Oldest Skeleton in the Americas?

National Geographic News recently published an article about the oldest skeleton ever found in the Americas. This skeleton of a female, believed to date to 13,600 years ago, was found in an underwater cave near Tulum, Mexico. Eva de Naharon, named after the cave in which she was found, was accompanied by three other skeletons dating between 11,000-14,000 years ago. Chan hol, one of the other skeletons found, is being excavated currently and is believed to be possibly even older than Eva.

The cave is now 50 feet below sea level but Eva and the other skeletons are believed to have lived in the caves at a time when sea levels were much lower. It is thought that sea levels at that time were as much as 200 feet below their current levels. Along with the human remains, archaeologists have found the remains of such species as elephants, giant sloths and even ancient fauna, which could possibly help to determine the age of the site and re-create the environment near the coast.

These finds raise some questions about the prevailing theory of the populating of the Americas. This theory, commonly referred to as Clovis First, states that the first Americans crossed the Bering Land Bridge from Siberia into Alaska around 11,500-13000 years ago (for more information click here). First of all the age of the skeletons doesn’t seem to fit with the theory. They are much older than would be expected. There may be a reason for this though. According to David Anderson, an archaeologist from the University of Tennessee, the seawater that these bones have been in for thousands of years might have potentially altered the levels of Carbon 14 in the bones. Any alteration in the levels of C14 is going to affect what is believed to be the correct age of these bones. Another aspect that raises questions is the skull morphology. Eva’s skull has more characteristic features of those found in Southern Asia rather than Northern Asia. These finds will be very important as experts learn more about them and confirm information such as how old they are and even where they came from.

Object of the Day: Seal Call

Another arctic item from our ethnographic collection is a seal call. We unfortunately do not know the collector or date of this item, but we do know that it comes from the area around Nome, Alaska. The item is made of two seal claws attached to a piece of wood by leather strips. Since seals are traditionally very curious animals, the Inupiat would find the seals’ breathing holes and then use this seal call to scratch the ice to attract the seals. Hearing this sound, the seals would believe that there were other seals nearby and would want to investigate. Inupiat hunters would then patiently sit for hours by holes in the ice during the winter, waiting for a seal to appear.

Winter in Alaska was a harsh and often dangerous season. During this time, the Inupiat would hunt seal instead of caribou or whale which they hunted during the rest of the year. Since the seals were their main source of food, Inupiat groups would move every few weeks to new holes when the seal population became depleted.

In addition to having trouble finding food, the Inupiat would have to deal with extreme cold. During the month of February, the average temperature is between –25 and –30 degrees Fahrenheit. Because of these dangerous conditions, one of the most important defenses against the weather was magic used by shamans. The shamans forecasted the weather and tried to control it when possible. One way in which to control the weather was through the enforcement of taboos and the use of certain charms. By following a strict set of customs and rules, it was believed that the Inupiat could have some control over their physical environment.

Another way that the Inupiat would deal with the harsh winters was to have various celebrations and festivals. Most events occurred during the coldest and darkest months, from October to April, which served to solidify the Eskimo culture politically, socially, economically and religiously. These were also events to look forward to and to brighten the long, dark winter.

One of these festivals was the Messenger Feast. This was held in mid-winter and often lasted for 4 to 7 days, or until the food ran out. At this festival, there were many activities such as men seeking out their guests to deliver memorized songs and “jump dance” competitions where runners from each village would run races to win prestigious prizes. In addition to songs and activities, one of the main purposes of this feast was to promote economic exchange. Coastal and in-land villages would trade their respective goods with each other such as whale oil, walrus ivory, dried fish and caribou meat. By participating in the festival, various villages were able to cement political alliances, trade essential goods, increase social prestige and to bring some excitement to the dark winter days.

Resources Used:

Burch, Ernest S. Jr. The Eskimos. London: Macdonald & Co. 1988

Burland, Cottie. Eskimo Art. England: Hamlyn, 1973

Fair, Susan W., “The Inupiaq Eskimo Messenger Feast: Celebration, Demise, and Possibility”. The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 113, No. 450, Holidays, Ritual, Festival, Celebration, and Public Display (Autumn, 2000), pp. 464-494

Object of the Day: Needle Case

The ethnographic collection here at Luther College is very fortunate to have an extensive assortment of material culture from the Inupiat people of Alaska. A large majority of this collection was donated to the college by Luther alumnus Reverend T. L. Brevig, who was a Christian missionary in this region during the end of the 19^th century. One interesting object that he brought back was a needle case carved with images from the Inupiat’s everyday life. This needle case is a 13.5 cm long, hollowed out bone with a wooden plug in one end. These cases were used to hold needles that were typically made from bone, antler or ivory. On the case itself are a variety of carved images. One side shows a western-style house along with a shed, dogs, and a person with two hides.

