Anthropological Evidence Research Articles

Changing Language, Remaining Pygmy

In this article I am illustrating the linguistic diversity of African Pygmy populations in order to better address their anthropological diversity and history. I am also introducing a new method, based on the analysis of specialized vocabulary, to reconstruct the substratum of some languages they speak. I show that Pygmy identity is not based on their languages, which have often been borrowed from neighboring non-Pygmy farmer communities with whom each Pygmy group is linked. Understanding the nature of this partnership, quite variable in history, is essential to addressing Pygmy languages, identity, and history. Finally, I show that only a multidisciplinary approach is likely to push forward the understanding of African Pygmy societies as genetic, archeological, anthropological, and ethnological evidence suggest.

Changing Language, Remaining Pygmy

In this article I am illustrating the linguistic diversity of African Pygmy populations in order to better address their anthropological diversity and history. I am also introducing a new method, based on the analysis of specialized vocabulary, to reconstruct the substratum of some languages they speak. I show that Pygmy identity is not based on their languages, which have often been borrowed from neighboring non-Pygmy farmer communities with whom each Pygmy group is linked. Understanding the nature of this partnership, quite variable in history, is essential to addressing Pygmy languages, identity, and history. Finally, I show that only a multidisciplinary approach is likely to push forward the understanding of African Pygmy societies as genetic, archeological, anthropological, and ethnological evidence suggest.

Urbanisation in India During colonial rule and Historiography: Prospective sand Problems

Studies on urbanisation and urban centres during the ancient and medieval period have largely remained a neglected and relatively less explored field. Urbanisation is not a new phenomenon. Urbanisation is not a product. In this paper an attempt is made to assess the problems and perspectives in applying the process of urbanisation in India in interpreting the economic history, or otherwise known as “New Economic History” or “Urbanisation History”, which means the application of the process of urbanisation to historical studies for attaining precision and perfection. Modern historians, basing their study in conjunction with records and data available and anthropological evidence, elements of change and continuity have been noticed in the post Mughal period i.e. colonial period in Indian society and economy. In this paper an attempt is made to assess the problems and perspectives in applying the process of urbanisation in India during the colonial period in interpreting the economic history, or otherwise known as “New Economic History” or “Urbanisation History”, which means the application of the process of urbanisation to historical studies for attaining precision and perfection. Right from the ancient times till independence, India had been ruled by different communities under different reigns. As a consequence, several factors such as political, social, economic, religious and cultural had come to influence the growth and pattern of the urbanization of the country in varying degrees in different time periods. Of them, religious and cultural factors were the basis of the urban growth in the early and medieval era. Although, among the economic factors, trade was the major one to affect the early urbanization. However, clear definitions of trade and urbanization came to India dur ing colonial period. It was found that trade and urbanization went hand in hand in colonial period. Hence the main objective of this paper is to study the growth and pattern of the trade under colonial rule and asses its impact on the urban growth and development in the pre- independent India. Studies on urbanisation and urban centres during the colonial period have largely remained a neglected and relatively less explored field. Urbanisation is not a new phenomenon to Indian context. Urbanisation is not a product. It is a process in the course of history of mankind. There is tendency to follow the notion that “ a town is a town, wherever it is” and that being a visual phenomenon the town to city should be made an object of study in its own right. As a result some of the works on urbanisation nothing more than compilations of lists of towns under various categories such as market, trade and commercial centres, political and administrative centres and religious centres. Sociologists look at it a as a process as well as instrument of modernisation and social change- a break from traditional past. Geographers look at urbanisation as a process by which human beings and their activities congregate spatially to give rise to towns and cities of various sizes-They also examine the internal structures functions and external relations of urban places.

Play: Notes of Balinese and Thai Cockfights: An Examination of Clifford Geertz's 'Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight'

Critical examination of Clifford Geertz's “Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese cockfight” base on empirical anthropological evidence countering Geertz's notion of cockfighting as being super symbolic with the argument of it as far more superficial in its societal significance.

