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

Energy Use by Eem Neanderthals

A paper in the Journal of Archaeological Science by Bent Sørensen of the University of Roskilde in Denmark, discusses how European Neanderthals living in the Eemian interglacial, dated to around 125,000 years bp  might have conserved much needed energy by drying and storing meat,  wearing fitted clothing, and sleeping beneath blankets of mammoth skin, behaviours that would have greatly increased their chances of surviving decreasing temperatures with the onset of ice ages.

Because Neanderthals were far more robust than ourselves and experienced lives of great physical duress, energy acquisition and conservation would have been of prime importance to them, especially when we consider that hunting trips in pursuit of large herbivores would have involved the physical challenges of attacking the prey at close quarters,  transportation of large quantities of meat back to camp  – drying large quantities of freshly killed lean meat greatly reduces the weight burden, and moreover prevents it from quickly rotting. Fatty meat on the other hand does not preserve well, and rots more quickly than lean meat.

The paper also presents a good case for the idea that contrary to many depictions of barefooted archaic humans draped in ill-fitting animal skins, (which would have afforded little in the way of protection from the elements) it seems more likely from the scarce archaeological evidence, that they wore clothes that fit and sturdy foot-wear to boot. Not only would this have been the case during colder glacial eras, but also during warmer spells, when sleeping at night would have required the use of covers or blankets, when night-time temperatures would have dropped.

Abstract:

An analysis of energy use by Neanderthals in Northern Europe during the mild Eem interglacial period is carried out with consideration of the metabolic energy production required for compensating energy losses during sleep, at daily settlement activities and during hunting expeditions, including transport of food from slain animals back to the settlement. Additional energy sources for heat, security and cooking are derived from fireplaces in the open or within shelters such as caves or huts. The analysis leads to insights not available from archaeological findings that are mostly limited to durable items such as those made of stone:

Even during the benign Eem period, Neanderthals faced a considerable heat loss problem. Wearing tailored clothes or some similar measure was necessary for survival. An animal skin across the shoulder would not have sufficed to survive even average cold winter temperatures and body cooling by convection caused by wind. Clothes and particularly footwear had to be sewn together tightly in order to prevent intrusion of water or snow.

The analysis of hunting activity evolvement in real time further shows that during summer warmth, transport of meat back to the base settlement would not be possible without some technique to avoid that the meat rots. The only likely technique is meat drying at the killing site, which indicates further skills in Neanderthal societies that have not been identified by other routes of investigation.

Although only the abstract is available at the Journal of Archaeological Science, the paper is reproduced (PDF) in its entirety at Professor Sørensen’s website, affording us the opportunity of gleaning further insights into the lives of Neanderthals living in north-western Europe 125,000 years ago, a time when the climate is estimated to have been fairly similar to the current conditions, and one that was capable of supporting plenty of food on the hoof, and extensive woodlands which in turn allowed Neanderthals to exploit timber, not only as fuel for the fire, but quite possibly for the occasional hut as well – suggestions that they built wind-breaks for example, is further testament to their technological prowess.

Additionally, consideration is given as to how they would have coped with the cold during long glaciations, when the fauna they hunted would have changed, focussing more on mammoth, which appear to have been virtually absent from this part of Europe during warm intervals. Here’s an excerpt from the paper addressing this very topic:

The minimum endurable temperature calculations presented in Table 1 show, that sleeping naked in a cave or hut (sheltered from wind) requires temperatures above 27 or 28 °C (male and female), and 5 °C more if sleeping outside, even in a place with low wind (1.5 m s-1). Wearing one layer of clothes, the minimum endurable temperatures change to 13 and 15 °C inside, 16 and 20 °C outside, and with a mammoth-equivalent skin cover to –15 and –10 °C inside and -9 and –4 °C outside in a 5 m s-1 wind. Clothes plus mammoth-equivalent skin cover lowers the endurable temperatures by another 13-14 °C.

The implication is that bed cover equivalent to a large mammoth skin would have been indispensable at nearly all times during the year, and that hunters on a multi-day winter hunting expedition would have had to bring some form of cover to use when sleeping along on the trip. Exposed body areas such as the face would need heat transfer from adjacent areas. Extremities are more cold-sensitive than the whole-body average, and only small exposed areas would receive enough heat transfer from covered parts of the body. Thus, the conclusion drawn is that in average winter conditions, the clothes worn must have been capable of preventing air flow from penetrating to more than small body surface areas, and that footwear in particular must have been tailored to wrap the feet entirely during the long walks associated with day-long hunting trips.

