Early Man Research Articles

Early man, late journalists

Early man, late journalists

PAIN IN FIBROMYALGIA

Just as our caveman forebears were frail in the face of predatory animals, we are frail in today's society of childhood neglect or abuse, bumper-to-bumper traffic, frustration at work, and multiple daily hassles. The same neuroendocrine systems and pain regulatory mechanisms that protected early man during acute stress are still encoded in our genome, but may be maladaptive in psychologically and physiologically vulnerable people faced with chronic stress. Many patients with fibromyalgia become vulnerable because of the long-lasting psychological and neurophysiological effects of negative experiences in childhood. Ill-equipped with positive cognitive, emotional, and behavioral skills as adults, they display maladaptive coping strategies, low self-efficacy, and negative mood when confronted with the inevitable stressors of life. Psychological distress ensues, which reduces thresholds for pain perception and tolerance (already relatively low in women) even further. Converging lines of psychological and neurobiological evidence strongly suggest that chronic stress-related blunting of the HPA, sympathetic, and other axes of the stress response together with associated alterations in pain regulatory mechanisms may finally explain the pain and fatigue of fibromyalgia. Vulnerable people who can be classified by the ACR criteria as having fibromyalgia do not have a discrete disease. They are simply the most ill in a continuum of distress, chronic pain, and painful tender points in the general population.

Nutritional influences in the geographic dispersal of pleistocene man

Originally the genus Homo was confined to tropical and subtropical areas where the basic primate plant foods were available year‐round. Early Pleistocene man differed from other primates in his propensity and ability to add animal protein to his diet, using the cutting edges of cracked pebbles to scavenge carnivore kills, and probably by capturing small animals directly. By the Mid‐Pleistocene, the skills of H. erectus in scavenging/hunting had improved to a point where the species could acquire enough meat to tide them through northern winters. Fortunately, animal flesh provided enough vitamin C to prevent scurvy. From the middle to the end of the Pleistocene, human diets at northern latitudes cycled between 100% meat in winter (high in protein and fat) and mixed plant and animal foods in summer (high in protein, low in fat). The superb hunting skills achieved by H. sapiens sapiens in the Late Pleistocene enabled our species to colonize every region in the world that offered habitat to other animals.

THE GENESIS OF SHAKESPEARE'S TITUS ANDRONICUS

This article suggests that Genesis foregrounds much of the ritual action of Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus. Many atrocities occur in Titus Andronicus, and its ritualised brutality has brought centuries of critical denigration. Recently, scholars have attempted to locate Titus's rituals in myth or in anthropological paradigms of primitive culture. Extending these attempts, this article traces connections between the ritual action of Titus and Genesis, establishing Genesis as a possible source for the play. From its first human sacrifice, Alarbus, to its last, Lavinia, Titus Andronicus's action is explicitly pagan. Non-Christian, over-determined rituals have sub jected the play to centuries of critical denigration. Recently, however, less condemnatory critical inquiry focuses on them.1 Some critics even suggest specific origins for the rituals of Titus. William W. E. Slights puts forward Rene Girard's theory of sacrificial purification.2 Also from an Girardian perspective, Stephen X. Mead sees in Titus 'a crisis of community-binding ritual.'3 William H. Desmonde argues for a ritual origin in 'the ancient Greek myths of Pelops and the Rape of Persephone,' and 'ultimately from tribal puberty rites.' 4 Francis Barker notes that 'Judging from the early incidence of human sacrifice or from the prominence that it gives to an act of cannibal ism, it could be argued that Titus Andronicus represents Rome as a primitive society.'5 Taking Barker's analyses of the primitivism of Titus Andronicus further, I will suggest that the play's rituals may reflect the early post-lapsarian world of Genesis. This interpretation links 'the primitive' in Titus to a mythology of early man that we know Shakespeare consulted. The main contender for the source of Titus Andronicus is the History of Titus Andronicus. This prose narrative survives in an eighteenth-century ver sion, whose links to the sixteenth-century are unverifiable. Although I am unwilling to nullify its place as a possible source, the arguments of several critics demonstrate its tenuous position. Titus' s most recent editor, Jonathan

Social cognitive and physical health determinants of exercise adherence for HIV-1 seropositive, early symptomatic men and women

This study examined social cognitive and physical health factors that might explain variations in exercise adherence in a 3-month supervised exercise intervention for a group of mildly symptomatic, HIV-1 seropositive men and women. The social cognitive predictor variables were outcome expectations and self-efficacy. The physical health predictor variables included CD4+ cell counts, self-report inventories of physical symptoms, and physicians' examinations. Self-report inventories of physical symptoms were associated with physicians' examinations and combined into a composite measure of physical health. Criterion variables included exercise adherence rates, VO2max change, and status as a 'remainder' versus 'drop-out.' The composite measure of physical health emerged as a significant predictor of adherence rate and gave perfect prediction of remainers and a moderate prediction of dropouts. No significant associations were observed between the social cognitive predictors and adherence. Results suggest that for this population physical health status is a better predictor of exercise adherence than either perceived self-efficacy or outcome expectancy.

