Anthropology posts
- February 3, 2012
- 02:57 PM
- 12 views
Ameloblast from the past
by zacharoo in Lawn Chair Anthropology
I've posted a couple times about the prospects of using high-resolution computed tomography imaging to assess cellular-level processes of growth and development. Today, Paul Tafforeau and colleagues present a synchrotron-based visualization of the adventurous paths that individual enamel-forming cells'(ameloblasts) take to form tooth crowns. I've been focusing more on using these techniques for studying bone growth, but I got the idea of that from previous studies of teeth (see Ma........ Read more »
Macchiarelli, R., Bondioli, L., Debénath, A., Mazurier, A., Tournepiche, J., Birch, W., & Dean, M. (2006) How Neanderthal molar teeth grew. Nature, 444(7120), 748-751. DOI: 10.1038/nature05314
Smith, T., Tafforeau, P., Reid, D., Pouech, J., Lazzari, V., Zermeno, J., Guatelli-Steinberg, D., Olejniczak, A., Hoffman, A., Radovcic, J.... (2010) Dental evidence for ontogenetic differences between modern humans and Neanderthals. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 107(49), 20923-20928. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1010906107
Tafforeau, P., Zermeno, J., & Smith, T. (2012) Tracking cellular-level enamel growth and structure in 4D with synchrotron imaging. Journal of Human Evolution. DOI: 10.1016/j.jhevol.2012.01.001
- February 2, 2012
- 07:00 PM
- 29 views
Herpes Gladiatorum: Full Contact Infectious Diseases
by rbca in BODY HORRORS
In honor of one of the most lucrative American holidays happening this very weekend, I thought I’d explore sports and infectious diseases. Specifically, contact sports and skin infections! What could be better than watching the Super Bowl and knowing just exactly what kind of diseases could possibly be smeared between the players of the Patriots and Giants?... Read more »
Adams, B. (2010) Skin infections in athletes. Expert Review of Dermatology, 5(5), 567-577. DOI: 10.1586/edm.10.50
- February 2, 2012
- 12:34 PM
- 56 views
The earliest arty neanderthals?
by sahelanthropus in EvoAnth
Modern humans are almost defined by their behaviours, making the development of modern behaviour a fundamental turning point in the origin of us. It’s when we stopped being hominins and started being humans. Actually, that’s a lie: we’re technically still hominins, that’s just a pithy – if factually vacuous – statement to convey the importance [...]... Read more »
Roebroeks, W., Sier, M., Nielsen, T., De Loecker, D., Pares, J., Arps, C., & Mucher, H. (2012) Use of red ochre by early Neandertals. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1112261109
- February 2, 2012
- 02:22 AM
- 51 views
Science Majors are from Mars...
by Neuroskeptic in Neuroskeptic
According to a new study, students with a family history of autism tend to major in math and science, while substance abuse and depression are more common in the ancestors of humanities fans.In an online survey, over 1,000 new Princeton undergrads were asked about their intended major and whether anyone in their family had been diagnosed with one of 16 neurological and psychiatric disorders. More details here.Of the 16 maladies, 5 were so rare that there wasn't enough data to analyze. Of the rem........ Read more »
Campbell BC, & Wang SS. (2012) Familial Linkage between Neuropsychiatric Disorders and Intellectual Interests. PloS one, 7(1). PMID: 22291951
- January 31, 2012
- 03:08 PM
- 64 views
Who Was Horse Eve?
by Elizabeth Preston in Inkfish
Her story doesn't involve any borrowed ribs or knowledge-bestowing apples, but she was the female forbear of all horses alive today. Researchers say the Eve of horses lived about 140,000 years ago. Her family tree contains some revealing gossip about when, and where, horses began their relationship with humans.
