Important Role In Human Evolution Research Articles

Assessing the role of meat consumption in human evolutionary changes. A review

The historical study of changes in food patterns is an integral part of the study of biological and social adaptations during the formation and further development of Homo sapiens species. For quite a long time, diets have been considered the driving force of human evolution. Changes in the type of food consumed and the way it was obtained have been associated with encephalization and the emergence of bipedalism, as well as ecological, social and cultural evolution of hominins1 . Archaeological and paleontological evidence indicates that at least about 3 million years ago, hominins increased their meat consumption and developed the necessary fabricated stone tools, while their brains and bodies evolved for a novel foraging niche and expanded hunting grounds. Animalsource foods have always been an integral part of the human diet. However, the way they are obtained and processed changed dramatically during human evolution. Meat became a common food source when systematic hunting began using technologies and tools focused on killing animals and meat cutting, which reduced the time and effort spent on chewing food, and later, on its cooking. At some point after this, humans began to hunt together, which made it possible to obtain meat from big game, and as a result, develop the social and altruistic skills to distribute the prey between sexes and ages. The eating habits of our ancestors have been studied using a variety of methods, including anthropometry, the use of archaeological data, and isotope analysis of bones and teeth to determine trophic status. The adaptive biological significance of meat-eating, which played an important role in human evolution, was analyzed, including the “expensive tissue hypothesis” draw attention to the evolutionary forces responsible for the increase in hominin brain size. Furthermore, data on changes in human anatomy, digestion and metabolism are systematized, indicating an evolutionary dependence on and compatibility with significant meat consumption. At the same time, a number of changes in the human body are associated with the skill of using fire in cooking. Heat processing of food stimulated our ancestors to overcome the food specialization intrinsic to animals. The question of what is the right diet for the human species and what are the potential consequences of limiting meat consumption is briefly addressed.

Coastal Archaeology and Historical Ecology for a Changing Planet

Our ocean planet is home to diverse marine environments and organisms that played an important role in human evolution and ecology. Today, coastal marine ecosystems are dramatically degraded and threatened by climate change, habitat destruction, overfishing, and more, leaving key questions about the future of ocean ecosystems in increasingly unstable times. Archaeology provides perspectives on past marine ecosystems and people’s role in shaping and influencing coastal environments prior to the dramatic changes of the postindustrial era. Drawing on archaeological research from the California Coast and the Chesapeake Bay, I explore how an understanding of long-term human interactions with marine ecosystems can help address contemporary environmental challenges and better prepare us for an uncertain future. Although clear examples of archaeological research guiding present-day biological conservation management and policy are limited, there are important signs of success. These include collaboration with Indigenous communities; growing recognition by biologists, ecologists, and other scientists of the significance of archaeological and historical ecological perspectives; and continued emphasis on the links between environmental conservation and social justice.

Good performance-high attractiveness effect: an empirical study on the association between athletes’ rankings and their facial attractiveness

ABSTRACT Face attractiveness has been found to play an important role in human evolution, possibly because highly attractive faces were more likely to be associated with good health and reproductive ability. It is important to explore the association between athletic performance and face attractiveness of the world-class elite athletes to further understand the dominance of physical fitness of facial features in competitive sporting events environment. In this study, Experiment 1, Experiment 2, and Experiment 3 investigated the association between facial attractiveness scores and athletic performance in the conditions of absence of sports information, with sports information, and real-time measurement during the Tokyo Olympics, respectively. Experiment 4 further explored the variations in facial features of athletes in different sports through the sport judgment task. It was found that athletes with better performance were considered more attractive, demonstrating the existence of the good performance-high attractiveness effect. Female athletes showed a good performance-high attractiveness effect in the 3-meter diving and floor exercises, which emphasised fine control and aesthetics. Male athletes had the similar effect in the 100-meter sprint, although it was not so robust as the female athletes. Compared with triathlon, high attractiveness was considered to be the facial feature that floor exercise athletes should have. In conclusion, this study found that sports performance can be reflected in face attractiveness, and that different skill related physical fitness requirements have different performance patterns in face attractiveness, providing new evidence for the evolutionary theory of facial attractiveness.

