Anthro potpouri

From: Glenn Morton (glenn.morton@btinternet.com)
Date: Fri Feb 09 2001 - 15:42:45 EST

  • Next message: bill r wald: "Re: wheres the beef"

    No I have not re-subscribed, and may not for a long time. But there are
    several issues that will interest those on this list.

    Several items of anthropological interest have come to my attention over the
    past few days.
    I reported earlier (on the ASA list) that Adcock et al had sequenced the
    mtDNA of a 60,000 year old modern human and found that it was quite
    different from modern human mtDNA. The DNA being quite different from modern
    human mtDNA means that this human had an extremely old mtDNA, which strongly
    implies interbreeding between H. erectus and H. sapiens. This of course
    suggests the conclusion that we and they are of the same species. Details
    can be found at http://www.calvin.edu/archive/asa/200101/0123.html

    The reason I cite that again, is because I finally got (from my library
    service halfway around the world) an article from Science by Wolpoff, Hawks,
    Frayer, and Hunley. They compared two eastern European skulls from Mladec
    with the skulls of the reputed Out of Africa invaders (Skhul/Qafzeh people)
    and with the skulls of Neanderthals. They also performed the same process
    with an early modern human Australian (WLH-50) and compared it with Ngandong
    erectus and with the Skhul/Qafzeh people. They scored each skull for a set
    of traits, up to 30. They then computed a pairwise difference between the
    groups. What they found was that the early modern humans at Mladec
    resembled Neandertal more closely than the replacement Skhul/Qafzeh peoples.
    THey also found that the early modern Australian resembled H. erectus more
    closely than the supposed replacement population. The authors say:
    “On average, WLH-50 possesses fewer differences from the Ngandong group (3.7
    pairwise differences) than from either African (9.3) or Levantine (7.3)
    groups. Mean pairwise differences between Ngandong and African, and Ngandong
    and Levantine groups are statistically significant at the 0.05 level
    (Mann-Whitney).” Milford H. Wolpoff, John Hawks, David W. Frayer, and Keith
    Hunley, “Modern Human Ancestry at the Peripheries: A Test of the Replacement
    Theory,” Science 291(2001):293-297, p. 295
    **
    “In sum, in its nonmetric traits WLH-50 is closer to the specimens from
    Ngandong than to any other group. If Ngandong was the expected ancestor
    under the replacement theory, this would disprove a dual-ancestry
    hypothesis. However, it is not, and a Ngandong ancestry disproves the
    replacement theory, so the conservative interpretation of these results is
    that the dual-ancestry hypothesis cannot be disproved.” Milford H. Wolpoff,
    John Hawks, David W. Frayer, and Keith Hunley, “Modern Human Ancestry at the
    Peripheries: A Test of the Replacement Theory,” Science 291(2001):293-297,
    p. 295-296
    **
            “The average pairwise difference between Mladec 5 and the Neandertal sample
    is 14.8, and between Mladec 5 and the Skhul/Qafzeh sample, 14.0—virtually
    the same. On the other hand, for Mladec 6 the corresponding comparisons are
    7.8 and 11.6, so it is closer to the Neandertal sample.” Milford H. Wolpoff,
    John Hawks, David W. Frayer, and Keith Hunley, “Modern Human Ancestry at the
    Peripheries: A Test of the Replacement Theory,” Science 291(2001):293-297,
    p. 296
    **
            “Another way to examine this nonmetric variation is in terms of its
    distribution within and between the samples of putative Mladec ancestors.
    Three of the nonmetric variables completely separated the Neandertal and
    Skhul/Qafzeh samples. Of these, the Mladec crania were like the Neandertals
    in two, and like Skhul/Qafzeh in one. Seven additional traits almost
    completely separated the putative Mladec ancestors. Of these, the Mladec
    crania were like the Neandertals in four, and like Skhul/Qafzeh in two. For
    the seventh trait, one Mladec cranium was like each comparative sample. In
    spite of the predominance of Neandertal resemblances for this subset of 10
    traits, the normal approximation of the binomial distribution shows that an
    ancestry hypothesis in which dual ancestry is assumed to be equal ancestry
    cannot be rejected at the 0.05 level.” Milford H. Wolpoff, John Hawks, David
    W. Frayer, and Keith Hunley, “Modern Human Ancestry at the Peripheries: A
    Test of the Replacement Theory,” Science 291(2001):293-297, p. 296
    **
    “We do not doubt that many prehistoric groups were replaced by others, but
    we conclude that the hypothesis that all living humans descended from a
    single geographically isolated group during the Late Pleistocene is false,
    and that the replacement explanation for the origin of these early modern
    Australians and Europeans can be ruled out.” Milford H. Wolpoff, John Hawks,
    David W. Frayer, and Keith Hunley, “Modern Human Ancestry at the
    Peripheries: A Test of the Replacement Theory,” Science 291(2001):293-297,
    p. 296

