Anthropology.net

What you may call the hip or pelvis is actually formed by the joining of ilia, ischia, pubis bones to the sacrum and the coccyx. The shape of the human pelvis is unique amongst primates and part of the complex of anatomical changes which allow us for bipedal motility.

The Male Pelvic Girdle

Between males and females, the pelvis is significantly different. I’ll review some of the features that should be common knowledge to anyone with a forensic or physical anthropology background. For starters, where the two pubis bones meet, at the lower edges of the two inferior public rami, there is a feature called the subpubic angle. Males have an angle smaller than 90 degrees, while females have a larger one. You need not take a protractor to make this observation. If you got a pelvic girdle with subpubic angle wider than a right angle then you most likely have a female… anything smaller and you have a dude.

But there is more, under the posterior inferior spine of the illium, and above the ischial spine, exists a feature called the greater sciatic notch, a sort of passage way for the piriformis muscle and the sciatic and posterior femoral cutaneous nerves. In females the notch is broader than males. Another feature, the biiliac width, a metric measurement made from the widest point between the two ilia is also a sex determining feature. Relative to their overall body sizes, females have large biiliac widths. The two ilia seem to flare out wider in a female. With a wider biiliac width, comes a wider pelvic inlet or the circumference of the lesser pelvis forms.

The Female Pelvic Girdle

So why do females have larger pelvic inlet, width between the two ilia, and a larger subpubic angle? That’s because they give birth. A wider pelvis allows for better distribution of the added weight that comes during pregnancy. A wide pelvic inlet allows for more space to hold the baby in utero. Furthermore, passing the largest brain to body size mammal through a narrow pelvis would not only be painful, but poses a serious danger to both the mother and baby during childbirth.

The average female adult has a biiliac width of 28 cm. Certain populations, such as Greek women have biiliac widths of 27.5 +/- 2.29 cm, falling within the average (Steyn et al., 2008). Inupiat women have widths averaging 28.6 +/-  0.2 cm, Finns at 27.9 +/- 0.2 cm (Ruff et al., 2004). But, east Asian populations, such as the Japanese have smaller pelvises, with less variation. The average billiac width of women from Japan is around 27.2 +/- .02 cm (Ikoma et al., 1988).

This all makes sense, east Asian people are on average smaller than white people or people from Africa. In fact, anthropologists have regularly relied on estimating body size and mass from biiliac measurements. The average Japanese woman is 153 cm tall, while European women from Germany or the Netherlands average 166 cm in height. You can see such a distinction when comparing Finnish and Japanese pelvic girdles. Asian newborns babies are also have smaller weight at birth (3.2 kg) compared to white babies (3.4kg). A  white woman with a wider pelvis can give birth to larger white babies.

So what happens when a white man, with big white genes, reproduces with a small Asian woman? Well, Razib pointed out a new study in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology which reviews the impact of such couplings. The paper, “Perinatal outcomes among Asian–white interracial couples,” documented that 33% of such couples surveyed had caesarean deliveries. The latest NIH data on the caesarean rate in the United States is 30%.

The authors suggest that the reason why such couples have 3% more C-section deliveries is that the smaller Asian pelvis is less able to accommodate babies of a certain size. The Asian-white couples had larger babies, with a median 3.36 kg for Asian-mother/white-father versus 3.21 kg for babies from Asian-Asian couples.

There’s a much larger discussion to be had than just reviewing a review of the anatomy and evolutionary history of such a study. Ever so recently, we hosted yet another post on the anthropology of race, which summarized that, “race does not exist in the world in any ontologically objective way.” If you’ve been a regular reader, you would know I’ve tackled this mantra many times. What could be anymore ontologically objective than such a study?

The nature of an Asian is on average smaller in body size than other humans. Of course there is variation. There are some large Asians, but the are very few. The majority are smaller in comparison to other humans. Studies like this show that Asian-mother and white-fathers produce larger babies and have increased rates of C-sectiond deliveries.

There are serious health issues with C-section deliveries, and thus serious, tangible biologically race related issues when people from two different populations mate and increase their chance of having a C-section delivery. The health issues I mention are the increased childbirth mortality rate. On average 1 in every 10,000 women who gives a natural birth will die during childbirth, while 1 in every 2,500 women who undergo C-sections will die during childbirth. In otherwords, women who give birth via C-section are 4x as likely to die. Furthermore, caesarean deliveries increase the risks for malpresentation, placenta previa, antepartum hemorrhage, placenta accreta, prolonged labor, uterine rupture, preterm birth, low birth weight, and stillbirth in their second delivery. The paper also outlines the higher prevalence of gestational diabetes for such interracial couplings.

That all being said, race is not just a social construct. How we interpret biological differences, such as pelvis size, skin color, etc. are not socially constructed but real observations, made from quantiative analysis. There are distinct anatomical, genetic, even behavioral differences that are not derived soley from stereotypes.

