Anthropology.net

Yesterday, my father emailed me a link to the Iranian Genome Project that caught my eye. Ironically, Razib over at Gene Expression also highlighted this project in a recent post. Much like the intentions Harappa & Dodecad ancestry projects, of which I’ve participated in by submitting my 23andme data, the Iranian Genome Project aims to enlighten Iranian heritage and health. As an Iranian American who follows population genetics regularly, I am very keen on intersection of these two topics.

I’ll be following the project, but honestly I don’t have high hopes. I would love to be proven wrong. It seems lofty, using a lot of high yield buzzwords. My first impression was if this nothing more than a CV booster … Especially since it hasn’t been updated since last September. I guess it can’t be completely an empty shell because they have an impressive member on research team, Pardis Sabeti.

You can learn more about this project by checking out their site, watching the following video and following them on Twitter: @irangenes. If you want, you can participate in the project by filling out this survey.

We’ve covered the mitochondrial genome of the Denisova individual 2 years ago, back in March 2010. For those not familiar with the Denisova hominin, this specimen represents an archaic human species present at least 41,000 years ago – coexisting with Neandertals and modern humans in the Altai Mountains of Siberia. The species is represented by a tooth and phalange.

A draft of the genome was released shortly afterwards in December, 2010. Today, after 30-fold coverage of the genome using Illumina GAIIx sequencing platform, the complete genome was released. It is free to download and use on Amazon Web Services… weighing in at 160gb.  I can imagine a lot of interesting comparisons can be made with this dataset and am happy the researchers made it available to the public.  There’s a caveat though, you can use the data but however agree that you cannot publish your findings until the researchers at Max Planck first get a stab at it.

I am now two-thirds done with my psychiatry rotation. It has been a fascinating experience so far. I’ve seen the gamut of psychiatric cases, depressed people who cut their necks through and through, to florid schizophrenics worried that the Hiroshima bomb will go off any moment. The treatment of psychiatric conditions like depression or schizophrenia often revolves around regulating monoamine neurotransmitters like serotonin, norepinephrine and dopamine.

Dopamine is an important neurotransmitter that functions in a lot of behaviors and reactions, such as movement, lactation, aggression, fear, etc. In diseases like Parkinson, dopamine levels lower and movement becomes uncontrolled. In other diseases like schizophrenia, either dopamine levels are high or response to dopamine is higher, and paranoia & hallucinations manifest. Treating schizophrenia involves blocking dopamine receptors. As you can imagine, a common side effect of antipsychotics is movement disorders — or Parkinsonism.

So why am I on this neuropsychiatric kick on an anthropology blog? Our cultural and behavioral predisopostions ultimately boil down to chemicals in our brain interacting and stimulating other areas. One of the most important functions of dopamine is in the reward system of the brain, an area called the nucleus accumbens that primes pleasurable behavior to repeat, such as sex, eating, and drugs.

In this video, Robert Sapolsky of Stanford Neurology makes the distinction between how dopamine levels rise in the anticipation of pleasure and not as a response to pleasure. I especially like that comment he made regarding reward and religion, “There’s no monkey out there willing to lever press because St. Peter is down the line.”

Cover via Amazon

June 12^th is the 30^th anniversary of Raiders of the Lost Ark and Indiana Jones remains the world’s most famous archaeologist.  How many real-life archaeologists are household names?  In honor of Indy‘s birthday, I’m posting a revised excerpt of an essay I wrote for the Society for American Archaeology’s Archaeology for the Public website several years ago (see  this link for the complete version):

In 1981 Raiders of the Lost Ark set the tone for virtually every action blockbuster that has been produced since, and it is easily the most well-known fictional film with archaeological content.  Its sequels Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984), Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008) were also very commercially successful.  Despite the differences I’ve outlined (and there are many more), a large segment of the general public associates archaeology with the now legendary character of Indiana Jones.  When people find out you’re an archaeologist, their first question is often “Is it really like Indiana Jones?”  As a result, Indy gets a lot of criticism from professionals who get tired of explaining that archaeology is rewarding, is often full of adventure and excitement, but it’s not very much like Indiana Jones.  But archaeologists and educators can use the popularity of the Indiana Jones movies to their advantage.  These films, by depicting what archaeology isn’t, provide an entertaining opportunity for teachers and students to make comparisons and discuss what archaeology is.