    At the same time I received an article from the South African Journal of
    Science discussing the state of Chinese Paleoanthropology. They too gave
    evidence for the continuity of traits from H. erectus into modern
    populations. At the site of Tangshan, near Nanjing, two skulls were found
    in 1993 and 1994. They show some very interesting features including the
    earliest evidence of syphilis and a common facial structure with modern
    Chinese. These fossils are 500,000 years old. The article states:

            “The most important recent finds of human fossils are two crania of Homo
    erectus from Tangshan, 30 kilometres east of Nanjing, Jiangsu Province,
    that came to light in 1993 and 1994, respectively. Local workers in a
    limestone quarry extracted them from a cave deposit. They are significant in
    being nearly identical in most important features to Peking Man from
    Zhoukoudian. Together with the fragmented cranium from Yiyuan county,
    Shangdong Province, they suggest that Peking Man-like people were to be
    found from northern China to the territory across the Yangtze River during
    the Middle Pleistocene.
            “Tangshan I was found on 13 March 1993. It is gracile and thought to
    represent a female. It comprises the anterior part of the cranium and
    fragments of the occipital and parietal bones. Marked pathology is evident
    in the frontal squama. The surface is uneven, showing bony loss and repair.
    According to Lu Zun’e, this lesion is characteristic of the sexually
    transmitted disease, syphilis. If he is correct, this woman would be the
    oldest known victim of syphilis! What is more, the cranium preserves
    portions of the face not seen in previous crania of H. erectus from either
    Zhoukoudian or other sites. Although two Yunxian faces display more parts of
    the facial skeleton, they are badly distorted. The vace is low and flat,
    with a well-expressed canine fossa and horizontally oriented cheek-bone,
    which forms a good mid-facial flexion such as is commonly seen in fossil and
    extant Asian people. Tangshan II is a deformed male calotte.”
            “No artefacts have been found at Tangshan, and there is no evidence that
    the cave once offered shelter to prehistoric hominids. The date of this site
    is about 500 kyr according to various dating techniques.” Q. Wang and P. V.
    Tobias, “Recent Advances in Chinese Palaeo-anthropology,” South African
    Journal of Science 96(2000):463-466, p. 463-464

    For those who make silly, silly claims like Henry Morris does:

            "When I was in school, I was taught that the three conclusive proofs of
    human evolution were Piltdown man, Peking man and Java man. These famous
    discoveries, however, are no longer taken seriously. Piltdown man was a
    hoax, Peking man has been lost for forty years and Java man was later
    admitted by its discoverer to be an artificial construct of a human
    thighbone and the skull of a gibbon. other former 'stars' in the ape-man
    extravaganza were Nebraska man (an extinct pig) and Neanderthal man (now
    universally acknowledged to be modern man).
            "The current 'star' in this long-running show is a supposed hominid
    (ape-man) named Australopithecus (meaning 'ape of the south'), associated
    with a varied collection of fossil evidence, including Leakey's Skull 1470
    and Carl Johanson's Lucy, as well as Mary Leakey's Laetoli fossil
    footprints." ~ Henry M. Morris, Creation and the Modern Christian, (El
    Cajon, California: Master Book Publishers, 1985), p.181

    they should remember that Tangshan recovered more fossils that are just like
    Peking man.

    The Wang and Tobias article also points out that China contains fully 1/3 of
    the human fossils found to date.

