Biological Anthropology - Science topic

Abstract Comprehensive understanding of evolution is essential to full and meaningful engagement with issues facing societies today. Yet this understanding is challenged by lack of acceptance of evolution as well as misconceptions about how evolution works that persist even after student completion of college-level life science courses. Recent rese...

A recurring observation in the literature is that females tend to be less represented than males in osteological collections. How can we explain such observations? Do female skeletons preserve less well than their male counterparts? In this study, 200 skeletons from the Collezione Antropologica LABANOF (CAL), equally divided between sexes, were sel...

Climate change and the Anthropocene pose numerous challenges for all sectors of humanity. For anthropology, one of them is how to use the deep situated knowledge on human-environment relations for adaptation to accelerated environmental change, especially in frontier communities that are both the traditional object of study of the discipline and th...

Substantial relaxation of natural selection beginning around 1900 changed the mutation/selec­tion balance of modern genetic material, producing an increase in variable anatomical structures. While multiple structures have been affected, the temporal increase in variations of the sacrum, specifically, ‘Sa­cral Spina Bifida Occulta,’ have been reliab...

Anthropology has as ambition the study of the whole of humanity. It includes several specialties and sub-specialties that, despite their differences, offer an overall perspective that requires a holistic research approach. In Biological Anthropology, one of its specialties, anthropologists study biological variations in contemporary human populatio...

Laboratory activities in this workbook are presented as chapters each of which could either be highly specialized, or generic. The approach and the level of difficulty will vary based on instructors’ preferences and more importantly availability and quality of the materials and equipment available in the laboratory.

Biocultural approaches in anthropology originated from a desire to dissolve the nature/culture divide that is entrenched in the discipline. Whereas biocultural approaches were born under the umbrella of medical anthropology, by the late 1990s, biology-centered approaches to bioculturalism had been mostly taken up by human biologists in biological a...

Historic skeletal collections in the US that were assembled during the 19th and early 20th centuries have recently come to the forefront of ethics discussions in biological anthropology. Most, if not all of these collections were amassed prior to landmark guidelines such as the Nuremberg Code, or the Belmont Report in which research subjects are af...

Reproductive seasonality is a phenomenon common to human and animal populations and driven by, among others, climatic variables. Given the currently changing climate and its impacts on both the environment and human lives, the question arises of its potential effects on reproductive seasonality. Few studies have specifically explored the seasonalit...

EvoHom is a board game currently in development to address issues high school science teachers face: developing interesting and engaging alternative methods of teaching science, while facing time and budgetary constraints. Development of EvoHom started with interviews and surveys of high school educators to identify barriers to developing alternati...

Le site de Huaca Amarilla, situé dans le désert de Sechura au nord du Pérou, a livré un ensemble funéraire singulier utilisé entre le IXe et le XVe siècle. Il se compose de 112 individus immatures (70 provenant de contextes funéraires fouillés et 42 de vestiges dispersés) dont l’âge au décès a été estimé entre 24 semaines d’aménorrhées et 7 ans, et...

Most textbooks and atlases of human anatomy chronicle only a few cases of muscle variations in the normal human population, or of muscle anomalies within congenital malformations. Consequently, there is a misconception of what is considered normal human anatomy and what that looks like. Each person within the normal population has at least a few mu...

Forensic anthropology is commonly considered a subdiscipline of biological anthropology. While the discipline of forensic anthropology currently requires specific training and certification, many faculty members in the broader discipline of biological anthropology continue to list forensic anthropology, or “forensics,” as a research interest, speci...

The 5th century AD in the Carpathian Basin was a time of successive political and social shifts arising from the fall of the Roman and the Hunnic Empire, together with significant changes in the anthropological profile of the population. Besides, the consecutive waves of migrations contributed to these developments, which resulted in a remarkable h...

Understanding the contribution of fish to the human dietis an important debate in past population studies as it implies specific organization (e.g. adapted techniques, gender‐based activities?) and relationship with the local or sublocal environments (e.g. mobility, seasonal‐based exploitation). In the Paris Basin, the role of fish has been discuss...

