Anthropology.net

Anyone remember 2 years ago, when Survival International released some photos of an uncontacted tribe at the border of Brazil and Peru? Well an update came out, a remarkable video showing the tribe and describing what’s being done to protect them. Oh and by the way, this is part of BBC’s Human Planet.

Check out the video here.

Image by Omar A. via Flickr

I stumbled upon this news piece in The Times regarding archaeology in Saudia Arabia. I wanted to share it with you all because of last week’s discussion of handaxes from the neighboring UAE. The article describes how archaeologists have been using Google Earth to survey for sites and have identified possibly 2,000 or so potential ones in Saudia Arabia. Now using Google Earth to do some armchair archaeology is nothing new really, there are examples from 2005, 2006, 2008 and 2010.

But we all know how strict Saudia Arabia is. One of their many impositions has traditionally been against archaeology — fearing that discoveries may disrupt the foundation of it being a cradle for Islam. From the article,

David Kennedy, a professor of classics and ancient history at the University of Western Australia, used Google Earth satellite maps to pinpoint 1,977 potential archaeological sites, including 1,082 teardrop shaped stone tombs…

…But few archaeologists have been given access to Saudi Arabia, which has long been hostile to the discipline. Hardline clerics in the kingdom fear that it might focus attention on the civilisations which flourished there before the rise of Islam – and thus, in the long term, undermine the state religion.

In 1994, a council of Saudi clerics was reported to have issued an edict asserting that preserving historical sites “could lead to polytheism and idolatry” – both punishable, under the Kingdom’s laws, by death.

This is not surprising to many. What is surprising was this tid bit:

Saudi Arabia’s rulers have, in recent years, allowed archaeologists to excavate some sites, including the spectacular but little-known ruins of Maidan Saleh (Correction its really Mada’in Saleh), a 2,000 old city which marked the southern limits of the powerful Nabataean civilisation.

For the most part, though, access to ancient sites has been severely restricted.

There are a lot of examples where traditions, governments, etc. get in the way of phenomenal discoveries. However, there are few where objection relaxed. I’m hopeful we’ll see more archaeology conducted on the Arabian peninsula, but I’ll think we’ll be seeing more from the more liberal areas like the Emirates.

Related Articles

• Archaeologists Find 1,082 Ancient Tombs in Google Earth [Science] (gawker.com)
• Archaeologists Find 1,082 Ancient Tombs in Google Earth [Science] (gawker.com)
• Google Earth finds Saudi Arabia’s forbidden archaeological secrets (telegraph.co.uk)

Hans-Peter Uerpmann of the University of Tubingen has lead a team excavating the Jebel Faya site in the United Arab Emirates, right near the Straits of Hormuz. They’ve found 125,000 year old stone tools that look like early modern human tools from East Africa around the same time. They’ve published their findings in today’s Science, under the title, “The Southern Route “Out of Africa”: Evidence for an Early Expansion of Modern Humans into Arabia.”

The current understanding is what we know as anatomically modern humans (AMH) originated in Africa about 250,000 years ago. The oldest Home sapiens, known as H. sapiens idaltu, was found to be 160,000 years old, found at the Middle Awash site in Ethiopia. Then between 80k-100k years ago, modern humans began appearing in the middle east, as remains from sites like the Qafzeh cave in Israel have yielded. Most agree that AMH stayed in Africa and about 140,000 years ago they began migrating out. There was an exception, a colonization remained or failed in Israel about 100,000 years ago.

One of the hand axes from Jebel Faya, UAE (Photograph courtesy Science/AAAS)

These hand axes, pictured above, show a pattern of flaking distinct from that made by Neandertals and also dissimilar to those by ~100,000 year old Israeli tools. They are two sided and very similar to stone tools seen only in early Africa.

What this means is early humans left Africa 20,000 years earlier than thought. Just how did they do it? 130,000 years ago, there was a window of climate change. They figured this out by using luminescence dating to determine the age of sand grains buried with the stone tools. Luminescence dating is a technique that measures naturally occurring radiation stored in the sand. The data showed that 130,000 years ago, the Arabian Peninsula was relatively more warm which caused more rainfall, turning it into a series of lush habitable land. During this period the southern Red Sea’s levels dropped and was only 2.5 miles or 4 km wide. This offered a brief window of time for humans to easily cross the sea and cross the Peninsula to opposing sites like Jebel Faya.

Does this study tell us that modern humans left Africa, into Arabia and out from there? It is most certainly a possibility. However, these axes could be of an abandoned migration like the site in Israel I’ve mentioned. I say that because no genetic clade, be it from mitochondrial, Y-chromosome, or somatic genome, shows an earlier divergence of modern humans from Africa earlier than 60,000 years ago. At the very minimum a find like this tells us humans left Africa a bit sooner than we thought, but does not really tell us that these were the humans that helped seed the Eurasia.

