Science topic
Evolutionary Anthropology - Science topic
Explore the latest questions and answers in Evolutionary Anthropology, and find Evolutionary Anthropology experts.
Questions related to Evolutionary Anthropology
A) ~195,000 years
B) ~233,000 years
C) ~125,000 years, if the two correlations below are valid:
In New Paradigm,
Omo 1 is most probably younger than 140 ka despite the redating to ~195 ka [51] and also despite the ~233 ka based on the correlation of the KHS tuff with the eruption of the Shala volcano ~350 km away [143]. The ~195 ka is based on the Nakaa'kire tuff that is older than Omo 1 whereas KHS tuff is stratigraphically younger than Omo 1. If the ~233 ka is correct, KHS tuff (and thus Omo 1) impossibly appears to be older than Nakaa'kire tuff,~195 ka. Until now, "Vidal et al. (2022) made no attempt to address this discrepancy" [17].
On the other hand, McDougall et al. [51] pointed outthe other possibility that “The two parts of Member II (...) may correspond to the two phases identified in sapropel S5 (119–124 kyr)”. It means significantly increased precipitation and so very rapidly deposition of Member II in MIS 5e. In this case, the top of Member I (and Omo 1) maybe ~125 ka old.
In anatomy, some unusual features of Omo 1’s postcranial skeleton are shared with some Levantine early moderns (Qafzeh 8, Qafzeh 9, and Skhul 5), and with Neanderthals, and also with some specimens from the European Gravettian, especially Grotte des Enfants 4 [144]. These affinities, of course, support a post-140 ka age for Omo 1.
Omo 2 corresponds to the same stratigraphic level with Omo 1 but 2.6 km away and also relatively (~60 cm) deeper compared to the base of Member II [51]. In New Paradigm, Omo 2 most probably is coeval with the Ngaloba (Laetoli H.18) cranium, 129 ka old [20]. If so, both are retrogressive forms of Sapiens due to the sudden cooling 129 ka ago
Do I have a right sense, when I imagine that traditional anthropology which studied 'primitives', is near to biological than to socio-cultural?
The common view is that it does, but recently this view has been challenged. For example Prum (2013):
"Current concepts of art cannot exclusively circumscribe the human arts from many forms of non-human biotic art. Without assuming an arbitrarily anthropocentric perspective, any concept of art will
need to engage with biodiversity, and either recognize many instances of biotic advertisements as art, or exclude some instances of human art."
I need to obtain a substitution rates per site per lineage per Myr in order to calibrate a molecular dating of a phylogeny between individuals from different rivers in South america. I found just one paper at the moment to use that method,that paper is "South American rays came in with the sea", but at the moment it had been difficult to obtain it from any database. Maybe you can suggest me others readings, Thanks!
I stumbled upon a study in which distinct SNPs in the fetal haemoglobin of Llamas supposedly made their erythrocytes to have more affinity towards oxygen, giving an advantage in their high altitude habitat, contrary to their camel cousins who lacked such mutation. Is it possible to retrace this back to humans?
Hello everyone !
I'm trying to make some research on the domestication of the ferret, especially during the middle age.
I know it has been domesticated way longer before the cat in Europe, first to chase rats, and later for rabbit hunts. Fact is, I cant find any informations or real sources on the subjet.
Do you have real archaeological, visual or historical sources for the ferret domestication ?
Some say people lived from "animal husbandry" of ferrets, is it true ?
What can you teach me about this animal ?
Hello,
I red many documents and forum posts but I can not really find the exact way to update the SNP ID and Position before merging data file in Plink. I tried VEP, NCBI, UCSC.
Does anyone know how to resolve this problem? I am stucking at this process too long.
Thank you
Hi - is anyone aware of any recent research - from anthropological and sociological perspective that focuses on the effectiveness of legal frameworks within the EU and UK to eradicate FGM / C within its borders?
My focus is not on the medical implications, rather it's on the legal provisions. I don't think my research has shown enough depth - any suggestions for MSc/MPhil or PhD searches?
I'm trying to track down any examples of prehistoric occupation floors where the main/full-size camp (hearths, activity areas, sleeping areas, etc), might have a smaller miniature version right next-door (so to speak), or very nearby?
Many mammals have a bone called the baculum. Elephants and humans don't. Why?
Is their a survival advantage specific to elephants & humans?
When we look at the sequence of bones from homo erectus back through to neanderthal man and beyond, at any point is there a baculum?
Could anyone please suggest bibliographic references about the second metacarpal bones of neanderthal and paleolithic human? Thank you!
hi dears
What dates do you recommend for these tools that been found randomly in different places in the southern Alborz mountain of Iran? The Geographical coordinates is :(N:36 12 40.00 E: 50 15 31.50)?
thanks a lot...
I just read that the first naledi fossil was a mandible which had collapsed from the breccia above. The morphological comparative evidence is clear IMO: naledi (humanlike plantigrade feet, more flamingo- than ostrich-like) were wetland waders, who collected aquatic herbaceous vegetation (& probably other foods) like lowland gorillas regularly & bonobos occasionally do, but much more frequently: this also explains their bonobo-like features, e.g. the curved manual phalanges (for climbing in the branches above the swamp like bonobos do). When they died in the swamp, their bodies got almost immediately covered with mud, which could explain why the fossils are remarkably complete. But I'm no geologist: the caves below the wetland eroded away, but how exactly could the fossils end up in the Naledi cave?