The coupling between maturation and growth in the age estimation of young individuals with altered growth processes was analyzed in this study, whereby the age was determined using a geometric morphometrics method. A medical sample comprising 223 fetuses and infants was used to establish the method. The pars basilaris shapes, quantified by elliptic...

Issues concerning naturalism have increasingly become the subject of philosophical reflections involving ontological, epistemological, and even ethics affairs. The most popular topic for contemporary philosophy has been the relationship between ontological results of Darwinism and epistemology. Despite the varied circumstances of its establishment,...

During World War II, part of France was occupied by the German army. In the summer of 1940, the Germans wanted to invade England from France. Then, the Battle of Britain began, which lasted until spring 1941 after a victory of the Royal Air Force over the Luftwaffe. During this battle, the Luftwaffe bombed southeast England and the London area usin...

Since the initial identification of the Denisovans a decade ago, only a handful of their physical remains have been discovered. Here we analysed ~3,800 non-diagnostic bone fragments using collagen peptide mass fingerprinting to locate new hominin remains from Denisova Cave (Siberia, Russia). We identified five new hominin bones, four of which conta...

Most biological anthropologists acknowledge that phenotypic human variation is distinct from human race. However, there is the potential for the research on human variation to be (mis)interpreted by the public as a reification of biological races. To explore this possible misuse, this study is a content analysis of articles (n = 1146) in the promin...

Table des matières Musée National de Préhistoire : Regards croisés, François Augiéras, les rives primitives 2 La lettre du Campus Condorcet décembre 21 6 American Journal of Biological Anthropology : Body proportions and environmental adaptation in gorillas 13 The Conversation : Les populations de chasseurs-cueilleurs du Paléolithique connaissaient...

Bipedal trackways discovered in 1978 at Laetoli site G, Tanzania and dated to 3.66 million years ago are widely accepted as the oldest unequivocal evidence of obligate bipedalism in the human lineage 1–3 . Another trackway discovered two years earlier at nearby site A was partially excavated and attributed to a hominin, but curious affinities with...

To reconstruct locomotor behaviors of fossil hominins and understand the evolution of bipedal locomotion in the human lineage, it is important to clarify the functional morphology of the talar trochlea in humans and extant great apes. Therefore, the present study aimed to investigate the interspecific-differences of the talar trochlear morphology a...

Criminality accompanies humanity for millennia. Despite the fact that this phenomenon has received much attention from researchers of different times and countries, its joint understanding is still missing. Taking into account the previous experience of cognition of this phenomenon, of course, should be the key to effective preventive action in cur...

We investigate the relationship between climatic and demographic events in Korea during the Chulmun period (10,000–3,500 cal. BP) by analyzing paleoenvironmental proxies and 14C dates. We focus on testing whether a cooling climate, and its potential negative impact on millet productivity around the mid 5th-millennium cal. BP, triggered the populati...

Immature orangutans acquire their feeding skills over several years, via social and independent learning. So far, it has remained uninvestigated to what extent orangutan mothers are actively involved in this learning process. From a fitness point of view, it may be adaptive for mothers to facilitate their offspring’s skill acquisition to make them...

Childhood is an ontogenetic stage unique to the modern human life history pattern. It enables the still dependent infants to achieve an extended rapid brain growth, slow somatic maturation, while benefitting from provisioning, transitional feeding, and protection from other group members. This tipping point in the evolution of human ontogeny likely...

Most forensic anthropologists and the populations they study are WEIRD—that is, Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic. In their interventions into the WEIRD, Clancy and Davis (2019) contend that WEIRD is a euphemism for white and that it is the white, Western European–derived scientists and subjects that skew the predominating nar...

Human populations are genetically affected by their demographic history, which shapes the distribution of their functional genomic variation. However, the genetic impact of recent demography is debated. This issue has been studied in different populations, but never in North Africans, despite their relevant cultural and demographic diversity. In th...

While recent advances in genetics make it possible to follow the genetic exchanges between populations and their phenotypic consequences, the impact of the genetic exchanges on the sensory perception of populations has yet to be explored. From this perspective, the present study investigated the consequences of African gene flow on odor perception...