Many of us, especially children and adolescents, are first exposed to the field of archaeology by viewing fictional adventurers like Indiana Jones.  Personally, I first heard the word archaeology when I saw Raiders of the Lost Ark as a kid.  While sitting in that darkened theater, I was so impressed by Indy’s intelligence and determination that I resolved to go to the school library and read more about this mysterious thing called archaeology.  Despite my initial disappointment that archaeologists didn’t carry bullwhips, I quickly became fascinated with real archaeology.  That was 30 years ago and I’m still fascinated.  The Indy movies don’t accurately reflect archaeology, but their popularity has the potential to spark public interest in finding out more about archaeology – the facts behind the fiction.  The archaeologists of tomorrow might very well be sitting at home or in class watching Raiders of the Lost Ark today.  In that sense, Indiana Jones is a hero to movie-goers, educators, and archaeologists alike.

So I argued then, and still believe, that Indiana Jones can help popularize real archaeology.  Evidently, the Archaeological Institute of America shares this belief since Harrison Ford is a member of their governing board.  What do you think?  Is Indiana Jones good for archaeology?  Please share your thoughts and memories of Raiders of the Lost Ark in the comments.

- Jay Fancher

By Jay Fancher

Oil transformed Dubai in the 1970s. The city now boasts the world's tallest building, giant malls, and some two million residents, who depend on desalinated seawater and air-conditioning—and thus on cheap energy—to live in the Arabian desert. (Credit: Jens Neumann/Edgar Rodtmann/NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC)

To paraphrase Carl Sagan, science has a way of deflating human conceits.  Anthropology reveals that humans are special – just not for many of the reasons proposed throughout our history.  Thanks to biology, astronomy, and geology, we now know that:

• Modern humans are one species among many, not the pinnacle of all creation.

• We’re not the center of the universe; our planet orbits a fairly average star.

• We haven’t been around since the beginning of time – far from it.

On a 4.5-billion-year-old planet, with a 3.5-billion-year history of life, anatomically-modern Homo sapiens only go back about 200,000 years.  We’re brand new, a tiny blip on the geologic time scale!  Despite this, a new National Geographic article explores the possibility that the “Anthropocene” may have already begun.  Here is a brief excerpt:

Enter the Anthropocene—Age of Man It’s a new name for a new geologic epoch—one defined by our own massive impact on the planet. That mark will endure in the geologic record long after our cities have crumbled…Probably the most obvious way humans are altering the planet is by building cities, which are essentially vast stretches of man-made materials—steel, glass, concrete, and brick. But it turns out most cities are not good candidates for long-term preservation, for the simple reason that they’re built on land, and on land the forces of erosion tend to win out over those of sedimentation.

The author of the article, Elizabeth Kolbert, graciously agreed to an interview with Anthropology.net.  The text of our discussion, conducted via e-mail, follows:

Fancher: The greatest strength of anthropology is its all-encompassing view of humanity.  We’re proud of this breadth, frequently describing our work as the study of all people, in all times, and all places.  But, as you state in your article, stratigraphers take an extremely long view – the entire 4.5-billion-year history of Earth.  How can students of the human past benefit from this geological perspective?

Kolbert: I’m not sure I have a good answer for this.  As all anthropologists know, we are a young species.  So human history doesn’t tell us much about earth history.  What is particularly alarming about a lot of recent discoveries in geology is that you have to go way, way back – i.e., tens of millions of years – to find analogues for some of the things we are doing today, like, for example, acidifying the oceans.

Fancher: I was surprised to read that our proudest technological achievements might not be easy to recognize in the geological record.  It’s humbling to think that urban centers will ultimately be as fleeting in the geological record as short-term hunter-gatherer camp sites are in the archaeological record.  Despite our human desire to leave huge, everlasting monuments, is it better not to be noticed in the geological record?

Kolbert: Well, it’s not clear that we will be noticed, because it’s not clear there’s going to be anything around to notice us.  But we will be noticeable.  And certainly from the standpoint of the other organisms on earth, it would be a lot better if our impact were not so obvious.

Fancher: Some issues of scientific classification appear to have little practical relevance.  For example, the debate over whether Pluto qualifies as a planet or not.  In your article, Dutch chemist Paul Crutzen concludes that the value of the Anthropocene classification goes far beyond textbook revisions.  Can you elaborate on the meaning of the Anthropocene?

Kolbert: Officially, we live in the Holocene, or “wholly recent” epoch.  The Anthropocene translates basically as the man-made epoch.  It’s an acknowledgment that humans, rather than what are sometimes quaintly called “the great forces of nature,” have become the driving force on the planet.

Fancher: How might recognition of a geological epoch called the Anthropocene influence human behavior?