Michael J. Nystrom, Aaron B. Caughey, Deirdre J. Lyell, Maurice L. Druzin,Yasser Y. El-Sayed (2008). Perinatal outcomes among Asian–white interracial couples in American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology 199 (4), (385.e1-385.e5) DOI: 10.1016/j.ajog.2008.06.065

As Ruth Frankenberg in her book The Social Construction of Whiteness: White Women, Race Matters argues, our daily lives are affected by race whether we are aware of it or not. We all see the world through a racial lens that colors our world black, white, Asian, Mexican, minority, or “other”. How we are seen and how we see others affects various domains of our lives and the lives of others; from the types of jobs we have, the amount of money we make, the kind of friends we make, the places we live, the foods we eat, the schools we go to, etc… The entire social structure we inhabit is affected by at least one social construction, race. Interestingly, most people in the United States (which consist of people of color) are aware of this, but have not dismantled it. Why is that?

Often times the word social construct is thrown around in various theoretical and general works without ever being defined or discussed. However, understanding what is meant by race as a social construct is vital to understanding the capacity race has to intersect and affect other aspects and domains of life and society, as well as how to dismantle it.

To begin, a social construct is ontologically subjective, but epistemologically objective. It is ontologically subjective in that the construction and continued existence of social constructs are contingent on social groups and their collective agreement, imposition, and acceptance of such constructions (for more on the notion of social constructions see The Construction of Social Reality by John Searle). There is nothing absolute or real about social constructions in the same way as there is something absolute and real about rocks, rivers, mountains, and in general the objects examined by physics. For example, the existence of a mountain is not contingent on collective acceptance, imposition, or agreement. A mountain will exist regardless of people thinking, agreeing or accepting that it does exist. Unlike a mountain, the existence of race requires that people collectively agree and accept that it does exist. Franz Boas, a physicist by training, supports this view of race best in his work Race, Language, and Culture where he observes that there is nothing biologically real about race. There is nothing that we have identified as race that exists apart from our collective agreement, acceptance, and imposition of its existence.

Race, although it does not exist in the world in any ontologically objective way, it still is real in society (as opposed to nature). Race is a social construction that has real consequences and effects. These effects, consequences and the notion that race is ontologically subjective is epistemologically objective. We know that race is something that is real in society, and that it shapes the way we see ourselves and others. Many rightly claim that race is conceptually unstable. However, this should not lead us to skepticism about race, i.e. that we cannot have any objective knowledge about race. We can know what race is and how it works regardless of the various shifts in meaning that have occurred through history and occur geographically.

The notion of race as a social construct I am proposing is partially captured by various works. In Takaki’s work A Different Mirror: A history of Multicultural America, race is a social construct produced by the dominant group in society and their power to define. In other words, the dominant group in society imposed the boundaries of group membership by defining race in terms of biology. If you were black, then you were biologically inferior to a white person. Takaki explains that Africans in America were first brought to America as indentured servants. After completing the terms of their servitude they were freed, and had the status of free men. The color line at the time had not been drawn. Nonetheless, with the growing population of free Africans in America, fear of losing hegemonic control began to spread through the white population. Due to this, race as a biological concept was developed and used to justify the enslavement of a growing free black population early in U.S. history. This initial biological understanding of race helped draw the color line. The boundaries of group membership were marked by skin color. Till this day the primary race indicator is skin color.

Frankenberg in her work The Social Construction of Whiteness expands on what race indicators and hence race identify today. She simply explains that race is an indicator of difference, but an indicator of what kind of difference she does not say. As we have seen through Boas’s work, there are no biological differences between different “races”. Additionally, race does not identify differences in culture and is always loosely connected to biology. According to Frankenberg culture is unbounded. We cannot conclusively say on the basis of skin color that someone participates in white, or black cultural practices (although many people still do). This notion of unbounded cultural practices is exemplified in Gary Taylor’s piece White Noise: What Eminem Can Tell Us About White America, where he describes a white man (Eminem) in the hip-hop culture. George Lipsitz in his work Lean on Me: Beyond Identity Politics also discusses how Joe Clark, a black man, engages in a form of racism that perpetuates white privilege and supremacy.

Jan Nederveen Pieterse’s work White Negroes, suggests that the difference Frankenberg speaks of is one of status. The meaning of race developed so far with Takaki, Boas, Frankenberg and now Pieterse suggests that race is a marker of status that includes or excludes one from broader social constructs and enables or disables certain powers. Race typically works through race indicators which are used to indicate which race you are, and consequently what sort of status you have in society, e.g. in President Jefferson’s time race indicated a status of slave or slave master. Since race and race indicators are collectively imposed and defined by the dominant group, so is one’s status. Additionally, since race is a social construct and is ontologically subjective, it continues to work only in virtue of collective agreement and acceptance. Many people may object that they are not part of the collective agreement and acceptance I am describing. Nonetheless, as Frankenberg discusses and admits she herself is evidence of, white people are often blind to racism and do not see the privileges they have due to their skin color. Regardless of white people being anti-racist, they participate within a racialized society which privileges them. As Frantz Fanon described in his book Black Skin, White Masks, many individuals may claim they are not racist while tacitly accept the dominant racist ideology by way of reaping the benefits coffered to them.