Iron stores in man in relation to diet and iron requirements.

To calculate iron stores in man and their rates of changes in relation to iron requirements and dietary iron intake and bioavailability. Newly established relationships between iron absorption from whole diets and serum ferritin (SF) and between SF and iron stores allow calculations of amounts of stored iron under different conditions (diets, losses) at stationary states when absorption equals losses. Rate of growth of stores can also be calculated. All calculations are based on observations and require no model assumptions. Present calculations of iron stores agree with previously observed phlebotomy values. Differences in intake and bioavailability of dietary iron and in iron requirements had marked effects on amounts of stored iron. A wide range of diets was studied, from a hypothetical high-meat diet typical for early man to diets in developing countries. A new equation is given for the translation of SF into iron stores. Analyses of growth rate of stores under different conditions showed a fast growth from zero iron stores during the first year (reaching about 80% of final amounts) followed by a much slower rate for 2-3 y. A marked inertia was seen in rate of changes in iron stores that was more marked the closer stores were to their stationary states making it difficult to use SF to estimate short term changes in iron absorption in iron replete subjects. Realistic Western-type diets with good bioavailability can cover iron requirements in most women and can restitute iron stores during lactation. The high prevalence of iron deficiency in menstruating Western women is thus mainly related to a further low bioavailability of iron in present diets. Present analyses also demonstrated an effective control of iron absorption preventing development of iron overload in otherwise healthy subjects even if the diet is fortified with iron and even if meat intake is high.

Inheritance, marriage, widowhood and remarriage: a comparative perspective on women and landholding in north-east Norfolk, 1440–1580

In medieval and early modern England, men's and women's rights to land were not equal. Sons were preferred over daughters in the inheritance of land. Marriage removed rights of property ownership from women and placed them in the hands of their husbands. Yet land stood at the heart of the economy and society in rural England in a period when agriculture was the main employer and land the main source of wealth, social status and political power. Ordinary women's inferior rights to land were a key aspect in women's subordination as a whole. The study presented here is a detailed examination of women's acquisition and possession of land in north-east Norfolk in the period 1440–1580, using data from manorial documents and wills. Erickson has noted that ‘it is relatively easy to compile information on how women as a sex were supposed to act in early modern England, and lists of the legal restrictions placed upon them. It is much more difficult to ascertain exactly how women did behave and how they responded to their legal disabilities.’ This study emphasizes actual practice rather than legal theory.

Fallacies in the pathological confirmation of the diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease

OBJECTIVENecropsy confirmed clinical diagnostic accuracy for Alzheimer’s disease is claimed to exceed 90%. This figure contains two fallacies; it includes cases in which Alzheimer’s disease exists with other diseases affecting...

Early man and his environment in Central India

Early man and his environment in Central India

97/04657 Mechanical properties of resin-based carbon-carbon composites modified with needle coke: Balik, K. et al. Carbon Carbonaceous Compos. Mater.: Struct.-Prop. Relat., [Conf.], 1995, (Pub. 1996), 371–379. Edited by Palmer, K. R. et al., World Scientific, Singapore

After a summary assessment of certain selected early man sites in various parts of America, the environment of the Venezuelan coastal plain is discussed in order to evaluate the stratigraphy and radiometric dating of the Taima-Taima site, near Coro, Venezuela, where mammals, many now extinct, were killed by people making El Jobo points about 13,000 years ago.Potentially important areas in Peru, Chile and Brazil are mentioned. Certain problems in the models and interpretation of South American paleoclimates are pointed out.The presence of at least four different bifacially flaked stone projectile point traditions in widely separated and environmentally diverse parts of America between 11,000 and 13,000 yr ago suggests that the immediate cultural antecedents of these traditions were essentially independent of one another. From this it is argued that several early American flaked-stone point traditions developed indigenously in America from technological bases which were present in the Old World Middle Paleolithic.