Kolbert: I end the piece with a quote from Paul Crutzen, the Nobelist who coined the term.  Crutzen says, “What I hope is that the term ‘Anthropocene’ will be a warning to the world.”  I think what he means by that is: we are now in the driver’s seat.  Unfortunately, we don’t really know how to operate the vehicle.  So we’d better think about what we’re doing very carefully.

Many thanks to Elizabeth Kolbert for writing such a thought-provoking article, and for agreeing to this interview.  Enter the Anthropocene – Age of Man is part of National Geographic magazine’s year-long coverage of the global human population reaching 7 billion.

What do you think about the possibility of a geological epoch called the Anthropocene?

On the lighter side of anthropology…  The Onion takes a satirical look at what outrageously pseudoscientific research into human origins might look like.  Their headline reads:

“Anthropologists Trace Human Origins Back To One Large Goat”
‘Wait, That Can’t Be Right,’ Scientists Say”

In addition to being funny, the article, by contrast, helps show the strict standards of evidence, interdisciplinary collaboration, and peer-review process of actual paleoanthropological research.  Also, our close relationship with other primates is highlighted when one fake Onion researcher observes that “…humans don’t look like goats.”  In other words, don’t expect any presentations on “goat people” at professional anthropological conferences anytime soon.  Enjoy!

- Jay Fancher

Anonymous is not a force to be reckoned with. Scientologists have felt their wrath for sometime, Sarah Palin did as well, as have MasterCard & Visa post-Wikileaks fiasco. I’m sure Aaron Barr is now realizing the impact Anon has. Aaron Barr is head of an internet security company, HBGary Federal. His company was contracted by Bank of America as a counter Wikileaks impending release of cables that will incriminate BofA.

Anon vs. Scientology

Ars Technica has written up a 3 page account of the situation, which is absolutely fascinating. The tl;dr seems like its comes straight out of a B movie. Aaron’s ingenious plan was to ‘infiltrate’ Anon…He joined IRC channels in an attempt to sabotage Anon and get names of those in the organization.

His problems started here. Aaron failed to realize Anon is not a true organization. At its core, Anon is an anti-organization, as anarchist as you can be, with no leadership and an ever-changing membership. Aside from infiltrating the chat groups, Aaron attempted to flesh out members of Anon via a guilt-by-association method using something akin to 6-degrees-of-separation and social media. He revealed himself to the group, claiming to research them.

What ended up completely backfired on Aaron. Anon was pissed. In traditional hacking manner, they hacked his company’s site and replaced the front page. They also managed to get a hold of at least 44,000 of his emails and release them via torrents. They deleted 1 TB of his backups, wiped his devices and to top it all of, got a hold of his Twitter and LinkedIn accounts where they posted messages as him. For a company that was in the midst of a sale, Anon effectively ruined that.

This leads me to a open up a discussion regarding the Anthropology of Hackers, a timely piece that appeared in the Atlantic yesterday by NYU’s Gabriella Coleman. In her write up she outlines her 13 week curriculum on the culture of hacking, covering topics like open source, privacy & anonymity, and the dawn of the nerds. Ironically, almost all are relavent to HBGary Federal, given Aaron’s troubles. I wonder how they’d benefit from a crash course in Coleman’s class. Looking at Coleman’s course topics, there’s a lot to consider regarding hacking. The most relevant to this topic is the material covered in Weeks 11 & 12,

Week Eleven: Anarchism and the Politically Minded Hacker

Many hackers express some degree of ambivalence over the politics of hacking as Patrice Riemens has argued and as hackers themselves have raised. This is not the case with a small but well organized cadre of hackers located primarily in Latin America, Europe, and North America who havecharted collectives, many of them influenced by the political philosophy of anarchism. To grapple with anarchism as a political philosophy (which, similar to hacking, is plagued with a parade of misconceptions), we turn to David Graeber‘s fantastic pamphlet, Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology. We also read Jeff Juris’s ethnographic work about technology activists during the counter-globalization era Networking Futures.

Week Twelve: Trolls and the Politics of Spectacle

If anyone has been paying attention to the Internet in recent years, it has been impossible to miss a class of provocateur and saboteur: the Internet troll, whose raison d’être is to be as offensive as humanely possible via raunchy (but often humorous and quite esoteric) language, images, pranks, and tricks, basically, doing it for what they call the “lulz.” To get a sense of the cultural logic and exploits of trolls we read “The Trolls Among Us” by Mattathias Schwartz. To help us grapple with the nature of spectacle, we read a couple of chapters of Dream: Re-imagining Progressive Politics in an Age of Fantasy by Stephen Duncombe. We read excerpts from Lewis Hyde’s magnificent book on tricksters to consider whether the troll might be an example of these mythical creatures that have dazzled countless societies with their trickery. We watch a talk on a protest movement against the Church of Scientology whose roots lie in the act of trolling buteventually turned into a morally serious protest movement, which nonetheless retained the tactics of spectacle as part of its political arsenal.