Let us summarize what we have said about what race is so far. First, race is a social construct contingent on collective acceptance, agreement, and imposition. Second, race has always been defined by the dominant group in society. Third, race indicates differences in status. The status indicated by which race you are, either includes or excludes one from broader social constructs, and disables or enables certain powers. To illustrate how this sort of understanding of race works let us look at the United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind case of 1923 and the United States v. Takao Ozawa case of 1922.

Thind, an Indian American man, filed for citizenship in the U.S. in 1923, and was denied on the basis of his not being white. The U.S. Supreme court found that while Indians were anthropologically categorized as Caucasian, the “understanding of the common man”, wrote Justice George Sutherland, “knows perfectly well that there are unmistakable and profound differences”. Hence, despite being Caucasian, what many in the past (and almost everyone today) believed to be white, Thind was denied his status as white. The effects of the Supreme Court’s ruling retroactively affected all Indians who had already been granted citizenship. In the Takao Ozawa case in 1922, Takao argued that based on scientific evidence, he was white. Nonetheless, Justice Sutherland argued that he was not Caucasian, and hence could not be white, and consequently denied his citizenship. The rulings denying Takao and Thind’s citizenship strengthened anti-Asian sentiment.

The above cases demonstrate a profound kind of contradiction. The cases demonstrate a contradiction that was overlooked regardless of how obvious it was. Thind was not granted citizenship because he was not white, regardless of being Caucasian, and Ozawa was denied citizenship for not being Caucasian, despite being white. What allowed for this contradictory position to be maintained was the Supreme Court’s dominant status. The power Takaki describes is evident in the courts ruling. The common “white” man, and his status as dominant, allowed him to define the parameters of race, despite contradictions. As a result, Thind and Ozawa were excluded. By being excluded, by way of being denied citizenship, all the various powers enabled by the status of U.S. Citizen were disabled. Such powers included the right to vote, run for political office, and various other legal powers. In addition, other powers that are not as codified or legal, such as access to work unions, certain academic institutions, and certain neighborhoods were also disabled. The effects of the Supreme Court’s ruling trickled down and strengthened racist immigration policies, e.g. the Asian Exclusion Act of 1924, as well as affecting the lives of people of color in general.

The above contradiction points out how racist thinking has little to do with skin color, and much to do with status, power and fear. Roediger’s work Working Towards Whiteness exemplifies this point by showing how new immigrants, initially identified as “not white” but with an in-between status (regardless of having white skin), gained a new status (of white) and consequently- power. As we can see from the above cases and analysis, race is consistently utilized to maintain and control power due to fear of losing power and the current dominant position. Oddly enough, the ideology of white supremacy is inspired and maintained due to fear.

W.E.B. Du Bois in his work The Souls of White Folk questioned what it is about whiteness, that enables white men to commit crimes and not be condemned. In other words, he questioned why in virtue of being white, does a person have certain powers. With the analysis we have developed so far, we can answer Du Bois’s question. The answer is there is nothing inherent or intrinsic about white skin that enables white men to commit crimes and not be condemned. What enables white men to do so, is the structure of society in which they live. As we have seen, there is nothing ontologically objective about race and intrinsic or inherent in white skin that makes white people dominant. If there was, race would not be as fluid and unstable, and Thind or Ozawa would have been granted citizenship. Race and status are defined by the dominant group in society politically, economically, socio-culturally, and historically. The process of defining is made possible due to collective acceptance, agreement, and imposition. Additionally, the definition produced by the dominant group in society is constituted by collective acceptance, agreement, and imposition.

Frantz Fanon and his notion of socio-therapy, as developed in Black Skin, White Masks, advises that in order for racism to cease, society must abandon the notion of race. Fanon believed that only after society had realized that race is not real, would it overcome racism. Fanon is logically correct in assuming that racism will end when we no longer see through a racial lens, yet he is wrong in assuming that race is not real and that removing the lens is possible. To illustrate how he is wrong, take for instance Russell Simmons’ position towards homophobia and sexism in hip-hop. Simmons’ position is similar to Fanons. Simmons believes that by eliminating the words “nigger”, “bitch”, and “hoe” from hip-hop, it will solve the problem of homophobia and sexism within hip-hop culture. This is obviously misdirected because it simply evades the root of the problem. Frankenberg’s notion of power-evasive racist discourse can directly critique both Simmons and Fanon.