Habeas Corpus: Death in Nineteenth-Century America

By time Philippe Aries published his panoramic survey of Western attitudes toward in 1977, L'homme devant la Mort (translated as The Hour of Our Death in 1981), it had become a truism that in modern-day America, d---h was ultimate taboo. In The American Way of Death, published in 1963, Jessica Mitford exposed more than shady business practices of funeral industry. The ghoulish and laughable details of cosmetic reconstruction and slumber rooms she gleefully provided demonstrated our own unwillingness to look squarely in face. Aries's study made it clear just how new-and American-this way of was. In early Middle Ages, men and women of Christendom accepted as a part of life of community and died secure in knowledge of their eventual resurrection. Such natural attitudes, Aries claimed, persisted among traditional peasant folk even into nineteenth century; but, among other classes, and under modernizing social conditions, they were superseded by other perspectives. Enlightenment rationalists analyzed as a purely biological phenomenon. Nineteenth-century romantics focused their attention on beautiful death and grieving survivors it left behind. But by early twentieth century, had become invisible, an embarrassing, even obscene fact to be hidden away. For Aries, however, contemporary America occupies a unique position in what he called the geography of invisible death (p. 594). For most part, is denied, but mourners are allowed to confront deathor, at least illusion of life-like corpse-in that uniquely American institution known as funeral home. The distinctive rituals of American

Vertebrate paleontology and the alleged ice-free corridor: The meat of the matter

The existence of a full-glacial, ice-free corridor through western Alberta has been argued for many years. It has been assumed to have existed, notwithstanding a near total lack of evidence, by many in the North American archeological community as a means of explaining the occurrence of ‘early man’ south of the ice in early postglacial time. In the last 15 years, much has been done to fill the knowledge gap (including theories on alternate routes) but there is still no consensus. Quaternary vertebrate fossils from Alberta, accompanied by numerous radiocarbon dates with a clear gap between 21 ka BP and at least 11.6 ka BP, now suggest that Alberta was overridden by ice during an extensive Late Wisconsinan glaciation. Therefore, a full-glacial, ice-free corridor could not have existed. However, much of the province could have served as a migration route, northward and southward, both before and after Late Wisconsinan glaciation. The preglacial passage could not have been a ‘corridor’ because numerous megafaunal remains and conifer wood, from numerous localities, with finite dates from ca. 43 ka to 21 ka BP, indicate extensive, ice-free conditions. Similarly, a Late Pleistocene corridor—critically appraised from the standpoints of vertebrate paleontology and archeology—is irrelevant because, by the time human migrants arrived in southern Alberta, less than 11 ka BP, the ice had been in retreat for well over 1000 years. Relative to human influx, the continuing use of the term ‘corridor’, with its connotation of a narrow or restricted passage, seems inappropriate.

Salvage of jeopardized myocardium by ischemic preconditioning: is the quest over?

Helmholtz is quoted to have said that if he'd had any influence in creation he would have returned the human eye to its maker for revisions. The same could be said of the heart with its only very rudimentary ability to defend itself against ischemia. Ischemia was obviously not a problem during evolution: Early man did not live much longer than prime time for reproduction and no selection bias existed to prevent vascular diseases, an affliction of later life. In spite of this natural disadvantage of aged males the number of existing although not very efficient defense mechanisms is surprisingly large. It is the general belief that the knowledge of these mechanisms may lead to the development of new therapies that hopefully improve the imperfect product of natural selection.

Language Polygenesis: A Probabilistic Model.

Monogenesis of language is widely accepted, but the conventional argument seems to be mistaken; a simple probabilistic model shows that polygenesis is likely. Other prehistoric inventions are discussed, as are problems in tracing linguistic lineages. Language is a system of representations; within such a system, words can evoke complex and systematic responses. Along with its social functions, language is important to humans as a mental instrument. Indeed, the invention of language,that is the accumulation of symbols to represent emotions, objects, and acts may be the most important event in human evolution, because so many developments follow from it. For example, Edward Sapir speculated that some embryonic form of language must have been available to early man to help him fashion tools from stone (Sapir,1921). Sophisticated biface stone tools date to early Homo erectus some 1.5 million years ago, suggesting a similar age for language. This paper considers whether the invention of language occurred at only one pre-historic site or at several sites. In other words, did language emerge by monogenesis or polygenesis? Early thinkers believed in monogenesis, against a background of divine creation. Perhaps the best known account is the biblical story of Adam giving names to plants and animals in the Garden of Eden. Similar legends are found among many peoples. Modern linguists too assume monogenesis, but on probabilistic grounds (see, for instance, Southworth and Daswani, 1974, p.314). The argument seems to be that the invention of language is an extremely unlikely event, because symbolization involves abstraction and requires synchronized insight by several individuals; therefore, the probability of occurrence at more than one site must be vanishingly small. We have found no explicit quantitative treatment of this question in the literature, but the underlying logic has to be the multiplication of probabilities. If p is small at one site,then p.p for two sites is smaller still, and so on. This reasoning is false, as we show here. The fallacy lies in the focus on two particular sites rather than consideration of all pairs of sites.