Pathogen threat and intergroup prejudice using the minimal group paradigm: Evidence from a registered report

Infection by parasites, bacteria, and other microorganisms has been a powerful selection pressure faced by humans and other species. Consequently, avoiding pathogens has played an important role in human evolution and continues to play a role in contemporary social psychological processes. The current research tested the hypothesis that pathogen avoidance promotes intergroup prejudice. Whereas previous tests relied on existing cultural groups, which can conflate outgroup status with pre-existing group stereotypes about disease or geographic variability in pathogen prevalence, the current experiments assessed intergroup bias using a minimal group paradigm. Based on preliminary evidence (Study 1, N = 207, undergraduate students) that experimentally priming pathogen avoidance motivation promoted negativity toward a minimal outgroup, we conducted a Registered Report (Study 2, N = 1339 online participants) to replicate and extend those findings. Our primary hypothesis was that an experimental manipulation of pathogen threat (relative to two control conditions) would produce greater intergroup prejudice (negativity toward the nominal outgroup relative to the nominal ingroup). This hypothesis was not supported in the larger, registered second study. Exploratory analyses provided some evidence for interactions between experimental priming of pathogen threat and individual differences in pathogen disgust, but the interactive pattern differed across the two experiments. Findings call into question the hypothesis that, in the absence of cultural stereotypes, situationally activated pathogen avoidance promotes intergroup prejudice.

Morphometric Identification of Starch Granules From Archaeological Contexts: Diagnostic Characteristics of Seven Major North American Plant Families

Starch-rich plants have played an important role in human evolution and societal development. Collected, grown, and consumed to support ever-increasing populations, such plants are integral to understanding past human diets. With the advent of starch granule analysis, plant resources that were invisible in the archaeological record can now be revealed in the cracks and crevices of artifacts. Widespread application of this technique, however, has stalled due to a lack of rigorous and standardized protocols. For example, taxonomic identification of starch granules using consistent diagnostic characteristics is still a challenge as there are no comprehensive surveys across important (i.e., dietary) plant taxa, especially at the levels of families, genera, and species. This study provides characteristics for identifying starch granules of seven major North American plant families (Amaranthaceae, Apiaceae, Fagaceae, Liliaceae, Pinaceae, Poaceae, and Solanaceae) based on systematic, morphometric studies of modern reference materials. A dichotomous key to starch granules of the seven families was also generated to aid in identification of those from archaeological contexts. Although we have focused on plants from western North America, these families occur across the globe and have had dietary significance throughout prehistory.

The role of balancing selection in maintaining human RhD blood group polymorphism: A preregistered cross‐sectional study

Maintenance of genetic polymorphism remains one of the big questions of evolutionary biology, which for a long time tended to be explained by balancing selection. This explanation was later criticized, but now is again accepted as an important mechanism in evolution. Human blood group systems seem affected by balancing selection especially strongly. In this preregistered study, we focused on stable coexistence of RhD-positive and RhD-negative subjects in a population. This is an evolutionary conundrum, because carriers of the less frequent negative allele suffer from lower fecundity due to haemolytic disease of the newborn affecting RhD-positive infants born to RhD-negative women. One explanation of persisting stability of RhD polymorphism points to heterozygote advantage. Over the past decade, numerous studies demonstrated that RhD-positive subjects score better than RhD-negative homozygotes in psychomotor tests and physical health-related variables. Still, evidence of better health and performance of heterozygotes is scarce and merely indirect. We compared the physical and mental health of 2,539 subjects whose RhD genotype was estimated based on their and their parents' RhD phenotype. We confirmed that RhD-negative homozygotes fare worse in terms of physical and mental health than subjects with RhD-positive phenotype and that RhD-positive heterozygotes enjoy better health than both homozygotes. For the first time, we demonstrated that RhD-positive homozygotes might suffer from worse health than RhD-negative homozygotes. Our results strongly support the hypothesis that RhD polymorphism is maintained by heterozygote advantage and that balancing selection may have played an important role in human evolution in this context and in general.