Thus far, I have repeatedly said that social constructs are contingent on collective acceptance, agreement, and imposition. It seems only natural to suppose that race will disappear altogether, as Fanon had hoped, once society stops collectively agreeing, accepting, and continuously imposing the notion of race. Nonetheless, this is a naïve supposition. Racism is engrained not only in the minds of people, but in the structure of society itself. Our legal system, our prison system, our educational system, our housing system, and various other aspects of society are all racialized. Take for example, Roediger’s assessment of the housing market after the Federal Housing Act in the 1930’s. Roediger shows how even capitalism–a layer in the foundation of U.S. democracy–is racialized by showing that the value of neighborhoods decreased and increased according to how it was racially organized. The more black people lived in a neighborhood the more the value of homes in that neighborhood would decrease. Abandoning the notion of race is not the solution to racism and white privilege. No matter how much we may attempt to make our legal language and documents racially neutral, race will always remain in the minds of people. Frankenberg’s notion of race cognizance seems to be a more viable and productive option. At the least, we have to come to terms with race, not abandon it but be aware of it, and understand it. Nonetheless, the general idea expressed in Fanon’s notion of socio-therapy (change society to cure the patient) seems to be correct. However, the change is not the abandonment of race, but instead a paradigm shift, or a revolution in the way race and differences are understood.

Emanuel Lusca recently contacted wishing to guest blog here at Anthropology.net. As a recent graduate of UC Berkeley, double majoring in anthropology and philosophy, I think Emanuel will fill some gaps in my lack of coverage of cultural anthropology topics… so I’m really excited to have him on board.

In his email, he explained that his anthropological interests are wide spread, stemming from his belief that anthropology is a self-reflexive exercise that aims to understand and explore oneself through the “other.’ He’s particularly interested n the intersection of ontology and epistemology in terms of the law, science, language and power. He told me he’s heavily influenced by thinkers such as Ludwig Wittgenstein, Martin Heidegger, Laura Nader, Bruno Latour, and others.

Currently, as a result of his religious upbringing, he is exploring the possibility of multiple understandings and lived realities in a shared world and the resulting ontological consequences and reconfiguration of power. He is applying to doctoral programs in cultural anthropology. And, the underlying question he is grappling with is how it is possible that demons be ontologically objective for a believer, and ontologically subjective for the theorist?

I welcome Emanuel to Anthropology.net, and hope you do as well!

This morning Dienekes pointed out a new paper in the open access journal PLoS Genetics on polygyny and its impact on human genetic variation. Razib followed suite, providing a more in depth review of the study. I recommend you check out both. In this post, I’m also gonna have a stab at reviewing the paper since it has an important anthropological impact.

The paper, “Sex-Biased Evolutionary Forces Shape Genomic Patterns of Human Diversity,” is authored by some people you may have heard of, such as Michael Hammer and Jeffrey Wall among others. Like many population geneticists, they isolated the problems and limitations of previous studies which investigated genetic diversity of humans from only markers on the mitochondrial DNA and non-recombining portion of the Y chromosome genome. They proposed that markers on the autosomal genome, including the X sex chromosome, will provide a more insightful understanding.

So they compared the genetic variation among 40 independent loci on the X chromosome and autosomes in 90 individuals from six different populations. 20 loci on the X chromosome and 20 on the autosomes were picked from non-coding regions of the genome.

Why wasn’t there a more even distribution of sites across the whole genome? Well, the authors specifically sought to seek out the impact of sex-specific processes, such as mating patterns, in shaping genomic patterns of variability. Both Razib and Dienekes do an excellent job in explaining this, but I’ll snip what Razib wrote since it is more clear in my mind:

“Assuming equal numbers of males and females in any given generation you expected a ratio of diversity of 0.75 between the X and the autosomes; remember that the number of copies of X circulating within the population are reduced by 25% because males carry only one copy, while women carry two.”

In other words, the X chromosome is present in two copies in females and a single copy in males. We all know that. We expect that the other chromosomes will show more genetic diversity than the X chromosome in a population with an equal number of breeding males and females because they are inherited equally by both sexes from each parent. In a populations with an unequal number of breeding males to females, we should see something different. Actually, we expect to see more genetic diversity on the X chromosome than on the other chromosomes in areas where men don’t get to pass on their genes, while most women do.

The authors’ samples included individuals from Africa, such as the Biaka of the Central African Republic, the Mandenka from Senegal, and the San from Namibia were included. Outside of Africa, the French Basque, the Han Chinese and Melanesians were also sampled. Roughly 210kb of DNA was sequenced from each of these individuals, and a basic statistical summary of the nucleotide diversity in six human populations was conducted. Comparing the observed nucleotide diversity on the X chromosome to the chromosomes showed that there was more genetic differences in the X chromosome than would be expected if equal numbers of males and females tended to mate.

Even though I explained this in two paragraphs above, polygyny could be the only reason why we see such results. Some men just didn’t get a chance to pass on their genes. The authors even made sure to rule out background selection, changes in population size and sex-specific migration in their conclusion. Only the process of polygyny could account for the sex ratio skew and resulting patterns of genomic variation. By this process, fewer unique male genes are being passed into the next generation.