The other side depicts an igloo, shed, and drying rack for fish or caribou.

In the Inupiat culture it is typically the women who make and repair clothing, and such cases were a common part of every woman’s personal effects. The Inupiat women were very able seamstresses, which Brevig comments on several times in his memoirs. Since it was virtually impossible to survive in the harsh arctic environment without adequate clothing, it was very important to be skillful at sewing. Because of this importance, needles - and needle cases - were especially significant and special to the women to which they belonged, which can be seen in the care and attention shown in the decoration.

Generally, traditional Inupiat clothing consisted of a parka, trousers, boots and mittens. Men and women usually had the same clothing, but it would differ in regard to cut and trim. The socks were woven from grass for insulation, while most of the other clothing was made from either sealskin or caribou hides. In addition to clothing, women also used their needles and sewing skills to make tent and boat covers, bags, storage containers, and sleeping bags. Needless to say, the Inupiat women always had something to keep them busy!

Out of Africa: Not Just a Movie

How did AMHSS (Anatomically Modern Homo Sapiens Sapiens) come to populate the whole world? This has been a huge question and debate in anthropology longer than I have been alive. Many different theories have been proposed but as of yet none have been proven with absolute certainty. In the field of anthropology there are currently two major theories that are circulating among academics: The Out of Africa Hypothesis and the Multiregional Hypothesis. Based on genetic, fossil, and archaeological evidence the details of each theory are squabbled over by leading experts in the field. Someday there may be new evidence that leads to a third or fourth major hypothesis. Since this can be such a confusing web of information here are some of the basic points of each.

Out of Africa Hypothesis

The basic premise of this hypothesis is that modern humans developed relatively recently in a single geographic area: Africa. Generally scholars who argue in favor of this hypothesis date the development and migration of AMHSS out of Africa to between 200,000 and 60,000 years ago. Proponents of this theory argue that AMHSS gradually replaced other existing hominid groups around the world including Neanderthals and any surviving groups of Homo erectus. What kind of evidence has been used to support this theory?

Development in mtDNA research has played a major role in the advancement of this theory. To make a long story short, scientists have found that by tracing the variations and mutations of human mtDNA they can discover the routes that human groups have traveled to get to where they are today. One of the key points in this research is that there is greater mtDNA diversity found in Africa than anywhere else in the world. This is exactly what scholars would expect to find if AMHSS has been in Africa the longest, meaning that the mtDNA found in Africa has had the most time for random mutations. The Genographic Project run by National Geographic maps out the different genetic markers or mutations in mtDNA that are characteristic of certain geographic areas. Another project from the Bradshaw Foundation does the same thing and incorporates major climate changes, such as the eruption of Mt. Toba 75,000 years ago, into the equation. The hypothesis about the Mt. Toba eruption is that most of the humans in the Southeast Asia region were wiped out, both AMHSS and any archaic populations that may have still been around. This would mean that a later wave of AMHSS would have populated that region of the world after 75,000 years ago. Experts believe that a secondary effect of the eruption was a global period of cooling due to the ash and dust in the atmosphere. This would have limited the spread of humans to higher latitudes for a time and made survival for both AMHSS and archaic populations already in those areas much more difficult. The idea that climate change can drastically effect the migration and lifestyles of humans is one that may become relevant for us in the next 100 years or so with global warming.

Archaeologists have found that 40,000 to 50,000 years ago there was an explosion of cultural activity, which resulted in changes in subsistence behavior, symbolic expression, and tools. Some archaeologists argue that this is what allowed AMHSS to replace other hominids in Asia and Europe because those cultural advances would have given AMHSS an advantage in using available resources. One of the most prominent of these cultural advances is the development of more sophisticated stone tools, such as spear points. With the use of spears AMHSS would have been able to hunt more efficiently. The ability to collect more food during hunting trips would allow AMHSS to support a larger population. The hypothesis here is that AMHSS would have been able to displace archaic groups by an advantage in sheer numbers and the diversity of resources exploited.

The third line of evidence often used in favor of this theory is that there is relatively little, if any, substantial anatomic evidence for intermixing of AMHSS with either Neanderthals or H. erectus. Most of the fossil evidence of AMHSS and archaic human groups have distinct anatomical differences. For example, Neanderthal skulls have a very distinctive prominent brow ridge that does not appear on AMHSS. This is one of the more problematic lines of evidence because there have been a few fossil finds which suggest that there was the possibility of intermixing between AMHSS, H. neanderthalensis and H. erectus. Which means it’s time to talk about:

The Multiregional Hypothesis

The Smithsonian’s Human Origins Program has a very good succinct description of this that I like:

According to the Multiregional hypothesis, also known as the Continuity hypothesis, the evolution of modern humans began when Homo erectus spread throughout much of Eurasia around 1 million years ago. Regional populations retained unique anatomical features for hundreds of thousands of years, but they also mated with populations from neighboring regions, exchanging inheritable traits with each other. This exchange of inheritable traits takes place by the process known as gene flow.