Indigenous impacts on North American Great Plains fire regimes of the past millennium

Fire use has played an important role in human evolution and subsequent dispersals across the globe, yet the relative importance of human activity and climate on fire regimes is controversial. This is particularly true for historical fire regimes of the Americas, where indigenous groups used fire for myriad reasons but paleofire records indicate strong climate-fire relationships. In North American grasslands, decadal-scale wet periods facilitated widespread fire activity because of the abundance of fuel promoted by pluvial episodes. In these settings, human impacts on fire regimes are assumed to be independent of climate, thereby diminishing the strength of climate-fire relationships. We used an offsite geoarchaeological approach to link terrestrial records of prairie fire activity with spatially related archaeological features (driveline complexes) used for intensive, communal bison hunting in north-central Montana. Radiocarbon-dated charcoal layers from alluvial and colluvial deposits associated with driveline complexes indicate that peak fire activity over the past millennium occurred coincident with the use of these features (ca. 1100-1650 CE). However, comparison of dated fire deposits with Palmer Drought Severity Index reconstructions reveal strong climate-fire linkages. More than half of all charcoal layers coincide with modest pluvial episodes, suggesting that fire use by indigenous hunters enhanced the effects of climate variability on prairie fire regimes. These results indicate that relatively small, mobile human populations can impact natural fire regimes, even in pyrogeographic settings in which climate exerts strong, top-down controls on fuels.

Group Selection in the Evolution of Religion: Genetic Evolution or Cultural Evolution?

In the scientific literature on religious evolution, two competing theories appeal to group selection to explain the relationship between religious belief and altruism, or costly, prosocial behavior. Both theories agree that group selection plays an important role in cultural evolution, affecting psychological traits that individuals acquire through social learning. They disagree, however, about whether group selection has also played a role in genetic evolution, affecting traits that are inherited genetically. Recently, Jonathan Haidt has defended the most fully developed account based on genetic group selection, and I argue here that problems with this account reveal good reasons to doubt that genetic group selection has played any important role in human evolution at all. Thus, considering the role of group selection in religious evolution is important not just because of what it reveals about religious psychology and religious evolution, but also because of what it reveals about the role of group selection in human evolution more generally.

Comprehensive identification and analysis of human accelerated regulatory DNA.

It has long been hypothesized that changes in gene regulation have played an important role in human evolution, but regulatory DNA has been much more difficult to study compared with protein-coding regions. Recent large-scale studies have created genome-scale catalogs of DNase I hypersensitive sites (DHSs), which demark potentially functional regulatory DNA. To better define regulatory DNA that has been subject to human-specific adaptive evolution, we performed comprehensive evolutionary and population genetics analyses on over 18 million DHSs discovered in 130 cell types. We identified 524 DHSs that are conserved in nonhuman primates but accelerated in the human lineage (haDHS), and estimate that 70% of substitutions in haDHSs are attributable to positive selection. Through extensive computational and experimental analyses, we demonstrate that haDHSs are often active in brain or neuronal cell types; play an important role in regulating the expression of developmentally important genes, including many transcription factors such as SOX6, POU3F2, and HOX genes; and identify striking examples of adaptive regulatory evolution that may have contributed to human-specific phenotypes. More generally, our results reveal new insights into conserved and adaptive regulatory DNA in humans and refine the set of genomic substrates that distinguish humans from their closest living primate relatives.

Molecular functions of human endogenous retroviruses in health and disease.

Human endogenous retroviruses (HERVs) and related genetic elements form 504 distinct families and occupy ~8% of human genome. Recent success of high-throughput experimental technologies facilitated understanding functional impact of HERVs for molecular machinery of human cells. HERVs encode active retroviral proteins, which may exert important physiological functions in the body, but also may be involved in the progression of cancer and numerous human autoimmune, neurological and infectious diseases. The spectrum of related malignancies includes, but not limits to, multiple sclerosis, psoriasis, lupus, schizophrenia, multiple cancer types and HIV. In addition, HERVs regulate expression of the neighboring host genes and modify genomic regulatory landscape, e.g., by providing regulatory modules like transcription factor binding sites (TFBS). Indeed, recent bioinformatic profiling identified ~110,000 regulatory active HERV elements, which formed at least ~320,000 human TFBS. These and other peculiarities of HERVs might have played an important role in human evolution and speciation. In this paper, we focus on the current progress in understanding of normal and pathological molecular niches of HERVs, on their implications in human evolution, normal physiology and disease. We also review the available databases dealing with various aspects of HERV genetics.