In the same issue, a very similar paper was also published that I don’t think many other people noticed. A separate team of academics applied this multilocus approach to the genetic diversity of Central Asia. It is published under the title, “Sex-Specific Genetic Structure and Social Organization in Central Asia: Insights from a Multi-Locus Study.” Their sample included 10 populations of bilineal agriculturalists and 11 populations of patrilineal herders from West Uzbekistan to East Kyrgyzstan. Bilineal means that there’s an even migration of men and women while patrilineal means there’s an uneven migration of women to their husband’s location. In total, their sample size represents 780 healthy adult men from 5 ethnic groups: Tajiks, Kyrgyz, Karakalpaks, Kazaks, and Turkmen. They conclude that the number of reproductive individuals is likely to be higher for women among patrilineal populations.

Both these studies show that the organization and structure of patrilineal populations is the likely cause of the observed genetic patterns, where men tend to father children with more females than females do with males despite institutionalized monogamy.

Michael F. Hammer, Fernando L. Mendez, Murray P. Cox, August E. Woerner, Jeffrey D. Wall, Dmitri A. Petrov (2008). Sex-Biased Evolutionary Forces Shape Genomic Patterns of Human Diversity PLoS Genetics, 4 (9) DOI: 10.1371/journal.pgen.1000202

Laure Ségurel, Begoña Martínez-Cruz, Lluis Quintana-Murci, Patricia Balaresque, Myriam Georges, Tatiana Hegay, Almaz Aldashev, Firuza Nasyrova, Mark A. Jobling, Evelyne Heyer, Renaud Vitalis, Molly Przeworski (2008). Sex-Specific Genetic Structure and Social Organization in Central Asia: Insights from a Multi-Locus Study PLoS Genetics, 4 (9) DOI: 10.1371/journal.pgen.1000200

About a week ago, I read and posted on a summary piece on cultural evolution research in PLoS Biology. The reviewer introduced me to Simon Kirby‘s work, which I found remarkable. Kirby and colleagues setup an experiment, one that observed the evolution of an artificial language from a set of random terms to an ordered, naturally adapting system in ways that assured its reproduction.

I didn’t know when Kirby was to publish his work, but lo and behold in this week’s issue of PNAS, I saw “Cumulative cultural evolution in the laboratory: An experimental approach to the origins of structure in human language,” by Simon Kirby, Hannah Cornish, and Kenny Smith. The experiment involved showing subjects illustrations that were associated with nonsense words.

The subjects were asked to play a game of Memory, by trying to recall the terms with the illustrations. Regardless of the accuracy of their recollections, the associated terms were used as a foundation of the group’s subsequent language training. This was done over and over, and low and behold, detectable patterns began emerging. Terms began to be used to describe whether an illustration pictured horizontal movement or a bouncing object. The following graphs document the transmission error and measure of structure over each generation:

Transmission Error & Measure of Structure versus the Number of Generations

Clearly there’s some pattern forming. But, Kirby and team understood that these emerging languages were simplistic and limited. So the team switched it up a bit, and discarded duplicate words. This represented a sort of selection, which gave structure and allowed the language to be remembered. Throughout 10 generations, the grammar of laboratory language went from meaningless, ad-hoc bunch of words into an expressive mode of communication. The speakers didn’t change, it was the change in the meanings behind the terms. The following graphs document the transmission error and measure of structure over each generation with selection:

Transmission Error & Measure of Structure versus Number of Generations with Selection

So how did the subjects screen out their own linguistic predispositions? Most humans are exposed to at least one language, which would clearly bias them and affect their abilities to give structure to a set of gibberish. In other words, the ‘selection’ applied could have been favoring structures that matched existing languages.

Kirby said that’s not really a concern, because that languages that emerged in his experiments do not have much in common with the extant languages. And since the emerging languages resembled those from computer models, which did not have preexisting languages to muddle up the waters, then we’re not to worry. Kirby concludes that the,

“The best explanation for our results is the cultural system ‘discovering’ adaptations for all aspects of the transmission bottleneck rather than merely mirroring the native language of our participants.”

Kirby, S., Cornish, H., Smith, K. (2008). Cumulative cultural evolution in the laboratory: An experimental approach to the origins of structure in human language. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0707835105

Language is a product of culture. Or is it? Which came first — language or culture? That’s like asking if the chicken or the egg came first. But cultural behavior has been documented in animals who do not have language systems, like gorillas who have intricate systems of processing plants. Richard Byrne summarized this behavior,

“Gorillas do not make tools in the wild… but several of their food-processing skills consist of highly structured, multi-stage sequences of bimanual action, hierarchically organized and flexibly adjusted to plants of highly specific local distribution and these abilities are near-ubiquitous among the local population. In terms of intricate complexity, gorilla plant-processing actually exceeds anything yet described in chimpanzees, unless tool-use per se is taken to be intrinsically more complex than non-tool-use. Gorilla, like Pan and Pongo, apparently sometimes relies for its survival on elaborate, deft and intricate feeding skills that are highly unlikely ever to be discovered by a solitary individual.”