The struggle to establish the African origins of Western civilisation

Notwithstanding, definitive evidence from archaeology and anthropology (that has also found a modest foothold in the accounting history literature) that accounting and accountants in Africa, were at the beginning of human (Western) civilisation as we know it, there remains strong Eurocentric and US-centric bias against recognising the full implications of this research. This paper reviews (briefly) the archaeological and anthropological evidence that supports this thesis, and then discusses the resistance to publishing the first accounting study on colonialism in Sierra Leone (that finally resulted in success).

Orphans in Sub-Saharan Africa: The Crisis, the Interventions, and the Anthropologist

Response to the orphan crisis in sub-Saharan Africa has focused mainly on mobilizing and distributing material resources to households with orphans. Only a few anthropologists have interrogated the frameworks and values on which the projects for orphans are based. In this paper, I analyze the trends in foster-care research in Africa and suggest that current ethnographic data on foster-care practices do not adequately reflect the changing context of fostering in Africa. There is a need for fresh anthropological evidence on fostering because of death. It is only when new data are generated that effective and culturally sensitive programs for orphans and the people who are directly responsible for their well-being can be developed. With fourteen million children orphaned because of AIDS, sub-Saharan Africa is facing an unprecedented crisis, which could be exacerbated because many more of the 22.4 million people living with HIV—60 percent women—will become ill and die for lack of life-saving antiretroviral treatment, to which only 45 percent of pregnant women have access to prevent transmission of HIV to their babies. Also, armed conflicts are causing more children to be orphaned. The responsibility for orphans is mostly borne by older women, who depend upon support from external partners comprising international

An anthropological perspective: another dimension to modern dental wear concepts.

For many years, research on tooth wear by dental academics has been diametrically opposite to that of anthropological research, with each discipline having a different understanding as to the nature of the wear processes. Dental focus revolved around preventive and restorative considerations while the anthropological focus was a biological understanding related to human evolution, diet, environment, form, and function and included all the craniofacial structures. Introducing the anthropological perspective into modern dentistry gives an insight into the “bigger picture” of the nature and extent of tooth wear. By combining anthropological evidence with clinical knowledge and experience, it is most likely to provide the best-informed and biologically based approach to the management of tooth wear in modern societies.

Hallucinations and Sensory Overrides

Hallucinations are a vivid illustration of the way culture affects our most fundamental mental experience and the way that mind is shaped both by cultural invitation and by biological constraint. The anthropological evidence suggests that there are three patterns of hallucinations: experiences in which hallucinations are rare, brief, and not distressing; hallucinations that are frequent, extended, and distressing; and hallucinations that are frequent but not distressing. The ethnographic evidence also suggests that hallucinations are shaped by learning in at least two ways. People acquire specific representations about mind from their local social world, and people (particularly in spiritual pursuits) are encouraged to train their minds (or focus their attention) in specific ways. These two kinds of learning can affect even perception, this most basic domain of mental experience. This learning-centered approach may eventually have something to teach us about the pathways and trajectories of psychotic illness.

Economic Stressors and the Demand for “Fattening” Foods

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Human capital, kinship, and gender inequality

We develop a household utility maximization model to explain gender disparities in education in traditional societies, based on anthropological evidence on the relationship between kinship and altruism. In this model, the asymmetry between males and females with respect to childbearing implies that parents face asymmetric monitoring costs with respect to the paternity of their grandchildren. Thus, with respect to co-residence decisions, households choose to have their male child and his bride co-reside in the male's natal family, and the female child and her husband co-reside with her husband's natal family (patrilocal exogamy). Because of this households also choose to invest less in a female child's education relative her male sibling. Copyright 2012 Oxford University Press 2011 All rights reserved, Oxford University Press.