To understand the story of Horse Eve, you'll have first convince yourself that any group of living organisms has a most recent common ancestor. Think of yourself and a friend. Unless ........ Read more »
Achilli, A., Olivieri, A., Soares, P., Lancioni, H., Kashani, B., Perego, U., Nergadze, S., Carossa, V., Santagostino, M., Capomaccio, S.... (2012) Mitochondrial genomes from modern horses reveal the major haplogroups that underwent domestication. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1111637109
- January 30, 2012
- 11:57 PM
- 29 views
Taking back Epigenetics
by zacharoo in Lawn Chair Anthropology
If I'm good at anything, it's looking into one topic and then getting distracted by something else during my search. In a recent case, I was scouring the literature on growth and life history. One ribald thing led to another, and next thing I know I've stumbled upon Gunter Wagner's recent review of the book Epigenetics: Linking Genotype and Phenotype in Development and Evolution. WTF is epigenetics, you ask? That's actually a pretty good question (see here). In the past ........ Read more »
Chen, E., Zhang, K., Nicolas, E., Cam, H., Zofall, M., & Grewal, S. (2008) Cell cycle control of centromeric repeat transcription and heterochromatin assembly. Nature, 451(7179), 734-737. DOI: 10.1038/nature06561
Feil, R., & Fraga, M. (2012) Epigenetics and the environment: emerging patterns and implications. Nature Reviews Genetics. DOI: 10.1038/nrg3142
Gilbert, S. (1996) Resynthesizing Evolutionary and Developmental Biology. Developmental Biology, 173(2), 357-372. DOI: 10.1006/dbio.1996.0032
Wagner, G. (2011) Epigenetics in all its beauty. Trends in Ecology . DOI: 10.1016/j.tree.2011.09.003
- January 30, 2012
- 01:31 PM
- 4 views
Preening the History of Primates
When viewed within the broader context of our evolutionary history, we are anthropoid primates. That’s the group which contains monkeys and apes (with our species being a specialized variety of ape, and apes being a particular subset of monkeys, and monkeys representing the major group of anthropoids). But how anthropoid primates originated has been a [...]... Read more »
Maiolino, S., Boyer, D., & Rosenberger, A. (2011) Morphological Correlates of the Grooming Claw in Distal Phalanges of Platyrrhines and Other Primates: A Preliminary Study. The Anatomical Record: Advances in Integrative Anatomy and Evolutionary Biology, 294(12), 1975-1990. DOI: 10.1002/ar.21498
Maiolino, S., Boyer, D., Bloch, J., Gilbert, C., & Groenke, J. (2012) Evidence for a Grooming Claw in a North American Adapiform Primate: Implications for Anthropoid Origins. PLoS ONE, 7(1). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0029135
Williams, B., Kay, R., & Kirk, E. (2010) New perspectives on anthropoid origins. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 107(11), 4797-4804. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0908320107
- January 30, 2012
- 03:16 AM
- 64 views
Where Did the Cahokians Come From?
by teofilo in Gambler's House
Regardless of exactly how many people lived at Cahokia, it’s clear from recent research that the population of the site and its immediately surrounding area grew immensely in a short period of time in the eleventh century AD. As Timothy Pauketat points out in the 2003 article that I was discussing earlier, the scale of [...]... Read more »
Lynott, M., Neff, H., Price, J., Cogswell, J., & Glascock, M. (2000) Inferences about Prehistoric Ceramics and People in Southeast Missouri: Results of Ceramic Compositional Analysis. American Antiquity, 65(1), 103. DOI: 10.2307/2694810
Pauketat, T. (2003) Resettled Farmers and the Making of a Mississippian Polity. American Antiquity, 68(1), 39. DOI: 10.2307/3557032
- January 29, 2012
- 10:34 PM
- 44 views
There’s More to That Red Plastic Cup Than You Thought
by Krystal D'Costa in Anthropology in Practice
Who here has not enjoyed a cold, refreshing drink from a red plastic cup? Alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages alike find themselves comfortably enclosed within the confines of the bright red vessel that has become a ubiquitous American staple at barbecues, picnics, parties, in dugouts and at minor league games, in food cars and at lunch [...]