Donald E. Brown's book, "Human Universals", explores and describes physical and behavioral characteristics that can be considered universal among all cultures, all people. I have not been able to get my hands on a copy of that work. Can someone who has read the book tell me if Brown employed a systematic cross-cultural analysis? Or did he employed a different methodology? If so, what was the procedure he used to determine which traits are ubiquitous in human societies? Are his findings robust and reliable? Or are they based on a somewhat haphazard survey of regionally isolated studies?
I'm curious to know if there are any specific behavioural signs of mutual belonging to social groups in primates that can be useful to identify an omologue in humans. (Example: the "separation cry" for careseeking/attachment).
I would not consider allogrooming as a specific sign of group belonging since it is mainly a caregiving behaviour... does it make sense by an ethological point of view?
I am looking to conduct a comparative study of instruments in the future and was curious what other instruments are out there to measure these things. If you have a novel measurement you would like for me to include in evaluation please let me know.
I see most people running urinary steroid hormone and oxytocin assays are publishing that SPE is required as sample prep, but I have been unable to replicate results reliably. I can use a commercially available EIA kit that does not require SPE prior to running, but I'm looking for good resources on how to know what sample prep is appropriate for your sample matrix and testing method as well as how to choose the correct SPE column. There are multiple types in the literature that are used. For example, oxytocin extractions interchangeably report using Phenomenex StrataX, Waters Oasis HLB, and Sep Pak C18,
Wild great apes commonly make their night nests around dusk and usually rise again at dawn, but do they sleep through the night? Does sleep come later in the evening, following a period of rest, or is there a period of wakefulness in the middle of the night? What is known about captive great ape sleep patterns? These questions may help us to understand the segmented sleep patterns thought to have been practiced by people in the West before Industrial Revolution.
I am trying to investigate why women are loathe to orient towards oncoming pedestrians and men are willing to do open pass. It has been suggested that, women tend to protect their breast with arms across when avoiding a collision. Is there any evolutionary theory to support this assertion?
I will appreciate any relevant articles and previous studies on pedestrian avoidance behavior.
Thanks
Daro
For several years some scholars have accepted the engraved pieces of ochre from Blombos cave in South Africa, at least one of which has a geometric cross-hatched pattern, as evidence of early modern human aesthetic creation (ca. 70,000 BP). See: Henshilwood, Christopher S.; d’Errico, Francesco; et al., “Emergence of modern human behavior: Middle Stone Age engravings from South Africa,” in Science, new series, vol. 295, no. 5558, February 15, 2002, pp. 1278-1280 (http://www.sciencemag.org/content/295/5558/1278.abstract?sid=da7c3755-b2bc-4ced-93da-2c024c50b1fd, access: March 14, 2015).
The recent discovery of similar engravings on shells on Java, from ca. 500,000 BP -that is, long before the emergence of modern Homo sapiens-, suggests that aesthetic creation evolved gradually. See: Joordans, Josephine C. A.; d’Errico, Francesco; et al., “Homo erectus at Trinil on Java used shells for tool production and engraving,” in Nature, December 3, 2014 (http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature13962.html, access: March 14, 2015).
Suggestions that chimpanzees make aesthetic decisions while painting are intriguing. See the following texts and video:
Can anybody point me toward additional studies on aesthetic creation by nonhuman primates, either in the archaeological record or among our contemporary primate cousins?
this is for a pretest of some fotographs of houses (with and without plants nearby) and gardens (with more or less plants and other natural elements).
we want to find out which of the stimuli are evaluated by participants as being most natural and which are least natural.
I'm not talking about scales like Perceived Restorativeness Scale.
My interest is to develop a general theory based on the evolution of the origin of the relationships in modern human.
Ernst Haeckel’ss adage ‘ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny’ envelopes the concept that the developing embryo goes through stages resembling successive stages in the evolution of their extinct ancestors.
Haeckel’s adage, which has been largely rejected as a biological hypothesis, differs from the hypothesis I suggest which could trace the direct lineage of hominins. I have termed this hypothesis the Ontogeny –Pylogeny Evolution Model. In retrospect, a better name would be the Ontogeny Phlogeny Calcaneal Model (OPCM) which suggests that all hominid ancestors (e.g., progenitor) will exhibit the same structural twist (Supinatus) in the posterior aspect of the calcaneus.
Apply the OPCM to uncovered fossils in the hominin taxa would eliminate Australopithecus africanus as a species in the human lineage.
Your thoughts?
There are some measures for slow LHS (alhb, mini-k, hkss), but I could not find a scale for measuring fast life history strategy in humans. Does such a scale exist? Will it make sense to develop such a scale (since I don't think that fast LHS could be accurately measured with K-strategy scales, for example by just inverting it)? Thanks in advance for your hints!