This example is just one of many. It documents that culture can be created, persist and change without language. It does so through mimicking and augmentation. So it is generally assumed that culture came first, and language emerged as a system of formalized symbols, sounds, gestures used a means of communicating culture.

Why am I mentioning this at all? Well, we’ve seen, read and reviewed a couple of recent studies investigating cultural evolution and patterns in linguistic diversity. Most notably is the paper by Atkinson et al., where Simon and team showed that language evolves in bursts. Additionally, Deborah Rogers and Paul Ehrlich showed that cultural things have functional and symbolic elements, the former of which is under naturally selective pressures.

Despite these advances, there are some who still think that culture and everything related with culture is nothing but noise. I don’t know where they get this idea from. Even John Herschel and Charles Darwin understood that extant ‘languages descended from a common ancestor,’ and, ‘the formation of different languages and of distinct species, and the proofs that both have been developed through a gradual process, are curiously parallel.’ This observation was made before the publication of The Voyage of the Beagle and without a doubt helped lay the framework for the theory of evolution. The irony is that these vocal objections come from someone who specializes in studying material culture.

Anyways, I digress. John Whitfield, a science writer and blogger behind El Gentraso, has published a feature in the latest issue of the open access journal PLoS Biology where he summarizes “… the Curious Parallel of Language and Species Evolution.” As anthropologists, we should appreciate the remarkable tangents between the dynamics of linguistic change and biological evolution. Because of these similarities, it is possible to use tools and frameworks used in studying biological evolution to study how language changes… even how cultures evolve. Furthermore, it is very possible that we may soon see a synthesis of theories, one that folds in both both biological and cultural evolution.

Whitfield summarizes research by Simon Kirby, which I didn’t know about but find fascinating.

“Kirby has asked subjects to learn a nonsense language and then teach it to new subjects, and so on. He found that the randomness quickly became regularized, as people unconsciously shaped words into something easier to remember and use, and devised rules to come up with words for things they hadn’t seen. Such a process may be at work in the spontaneous emergence over the past few decades of two sign languages—Nicaraguan Sign Language and Al-Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language. Each of these has moved rapidly from a system of gestures to a fully fledged language with conventions for grammar and sentence structure. Kirby plans to use them as a test bed for his ideas about how structure in language can rapidly emerge.”

In the piece, Whitfield also got to ask Mark Pagel‘s what his thoughts are with synthesizing ‘the two’. Pagel is an evolutionary biologist. He was one of the coauthors of the paper with Simon Greenhill and Atkinson. He’s also published an earlier paper with Atkinson titled, “Frequency of word-use predicts rates of lexical evolution throughout Indo-European history.” Pagel responded saying,

“Languages are extraordinarily like genomes. We think there could be very general laws of lexical evolution to rival those of genetic evolution.”

Alex Mesoudi agrees. He told Whitfield,

“If there’s a model system for cultural evolution, then probably the people working on language have got it, because there’s so much data… Cultural change and biological change share the same fundamental properties of variation, selection and inheritance.”

William Croft is a bit more cautious but also understands that,

“these are two different instantiations of a general theory of evolutionary change. These are early days, but such a theory will give us insights that you can’t get just by looking at one domain.”

So what do you think — is it possible to synthesize the two? Or do they exist as two inherently different entities that change under different conditions?

Oh, you may also be interested in this related video discussion between Paul Ehrlich and Carl Zimmer — where Ehrlich advocates that cultural evolution needs its own theoretical framework aside from evolutionary biology. Strange proposition, especially because he used a natural selection framework in his latest PNAS paper.

Pagel, M., Atkinson, Q.D., Meade, A. (2007). Frequency of word-use predicts rates of lexical evolution throughout Indo-European history. Nature, 449(7163), 717-720. DOI: 10.1038/nature06176

Byrne, R.W. (2007). Culture in great apes: using intricate complexity in feeding skills to trace the evolutionary origin of human technical prowess. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 362(1480), 577-585. DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2006.1996

Whitfield, J. (2008). Across the Curious Parallel of Language and Species Evolution. PLoS Biology, 6(7), e186. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.0060186

Remember that sensational set of photos of the ‘uncontacted’ people from the Brazilian-Peruvian Border? Well a couple weeks ago, Simon from HENRY, shared link that I think some of you maybe interested in. The link I speak of is this news piece, “Secret of the ‘lost’ tribe that wasn’t.”