Lithic remains from the Eem include awl-like points suited for making holes in skin material (found e.g. at the Stuttgart-Untertürkheim site; Wenzel, 2007), as well as knife-like blades suited for cutting strips of animal skin, that could be inserted and weaved through the holes, in order to convert plain furs into fitting clothes.

The last paragraph details the use of stone blades and awls, and despite a recent story which asserted that the earliest known stone blades date back half a million years, it transpires that both stone blades and awls are associated with Oldowan and Acheulean lithic industries, which also included scrapers, all of which could have been used in the treatment or modification of animal hides.

Although the necessary tools may have been available, this doesn’t necessarily mean that archaic species such as H. erectus definitely made their own clothes and shoes, but if they had already lost their body hair, sleeping under covers at night would have been just as necessary for them as their Neanderthal descendants. It may well have been that the first clothes were invented after archaic humans had realised that the material used for their nocturnal coverings could be further modified and stitched together to make the first clothes – it would have been apparent from very early on that simply draping themselves with animal hides would have been more a hindrance than an aid to survival. Whether aesthetic factors were also involved, isn’t known…….

The question of the earliest footwear has been addressed amongst others by Erik Trinkaus, who suggested that the appearance of more gracile toe-bones found with dated human fossil remains, seen at around 30,000 years bp, possibly earlier, indicated that people first began wearing shoes or boots at that time. However, there doesn’t appear to have been any reduction in the size of Neanderthal phalanges that would support this theory,which holds that shoe wearers use their big toe to gain traction, passing less energy through the four smaller toes, leading to a decrease in their size.

This story also receives coverage over at Discovery, and the article there includes further musings and a few quotes from Bent Sørensen:

According to the study, Neanderthals sported “one or two layers of skins/furs and wrapped skins/furs for shoes, held together by leather strings.”

Author Bent Sorensen told Discovery News that chewing clothing materials wasn’t beneath these members of the Homo genus.  “Neanderthal tooth marks indicate chewing hides for softening, which is essential for clothes making,” said Sorensen, a researcher in the Department of Environmental, Social and Spatial Change at Roskilde University.

Using the body surface area of Neanderthals, based on their skeletal remains, along with known climate condition averages for Northern Europe at the time, he calculated the metabolic body energy required to compensate for energy losses during sleep, daily settlement activities and hunting expeditions.  Even with warm fires lit in caves and at other home sites, Sorensen believes Neanderthals must have slept underneath mammoth skins and other coverings.  Tools found for making clothes, such as hide scrapers and points for poking holes in animal skins, support his contention that Neanderthals dressed in well-fitted layers.

And on the subject of how and why Neanderthals might have dried fresh meat:

Taking into consideration basic movements needed for hunting and survival, such as walking and wood cutting, Sorensen believes Neanderthal groups would have needed about 1,792 pounds of meat per month, requiring one mammoth — or other big game kill — every seven weeks.  Animal bones and stone tools at Neanderthal sites indicate they hunted away from home. In order to transport meat, Sorensen thinks they must have dried it somehow. But, he said, “I do not know of any evidence for (them) using salt.”

“As for preparation, boiling is much more efficient and nutrient-conserving than frying, and evidence from more recent Stone Age settlements confirm that meat was boiled in ceramic pots or skin bags,” he said. “However, it is still likely that frying over the camp fire was the usual method in Neanderthal communities, since no containers for boiling have been found.”  “Carrying dried meat from a mammoth home could now be done by seven to eight round trips (over) 14 to 16 days,” he added.

This last observation depicts Neanderthals as spending much of their precious time lugging heavy loads across the landscape, chopping and gathering timber when climate permitted, as well as much time and effort preparing animal hides by chewing, rather than living an idyllic lifestyle of nomadic people hunting and gathering plentiful supplies of food, leaving plenty of time on their hands for recreational activities.

Moreover, had Neanderthals used salt for drying the meat, they would not only have needed access to rock salt deposits, but would have needed to transport it in bulk to kill sites, which would further have expended their energy, so I’m not sure if salt was the solution. Although there are rock salt deposits in Germany, Austria and Poland, I’m not aware of any archaeology which demonstrates Palaeolithic exploitation of this resource, and in any case, only groups living nearby would likely have been able to make use of whatever they found to hand. It’s generally thought that Neanderthals groups lived in relative isolation to one another, meaning that salt was unlikely to have formed part of a trade network, not least because regular transportation in quantity would have required the use of animals to carry it.