Genetic structure of the Mon-Khmer speaking groups and their affinity to the neighbouring Tai populations in Northern Thailand

BackgroundThe Mon-Khmer speaking peoples inhabited northern Thailand before the arrival of the Tai speaking people from southern China in the thirteenth century A.D. Historical and anthropological evidence suggests a close relationship between the Mon-Khmer groups and the present day majority northern Thai groups. In this study, mitochondrial and Y-chromosomal DNA polymorphisms in more than 800 volunteers from eight Mon-Khmer and ten Tai speaking populations were investigated to estimate the degree of genetic divergence between these major linguistic groups and their internal structure.ResultsA large fraction of genetic variation is observed within populations (about 80% and 90% for mtDNA and the Y-chromosome, respectively). The genetic divergence between populations is much higher in Mon-Khmer than in Tai speaking groups, especially at the paternally inherited markers. The two major linguistic groups are genetically distinct, but only for a marginal fraction (1 to 2%) of the total genetic variation. Genetic distances between populations correlate with their linguistic differences, whereas the geographic distance does not explain the genetic divergence pattern.ConclusionsThe Mon-Khmer speaking populations in northern Thailand exhibited the genetic divergence among each other and also when compared to Tai speaking peoples. The different drift effects and the post-marital residence patterns between the two linguistic groups are the explanation for a small but significant fraction of the genetic variation pattern within and between them.

2. ONCE AGAIN, WITH MORE FEELING

ABSTRACTThis book summarizes in a compact volume Runciman's arguments to comparative sociologists that their discipline belongs under the theoretical umbrella of neo‐Darwinian selectionism. In his view, heritable variation and competitive selection govern cultural and social as well as biological evolution. Runciman makes a strong case for the usefulness of selectionism, but two of the theory's central features are problematic: his choice of units of selection; and the notion that culture can be distinguished from society historically as well as analytically. No one friendly to the basic project would argue against the need for hypotheses about units that undergo selection, but arguments can be made, also on pragmatic grounds, that he has chosen the wrong kinds of units. Runciman's learning and wisdom show to good effect in the book's fundamental approach: in the overall human story, the biological, cultural, and social coevolve. The quickly accumulating evidence of evolutionary psychology, anthropology, sociology, and neuroscience strongly supports the hypothesis that there is a biological basis for a great deal of human behavior, and also that sociocultural evolution modifies genes. History, in this way of thinking, is like a “braided stream” of unpredictably mutating, blending, and coevolving biological, cultural, and social processes. The old Darwinian image of branching fails to capture the complexity of evolutionary processes in biology, culture, and society. Runciman outlines a unified bio‐social science relying upon information theory. If his program were carried out consistently it would relegate to a non‐scientific level the traditional historical narratives about “carriers” or “vehicles”. The scientific‐explanatory level would instead feature replicators. Gametheory strategies play a prominent role in the selectionist picture. The emphasis on units of information stored in human brains or in exosomatic brain prostheses pushes neuroscience and information theory to the fore. An argument for the analytic‐heuristic value of “memes” and “practices” should be weighed against the value of other hypothetical units undergoing selection in a sociocultural evolutionary approach.

Rethinking Visual Ethics: Evolution, Social Comparison and the Media's Mono-Body in the Global Rise of Eating Disorders

This study applies evolution theory to visual ethics and argues that social comparison theory favored by scholars of eating disorders is actually a Darwinian maladaptation to the media's widespread digital manipulation of women's bodies creating the thin ideal. An evolutionary perspective suggests how the media is enmeshed and why social comparison of the mediated “mono-body” will continue. This study has three sections: 1) evolution theory and morality; 2) social comparison, biology of the social gaze, and anthropological evidence of Western media's role in the global rise of eating disorders; and 3) rethinking visual ethics to expand Newton's (2001) mass interpersonal relationship.

Saving the African Heritage is a Global Priority: How Can a New Subdiscipline of Rescue Archaeology Aid It?

