Journal of Anthropological Sciences最新文献

Colour strongly shapes our perception of the world and plays a main role in the emergence of language and in the transmission of information. It has been shown that systematic use of ochre, along with other cultural traits that reflect cognitive complexity, disappear and reappear from the archaeological record, suggesting that cultural transmission follows discontinuous trajectories that to this day are unknown to us. Understanding when humans started using colour and how this feature evolved may therefore be instrumental to understand the evolutionary paths followed by members of our lineage towards cultural complexity. The earliest secure evidence for ochre use is found at 300.000-year-old archaeological sites from Africa and Europe. It usually consists of iron-rich rocks characterized by a red, orange, yellow or brown colour and/or streak, modified by grinding, scraping and knapping to produce red or yellow powder, ochre residues adhering to different types of artefacts or sediment stained with ochre or rich in ochre microfragments. Around 160 ka, ochre use becomes a recurrent feature. Although analyses of ochre collections have become increasingly frequent, there is still very little information on the first instances of ochre use and on how this cultural feature evolved through time. Most cases of early evidence for colour use by different human fossil species were recovered during excavations conducted several decades ago, when ochre was not documented systematically. Excluding a few recently studied cases, there is often a lack of evidence to support the anthropogenic nature of these findings. The aim of this paper is to summarise what we know on ochre use during the Lower Palaeolithic / Early Stone Age (ESA) and Middle Palaeolithic / Middle Stone Age (MSA), review techniques currently used for the analysis of this material and highlight analytical and theoretical issues surrounding this complex cultural feature.

The relationship between anthropology and neuroscience has always been friendly but controversial, because they embrace inclusive common topics (human beings and their brains) although following distinct approaches, often more holistic and speculative in the former field, more reductionist and quantitative in the latter. In recent decades, novel disciplines have been proposed to bridge the gap between anthropology and neuroscience, mostly taking into account their common interest in human evolution. Paleoneurology deals with the study of brain anatomy in extinct species. Neuroarchaeology concerns the study of brain functions associated with behaviours that are of interest according to the archaeological record. Cognitive archaeology investigates the evolution of those behaviours following methods and theories in psychology. These new fields can provide quantitative and experimental support to topics that, to date, have been largely discussed only on a theoretical basis. Nonetheless, working with extinct species necessarily involves many limitations. Consistent theories on the evolution of our cognitive abilities must rely on the integration of different sources of information, on parallel and independent evidence from different fields, and on a proper attitude: openness and caution.

Paleoanthropology's relationship with evolutionary theory has not been entirely happy. The anatomists who dominated paleoanthropology for its first century had little interest in biological diversity and its causes, or in hominins' place in that diversity, or in the rules and principles of zoological nomenclature - which they basically ignored entirely. When, as the twentieth century passed its midpoint, Ernst Mayr introduced theory to paleoanthropology in the form of the gradualist Modern Evolutionary Synthesis (in its most hardened form), he shocked students of human evolution not only into a strictly linear evolutionary mindset, but into a taxonomic minimalism that would for years obscure the signal of phylogenetic diversity and vigorous evolutionary experimentation among hominins that was starting to emerge from a rapidly enlarging hominin fossil record. Subsequently, the notion of episodic as opposed to gradualist evolution re-established phylogenies as typically branching, and species as bounded entities with births, histories, and deaths; but the implications of this revised perspective were widely neglected by paleoanthropologists, who continued to reflexively cram diverse new morphologies into existing taxonomic pigeonholes. For Pleistocene hominins, the effective systematic algorithm became, "if it isn't Australopithecus, it must be Homo" (or vice versa), thereby turning both taxa into wastebaskets. The recent development of the "Extended Evolutionary Synthesis" has only exacerbated the resulting caricature of phylogenetic structure within Homininae, by offering developmental/phenotypic plasticity as an excuse for associating wildly differing morphologies within the same taxon. Homo erectus has been a favorite victim of this foible. Biological species are indeed morphologically variable. But they are only variable within limits; and until we stop brushing diverse morphologies under the rug of developmental plasticity, paleoanthropology will remain at a major impasse.