Divergent Roles of Autophagy in Virus Infection

Viruses have played an important role in human evolution and have evolved diverse strategies to co-exist with their hosts. As obligate intracellular pathogens, viruses exploit and manipulate different host cell processes, including cellular trafficking, metabolism and immunity-related functions, for their own survival. In this article, we review evidence for how autophagy, a highly conserved cellular degradative pathway, serves either as an antiviral defense mechanism or, alternatively, as a pro-viral process during virus infection. Furthermore, we highlight recent reports concerning the role of selective autophagy in virus infection and how viruses manipulate autophagy to evade lysosomal capture and degradation.

Evolution and homologies of primate and modern human hand and forearm muscles, with notes on thumb movements and tool use

In this paper, we explore how the results of a primate-wide higher-level phylogenetic analysis of muscle characters can improve our understanding of the evolution and homologies of the forearm and hand muscles of modern humans. Contrary to what is often suggested in the literature, none of the forearm and hand muscle structures usually present in modern humans are autapomorphic. All are found in one or more extant non-human primate taxa. What is unique is the particular combination of muscles. However, more muscles go to the thumb in modern humans than in almost all other primates, reinforcing the hypothesis that focal thumb movements probably played an important role in human evolution. What makes the modern human thumb myology special within the primate clade is not so much its intrinsic musculature but two extrinsic muscles, extensor pollicis brevis and flexor pollicis longus, that are otherwise only found in hylobatids. It is likely that these two forearm muscles play different functional roles in hylobatids and modern humans. In the former, the thumb is separated from elongated digits by a deep cleft and there is no pulp-to-pulp opposition, whereas modern humans exhibit powerful thumb flexion and greater manipulative abilities, such as those involved in the manufacture and use of tools. The functional and evolutionary significance of a third peculiar structure, the intrinsic hand structure that is often called the ‘interosseous volaris primus of Henle’ (and which we suggest is referred to as the musculus adductor pollicis accessorius) is still obscure. The presence of distinct contrahentes digitorum and intermetacarpales in adult chimpanzees is likely the result of prolonged or delayed development of the hand musculature of these apes. In relation to these structures, extant chimpanzees are more neotenic than modern humans.

The dopamine hypothesis of social support

It has been suggested that dopamine may play an important role in human evolution and adaptive behaviors. Recent studies have revealed an association between the dopamine system and social support among healthy individuals. However, the underlying mechanism remains unclear. In the present study, we propose a dopamine hypothesis, which states that the level of dopaminergic system activity could influence social support via the capacity of cognitive function. Two lines of literature supporting the mechanism of this hypothesis are reviewed. Further experimental and longitudinal study is required to test this hypothesis. This hypothesis may help to identify the mechanism explaining the influence of dopamine on social support and provide support for dopaminergic pharmacotherapy for deficits in social behaviors.

Fear of Darkness, the Full Moon and the Nocturnal Ecology of African Lions

Nocturnal carnivores are widely believed to have played an important role in human evolution, driving the need for night-time shelter, the control of fire and our innate fear of darkness. However, no empirical data are available on the effects of darkness on the risks of predation in humans. We performed an extensive analysis of predatory behavior across the lunar cycle on the largest dataset of lion attacks ever assembled and found that African lions are as sensitive to moonlight when hunting humans as when hunting herbivores and that lions are most dangerous to humans when the moon is faint or below the horizon. At night, people are most active between dusk and 10:00 pm, thus most lion attacks occur in the first weeks following the full moon (when the moon rises at least an hour after sunset). Consequently, the full moon is a reliable indicator of impending danger, perhaps helping to explain why the full moon has been the subject of so many myths and misconceptions.

Runaway cultural niche construction.

Cultural niche construction is a uniquely potent source of selection on human populations, and a major cause of recent human evolution. Previous theoretical analyses have not, however, explored the local effects of cultural niche construction. Here, we use spatially explicit coevolutionary models to investigate how cultural processes could drive selection on human genes by modifying local resources. We show that cultural learning, expressed in local niche construction, can trigger a process with dynamics that resemble runaway sexual selection. Under a broad range of conditions, cultural niche-constructing practices generate selection for gene-based traits and hitchhike to fixation through the build up of statistical associations between practice and trait. This process can occur even when the cultural practice is costly, or is subject to counteracting transmission biases, or the genetic trait is selected against. Under some conditions a secondary hitchhiking occurs, through which genetic variants that enhance the capability for cultural learning are also favoured by similar dynamics. We suggest that runaway cultural niche construction could have played an important role in human evolution, helping to explain why humans are simultaneously the species with the largest relative brain size, the most potent capacity for niche construction and the greatest reliance on culture.