Through gene flow, populations of H. erectus passed on a variety of increasingly modern characteristics, such as increases in brain size, across their geographic range. Gradually this would have resulted in the evolution of more modern looking humans throughout Africa and Eurasia. The physical differences among people today, then, would result from hundreds of thousands of years of regional evolution. This is the concept of continuity.

An important note to make is that most scholars that advocate this hypothesis do not believe that current regional physical differences denote any inherent mental attributes – this theory does not necessarily indicate the idea of human “races.”

The evidence for this hypothesis is very similar to the evidence used for the Out of Africa hypothesis, it’s just interpreted in different ways. Since the exact mutation rate of mtDNA is not known there are many different estimates of the age of origin of mtDNA found in AMHSS. It could potentially be as old at 850,000 years ago. mtDNA also makes up only about 1/400^th of our total genetic material, meaning that potentially 99.75% of our genetic material could be inherited from humans living at the same time as the “mitochondrial eve.” More recently there has been evidence that we share some of the more obscure genetic mutations that we previously assumed were only found in AMHSS with Neanderthals – such as the FoxP2 gene that might be associated with language. This raises some interesting questions about the relationship between AMHSS and archaic human groups.

Anatomic evidence is another big line of evidence used by advocates of the multiregional hypothesis. In modern human groups today there are certain anatomical differences that seem similar to earlier human groups from the same geographic areas. For example, Asian populations tend to have flatter cheek and nasal areas whereas the same features tend to project outward in European populations. Some argue that these traits are holdovers from archaic populations in the same areas. There are also a few fossil finds, such as the 25,000-year-old child skeleton found in Lagar Velho, Portugal which seems to display both AMHSS and Neanderthal traits, that might support interbreeding of AMHSS with archaic human populations. The 4-year-old had shorter stockier limb bones which were characteristic of Neanderthal skeletons, however, the skull of the child had the appearance of a typical AMHSS in that it did not have an overly pronounced brow ridge or an occipital bun.

Conclusions

Obviously there is still much research to be done in this area of anthropology. The future of this debate will undoubtedly come from the continued examination and re-interpretation of existing evidence as well as the discovery of new evidence. I for one am looking forward to seeing what come out in the next few years as technology continues to advance giving us new ways of interpreting the evidence.

Here are some more useful resources on this topic:

Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History: http://anthropology.si.edu/HumanOrigins/faq/Encarta/encarta.htm

PNAS: http://www.pnas.org/content/102/44/15942.full.pdf?ck=nck

John Hawks, Serial Founder Effects: http://johnhawks.net/weblog/reviews/genetics/ramachandran_2005_serial_founder.html

James Jacobs, Out of Africa 2: http://www.jqjacobs.net/anthro/paleo/genome.html

Donald Johanson, Origins of Modern Humans: http://www.actionbioscience.org/evolution/johanson.html

John Hawks, Multiregional vs. Out of Africa: http://johnhawks.net/weblog/topics/modern_human_origins/multiregional_vs_out_of_africa.html * This one has a particularly nice summary of both models!

Giant Clams and Early Modern Humans: Troubled Waters

An article published in late August in the online journal Current Biology sparked a flurry of popular science articles—National Geographic, Live Science, BBC News—that reported early modern humans were responsible for nearly wiping out a newly discovered species of giant clam, T. costata, 125,000 years ago. The proposed implication of this is that the over-harvesting of T. costata may have also spurred early modern humans to leave Africa. Although I didn’t have access to the original article in Current Biology, from the response articles I gathered that the evidence used to support the idea of human over-harvesting of the giant clams was solely the diminishing population size and shell size of the clam coinciding with the hypothesized date that Anatomically Modern Homo Sapiens Sapiens (AMHSS) left Africa. Of course the popular science articles might be magnifying the focus on humans for their own audiences. The original article was, after all, published in a biology journal.

If the hypothesis being circulated, that early modern humans are responsible for the near extinction of T. costata, it will have some profound implications for the field of anthropology. I’m hesitant to easily accept this explanation for several reasons. Judging from the evidence presented by the popular science articles, the focus of their research was the biology and near extinction of T. costata. There are potentially dozens of explanations for why a species’ population size might suddenly diminish. There also seems to be very little interdisciplinary collaboration on this research topic; all of the researchers involved are in the marine biology field with an emphasis on coral reef ecology. This is a perfect research question to warrant an interdisciplinary approach. Finally, the actual date and route of AMHSS out of Africa is still highly debated in the academic world – suggested dates range from 50 kya to 200 kya, not to mention all the different theories in circulation about the spread of AMHSS across the earth. Talk about a can of worms! I’ll briefly go over the different theories in this post and go more in depth in a future one.