In the news piece, Peter Beaumont, the author clarifies somethings that the press didn’t quite cover thoroughly. Firstly, the tribe photographed hasn’t been completely unknown to outsiders. In fact, ‘the tribe’s existence has been noted since 1910.’ Al-Jazeera got a chance to interview one of the sertanistas behind those photographs, Carlos Meirelles. Meirelles works for FUNAI, the Brazilian Indian Protection Agency  dedicated to searching out remote tribes and protecting them,

“Meirelles described how he found the group, detailed how they lived and how he planned the publicity to protect them and other tribes in similar danger of losing the habitat in which they have flourished for hundreds of years.

Meirelles admitted that the tribe was first known about almost a century ago and that the apparently chance encounter that produced the now famous images was no accident. ‘When we think we might have found an isolated tribe,’ he told al-Jazeera, ‘a sertanista like me walks in the forest for two or three years to gather evidence and we mark it in our GPS. We then map the territory the Indians occupy and we draw that protected territory without making contact with them. And finally we set up a small outpost where we can monitor their protection.’”

So Meirelles is a conservator of indigenous peoples and interested in finding more about them. He further explained the motivation behind the photos,

“…the Brazilian state of Acre offered him the use of an aircraft for three days. ‘I had years of GPS co-ordinates,’ he said. Meirelles had another clue to the tribe’s precise location. ‘A friend of mine sent me some Google Earth co-ordinates and maps that showed a strange clearing in the middle of the forest and asked me what that was,’ he said. ‘I saw the co-ordinates and realized that it was close to the area I had been exploring with my son – so I needed to fly over it….’

When I saw them painted red, I was satisfied, I was happy,’ he said. ‘Because painted red means they are ready for war, which to me says they are happy and healthy defending their territory….’

…But the revelation that the existence of the tribe was already established will provoke awkward questions over why a decision was made to try to photograph them – a form of contact in itself – in order to make a political point.”

So what do you think? Was photographing these people ethical?

I stumbled upon this list of 10 ‘extraordinary’ burial ceremonies that I want to pass onto you. Since we’re a anthropology focused community, it is very possible that you’ve heard of most of these rituals. I knew of several of them, but learned some new things as well.

The following are ones I found particularly noteworthy:

1. Air Sacrifice – Mongolia
   The lama, the spiritual leader of the community is,

   “the only one allowed to touch the corpse, and a white silk veil is placed over the face. The naked body is flanked by men on the right side of the yurt while women are placed on the left. Both have their respective right or left hand placed under their heads, and are situated in the fetal position…

   …The body is taken away from the village and laid on the open ground. A stone outline is placed around it, and then the village dogs that have been penned up and not fed for days are released to consume the remains. What is left goes to the local predators.

   The stone outline remains as a reminder of the person. If any step of the ceremony is left out, no matter how trivial, bad karma is believed to ensue.”

2. Sky Burial – Tibet
   

   “The deceased is dismembered by a rogyapa, or body breaker, and left outside away from any occupied dwellings to be consumed by nature…

   …The ceremony represents the perfect Buddhist act, known as Jhator. The worthless body provides sustenance to the birds of prey that are the primary consumers of its flesh.”

3. Pit Burial – Pacific Northwest Haida
   The Haida of the American northwest coast,

   “…Simply cast their dead into a large open pit behind the village.

   Their flesh was left to the animals. But if one was a chief, shaman, or warrior, things were quite different.

   The body was crushed with clubs until it fit into a small wooden box about the size of a piece of modern luggage. It was then fitted atop a totem pole in front of the longhouse of the man’s tribe where the various icons of the totem acted as guardians for the spirits’ journey to the next world.”

4. Predator Burial – Maasai Tribe
   The Maasai of East Africa, perform traditional burials but are reserved for only chief.

   “The common people are simply left outdoors for predators to dispose of, since Maasai believe dead bodies are harmful to the earth.”

5. Skull Burial – Kiribati
   The inhabitants of the tiny island Kiribati, in the South Pacific, lay out the dead in the house for as long as twelve days, they then bury the dead.

   “Several months after internment the body is exhumed and the skull removed, oiled, polished, and offered tobacco and food. After the remainder of the body is re-interred, traditional islanders keep the skull on a shelf in their home and believe the native god Nakaa welcomes the dead person’s spirit in the northern end of the islands.”

Clearly, there’s a theme to the ones I found interesting. I’m very curious to with how others view the body as a vessel. In contrast to many Judeo-Christian burials, these ones I’ve outlined don’t adorn their dead with fancy gravestones and a $6,000 coffin. Instead, they believe the body should be returned into the ecosystem.

Some of the commenters in the original post added some more interesting burial practices not mentioned, such as the Hanging Coffins in the Philipines. I’ve got one to add that is similar with the ones I plucked from the Brave New Traveler post, the Zoroastrian burial rites.