The shells of Etheria elliptica as recorders of seasonality at Lake Victoria

Reconstruction of past environments is an essential part of evaluating the ecology of organisms including early man and assessing the pressures for evolutionary change. In this study we have demonstrated that Etheria elliptica , the freshwater oyster of equatorial Africa, accretes layers of shell having a lunar month periodicity. Separation and oxygen isotopic analyses of the individual monthly layers affords a qualitative picture of seasonal change. Fourteen monthly samples of E. elliptica , collected near Kisumu on the Winam Gulf of Lake Victoria, gave oxygen isotope ratios in the penultimate layer of their shells in excellent agreement with the individual layers of a shell whose growth covered the same period. The variation in isotope ratios correlates clearly with the rainfall pattern of that region of East Africa.

Active confrontational coping predicts decreased clinical progression over a one-year period in HIV-infected homosexual men

The associations between stressful life events, psychiatric symptoms, coping, and social support and HIV disease progression one year later were studied in 51 HIV-infected asymptomatic and early symptomatic homosexual men. Dependent variables were CD4 counts and clinical progression. No associations between the psychosocial parameters and CD4 counts were found. Active confrontation with HIV infection as a coping strategy was predictive of decreased clinical progression at one year follow-up, after taking into account baseline biomedical and behavioral variables. These results show that active coping strategies may have an effect on disease progression, possibly mediated by greater compliance with medical treatments or by psychoneuroimmunological mechanisms.

The Uncertain Landscapes of Nationalism

The Uncertain Landscapes of Nationalism William H. Goetzmann (bio) Angela Miller. The Empire of the Eye: Landscape Representation and American Cultural Politics, 1825–1875. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993. vii 298 pp. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, and index. $37.50. Right up front, Angela Miller, professor of art history and American studies at Washington University, declares, “I came of age at a time when the concept of nationalism was (and is) highly suspect.” Ironically in this era when tribalism has replaced nationalism the world over, Miller has produced a masterful analysis of the relationship of American art to American nationalism. Today, as the very bonds of nationhood are strained as at no time since the Civil War — when public order is severely tested by tribal and “gang” loyalties, gender, ethnic, and class warfare are the intellectual diseratum, the government cannot defend the country from terrorists and the threat of nuclear proliferation — it is only appropriate that Miller reminds us just how precarious was the status and future of the “United” States in the years from the birth of the Republic to the end of Reconstruction. Her fascinating, massively researched treatise on the arts recalls Frederick Somkin’s Unquiet Eagle (1967), Perry Miller’s The Raven and the Whale (1973), Ernest Tuveson’s The Redeemer Nation (1968), and my own When the Eagle Screamed: The Romantic Horizon in American Diplomacy (1966) among the rising tide of works that do not see a solid nation state emerging in America until at least the middle of the Civil War. Gary Wills’s Lincoln at Gettysburg (1992) is only the latest contribution to this literature. Miller’s Empire of the Eye is one of the most important and thought-provoking books on this subject published in recent years. The general theme is the “politicization of the landscape” as reflected in the works of eastern American artists. Miller writes of “how the national landscape [paintings] came into being, which individuals were engaged in its invention, what their motives were and what alternatives existed” (p. 6). In so doing she argues that “There was little that was natural or inevitable about the process” (p. 3). America as “nature’s nation” was an artificial construct in which “artists, critics, collectors and men of letters collaborated in devising an institutionalized aesthetic... that subsequently appeared as a fully natural development [End Page 47] of an emergent nationalism” (p. 3). Considering Miller’s sentiments about the value of the nation state, her story should inevitably be a tragedy, but she fails ultimately to see the overall logic of where her ideological analysis has taken her. Nonetheless this is a brilliantly stimulating book — many-layered and multidimensional as it touches upon the historical context of the failed attempt to develop a national art. Common wisdom has it that Thomas Cole and the Hudson River painters early on created a national art. Miller refutes that assumption. She sees Cole and the Hudson River painters as a regional school that included some New England artists as well. To her they are the “New York School,” cuffed into national status by New York City’s American Academy of Art, newspaper critics like Henry T. Tuckerman, and later the Crayon magazine. Their paintings of European or Claudian versions of the Catskills and parts of New England became “national” by means of an agreed upon critical synecdoche. That is, the academicians and media critics as well as early men of letters agreed that this part of the new nation could stand for the whole. Cole, himself a Whig, was the darling of New York and New England Whiggery. So were painters like Kennsett, Doughty, Durand, Morse, Cropsy, and the young Frederick Church. In Miller’s scenario, however, Cole is an ambiguous figure. At one point he has absorbed the Claudian rules of eighteenth-century landscape painting, as in his The Garden of Eden (1827). He is an Enlightenment figure whose feeling for the universal rises above nationalism, localism and “that earlier wilder image.” 1 Seen as a devotee of the Scottish Realism of Archibald Allison and Adam Ferguson in which “Associationism” governed artistic choices, he is in the same category as those litterateurs of the Knickerbocker School...