Vitamin D deficiency has hugely impacted the health of past societies. Its identification in skeletal remains provides insights into the daily activities, cultural habits, and the disease load of past populations. However, up till now, this approach remained impossible in cremated bones, because temperatures reached during cremations destroyed all...

The importance of reference osteological collections is unquestionable. However, the development of methodologies is more reliable the closer the collection is socioeconomically, demographically, and genetically to the population under study. The purpose of this study is to characterize and contextualize a new Portuguese reference collection. The c...

Commingled remains describes the situation of intermixed skeletal elements, an extremely common occurrence in contemporary forensic cases, archaeological mass graves, as well as fossil hominin assemblages. Given that reliable identification is typically impossible for commingled contexts, a plethora of previous studies has focused on the developmen...

A widely accepted model for the peopling of the Americas postulates a source population in the Northeast Asian maritime region, which includes northern Japan. The model is based on similarities in stone artifacts (stemmed points) found in North American sites dating as early as 15,000 years ago and those of comparable age in Japan and neighboring r...

The La Chapelle-aux-Saints 1 skeleton of an old (>60-year-old) male Neanderthal is renowned for the advanced osteoarthritis of its spinal column and hip joint, and their implications for posture and lifestyle in these Mid- to Late Pleistocene humans. Reassessment of the pathologic lesions reveals erosions at multiple non-contiguous vertebrae and re...

In recent decades, funding agencies, institutes and professional bodies have recognized the profound benefits of transdisciplinarity in tackling targeted research questions. However, once questions are answered, the previously abundant support often dissolves. As such, the long-term benefits of these transdisciplinary approaches are never fully ach...

This volume provide an overview of biological anthropology, specifically in bioarcheology, paleopathology and forensic anthropology. It is an important resource for the scientific community tha belongs to this discipline, including evolutionary biologists, ecologists, medical researchers and students.

La découverte et l’étude du cercueil en plomb et des restes momifiés de Louise de Quengo, noble bretonne décédée en 1656, est l’une des grandes aventures de l’archéologie de ces dernières années. La condition de cette femme parmi ses contemporains, l’échange posthume des cœurs entre les époux, le processus de momification, ses habits funéraires, la...

The burials at the Neolithic cemetery Kadruka 23 in Sudan have yielded adornments and bone and lithic artefacts that occur as distinct stages of the chaîne opératoire . This article reports on a hitherto unrecognised funerary practice that highlights the importance of craftsmanship for Neolithic communities in life and beyond.

Polynesia was settled in a series of extraordinary voyages across an ocean spanning one third of the Earth¹, but the sequences of islands settled remain unknown and their timings disputed. Currently, several centuries separate the dates suggested by different archaeological surveys2–4. Here, using genome-wide data from merely 430 modern individuals...

In biological anthropology, parameters relating to cross-sectional geometry are calculated in paired long bones to evaluate the degree of lateralization of anatomy and, by inference, function. Here, we describe a novel approach, newly added to the morphomap R package, to assess the lateralization of the distribution of cortical bone along the entir...

Yawn contagion occurs when individuals yawn in response to the yawn of others (triggers). This is the first account of yawn contagion in wild geladas ( Theropithecus gelada ), a monkey species that shows yawn contagion in captivity and is organized in core units (one-male/bachelor groups) forming multilevel associations. In a population of geladas...

The merovingian rider and his horse: impact of equestrian equipment on the rider's posture and skeleton The Merovingian period offers an ideal archaeological context to address the question of equestrian practice by populations of the past. Within the funeral complexes, the archaeological and archaeozoological data testify to the presence of mounte...

Paleopathological studies have evolved in the last decade. New methods and assumptions on health have been explored, and the number of publications has encouraged interpopulation comparisons across time and space. However, care is needed when a straightforward comparison is used since recording methods and results’ presentation may differ between s...

The development and dispersal of agropastoralism transformed the cultural and ecological landscapes of the Old World, but little is known about when or how this process first impacted Central Asia. Here, we present archaeological and biomolecular evidence from Obishir V in southern Kyrgyzstan, establishing the presence of domesticated sheep by ca....