Morphological variation of the human pelvis, and particularly the hip bone, mainly results from both female-specific selective pressure related to the give birth of large-headed newborns, and constraints in both sexes for efficient bipedal locomotion, abdominal stability, and adaptation to climate. Hip bone morphology has thus been extensively investigated using several approaches, although the nuances of inter-individual and sex-related variation are still underappreciated, and the effect of sex on ontogenetic patterns is debated. Here, we employ a landmark-free, deformation-based morphometric approach to explore variation in modern human hip bone shape and size from middle adolescence to adulthood. Virtual surface models of the hip bone were obtained from 147 modern human individuals (70 females and 77 males) including adolescents, and young and mature adults. The 3D meshes were registered by rotation, translation, and uniform scaling prior to analysis in Deformetrica. The orientation and amplitude of deviations of individual specimens relative to a global mean were assessed using Principal Component Analysis, while colour maps and vectors were employed for visualisation purposes. Deformation-based morphometrics is a time-efficient and objective method free of observer-dependent biases that allows accurate shape characterisation of general and more subtle morphological variation. Here, we captured nuanced hip bone morphology revealing ontogenetic trends and sex-based variation in arcuate line curvature, greater sciatic notch shape, pubic body and rami length, acetabular expansion, and height-to-width proportions of the ilium. The observed ontogenetic trends showed a higher degree of bone modelling of the lesser pelvis of adolescent females, while male variation was mainly confined to the greater pelvis.

In recent decades, the scientific community has become aware of the importance of science being effectively open in order to speed up scientific and technological progress. In this context, the achievement of a robust, effective and responsible form of data sharing is now widely acknowledged as a fundamental part of the research process. The production and resolution of human genomic data has steadily increased in recent years, mainly due to technological advances and decreasing costs of DNA genotyping and sequencing. There is, however, a downside to this process due to the huge increase in the complexity of the data and related metadata. This means it is advisable to go beyond traditional forms of sharing analysis, which have focused on data availability only. Here we present a pilot study that aims to complement a survey on the availability of data related to peer-reviewed publications with an analysis of their findability, accessibility, useability and assessability (according to the "intelligent data openness" scheme). Sharing rates in genomic anthropology (73.0%) were found to be higher than human genomics (32.4%), but lower than closely related research fields (from 96.8% to 79.2% for paleogenetics and evolutionary genetics, respectively). We discuss the privacy and methodological issues that could be linked to this finding. Comparisons of sharing rates across a wide range of disciplines has suggested that the idea of human genomics as a forerunner for the open data movement should be questioned. Finally, both in genomic anthropology and human genomics, findability and useability were found to be compliant with the expectations of an intelligent data openness, whereas only a minor part of studies met the need to make the data completely assessable.

This study aims to carry out the first geometric morphometric analysis of the 3D size and shape of the full series of cervical vertebrae delving into variability related to sex and population background. For this reason, we analyzed the cervical vertebrae of both males and females belonging to Europeans, Africans, and Greenland Inuit. We 3D-scanned a total of 219 cervical vertebrae of males and females of three different modern human populations (European, African, and Inuit). A minimum of 72 landmarks and curve semilandmarks were positioned in each of the 3D vertebral models. Landmark configurations were analyzed following the standards of 3D Geometric Morphometrics to test for size and shape differences related to sex or population variation. Results show that male cervical vertebrae are consistently larger than in females while no regular shape differences are observed between males and females in any of the populations. Sex differences in cervical lordosis are thus not supported at the skeletal level of the 3D shape. On the other hand, there is no evidence for population-specific differences in size while shape does vary considerably, possibly also in relation to eco-geographic factors of overall trunk shape. Cervical vertebrae in cold-adapted Inuit were consistently shorter than in Europeans and Africans. The cervical spine may show a different pattern than the thoracic and lumbar spine, which might be related to stronger integration with the cranium, head mobility, and soft-tissue dependence. Our findings suggest that morpho-functional interpretations of the cervical spine based on vertebral skeletal morphology requires caution.

In two publications from 1967 and 1971, M. Masali described human skeletal remains presumed to have been found in the Balzi Rossi caves (Ventimiglia, Italy), based on a signed note dated to 1908. Since then, the remains - dubbed "Conio's Finds" and preserved at the University of Torino - had not been further studied. We performed a multidisciplinary investigation aimed at clarifying the geographical and chronological attribution of these specimens. Collagen extraction for AMS dating was unsuccessful, but we obtained two direct dates on the best- preserved crania via 231Pa/235U direct gamma-ray spectrometry (10,500±2,000 years BP and 12,500±2,500 years BP). We analyzed the metrics and morphology of the crania and femora by comparing them with samples belonging to the Upper Paleolithic, Mesolithic, and Neolithic periods, and evidenced that the "Conio's Finds" are morphologically more compatible with a Late Pleistocene rather than Holocene attribution. We analyzed the literature regarding the history of excavations at Balzi Rossi, and we propose that - if any credence should be given to the note accompanying the material - the remains may have been found in front of Grotta dei Fanciulli or Grotta del Caviglione, in the redeposited soil dug up during the installation of lime kilns carried out between the late 18th and the early 19th centuries. These hypotheses may be tested in the future by comparing the speleothem deposited on one of the crania and the remaining deposit at the site.