An argument involving the subsistence of AMHSS is by nature an interdisciplinary one. At the very least it involves archaeologist, paleoecologists, paleobiologists, and possibly geologists. The article in Current Biology does not seem to involve such an interdisciplinary approach. All of the listed authors have a focus on coral reef ecology. Admittedly, this might be all they need for the real focus of the article: the biology of T. costata. Whether or not those authors intended to raise the issue of early modern humans over harvesting giant clams the popular science articles certainly brought it up in a light that would benefit from interdisciplinary collaboration.

The need for interdisciplinary cooperation on this subject gets me to my next point – that there are potentially dozens of reasons that T. costata nearly disappeared. Paleoecologists would be able to help determine what the environmental conditions were at the time. A slight shift in the climate or chemistry of the marine environment could be disastrous for certain marine species. Paleobiologists and marine biologists together might be able to determine what other marine life existed at the time. Is it possible that T. costata had another predator at the time besides humans? Aside from other marine predators there were still other hominids running around 125,000 years ago. This is a possibility that professor John Hawks talks about on his blog. The process of natural selection would suggest that if a species were being selected for its nutritional value then the larger specimens would be hunted first and thus removed from the gene pool resulting in the decrease in shell size that was noted in the original article. Archaeologists would also be of use to identify evidence of humans harvesting T. costata in archaeological assemblages from the area in the period in question. We have no way of knowing for sure until we investigate other explanations or look for further evidence to support the hypothesis.

Uff da! (As we say here at Luther College). Now we’re left with the debate about the nature of AMHSS movement out of Africa. However, the Multiregional Continuity Theory contests even the hypothesis that AMHSS developed in Africa. Historically the Out of Africa hypothesis has been more popular among scholars. The theory is further differentiated into two separate iterations – the Recent Migration Theory and the Multiple Dispersal Model. Both of these present different hypotheses of how and where humans moved off the African continent. Both use genetic evidence alongside archaeological and anatomical data. The dates for all of these differing theories place the migration of AMHSS out of Africa from 50,000 to 200,000 years ago. This is a huge range! The most widely accepted average is between 100,000 and 60,000 years ago with more evidence indicating that the actual date is closer to 100,000 years ago. Does this mean that it’s possible that the near extinction of giant clams influenced AMHSS’s move from Africa? Sure it’s possible, but not all the evidence is in and the jury has yet to reach a verdict.

It would certainly be an interesting development for the field of anthropology if this newly discovered species of giant clam did indeed contribute to AMHSS moving out of Africa. I think we need to use a certain amount of caution in determining whether or not to believe this claim without multiple lines of evidence and interdisciplinary cooperation. In any field of science we progress in our understanding of the world by sharply questioning everything – so that is exactly what I think we ought to do in this case.

If you are interested in reading more about this topic or any of the points I raised here are some links I found helpful:

NERC: Africa-Arabia connections: coastal environments, tectonics and human dispersals - http://www.nerc.ac.uk/research/programmes/efched/results/bailey.asp

Bradshaw Foundation: Journey of Mankind - http://www.bradshawfoundation.com/stephenoppenheimer/

Action bioscience: Origins of Modern Humans – http://www.actionbioscience.org/evolution/johanson.html

In the Swing of Things

Welcome. Its been a little slow starting, with Blogger issues mostly straightened out and the academic year in full swing, we can finally start getting into the thick of things. We've got a couple of posts ready to go up this week. One on the recent article about the possible over-exploitation of Giant Clams by early modern humans and an object of the day feature about one of the Inuit needle cases in our Ethnographic Collections.

Before that, how about a little about the Lab and what we've got going on right now? Let's start with who we are and what we do... The Anthropology Lab here at Luther College curates Archaeological, Ethnographic, and Numismatic Collections. The archaeological collections focus on the prehistory of Northeast Iowa, specifically in the Upper Iowa River valley, but also contains site collections from across Iowa. The ethnographic objects in our collection originate from numerous countries around the globe with particular emphasis on Alaska, North America, and Africa. The Numismatic Collection includes ancient Greek, Roman, and Jewish coins as well as a wide assortment of historic foreign and American currency.

We use these collections primarily for research, exhibition, and the education of Luther students and people in our surrounding community. This year there are 14 students working in the lab, in addition to myself. They are working on a number of projects, first of which is cataloging the artifacts from the excavation of a historic site in Van Buren County, IA. We've also got a few students working on this blog; one student digitizing our site documents; 1 student digitizing sound recordings from the Chiwere Sioux Language Project; and a few students getting ready to start exhibit research.

Its gonna be a busy semester. We hope you'll check back and see how things are going...