This is a very interesting time to be looking at the intersection of technology and culture. There are anthropologists doing some fascinating work researching the sense of identity in online communities like World of Warcraft and Facebook… These groups share an online space, often with avatars and complex long-lasting interactions.

But with Anon there’s no identity.

Anon remains behind ever-changing screen names and masked localities behind proxies. I’m sure if you’ve ever taken an Intro to Cultural Anthropology course you would have touched on Erik Erikson’s theories of personality, We know what defines identity is a loose association of markers like behavior, language, dress, shared spaces, etc. Anon is disparate to any modern definition of identity. They do not share the same space, language, or any other measure of similarity except for behavior and ideology…

“We are Anonymous.  We are Legion.  We do not forgive.  We do not forget.  Expect us.”

I’d really like to get to hear Coleman’s take on this current event, or any cultural anthropologist for the matter. So if you’re interested, please chime in on your take on this all — What do you understand on Anon and how are they similar/dissimilar to other groups?

Carol Ward1, William Kimbel, and Donald Johanson have published a paper in Science on the arch seen in a newly discovered fourth metatarsal of Australopithecus afarensis (AL 333-160). A lot of the popular press are publishing misleading headlines that this proves bipedalism in australopithecines. No, we’ve known they were bipedal — we just didn’t have a true idea as to what extent they were bipedal. So a find like this helps investigate the degree of bipedalism.

AL 333-160 left fourth metatarsal in dorsal, lateral, medial, plantar, and proximal views.

How does this tell us how bipedal A. afarensis were?

) Box plots of angular relations of the proximal and distal metatarsal ends to the diaphysis in chimpanzees, gorillas, humans, and AL 333-160.

If you’ve ever had the pleasure of visiting a podiatrist, you’d know flat feet are not conducive to bipedalism. The two-way arch helps support upright walking and distribute recoil force. Other great apes like, chimps and gorillas have flatter feet than us. The authors of this paper confirmed this by comparing the fourth metatarsal of chimps, gorillas, and humans to AL 333-160.

On all their comparisons, AL 333-160 fell within range of humans. There were some occasions where there’s a lot of gray area which I’ll address later. Nonetheless, to the right you can see the best comparison, in my opinion, which the comparison of the arch of the diaphysis of the bone between the two species. You can have a look at the rest of the figures here.

The problem I am seeing here is that this metatarsal is not Lucy’s (AL 288-1). AL 333 is designated to fossils from the site where the “First Family” came from and not the same  locality as AL 288. Nonetheless, they are not the same individual. Kimbel is quoted in the BBC News, saying,

“Lucy’s spine has the double curve that our own spine does,” Professor Kimbel said.

“Her hips functioned much as human hips do in providing balance to the body with each step, which in a biped of course means that you’re actually standing on only one leg at a time during striding.

“The knees likewise in Lucy’s species are drawn underneath the body such that the thighbone, or femur, angles inwards to the knees from the hip-joints – as in humans.

“And now we can say that the foot, too, joins these other anatomical regions in pointing towards a fundamentally human-like form of locomotion in this ancient human ancestor.”

This is a flawed association to make; a form of what I would call confounding bias. We don’t have Lucy’s 4th metatarsal to see what it looks like and unfortunately we don’t have the rest of the this specimens skeleton to say it looked like Lucy’s. In fact, we have very little australopithecine appendicular and skeletons other than AL 288-1 (most notable are AL 129-1 and STS 14). So how can Kimbel say that the foot joins other anatomical regions when we don’t know what the other regions really looked like?

See, the n of this sample is 1. Looking at the intervals in the figures, especially Fig 3 & 4, there a a significant amount of variation in humans and chimpanzees that overlap. Chimps aren’t bipedal but we are. So imagine you are a paleoanthropologist way in the future looking at one metatarsal of a now-current then-ancient chimpanzee way and comparing it to a humans — surely you could make the same conclusion as these three have. And herein lies the big issue with sensationalism… as is the problem often in paleoanthropology, we just don’t have many comparative samples but people want definitive conclusions.