Early Dispersal of Man on Islands of the Indonesian Archipelago: Facts and Controls.

Sea barriers are an effective means of limiting the dispersal of terrestrial vertebrates. Fossil evidence shows, however, that land mammals have colonized islands. The island faunas are impoverished, and from the faunal composition it can be learned that only large mammals with good swimming and/or floating capacities could settle on these islands. Such mammals include elephants, deer, and hippos. In some cases paleoecological conditions on islands have led to the development of faunas with dwarf species.It is generally accepted that man was established on islands in the Neolithic. There is, however, an increasing amount of evidence that in some cases, migration of hominids across sea barriers initially occurred much earlier. The presence of flowery Palaeolithic industry on Sardinia (Italy) points to a Middle Pleistocene colonization of this island. Other islands in the Mediterranean, like Crete and Cyprus, were colonized only in the Neolithic. This proves that the distance of the island to the coast of the mainland was not the only limiting factor on colonization of islands by early Man. Other factors such as food supply also play a role. On Sardinia a hare-like mammal Prolagus existed. This animal had a high reproduction rate and could have served as a continuous food supply for a hunter-gatherer population.On the islands of S.E. Asia we find giant rats. These mammals could have served as a food supply for Palaeolithic Man. On Flores artifacts are found in association with a Middle Pleistocene fauna. Palaeontological evidence shows a faunal turnover in the Middle Pleistocene on both Sardinia (Italy) and Flores (Indonesia).

Swartkrans: A Cave's Chronicle of Early Man

Swartkrans: A Cave's Chronicle of Early Man

Thepenis rectus as a marker in human palaeontology?

Thepenis rectus, i.e. the human penis which maintains an almost horizontal position in its flaccid state, has so far only been observed amongst the Bushmen in southern Africa. There, however, it is already displayed in prehistoric rock art in stark and obviously intended contrast with differently positioned penes of other population groups. A similar juxtaposition can be found in European upper Palaeolithic cave art where certain humanlike figures, with indications of much body hair and with an upturned nose, exhibit what seems to be apenis rectus rather than an ordinary penis in erection. It is argued that these hairy people are most likely Neanderthals portrayed by early modern man (Homo sapiens) with whom they coexisted and who was struck by these anatomical differences. This theory is derived from the expert description and depiction of a recently killed remnant Neanderthal from central Vietnam who indeed shows the same combination of hairiness, an upturned nose and a thin penis with a compact small scrotum which is the mark of thepenis rectus. By comparing this body with representations of “bull-men” by perfectlysapiens Sumerians, it is realized that they, too, are most likely remnant Neanderthals with the same kind of penis. The same situation is again found in classical Greece where the hairy, knobby-nosed Satyr contrasts with the straight-nosed glabroussapiens Greek who mistook the former'spenis rectus for a penis in erection and therefore endowed him with sexual prowess and licentiousness. The conclusion is reached that the Satyrs, like the Mesopotamian “bull-men», must have been a remnant Neanderthal population, that these findings are consistant with not only the examination of a remnant Neanderthal from Southeast Asia, but also with the prehistoric evidence from both Europe and Africa, and that therefore thepenis rectus can be seen as a marker in Human Palaeontology, i.e. that ofHomo neanderthalensis.