Being Iranian, Zoroastrian culture is pretty deeply engrained. I’ve known for sometime that Zoroastrian people used to present the corpse to a dog, preferably a dog with a spot above each eye which is thought to have increased the efficacy of its gaze. This ritual is repeated five times a day. Since Zoroastrian religion revolves around light and fire, after the first rite, a fire is brought into the room and is kept burning until three days after the removal of the corpse to the Tower of Silence during daytime.

The Tower of Silence is composed of three areas, one for men, women, and children respectively. The corpses are exposed there naked and presented to vultures. Once the vultures do their thing, the remains are dried by the sun and then are buried into the central well.

I’m very curious to know the origin of this ritual, because of the remarkable similarity between the Mongolian and Tibetan practices. As you know the Mongols control Persia and Tibet for quite sometime, where I suspect these practices were exchanged, amongst other memes.

Do you have any interesting burial practices to share with us?

Introduction

Before I dive into the concept of race, I just want to thank Kambiz for this opportunity to broaden not only my perspectives but everyone else’s as well. I am very excited to discuss subjects that interest me and make people think critically about culture and society. I am looking forward to this personal challenge to hold my own writing with an anthropological community. I humbly thank you all in advance!

Historical Context

All the history books that I have read suggest that race was first recognized when the Europeans came over to America and saw the Native Americans. But what did the Europeans think of the peoples on their trade routes? What was different about the Native Americans that sparked a racial hierarchy to begin? Or is it our history books that are flawed due to being written by either by Americans or Europeans and are therefore biased?

The main concern of the Europeans was religion and how people of different colors fit into that scheme. Were they also “Children of God or soulless creatures that needed to be saved? The discussion of the “conversion” of “savages” is an entirely different bag of issues, so to speak. But this is, nevertheless, the beginning of the mistreatment of people for their skin color…in theory.

Definition

The definitions that I am referencing are from “The Social Construction of Difference and Inequality: Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality” with Tracey E. Ore describing race as “a group of people who perceive themselves and are perceived by others as possessing distinctive hereditary traits.” Whereas ethnicity would be “having cultural traits such as language, religion, family customs, and food preferences.” I state the definition of ethnicity because the two can be confused with one another but they can also be intertwined.

Reason for Race, Not Justification

It is human nature to categorize things to make our reality more palatable. Also, it is a coping mechanism for status. Something as simple as the color of one’s skin can denote their position in a hierarchy and can save a conversation. One does not have to talk to someone to figure out their status if they can just look at them and know according to their skin color, hypothetically speaking. Now, I am not saying we all do this, but realize that ingrained within each one of us is our culture that society has presented to us since birth. I believe, no matter who you are looking at, you will make some sort of assumption or employ some sort of stereotype to that person. This may include race but more importantly hierarchy or status judgment.

Construction through Society

Race is a very dynamic human category. It is not the same anywhere at any given time due to the different constructs set up within a society and the personal translation of that construct. The construction is solely based upon the “recipe” for race throughout the society’s history. In America, race started out by the decision of whether or not the peoples of darker skin were animals or men. That is a pretty intense construct to break out of after years of this type of thinking and teaching! It has taken decades…no centuries to even come face to face with the equal rights issues because people are just stuck in society’s cultural mind of oppression!

Not only sociocultural factors are involved but a more “exact” science as well: biology. Scientists justified oppression due to skin color by coming up with biological factors that proved “they” were inferior to them. We have outgrown this phase (for the most part), though, which is relieving. There is still a commanding argument on whether or not biology has anything to do the color of skin of anyone. Yes, the color of skin varies but does it make someone biologically different to the point of them being inferior or superior?

Conclusion

The conception of race is truly in the eyes of the beholder. It depends on who is looking, judging, assuming and has little or nothing to do with biology but the history of a society that makes assumptions or stereotypes of people of darker skin to create a social hierarchy that is visible or easily identified. There is variation of skin colors depending on the region of one’s origin. But the emphasis put behind the skin is the creation of race. The emphasis that is put in place by a sociocultural system is where the interpretation and conception of race stems from. Race is just an idea and not a fact of inferiority.

I have brought up Paul Ehrlich a lot lately. And this morning Razib emailed me a link to an interview of Ehrlich by Carl Zimmer on Bloggingheads.tv, so I felt compelled to share the interview with you.

In the discussion, Zimmer and Ehrlich discuss Ehrlich’s new book, “The Dominant Animal, the ‘overrated idea of a meme,’ why the study of cultural evolution needs its own theoretical framework aside from evolutionary biology.

I’m particularly interested in the last topic, which comes in at the 20 minute mark, since Ehrlich coauthors links to natural selection in his latest PNAS paper but advocates that social scientists need to step up to the plate and explain why cultures have evolved. The most noteworthy remark Ehrlich makes on this topic is,

“The ball is really in the court of social scientists today. They’ve got to get reorganized and particularly get rid of their preposterous disciplinary boundaries. How can you possibly be a political scientists without knowing economics and sociology and vice versa.”

The two also talk about other selected topics on population growth and the nuances that come with it.