Those who study the human past are well aware that all heritages are selective and change through time, and that in a great continent like Africa with many millennia of human history there has been, and still is, a plethora of local heritages. It is perhaps optimistic to expect common factors in all of them, but these may well exist and our role as scholars is to try and discover them. In this short editorial, I am concerned mainly with the threats to these multiple heritages on the continent and reiterate my earlier call for the strengthening of rescue archaeology in Africa (Alexander 1974). The destruction of the African tangible and intangible heritage, now taking place without being recorded in many countries, will be a tragedy for the whole human species. This is not only because the evidence of archaeology, human genetics and physical anthropology confirms our species developed in Africa and then spread from it, but because it is only in Africa that there is an unbroken development of human culture from its earliest manifestations to its present sophistication. This has taken place, until the last three centuries, without major external migration and conquest affecting its interior regions. The significance of this relative cultural isolation is only now coming to be realised, depending as it does on Africa’s size and Afr Archaeol Rev (2011) 28:93–96 DOI 10.1007/s10437-011-9093-5

Violence in Non-State Societies: A Review

Anthropological sources on non-state, tribal societies offer a wealth of evidence on violence that can expand the spatial and temporal gaze of criminological research. Reviewing this literature allows for a more comparative analysis of patterns of violence and challenges contemporary notions of social change and order. This paper provides an overview of the most relevant anthropological evidence on patterns of violence in non-state societies. Specifically, trends and overall levels of violence, age and sex patterns as well as social and environmental factors are reviewed in order to determine whether contemporary concepts and patterns of violence are universal or culturally specific. The findings presented here indicate that violence in non-state societies is a ubiquitous but culturally varying phenomenon used by males and may be related to interdependent social organizations and networks of exchange.

Reconstructing the Indian Origin and Dispersal of the European Roma: A Maternal Genetic Perspective

Previous genetic, anthropological and linguistic studies have shown that Roma (Gypsies) constitute a founder population dispersed throughout Europe whose origins might be traced to the Indian subcontinent. Linguistic and anthropological evidence point to Indo-Aryan ethnic groups from North-western India as the ancestral parental population of Roma. Recently, a strong genetic hint supporting this theory came from a study of a private mutation causing primary congenital glaucoma. In the present study, complete mitochondrial control sequences of Iberian Roma and previously published maternal lineages of other European Roma were analyzed in order to establish the genetic affinities among Roma groups, determine the degree of admixture with neighbouring populations, infer the migration routes followed since the first arrival to Europe, and survey the origin of Roma within the Indian subcontinent. Our results show that the maternal lineage composition in the Roma groups follows a pattern of different migration routes, with several founder effects, and low effective population sizes along their dispersal. Our data allowed the confirmation of a North/West migration route shared by Polish, Lithuanian and Iberian Roma. Additionally, eleven Roma founder lineages were identified and degrees of admixture with host populations were estimated. Finally, the comparison with an extensive database of Indian sequences allowed us to identify the Punjab state, in North-western India, as the putative ancestral homeland of the European Roma, in agreement with previous linguistic and anthropological studies.

