Africa theory is challenged. I still don’t know what to think of it all, the chin does look very robust.

The PNAS article is not yet published at the time of the National Geographic writing and me blogging this post. Seems like people are still jumping publication embargoes. I shouldn’t have to call out what a cheap shot it is to have sensationalist news getting out before the first hand reports do. I guess things will never change. So until I get my hands on the real paper, I’m just calling it as others are reporting it.

Both Razib and Dienekes have reviewed a paper on the population genetics of Central Asian peoples. To make sense of Central Asian ancestry has been challenging, to say the least. In particular, the problem is compounded by nomadic peoples without much written history nor uncovered archaeological record.

Ethnicities of Central Asia

What we do have are the linguistic, physical features, and now because of this paper some of the allelic traits of the different populations. Razib has pointed out some strange phrases from the paper that make me wonder about how much background on Central Asian cultures, migrations and phenotypes the authors really knew before publishing. There is really no confusion that more western Central Asian people look more western while more eastern Central Asian people look eastern, with some but little, shared traits.  But I don’t put total blame on them for not doing their research, it’s hard to make sense of the ancestry of Central Asia.

Razib has done a nice job explaining some of the previous cultures. Do check his post out. But a quick introduction for those who want to know, the steppes of Central Asia during the pre-Islamic periods, were predominated by sedentary Iranian peoples like the Sogdians, Chorasmians, Scythians, and Alans. Between the 5th-10th century, Turkic peoples moved from the east through the west. Turkic is a name given to a group of people who share a linguistic ancestry, Altaic. Some of these groups you may know are the Uyghur and Tatars. The Hun are possibly Turkic. Another major Altaic, but not Turkic, migration occurred with the Mongols during the 13th century.

There has been some confusion regarding the folklore and historical record compared to the phenotypic and linguistic differences on just how impactful the Turkic replacement been. The western historical record indicates that the invading Hun of the 5th centuries and Mongols later made a significant impact, wiping out large portions of ancient ethnic Iranian populations. This understanding is both true and false. There is evidence of entire cities being destroyed. At the same time, in texts like Ghenghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World, you read statements on how the Altaic invasions was much less of a violent horde and was demonized because of their comparative weakness in written language. In other words, the captors of the Mongolian Empire wrote their account of their overlords.

To this day, this has lead to “nationalistic” and ethnic conflicts and confusion, as evidenced by the June massacres of the Uzbeks by Kyrgyz groups regarding ancestry and heritage. The general consensus is the Tajik and Uzbeks were once a majority Indo-European-speaking population that were assimilated by migrating Turkic-speaking groups. The divergence from Middle Iranian to Turkic and New Persian was predominantly the result of an elite dominance process, as Razib points out.

So, just to which ancestry do Tajiks and Uzbeks, who share a Indo-Iranian language family and the Karakalpaks, Kazaks, and Turkmen, who share a Turkic language family belong to? With a 1,500 year shared regional history but linguistic separation, is it possible to flesh out if Turkic people invaded the West and replaced populations, or was there a back flow of Westerners who moved east?

Geographic-Linguistic-Genetic location of 26 Central Asian populations

The results from the paper out in The European Journal of Human Genetics, indicate that,

“The analysis of genetic variation reveals that Central Asian diversity is mainly shaped by linguistic affiliation, with Turkic-speaking populations forming a cluster more closely related to East-Asian populations and Indo-Iranian speakers forming a cluster closer to Western Eurasians. “

STRUCTURE plot on Central Asian Populations

Dieneke points out how the STRUCTURE plot (above) lets us see the that eastern Hazaras and Uyghurs have remained relatively separate from the more western peoples. Furthermore, supplemented by Razib’s comment,

“The eastern Turkic groups seem the least impacted by the Iranian substrate which was dominant before the arrival of Turks, while the Turcoman group sampled from western Uzbekistan seems to have been the most genetically “Iranized.”

…the correspondence analysis shows the Turkic groups exhibited a linear distribution toward East Asia, while the Iranian ones were placed where you’d expect them geographically.”

The data from this paper indicates that Turkic people did in fact move west, especially the men, since there’s high degree of  genetic homogeneity on the Y chromosomal lineage. They remained more genetic and linguistically unified and did not assimilate into Iranian genetics and languages. Additionally, contrary to popular belief, they did not absorb large populations of Iranians as their genetics and languages remained more separate than integrate.

A disclaimer, this is but one paper, with limitations on the number allelic markers that would make fine population differences more noticeable. But we can still see large trends regarding the ancestry of Central Asian people.

Martínez-Cruz B, Vitalis R, Ségurel L, Austerlitz F, Georges M, Théry S, Quintana-Murci L, Hegay T, Aldashev A, Nasyrova F, & Heyer E (2010). In the heartland of Eurasia: the multilocus genetic landscape of Central Asian populations. European journal of human genetics : EJHG PMID: 20823912

Related Articles

• Major study of Central Asian populations (Martinez-Cruz et al. 2010) (dienekes.blogspot.com)