There are many contradictions in the literature as to the origin of the omo-cervicalis (aka, atlanto-cervicalis, levator claviculae) muscle in non-human primates. Miller 1932 reports it's on the spinous process but all images (including his) appear to depict its origin on the lateral aspect of the pars interarticularis. Any informed knowledge on this from dissection or otherwise? Not from the usual literature citing Miller (ie., Aiello, Wood).
There are classic examples of heterozygote superiority (e.g., the malarial resistance of individuals heterozygous for the sickle-cell gene). But, how common — across the genome and across taxa — is heterozygote superiority?
I can think of two crudely relevant data points. In a wide array of taxa well over 50% of loci are monomorphic (which suggests no heterozygote advantage at those loci). On the other hand, inbreeding depression implies a homozygote disadvantage, at least at some loci.
The reason I said these facts are crudely relevant is because of a 2002 paper by Derek Roff where he presents experimental evidence that inbreeding depression (in a cricket) results more from an increased incidence of harmful recessives than from a reduction in the frequency of beneficial heterozygotes. If that result generalizes it does not argue for the prevalence of heterozygote superiority. Any thoughts?
While RACE and RACISM remain powerful concepts in popular culture, the notion of races seems to be difficult to pin down in light of more sophisticated genetic analysis. Is it time to promote the idea of abandoning the fundamental motion of races rather than simply advocating for improved interracial tolerance?
Knowing the influence of environmental factors, I wonder if it is correct/possible to estimate biological relatedness from the morphology of these bones.
Within the Mousterian record of western Europe, we have evidence for usage of black pigment made from MnO2 by Neandertals (50 000 years old at Pech-de-l'Azé I for instance). I've been using the analogy with the ethnographic record as well as some preliminary experiments to argue that they might have been used as dye stuff/stain (see Soressi et D'Errico, 2007 as well as Soressi et al 2008). Would anybody know of usage of MnO2 pigment for other purposes than body decoration/symbolic purposes?
Need help from someone who knows how to look at the Neanderthal genome sequence
Here is the link to the database at the Max-Plank-Institute http://www.eva.mpg.de/neandertal/index.html
For my research I am trying to find health issues with the Egyptian elite and royal mummies.
Are humans the only animals that are menopausal in females? If not, which are the others? What other relevant factors do they all have in common? Does the menopause confer the same survival advantage to all of them, or is it different? Is there an evolutionary advantage behind menopause?
I have a very specific question concerning modern human/neanderthal studies. As long as I understand, neanderthal trace in human genome is due to some recombinant loci. That means, neanderthal clonal genes (Y-chromosome, mt-DNA) were completely washed out from the modern human populations due to gene drift, but some recombinant loci still remain in the gene pool. Moreover, they exist in literally any non-African human person.
Discovering presence of neanderthal alleles in the sapiens genome became possible after scientists sequenced neanderthal genome. Thus, the location of the neanderthal alleles in Eurasian genomes is known and, perhaps, even available. That means, primers can be easily designed for these fragments and the "neanderthal" fragments should be relatively easy to sequence for any modern human.
That means, by sequencing these fragments for humans from the different parts of Eurasia one can reconstruct the underlining Neanderthal phylogeny, i.e. one can compare the neanderthals from West Europe, Caucasus, Central and East Asia, whose differences may well be much deeper in time than the differences between respective modern human lineages, which are thought to diverge 100 TY or similar. Should the existing differences between modern human populations be completely attributed to the divergence that started 100,000 TY? Or, perhaps, they at least partly root into the time of divergence among neanderthal geographic populations?
It sounds too simple, that means, most likely is something wrong and stupid in this logic, or evolutionary anthropologists already working on this. Or?
Would appreciate much for the comment.
For about 3 months, I will be observing indigenous Nicaraguans while they are fishing with a variety of technologies (bows, masks and crossbows, hooks, and nets). Overall, my associates and I will observe approximately 32 hour-long fishing bouts every day (evenly divided among the four technologies). The success of these bouts, as measured in kilograms of acquired fish, will depend on a variety of factors -- I am mostly interested in characteristics of the individual fishers: age, sex, experience, etc.
Owing to the behavior of the most common fish species, I anticipate that fishing returns will vary across the duration of the study. For example, the water varies in clarity throughout the study period, which means that return rates in mid-March, for example, will exceed those in early May. I will include fixed effects for water clarity and temperature to account for this variation as well as possible. And although I haven't implemented such models, I understand that I can model the temporal autocorrelation structure to account for residual day-to-day variation.
It occurs to me, however, that returns might also vary by time of day. For example, some species forage primarily in the early morning hours, which could lead to elevated returns for fishing bouts at that time. But those correlations by time of day could also exhibit a temporal autocorrelation structure across days, such that returns at 8:00 in the morning on April 15 and April 18 will be more closely correlated than returns on April 18 and May 9, for example.
I'm wondering if a general autocorrelation structure would successfully account for that double-correlation of day-to-day variation and time-of-day variation.
As an analogy to more conventional multilevel modeling, I feel like I'm trying to allow "time of day" to have varying slopes, not just varying intercepts. Any suggestions?