Sickle Cell Anemia In India And Africa

Abstract Linguistic archaeological and anthropological evidence suggest that Africans and Indian tribal groups share many features. In this paper we examine the relationship between sickle cell anemia in India and Africa. Sickle Cell Anemia in India and Africa Researchers have detected a relationship between blood groups among Indian tribal populations and Africans (Aravanan, 1976,1980). In addition Indian tribal groups share many physical features with African groups like the Fulani (Aravanan, 1976,1979,1980). This is most interesting because the HLA system provides us with a means to define the relatedness of varying ethnic groups. The Dravidian people share cultural and linguistic features with Africans (Sergent,1992; Winters 2007,2008). The archaeological evidence suggest that the Dravidian people belonged to the C-Group people of Nubia and migrated to India 5kya ( Lal, 1963; Winters, 2008). Dravidian speaking tribal groups share similar health problems as their African counterparts. Indian tribal groups have a high prevalence of the genetically transmitted sickle cell disorder (Mohanty, 1998; Kate, 2000). The sickle cell disorder is primarily found among the Kadaro, Irula and Pularya tribal populations (Aravanan, 1976,1980). The sickle cell disorder is an important indicator of a possible relationship between Dravidian speaking tribal groups and Africans since it is a hereditary blood disorder resulting from a defective hemoglobin state. It has two forms homozygous (suffer) and heterozygous (carrier). The distribution of sickle cell among tribal populations in India vary. But in many states the prevalence of sickle cell can range among the tribal population from between 10% -35% of the population (Kate, 2000). On average, if we look at the state of Maharastra, for example, as many as 10% can be carriers and 5% suffers (Kate,2000). There are a number of similarities between African and Indian sickle cell anemia especially in relation to the sickle cell common among Fulani. The Fulani people live throughout Africa. Linguist have reported that the Fulani and Dravidian languages are genetically related (Winters, 2007, 2008). Sickle cell anemia is named after the geographical region in which it is found. African tribal groups and Africans share Arab-India, Benin, and Senegal sickle cell anemia (Bain, 2006). The Senegal and Indian sickle cell share haplotypes (Rahimi et al, 2003). The Arab-Indian and Senegal haplotypes share the C!T mutation at position -158 (Bain, 2006; Rahimi et al, 2003). The reality that sickle cell is found mainly among the Indian tribal groups which have rarely interacted with outsiders make it clear that it was probably carried to India when Dravidians migrated from Nubia to South India (Winters,2008). It is interesting that the Arab-Indian and Senegal haplotypes are both associated with a C!T mutation at position -158. This is further conformation of the African origin of the Dravidians because it is in the Senegal area that we also find a large number of Fulani.

TRACELESS DEATH. MISSING BURIALS IN BRONZE AND IRON AGE ESTONIA

Departure In an overview of the Stone Age religious beliefs written half a century ago, Lembit Jaanits (1961, 68 f.) drew attention to the fact that the majority of people who lived at that time were most likely never buried in the ground. This conclusion was made on the basis of an amazingly low number of burials known in either settlement sites or separate cemeteries outside the settlements of that time. Similar thoughts had been published by Estonian folklorist in exile Oskar Loorits (1949, 118) already 12 years earlier. Although more cemeteries and graves from the late Mesolithic and Neolithic have been discovered within the last fifty years in what is today Estonia and its neighbouring areas, this suggestion is still valid and realistic. With a reference to anthropological evidence of some Siberian peoples, Jaanits supposed that the dead could have been taken to certain places outside the settlements (located e.g. in the forest) and left there on the surface of the ground, wrapped perhaps into skins or birch bark (Jaanits 1961, 69). After some time almost no traces will remain from such exposed bodies. As for the number of burial sites, the situation is even worse concerning the Early Bronze Age: no graves have been reported so far in Estonia, which could belong to the second millennium BC (Lang 2007, 147). This is most likely due to the stage of investigation and it is only a matter of time when the first burials will be discovered. In the southernmost neighbouring areas, for instance, several flat cemeteries with pit graves of the Early Bronze Age date have been unearthed, e.g. at Kivutkalns and Raganukalns (Graudonis 1967; Denisova et al. 1985). It was also in the late second millennium BC when the first monumental above-ground burial mounds were erected there, e.g. at Pukuli, Reznes, and Kalniesi (Graudonis 1967; Vasks 2000). In northern and western Estonia the first monumental stone graves were built slightly later, i.e. at the beginning of the Late Bronze Age (Lang 2007, 147 ff.). Since that time, at least one portion of burials has become very much visible in the archaeological record, and forms the main subject of research. However, it was gradually understood since the early 1990s that despite large numbers of stone graves of the Late Bronze and Iron Ages, one part of prehistoric populations have never been buried there. How big that part was, is not clear. At first sight this conclusion based on palaeodemographic calculations was only made for both stone-cist graves of the Late Bronze and early Pre-Roman Iron Ages and north-west-Estonian tarand-graves of the Roman Iron Age (Lang & Ligi 1991; Lang 1995a) because the number of burials in those graves was too small even for regular nuclear families. The tarand-graves in other parts of the country yielding larger numbers of burials were regarded to correspond to burial places of single farms with either nuclear or extended families. Later research into the osteological evidence of cremated bones has clearly demonstrated that even large burial grounds of the Middle and Late Iron Ages might have belonged only to one or a few families and not to larger village communities (Magi 2002, 74; Allmae 2003; Mandel 2003). This conclusion did not suit historical documents, however, that had reported a settlement pattern consisting of relatively advanced villages in the 13th century. The current article aims to discuss the problems connected with mortuary customs that are difficult to study or even invisible for archaeology. This is, first, a study of 'the others'--people who did not belong to the sphere of those buried finally in stone graves, sand barrows or flat cemeteries. Second, this is also a study of complexity in cultural behaviour concerning the death and mortuary customs in which the 'proper burying' has formed only one--and perhaps not the most popular--way of acting. Following the definition given by Frands Herschend (2009, 37), by the term 'burying' I mean the placing of the dead in a 'burial site', i. …