Ward, C., Kimbel, W., & Johanson, D. (2011). Complete Fourth Metatarsal and Arches in the Foot of Australopithecus afarensis Science, 331 (6018), 750-753 DOI: 10.1126/science.1201463

Very rarely is an entire family group of hominins buried and fossilized at the same time. It is even rarer for paleoanthropologists to discover such an assemblage. Fortunately for science but unfortunately for the hominins, caves occasionally collapsed on entire social groups.

Map of El Sidrón

At a site known as El Sidrón in Spain, excavations have been ongoing since 2000. To date, 12 Neandertals have been discovered in a context that points to a single geological event, circa 49,000 years ago. A group of 12 Neandertals is consistent with previous estimates of around 10 individuals per group.  At least six adults, three adolescents and four younger individuals were buried at once, most likely during a storm. The cold conditions of the cave system and immediate burial of the remains not only preserved the bones well, but were also ideal for DNA.

The remains were sexed based on both morphology and DNA analysis. After sex was determined, anthropologists identified the different Neandertal lineages based on mitochondrial DNA. Several of the adults were found to be male, and the other three female. It was discovered that all three males belong to the same matrilineal group, while each respective female has a different haplotype. When compared to modern Europeans, the authors noted that there is significantly less genetic diversity within the mitochondrial genome.

These results strongly imply that Neandertals exhibited patrilocal mating behavior. Females were the ones who would have changed family groups, not males. This type of insight into an extinct species is unique, thanks to the quality of DNA preservation available at El Sidrón.

Another interesting point of discussion in the study relates to Neandertal interbirth interval. One of the females was linked by DNA to two of the younger individuals, approximately several years apart in age. If the anthropologists are correct about the relationship, this puts the interbirth interval for Homo neanderthalensis at a value similar to hunter-gatherer groups today. This data, if replicated with other Neandertal individuals, could eventually dispel differential reproduction as a potential cause for Neandertal disappearance.

Knowing about Neandertal group dynamics could provide crucial clues as to why they went extinct. Future analysis of the remains recovered at El Sidrón will no doubt give more insights into our closest extinct relatives, and perhaps even why Homo sapiens flourished and Neandertals declined.

By Matthew Magnani

Lalueza-Fox, C., et al. (2011). “Genetic evidence for patrilocal mating behavior among Neandertal groups.” PNAS . January 4, vol. 108 no. 1 250-253.

Do archaeologists care about the living? Yes, but like all people, we focus on those aspects of a story that are of greatest interest to us. That’s why I have tuned out much of the news coming out of Egypt over the last few weeks. I casually skimmed through articles about the protests, the motivations of the protesters, political ramifications for the region and for me as an American, and even the tragic loss of life. But when Egyptian antiquities were endangered, I began to pay close attention! As a kid, I was inspired by Indiana “It belongs in a museum” Jones. What happens when the museums themselves are threatened? Archaeological materials are one of the many casualties of war and civil unrest, as recently seen in Iraq.

During the Egyptian protests, the Cairo Museum, one of the most significant repositories of artifacts in the world, was raided by looters. Thankfully, it appears that none of the museum’s famed mummies were damaged and, in fact, some protesters defended the museum from looting. Dr. Zahi Hawass, head of Egypt’s Antiquities Department, even ridiculed some looters for stealing souvenirs from the museum gift shop while leaving priceless artifacts untouched. It could have been much worse, since the museum’s collections are truly irreplaceable, and their theft would’ve represented a great loss to humanity.

From the perspective of archaeological preservation, it was a relatively happy ending. Wait…was I really more outraged by the prospect of stolen artifacts and ransacked mummies than hundreds of deaths? Maybe 24-hour global news cycles have desensitized me to death tolls and modern human tragedy. Archaeologists, especially, have been accused of insensitivity toward living people (insert your own joke about archaeologists “preferring their informants dead” here). Sometimes this reputation is deserved – long hours poring over bones and stones in laboratories can dull a person’s sociability. But archaeologists are anthropologists and, as the anthropology.net motto says, we go “Beyond bones & stones.” Archaeologists are as focused on people as any other branch of anthropology. We reconstruct past human behavior from material remains, work with living and descendant communities to better understand the past, and do our best to share archaeology with everyone. Ideally, we go into anthropology because we are human beings who care about our fellow human beings, past and present. And, if our priorities sometimes need adjusting, world events remind us to pay attention to living people and dynamic political situations in addition to mummies.

What aspects of the Egyptian protests have been most meaningful to you?

- Jay Fancher