    This article also discusses the very controversial Longgupo site which was
    claimed to have the oldest evidence of hominids out of Africa--a H. habilis
    (a being prior to H. erectus). A mandible and a tooth had been found and
    claimed to be human. The humanity of the mandible was challenged by several
    authors, including Wolpoff, Schwartz and Tattersall. But the tooth appears
    to be human. Here is what Tattersall and Schwartz have to say:

    “As we pointed out at the time, the teeth in the jaw fragment bear a close
    resemblance to the teeth of an orangutan relative known from a much later
    site in Vietnam. Moreover, the incisor, although convincingly hominid, is
    rather generic and difficult to assign to any particular species.” Ian
    Tattersall and Jeffrey Schwartz, Extinct Humans, (New York: Westview Press,
    2000), p. 157

    But if the tooth is the remains of a hominid, then this is the earliest
    evidence of humankind outside of Africa--the site is over 2 Myr old. Wang
    and Tobias write:

            “In the face of these doubts about the supposedly hominid fossils found at
    Longgupo in the 1980s, more convincing artefacts were discovered during
    excavations in 1997 and 1998. They provided strong supporting evidence of a
    hominid presence at Longgupo. Most of the items are made from limestone,
    massive and crudely worked, comparable with the Oldowan artefacts from
    Olduvai Gorge in East Africa. As these artefacts seem to document the
    presence, at some 2 Myr, of hominids in China, a long-dormant belief was
    re-awakened, namely that Asian Homo erectus was rooted in Asia, not Africa.”
    Q. Wang and P. V. Tobias, “Recent Advances in Chinese Palaeo-anthropology,”
    South African Journal of Science 96(2000):463-466, p. 464

    One other interesting article concerning the intelligence of fossil man (H.
    ergaster--the African erectus) was the discovery, finally, of some acacia
    wood left on some stone axes. It has long been known that erectus/ergaster
    were using the stone tools for wood working, but never had any actual wood
    been found on the tools. I will eagerly await the full article because from
    the way the following abstract is written it sounds like the wood found was
    wood used for hafting the stone to a spear, but this impression may be
    wrong:

    Did Homo erectus take shop? An assemblage of 1.5-million-year-old stone hand
    axes unearthed in Tanzania says yes, contends Manuel Dominguez-Rodrigo of
    the Universidad Complutense, Madrid, who recently excavated the tools at
    Peninj, a site west of Lake Natron. The axes, worn from heavy use, bear
    traces of acacia wood on their blades, the world's earliest evidence for
    woodworking. "Until now," says Dominguez-Rodrigo, "it was believed that our
    ancestors' toolkit was limited to simple hand-held stone tools until about
    500,000 years ago, when wooden tools and weapons appear to have come into
    use. The oldest-known wooden implements, from 400,000 years ago, are a set
    of spruce spears, found near Hannover, Germany, and a yew lance tip from
    Clacton-on-Sea, England; a 500,000-year-old fossilized rhinoceros shoulder
    blade with a projectile point wound was found recently at Boxgrove, England,
    attesting the development of spears by that date. "That our forebears had
    the ability to fashion wood into utensils a million years earlier than
    previously thought," adds Dominguez-Rodrigo, "will cause us to reassess our
    understanding of their ability to hunt and gather." As for what may have
    been crafted of acacia wood at Peninj remains to be determined; no wooden
    artifacts were recovered.--ANGELA M.H. SCHUSTER
    http://www.archaeology.org/online/news/wood.html

    There is a report that men can fool women into thinking they are MANLY by
    having a deep voice. See
    http://dsc.discovery.com/news/briefs/20010129/manlymen.html

    I mentioned a few days ago (on the ASA list) that there was evidence of an
    upright being living 6 million years ago. Apparently the team has put the
    fossils on display. see
    http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_1157000/1157536.stm
    This fossil is supposed to be more human that Lucy with teeth close to those
    of modern humans. It is sure to stir up controversy. I would like to point
    out that I have for years argued that this was a likely
    occurrence--eventually. The fossil's age, and classification are sure to be
    attacked by others if for no other reason than the vitriolic argument over
    who owns the rights to dig in the ground from which he was taken.

    One note of archaeological/ Biblical interest, there is an account of
    Finkelstein and Silberman's view's on the history of Israel at
    http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2001/02/07/solomon/index.html?CP=SAL&DN=1
    10

    The article says: "In the essay, Herzog laid out many of the theories
    Finkelstein and Silberman present in their book: 'the Israelites were never
    in Egypt, did not wander in the desert, did not conquer the land[of Canaan]
    in a military campaign and didn not pass it on to the twelve tribes of
    Israel."

    glenn

    see http://www.glenn.morton.btinternet.co.uk/dmd.htm
    for lots of creation/evolution information
    anthropology/geology/paleontology/theology\
    personal stories of struggle



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