Genomic variation and adaptation in Africa: implications for human evolutionary history and disease

Africa contains the greatest levels of human genetic variation and is the source of the worldwide range expansion of all modern humans. However, relatively little is known about genomic variation in ethnically diverse African populations. Knowledge of genetic structure within Africa has important implications for the design and implementation of disease association studies in Africans and in African Americans, and for reconstructing modern human origins. In addition, studies of genetic adaptation in Africa have important implications for identifying genes that play an important role in human evolution and disease. The African populations included in this study practice diverse subsistence patterns and have diverse diets (e.g. the study includes hunter-gatherers, pastoralists, agriculturalists and agro- pastoralists). The populations studied live in diverse environments with differing pathogen exposure (tropical forest, savannah, coastal, desert, low altitude and high altitude) and, therefore, are likely to have experienced local adaptation. In this talk I will discuss results of analyses of genome-scale microsatellite and SNP genotyping data in a large set of geographically, linguistically and ethnically diverse African populations, as well as locus- specific analyses of genes that play a role in adaptation to diet and infectious disease. Implications for future whole genome sequencing analyses will be discussed.

Predictive adaptive responses and human evolution

The importance of a single genotype being able to produce different phenotypes in different environments (phenotypic plasticity) is widely recognized in evolutionary theory and its adaptive significance is clear. In most cases, the developing organism responds to an environmental cue by producing a selectively and immediately appropriate phenotype. One subset of phenotypic responses to environmental stimuli, however, does not necessarily provide an immediate selective advantage. Rather, these kinds of responses, which we call 'predictive adaptive responses' (PARs), act primarily to improve fitness at a later stage of development. We argue that PARs have had an important role in human evolution, and that their recognition and interpretation has major significance for public health.

Antiquity of cancer.

Antiquity of cancer.

Cultural niche construction and human evolution.

Organisms frequently choose, regulate, construct and destroy important components of their environments, in the process changing the selection pressures to which they and other organisms are exposed. We refer to these processes as niche construction. In humans, culture has greatly amplified our capacity for niche construction and our ability to modify selection pressures. We use gene-culture coevolutionary models to explore the evolutionary consequences of culturally generated niche construction through human evolution. Our analysis suggests that where cultural traits are transmitted in an unbiased fashion from parent to offspring, cultural niche construction will have a similar effect to gene-based niche construction. However, cultural transmission biases favouring particular cultural traits may either increase or reduce the range of parameter space over which niche construction has an impact, which means that niche construction with biased transmission will either have a much smaller or a much bigger effect than gene-based niche construction. The analysis also reveals circumstances under which cultural transmission can overwhelm natural selection, accelerate the rate at which a favoured gene spreads, initiate novel evolutionary events and trigger hominid speciation. Because cultural processes typically operate faster than natural selection, cultural niche construction probably has more profound consequences than gene-based niche construction, and is likely to have played an important role in human evolution.

Evolution of Hunting and Meat-Eating Behavior in Hominoidea

Hunting and meat-eating behavior by the genus Pan are reviewed from the perspective of the prey species. These behaviors have been reported for wild chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) at 14 study sites, and include all three sub-species of the chimpanzee, in population from West to East Africa in environments from savanna to rain forest. The main targets of hunting and meat-eating by chimpanzees are non-human primates: of 12 study sites where prey species were identified, non-human primates other than chimpanzees were hunted or eaten by chimpanzees at 11 sites. Hunting and meat-eating by wild bonobos (Pan paniscus) have been reported at three study sites. The targets of hunting and meat-eating were restricted to small mammals such as flying squirrels or infant duikers. Interspecific relationships between the bonobos and sympatric nonhuman primates, which are the main targets of hunting and meat-eating by chimpanzees, were non-antagonistic. The common ancestor of Pan and humans may have acquired its meat-eating habit in a forested environment since gorillas and orangutans do not hunt. It seems that hunting and meat-eating played an important role in human evolution after the appearance of Homo.