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Bunimovitz, S., & Greenberg, R. (2004) Revealed in Their Cups: Syrian Drinking Customs in Intermediate Bronze Age Canaan. Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, 19. DOI: 10.2307/4150104
Donner, W. (1994) Alcohol, Community, and Modernity: The Social Organization of Toddy Drinking in a Polynesian Society. Ethnology, 33(3), 245. DOI: 10.2307/3774009
Magennis, H. (1985) The Cup as Symbol and Metaphor in Old English Literature. Speculum, 60(3), 517. DOI: 10.2307/2848173
McAllister, P. (2003) Culture, Practice, and the Semantics of Xhosa Beer-Drinking. Ethnology, 42(3), 187. DOI: 10.2307/3773800
- January 29, 2012
- 03:42 PM
- 81 views
Neanderthals had differently organised brains
by sahelanthropus in EvoAnth
Homo neanderthalensis is not a species to be dismissed lightly. They weren’t especially dumb, nor especially weak. Indeed, they actually had larger brains and denser muscles than we did. On top of that, their technology was so well adapted to their environment that they were able to flourish without drastically altering it for hundreds of [...]... Read more »
Pearce, E., & Dunbar, R. (2011) Latitudinal variation in light levels drives human visual system size. Biology Letters, 8(1), 90-93. DOI: 10.1098/rsbl.2011.0570
- January 27, 2012
- 02:57 PM
- 95 views
When Psychologists Take Things Too Literally
by Elizabeth Preston in Inkfish
Thankfully, in brainstorming meetings where I'm asked to "think outside the box," no one has ever put me in an actual box. That's not true of the undergrads who volunteered for a recent psychology study.
Angela Leung, a researcher in Singapore, and her colleagues in the United States were studying a phenomenon called "embodied cognition." The idea is that a brain can't help being influenced by the body it's stuck inside. Feelings can run backward: We might be smiling because we're happy, or ........ Read more »
Angela Leung, Suntae Kim, Evan Polman, See Lay, Link Qiu, Jack Goncalo, & Jeffrey Sanchez-Burks. (2012) Embodied Metaphors and Creative "Acts". Psychological Science. info:/
- January 27, 2012
- 01:57 PM
- 74 views
Bad at Music, Bad at Chinese
by Callum Hackett in For the Ears
Another recent study (this one conducted by laboratories in Beijing and Montreal) has shown a link between the mental processing of music and language, though this time by looking at cognitive dysfunction. Most people could not imagine living without the capacity for enjoying and creating music, but … Continue reading →... Read more »
Nan Y, Sun Y, & Peretz I. (2010) Congenital amusia in speakers of a tone language: association with lexical tone agnosia. Brain: a journal of neurology, 133(9), 2635-42. PMID: 20685803
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- January 27, 2012
- 11:36 AM
- 123 views
Disrupting & Inventing “Religion”
by Cris Campbell in Genealogy of Religion
When I teach my anthropology of religion course the first order of business is to define and disrupt “religion” as a category. I begin by having students identify everything they consider to be “religion.” Our list grows and all the usual suspects make their appearance. After the list has been compiled, we then ask what [...]... Read more »
Josephson, Joseph A. (2011) The Invention of Japanese Religions. Religion Compass, 5(10), 589-597. DOI: 10.1111/j.1749-8171.2011.00307.x
- January 27, 2012
- 10:10 AM
- 107 views
Oxford University Censor First Broadcast of Lecture That Resulted in Censuring of Prof. Nutt, Former UK Government Drugs Advisor
by Neurobonkers in Neurobonkers
Watch the full video of the lecture and uncover what was in the slides censored for "copyright reasons"... Read more »
Nutt, D., King, L., & Phillips, L. (2010) Drug harms in the UK: a multicriteria decision analysis. The Lancet, 376(9752), 1558-1565. DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(10)61462-6
Nutt, D. (2009) Estimating drug harms: a risky business?. Centre for Crime and Justice Studies. info:/
Halpern JH, Sherwood AR, Hudson JI, Gruber S, Kozin D, & Pope HG Jr. (2011) Residual neurocognitive features of long-term ecstasy users with minimal exposure to other drugs. Addiction (Abingdon, England), 106(4), 777-86. PMID: 21205042
Carhart-Harris, R., Erritzoe, D., Williams, T., Stone, J., Reed, L., Colasanti, A., Tyacke, R., Leech, R., Malizia, A., Murphy, K.... (2012) Neural correlates of the psychedelic state as determined by fMRI studies with psilocybin. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1119598109
Editorial team. (2010) The EMCDDA annual report 2010: the state of the drugs problem in Europe. The European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction, also published in Euro surveillance :European communicable disease bulletin, 15(46). PMID: 21144426
- January 27, 2012
- 09:19 AM
- 13 views
Mourning Digitally
by Krystal D'Costa in Anthropology in Practice
Ed Note: Another flashback from the archives of AiP this Friday, though a sombre one at that. It’s rainy and dreary here in New York City, and my thoughts are a bit dark today. How are social technologies changing the experience of death for those charged with remembering? Death has been referred to as the [...]