Drying large quantities of meat with smoke would have required intense activity at the kill site, the erection of a wooden structure and construction and maintenance of a fire would have required a hypothetical hunting party of 5 or 6 people to have set up a secondary kill-camp, thus expending more energy, which in turn would have been supplied in part from fatty meat from the kill which would presumably have been eaten instead of the lean cuts set aside for drying. Smoke from a small camp fire wouldn’t have been sufficient for drying out the meat from a mammoth for example.

The least labour intensive methods of drying meat would have been sun and wind, involving the building of wooden frames or structures on which to place it, but of course local weather conditions would have dictated how often and for how long this would have been a viable option.

The suggestion that Neanderthals made their own fitted clothes and kept food in storage rather than eating as much as they could on the spot, before heading off in search of the next meal, certainly seems to indicate complexity of thought that allowed for long-term planning and innovatory behaviours  – and as we have seen from previous reports, they made a type of adhesive from heat-treated birch resin around 80,000 years ago, with which they may have hafted their hunting spears.

Over recent years the perception of Neanderthals has significantly altered, with strong indications that they may have been just as adept at survival as their anatomically modern counterparts, with one or two key differences that may have caused their downfall.

As mentioned in the paper, Neanderthals weren’t capable of throwing spears, which meant that big game had to be tackled close up, increasing  the risks of injury and death over someone launching a spear from a relatively safe distance, but the energy expenditure would also have been considerably greater. This might not have been to detrimental in the absence of competition, but once that competition arrived in the guise of anatomically modern humans (AMH), it’s likely that the balance tipped in favour of the moderns.

Not only would AMH have had to spend less energy hunting, but it would also have been relatively easy for AMH to rob Neanderthals of their own food. In the paper, Sørensen proposes a model for Neanderthal groups and their seasonal hunting and gathering activities. The basic group might have comprised 25 people, of which about 15 would have been children, leaving about 5 or 6 individuals available for hunting trips, who exploited territories of between 10 and 50 square kilometers. Seasonal base camps would have been established, with fresh or dried meat being transported from kill sites, meaning that rather than being nomadic, the Neanderthals would have relied heavily upon the same resources being in place at the same stages of each year, every year. Climate change might have been quick, but presumably slow enough for Neanderthals to adapt and survive.

Greater problems may well have arisen with the advent of AMH at the same time as climate change as Upper Palaeolithic cooling kicked in, meaning that not only would Neanderthals have been obliged to alter their own hunting strategies, but they found themselves in competition with AMH for the prime sites. We can imagine how the somewhat rigid strategies of Neanderthals would have made them vulnerable to being out-hunted by AMH, and at risk of ambush when guarding or transporting freshly killed meat. The fact that AMH could have thrown spears not only at prey but Neanderthals too would have given them a doubly competitive edge, and although such events may have been rare at first, over the course of about 15,000 years that AMH and Neanderthals shared Eurasia, deteriorating climate and AMH populations which were increasing, could between them have been major contributory causes in the downfall of Neanderthals.

Demography and the Extinction of the European Neanderthals (PDF) is another paper by Professor Sørensen, which addresses these and other potential factors as disease, spread by AMH and transported by migratory groups of Neanderthals, and provides yet more food for thought for those attempting to explain the mysterious demise of our enigmatic cousins.

References:

Energy Use by Eem Neanderthals by Bent Sørensen, Department of Environmental, Social and Spatial Change, Roskilde University, DK 4000 Roskilde, Denmark, Journal of Archaeological Science Article in Press, Accepted Manuscript, 2009.

Demography and the Extinction of the European Neanderthals by Bent Sørensen, Department of Environmental, Social and Spatial Change, Roskilde University, DK 4000 Roskilde, Denmark.

image from: A Brief History of World Costume

A new paper published in Anthropological Science claims that comparative skull analyses between the hobbit skull and various others from H. sapiens and a plethora of archaic others, indicates to the authors of this study that the diminutive humans, whose remains were discovered on the island of Flores descended from Asian Homo erectus.

The paper is free to access, and although I haven’t had time to read it through, looks set to cause yet more rumblings in the ongoing debate between those who contend H. floresiensis was a microcephalic H. sapiens, and those who believe that an entirely new species of human has been discovered. Here’s the abstract…

Since its first description in 2004, Homo floresiensis has been attributed to a species of its own, a descendant of H. erectus or another early hominid, a pathological form of H. sapiens, or a dwarfed H. sapiens related to the Neolithic inhabitants of Flores. In this contribution, we apply a geometric morphometric analysis to the skull of H. floresiensis (LB1) and compare it with skulls of normal H. sapiens, insular H. sapiens (Minatogawa Man and Neolithic skulls from Flores), pathological H. sapiens (microcephalics), Asian H. erectus (Sangiran 17), H. habilis (KNM ER 1813), and Australopithecus africanus (Sts 5).