Armitage, S., Jasim, S., Marks, A., Parker, A., Usik, V., & Uerpmann, H. (2011). The Southern Route “Out of Africa”: Evidence for an Early Expansion of Modern Humans into Arabia Science, 331 (6016), 453-456 DOI: 10.1126/science.1199113

Endurance running has been cited since the 1980’s as a possible explanation for the modern human body plan. Past studies have focused on the running abilities of species such as Homo ergaster and Homo sapiens, with little or no mention of other species or genera. Currently in press in the Journal of Human Evolution is a discussion of Neandertal running capabilities.

The authors observed the length of the calcaneal tuber of the foot, which correlates with how far the Achilles tendon will stretch during movement. For this study measurements were taken of both Homo sapiens and Homo neanderthalensis.  Species with short calcaneal tubers stretch their Achilles tendons to a greater degree, which is then returned in the form of elastic energy. Species with long tubers stretch the Achilles tendon less and therefore have a lower return of elastic energy.

White Line: Calcaneus tuber length. Red Line: Achilles tendon moment. Correlation between the two values. Photo from Raichlen et al.

Simply put, a species with shorter calcaneal tubers will use less energy when running. Anatomically modern humans have been found to have short tubers, while longer ones are found on Neandertal remains. According to the authors, this variation has significant behavioral implications.

Unlike modern humans, the storage of less elastic energy in Neandertals would have made running less efficient. However, Neandertals were not necessarily at a disadvantage in the colder climates they are often said to have inhabited. It is more likely that running over long distances would have been energetically costly to them, without having huge benefits.

Long distance running would prove beneficial in warmer climates where animals are prone to hyperventilate when chased. Modern humans would have benefitted from endurance running because it would have aided in capturing prey. The same model does not necessarily apply in colder climates. A runner could chase an animal all day in low temperatures and never have the animal succumb to heat stress or hyperventilation. It is for this reason argued that the ability to run long distances would not have been as evolutionarily valuable to Homo neanderthalensis.

Discussing endurance running provides fascinating insight into human evolution. While the ability to run long distances can be very revealing about evolutionary history, lack of endurance can be as well.

By Matt Magnani

Raichlen, D.A., Armstrong, H., Lieberman, D.E. (2011). “Calcaneus length determines running economy: Implications for endurance running performance in modern humans and Neandertals.” The Journal of Human Evolution. Article in Press.

A hunter-gatherer mother sits stirring a pot of stew over an open fire.  Her young son, eagerly anticipating the evening meal, approaches the pot and asks, “What are we eating?”  “Not sure.  Meat, I think.  Probably some other stuff,” she replies.

Okay, I made that up.  The preceding exchange would never occur between hunter-gatherers.  Or horticulturalists.  Or pastoralists.  Or most of the other subsistence systems that anthropologists study.  The mother, and usually the son, would know what was in the pot because they took part in hunting, gathering, raising, growing, or processing the ingredients.  And that’s pretty much the way it’s been for the vast majority of human history.

So how did we end up here?  An Alabama law firm is suing Taco Bell, claiming that the meat used in Taco Bell’s products does not meet the U.S. Department of Agriculture definition of “beef.”  In fact, the lawsuit alleges that the company’s meat filling is only 35% beef, with the remainder comprised of non-meat ingredients such as water, oats, modified corn starch, maltodextrin, etc.

Taco Bell asserts that their products contain 100% beef.

That’s a big difference in percentages.  Someone’s not telling the truth, or is at least being very disingenuous.  Thankfully, we humans have an established method for evaluating evidence-based claims…SCIENCE!  Yes, I can turn anything into an advertisement for science, and I hope the legal proceedings rely on solid data to resolve this dispute.

From an anthropological perspective, this issue highlights the wide, historically-unprecedented, gap between food production and food consumption in 21st Century developed nations.  We’re all food consumers, far fewer of us are food producers.  The production of our food most often occurs out of sight.  Michael Pollan [In Defense of Food and the film Food, Inc.] argues that much of what we eat is not even food in the strict sense, but rather “food products,” manufactured from food and the “other stuff” I mentioned before.

Many people seem repelled by the idea of unidentifiable “meat.”  But, like our Paleolithic ancestors, we crave fat, salt, and sugar [Martin Jones' Feast: Why Humans Share Food and Richard Wrangham's Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human].  Fast food provides massive quantities of all three for a low, low price.  I had Taco Bell a few days ago, so I understand the allure of quick, cheap calories.  How we got to this point is a fascinating story, well-covered by anthropological research (please see included links and share your own in the comments).  Since we are so removed from the production of our own food products, I think it’s reasonable for consumers to know what’s in the pot – even if laboratory analysis is required to figure out the ingredients.  What do you think?

- Jay Fancher

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.

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.