Background: Oral quality of life is of great importance in head and neck cancer, where each patient combines functional, social and esthetic needs. Our study aimed to evaluate the influence of prosthetic and/or maxillofacial rehabilitation on patients' perceived oral quality of life. Material and methods: The General Oral Health Assessment Index...

The paper aims to study intragroup variation inside the two pre-Columbian Cuban populations: the aceramic Archaic and the ceramic Taino groups, based on their cranial morphology. The latter applied artificial cranial deformation to all its members, so the groups are referred to as "non-deformed" and "deformed" samples here. Studies across different...

In 2009, Dr. Eugene “Gene” Giles, PhD, D-ABFA (#14), sat across from me in a plush red velvet chair in the lobby of the Hyatt Regency Chicago. We were discussing his research around the birth of forensic anthropology. Gene, enthusiastically, but in his usual reserved, self-effacing manner, discussed his time at Harvard and his current research proj...

Whilst an African origin of modern humans is well established, the timings and routes of their expansions into Eurasia are the subject of heated debate, due to the scarcity of fossils and the lack of suitably old ancient DNA. Here, we use high-resolution palaeoclimate reconstructions to estimate how difficult it would have been for humans in terms...

Ancient DNA studies have revealed how human migrations from the Neolithic to the Bronze Age transformed the social and genetic structure of European societies. Present-day Croatia lies at the heart of ancient migration routes through Europe, yet our knowledge about social and genetic processes here remains sparse. To shed light on these questions,...

The Baka Pygmies are known for their short stature resulting from a reduced growth rate during infancy. They are peculiar also for their teeth erupt earlier than in any other African population, and their posterior dentition is larger than in non-Pygmy populations. However, the Baka’s dental morphology, like several other aspects of their biology,...

Humans are unique in their diet, physiology and socio-reproductive behavior compared to other primates. They are also unique in the ubiquitous adaptation to all biomes and habitats. From an evolutionary perspective, these trends seem to have started about two million years ago, coinciding with the emergence of encephalization, the reduction of the...

Stable isotope analysis of human tissues has become a valuable tool for mapping human geolocation. This study adds to the existing knowledge of the relationship between oxygen stable isotopes in human enamel and drinking water by presenting enamel oxygen values in clinic-extracted human dental enamel with known provenance. The results from this stu...

Readings in Evolutionary Theory, Genetics, and the Origins of Modern Human Morphology provides students with a collection of readings that explore critical concepts in biological anthropology and human evolution. The text is divided into 10 distinct sections that feature an introduction, relevant readings, and post-reading questions. Opening sectio...

From early infancy, human face-to-face communication is multimodal, comprising a plethora of interlinked communicative and sensory modalities. Although there is also growing evidence for this in nonhuman primates, previous research rarely disentangled production from perception of signals. Consequently, the functions of integrating articulators (i....

Objectives Digital models are now frequently used in biological anthropology (bioanthropology) research. Despite several studies validating this type of research, none has examined if the assessment of dental wear magnitude based on Computerized Tomography (CT) scans is reliable. Thus, this study aims to fill this gap and assess if dental wear magn...

Objectives: Altitude is one of the most demanding environmental pressures for human populations. Highlanders from Asia, America and Africa have been shown to exhibit different biological adaptations, but Oceanian populations remain understudied [Woolcock et al., 1972; Cotes et al., 1974; Senn et al., 2010]. We tested the hypothesis that highlander...

Denisova Cave in southern Siberia is the type locality of the Denisovans, an archaic hominin group who were related to Neanderthals1–4. The dozen hominin remains recovered from the deposits also include Neanderthals5,6 and the child of a Neanderthal and a Denisovan7, which suggests that Denisova Cave was a contact zone between these archaic hominin...

Life history, brain size and energy expenditure scale with body mass in mammals but there is little conclusive evidence for a correlated evolution between life history and energy expenditure (either basal/resting or daily) independent of body mass. We addressed this question by examining the relationship between primate free-living daily energy exp...