Our analysis includes specimens that were highlighted by other authors to prove their conclusions. The geometric morphometric analysis separates H. floresiensis from all H. sapiens, including the pathological and insular forms. It is not possible to separate H. floresiensis from H. erectus. Australopithecus falls separately from all other skulls. The Neolithic skulls from Flores fall within the range of modern humans and are not related to LB1.

The microcephalic skulls fall within the range of modern humans, as well as the skulls of the Neolithic small people of Flores. The cranial shape of H. floresiensis is close to that of H. erectus and not to that of any H. sapiens. Apart from cranial shape, some features of H. floresiensis are not unique but are shared with other insular taxa, such as the relatively large teeth (shared with Early Neolithic humans of Sardinia), and changed limb proportions (shared with Minatogawa Man).

The putative link to H.erectus isn’t entirely unexpected, if only from a geographical perspective, because the island of Flores was also home to these archaic humans some 840,000 years ago – as with the so-called hobbits, nobody is quite sure how they managed to arrive on an island so long ago, when a sea crossing was the only available means of access.

(via Mundo Neandertal)

image via online paper

Reference:

The Origin of Homo floresiensis and its Relation to Evolutionary Processes Under Isolation. (PDF) (HTML) G.A. Lyras, M.D. Dermitzakis, A.A.E. Van der Geer, S.B. Van der Geer, J. De Vos. Anthropological Science 117(1), 33–43, April 2009.

There’s a new online resource for anthropologists, or anyone with an interest in the field, which allows members to set up or join groups that relate to their own sphere, communicate with one another, announce events, write blogs and post to forums, add media content, and so on – all under the umbrella of the Open Anthropology Cooperative.

The OAC came into being on May 29th, 2009, since when nearly a thousand people have signed up, and 84 groups have been started, some of which are mainstream, and many of which concentrate on more specific areas. Here’s an overview from their About page:

Anthropology has a distinguished past, but it has an even greater future. This is bound to depend on professionals and students of anthropology; and we hope that those of us who are already committed to the discipline will find here like-minded anthropologists, as well as new tools, resources and opportunities for collaboration.  The Open Anthropology Cooperative is not just for the members of an academic discipline; we welcome anyone for whom our conversations are interesting.

An engaged anthropology for the 21st century should also be an interdisciplinary project aiming to discover what we need to know about humanity as a whole if we would make a better world. Such a project depends on making full use of the emerging social and technical synthesis entailed in the digital revolution. It also means engaging with a new kind of inequality, the digital divide.  The OAC was launched on 28 May 2009 by a group of friends who met on Twitter before joining Ning.

The most important word in our title is the first. Open access, open membership, open to sharing new ideas, open to whatever the organization might do or become; open to everyone, as in ‘open source’. We have already started many discussion groups, blogs, a forum and places to share a variety of ideas and materials. This is just the beginning: we expect to hold virtual conferences, to add podcasts, publish longer pieces online and incorporate a variety of social networking devices into our exchanges.

The OAC is for all of us to explore and elaborate. Let the people take over! To help out with that, we have a small team of administrators (below) and an OAC Policy Forum where you can participate in shaping the Cooperative’s development. We encourage initiatives using languages other than English.

I’d imagine OAC would be of great interest to many readers of this site, and because there is far more there already than I can briefly cover here, I’d suggest having a browse round the various parts of the site, check out the groups. The signing up process is quick and straightforward, and indeed necessary for those wishing to interact with existing members, who hail from a wide variety of locations, bringing to the site a great scope of interests and backgrounds.

As I’ve only just signed up, it’ll be a while before I find my way around, but I’m hoping that over coming weeks and months there will be discussions, events and content posted there that will merit further mention in these pages. I came across this video for example, Tales From The Jungle: Margaret Mead, which begins by looking at her work in Samoa and the later controversy that arose, all which I’m hoping to cover as part of another post,

Open Anthropology Cooperative

image from here

Two items of news that have appeared over the last day or two, and which I’d otherwise have definitely submitted to the recent edition of Four Stone Hearth, concern analyses of mastodon and mammoth bones, the first of which leads a researcher to suggest he has good evidence that humans were inhabiting the Americas as far back as 33,000-50,000 bp, whilst the second story indicates that the mammoth may have survived in Britain as recently as 14,000 bp, about 7,000 years later than previously thought.