Paleolithic Nutrition

A quarter century has passed since the first publication of the evolutionary discordance hypothesis, according to which departures from the nutrition and activity patterns of our hunter-gatherer ancestors have contributed greatly and in specifically definable ways to the endemic chronic diseases of modern civilization. Refinements of the model have changed it in some respects, but anthropological evidence continues to indicate that ancestral human diets prevalent during our evolution were characterized by much lower levels of refined carbohydrates and sodium, much higher levels of fiber and protein, and comparable levels of fat (primarily unsaturated fat) and cholesterol. Physical activity levels were also much higher than current levels, resulting in higher energy throughput. We said at the outset that such evidence could only suggest testable hypotheses and that recommendations must ultimately rest on more conventional epidemiological, clinical, and laboratory studies. Such studies have multiplied and have supported many aspects of our model, to the extent that in some respects, official recommendations today have targets closer to those prevalent among hunter-gatherers than did comparable recommendations 25 years ago. Furthermore, doubts have been raised about the necessity for very low levels of protein, fat, and cholesterol intake common in official recommendations. Most impressively, randomized controlled trials have begun to confirm the value of hunter-gatherer diets in some high-risk groups, even as compared with routinely recommended diets. Much more research needs to be done, but the past quarter century has proven the interest and heuristic value, if not yet the ultimate validity, of the model.

Moral Relativism in Context

(1.1) The average moral relativist denies the existence of “absolute moral truths.” (1.2) The average moral relativist often expresses her commitment to moral relativism with slogans like ‘What’s true (or right) for you may not be what’s true (or right) for me’ or ‘What’s true (or right) for your culture may not be what’s true (or right) for my culture.’ (1.3) The average moral relativist endorses relativistic views of morality without endorsing relativistic views about science or mathematics. (1.4) The average moral relativist takes moral relativism to be non-relatively true and does not think there is anything contradictory about doing so. (1.5) The average moral relativist adopts an egalitarian attitude toward a wide range of moral values, practices and beliefs, claiming they are all equally legitimate or correct. (1.6) The average moral relativist often admonishes others to be more tolerant of those who engage in alternative ethical practices and to refrain from making negative moral judgments about them. (1.7) The average moral relativist sometimes makes negative moral judgments about the behavior of others—e.g., by harshly judging moral absolutists to be intolerant—but is less inclined to do so when the relativist’s metaethical views are salient in a context of moral judgment. (1.8) The average moral relativist takes anthropological evidence concerning the worldwide diversity of ethical views and practices to support moral relativism.