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Aggarwal, R. (2001) At the Margins of Death: Ritual Space and the Politics of Location in an Indo-Himalayan Border Village. American Ethnologist, 28(3), 549-573. DOI: 10.1525/ae.2001.28.3.549
Dernbach, Katherine Boris. (2005) Spirits of the Hereafter: Death, Funerary Possession, and the Afterlife in Chuuk, Micronesia. Ethnology, 44(2), 99-123. info:/
- January 26, 2012
- 03:30 PM
- 97 views
Man's Best Friend, the Turkana Tribe & a Gruesome Parasite
by rbca in BODY HORRORS
Echinococcus granulosus is the causative agent of hydatid disease, a real nasty piece of work that usually plagues dogs and the ruminants they herd or hunt. The Turkana district in Kenya has the highest incidence and prevalence of hydatid disease in the world, due to the incredibly unique role that dogs play in the day-to-day life of their human owners.... Read more »
Romig, T., Omer, R., Zeyhle, E., Hüttner, M., Dinkel, A., Siefert, L., Elmahdi, I., Magambo, J., Ocaido, M., Menezes, C.... (2011) Echinococcosis in sub-Saharan Africa: Emerging complexity. Veterinary Parasitology, 181(1), 43-47. DOI: 10.1016/j.vetpar.2011.04.022
- January 26, 2012
- 11:39 AM
- 57 views
Evidence of Massacre in Ancient Turkey
by Katy Meyers in Bones Don't Lie
Determining the social relationships between populations in the past can be difficult. Trading can be inferred from the presence of artifacts like pottery with foreign designs, or non-local foods. Warfare can be determined from the presence of mass graves or … Continue reading →... Read more »
Erdal, O.D. (2012) A possible massacre at Early Bronze Age Titriş Höyük, Anatolia. International Journal of Osteoarchaeology, 22(1), 1-21. DOI: 10.1002/oa.1177
- January 25, 2012
- 09:24 PM
- 69 views
The Great Mystery of Vanishing Phonemes
by Wintz in A Replicated Typo 2.0
It’s been well over a year since I first wrote about the relationship between phoneme inventory size and demography (see here and here). Since then, I have completed a thesis examining this relationship further, especially in the context of the relative roles of demography and tradeoffs between other linguistic subsystems (namely, a language’s lexicon and [...]... Read more »
Atkinson, Q. (2011) Phonemic Diversity Supports a Serial Founder Effect Model of Language Expansion from Africa. Science, 332(6027), 346-349. DOI: 10.1126/science.1199295
- January 25, 2012
- 02:27 PM
- 116 views
IQ Varies with Context
by Greg Laden in Greg Laden's Blog
In a very interesting way.
As a regular reader of this blog, you know that IQ and similar measures are determined by a number of factors, and for most "normal" (modal?) individuals, one's heritage (genes) is rarely important. Putting it another way, variation across individuals in IQ and other measures have been shown again and again to be determined by things like home environment, diet and nutrition, and even immediate social context. Here's another finding supporting this: Read the rest o........ Read more »
Kishida, K., Yang, D., Quartz, K., Quartz, S., & Montague, P. (2012) Implicit signals in small group settings and their impact on the expression of cognitive capacity and associated brain responses. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 367(1589), 704-716. DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2011.0267
- January 25, 2012
- 01:49 PM
- 69 views
Evolving our success
by sahelanthropus in EvoAnth
If you were asked what it was that makes Homo sapiens so successful, how might you respond? That it is our technology, which enables us to conquer any environment? But what allowed the development of such technology? Our big brains of course! But why did our brains get so big? To facilitate larger group sizes! [...]... Read more »
Grove, M., Pearce, E., & Dunbar, R. (2011) Fission-fusion and the evolution of hominin social systems. Journal of Human Evolution. DOI: 10.1016/j.jhevol.2011.10.012
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