The first story concerns the vexed question of when the Americas were first occupied by humans, which as will have been apparent over recent times, has seen the Clovis First theory finally, if belatedly laid to rest. Archaeological and genetic evidence points to an occupation by at least 15,000 bp, but even these early dates may not tell the whole story, with researchers pointing to a variety of sites in places like Valsequillo in Mexico, where claims for 40,000 year-old footprints have been made, caves with shell middens in Baja California, the site at Topper and others to suggest a human presence tens of thousands of years before the immediate antecedents of Clovis were around.

Dr. Steven Holer, Curator of Archaeology at the Denver Museum of Natural History and Science,  has conducted extensive research into fractured mammoth and mastodon bones dated 20,000 bp and older, which he contends could only have been broken by humans wielding hammerstones, and although no artefacts or humans remains have been found in context, he’s convinced that he has proof of a very early human presence. Quoted recently in Indian Country Today, he explains his current theories:

“Several scientists, me included, are producing evidence of a much older Native American occupation of the continent,” he said, adding that, as has happened in the past, “the scientific establishment has underestimated the time depth of the Native American occupation of the Americas.”

A practitioner of experimental archaeology, Holen studies the patterns of breakage in mammoth bones, extrapolating and recreating the kind of instrument and force required to create such fractures and hypothesizing possible implements that could be made from the shattered remains.

“The only way these could be broken in the past as we see it is by humans using hammerstones.”  Although stone tools have not yet been found with the bones, “You don’t have to have stone tools – you have to have evidence of human technology.”

The uses of fractured bones may have varied, including that of the mammoth from Nebraska recently radiocarbon-dated at 33,000 before present (BP).

For the sake of brevity, I’ll refer readers to two papers he has authored, (here and here – both pdf), which add a great deal more background to the sites he’s excavated, and include embedded photos of various bones that appear to exhibit signs of human modification. Moreover, he makes a point of  explaining why he believes these bones were not gnawed by carnivores or trampled by other mammoths, quoting the observations of contemporary researchers who have examined African elephant bones that had been killed by humans and modified by scavengers.

The second story, covered in Science Daily, takes us to the county of Shropshire in Britain, where in 1986, the so-called Condover mammoths were discovered. With the advent of what are described as more accurate radiocarbon dating techniques, Professor Adrian Lister, in collaboration with the Natural History Museum in London, claims he has been able to establish that the mammoth survived in Britain until 14,000 years ago, long after the glacial maximum at around 21,000 bp, which was previously thought to have killed them off. This later date is believed to correspond with the theory that the warming climate and ensuing loss of habitat accounted for the demise of the mammoth, rather than their suffering an extinction event at the hands of overly enthusiastic Pleistocene hunters.

There are three related papers published in the current edition of the Geological Journal, all of which are free to access, and details of which appear below.

image: mammoth femur, Denver Museum of Nature and Science

References:

Holen, S. R., 2007. The Age and Taphonomy of Mammoths at Lovewell Reservoir, Jewell County, Kansas, USA (PDF | 790KB). Quaternary International (in press)

Holen, S. R., 2006. Taphonomy of Two Last Glacial Maximum Mammoth Sites in the Central Great Plains of North America: A Preliminary Report (PDF | 979KB). Quaternary International 142-143:30-43.

Late-glacial Remains of Woolly Mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius) From Shropshire, UK: Stratigraphy, Sedimentology and Geochronology of the Condover Site (PDF) (p 392-413) J. D. Scourse, G. R. Coope, J. R. M. Allen, A. M. Lister, R. A. Housley, R. E. M. Hedges, A. S. G. Jones, R. Watkins Published Online: Jun 18 2009 7:22AM DOI: 10.1002/gj.1163

Palaeoenvironmental Context of the Late-glacial Woolly Mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius) Discoveries at Condover, Shropshire, UK (PDF) (p 414-446) J. R. M. Allen, J. D. Scourse, A. R. Hall, G. R. Coope Published Online: Jun 18 2009 7:22AM DOI: 10.1002/gj.1161

Late-glacial Mammoth Skeletons (Mammuthusprimigenius) from Condover (Shropshire, UK): Anatomy, Pathology, Taphonomy and Chronological Significance (PDF) (p 447-479) Adrian M. Lister Published Online: Jun 18 2009 7:22AM DOI: 10.1002/gj.1162