Modern Hunter-gatherers Research Articles

Phylogeny and disease associations of a widespread and ancient intestinal bacteriophage lineage

Viruses are core components of the human microbiome, impacting health through interactions with gut bacteria and the immune system. Most human microbiome viruses are bacteriophages, which exclusively infect bacteria. Until recently, most gut virome studies focused on low taxonomic resolution (e.g., viral operational taxonomic units), hampering population-level analyses. We previously identified an expansive and widespread bacteriophage lineage in inhabitants of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Here, we study their biodiversity and evolution in various human populations. Based on a phylogeny using sequences from six viral genome databases, we propose the Candidatus order Heliusvirales. We identify heliusviruses in 82% of 5441 individuals across 39 studies, and in nine metagenomes from humans that lived in Europe and North America between 1000 and 5000 years ago. We show that a large lineage started to diversify when Homo sapiens first appeared some 300,000 years ago. Ancient peoples and modern hunter-gatherers have distinct Ca. Heliusvirales populations with lower richness than modern urbanized people. Urbanized people suffering from type 1 and type 2 diabetes, as well as inflammatory bowel disease, have higher Ca. Heliusvirales richness than healthy controls. We thus conclude that these ancient core members of the human gut virome have thrived with increasingly westernized lifestyles.

Homo medicus: The transition to meat eating increased pathogen pressure and the use of pharmacological plants in Homo.

The human lineage transitioned to a more carnivorous niche 2.6mya and evolved a large body size and slower life history, which likely increased zoonotic pathogen pressure. Evidence for this increase includes increased zoonotic infections in modern hunter-gatherers and bushmeat hunters, exceptionally low stomach pH compared to other primates, and divergence in immune-related genes. These all point to change, and probably intensification, in the infectious disease environment of Homo compared to earlier hominins and other apes. At the same time, the brain, an organ in which immune responses are constrained, began to triple in size. We propose that the combination of increased zoonotic pathogen pressure and the challenges of defending a large brain and body from pathogens in a long-lived mammal, selected for intensification of the plant-based self-medication strategies already in place in apes and other primates. In support, there is evidence of medicinal plant use by hominins in the middle Paleolithic, and all cultures today have sophisticated, plant-based medical systems, add spices to food, and regularly consume psychoactive plant substances that are harmful to helminths and other pathogens. We propose that the computational challenges of discovering effective plant-based treatments, the consequent ability to consume more energy-rich animal foods, and the reduced reliance on energetically-costly immune responses helped select for increased cognitive abilities and unique exchange relationships in Homo. In the story of human evolution, which has long emphasized hunting skills, medical skills had an equal role to play.

Big-game hunting during the late Middle Paleolithic in the Levant: Insights into technology and behavior from Nahal Mahanayeem Outlet, Upper Jordan River, israel

Examination of the complete assemblage of pointed artefacts from the short-term kill-butchering site of Nahal Mahanayeem Outlet (NMO), Upper Jordan River, enabled the first holistic reconstruction of big-game procurement during the Late Middle Paleolithic in the Levant. The detailed analysis of diagnostic impact fractures (DIF) observed on the artefacts, in conjunction with their morpho-metric characteristics, indicates a predominant use of low velocity weapons such as thrusting and throwing spears (javelins). Reconstruction of NMO hunting techniques was based upon these results in combination with the site landscape features, faunal remains, and ethnographic record. The particularities of spear use recorded for modern hunter-gatherers may explain the relatively low frequency of DIF observed on pointed artefacts from the NMO assemblage and shed light on their techno-typological diversity. The study exemplifies the advantage of combined analysis of projectile damage and morpho-metric characteristics of the points.

Comparing walking and running in persistence hunting

It has been proposed that humans' exceptional locomotor endurance evolved partly with foraging in hot open habitats and subsequently about 2 million years ago with persistence hunting, for which endurance running was instrumental. However, persistence hunting by walking, if successful, could select for locomotor endurance even before the emergence of any running-related traits in human evolution. Using a heat exchange model validated here in 73 humans and 55 ungulates, we simulated persistence hunts for prey of three sizes (100, 250, and 400 kg) and three sweating capacities (nonsweating, low, high) at 6237 combinations of hunter's velocity (1–5 m s−1, intermittent), air temperature (25–45 °C), relative humidity (30–90%), and start time (8:00–16:00). Our simulations predicted that walking would be successful in persistence hunting of low- and nonsweating prey, especially under hot and humid conditions. However, simulated persistence hunts by walking yielded a 30–74% lower success rate than hunts by running or intermittent running. In addition, despite requiring 10–30% less energy, successful simulated persistence hunts by walking were twice as long and resulted in greater exhaustion of the hunter than hunts by running and intermittent running. These shortcomings of pursuit by walking compared to running identified in our simulations could explain why there is only a single direct description of persistence hunting by walking among modern hunter-gatherers. Nevertheless, walking down prey could be a viable option for hominins who did not possess the endurance-running phenotype of the proposed first persistence hunter, Homo erectus. Our simulation results suggest that persistence hunting could select for both long-distance walking and endurance running and contribute to the evolution of locomotor endurance seen in modern humans.

New site at Olduvai Gorge (AGS, Bed I, 1.84 Mya) widens the range of locations where hominins engaged in butchery

Outstanding questions about human evolution include systematic connections between critical landscape resources—such as water and food—and how these shaped the competitive and biodiverse environment(s) that our ancestors inhabited. Here, we report fossil n-alkyl lipid biomarkers and their associated δ13C values across a newly discovered Olduvai Gorge site (AGS) dated to 1.84 million years ago, enabling a multiproxy analysis of the distributions of critical local landscape resources across an explicit locus of hominin activity. Our results reveal that AGS was a seasonally waterlogged, largely unvegetated lakeside site situated near an ephemeral freshwater river surrounded by arid-adapted C4 grasses. The sparse vegetation at AGS contrasts with reconstructed (micro)habitats at the other anthropogenic sites at Olduvai Gorge, suggesting that central-provisioning places depended more heavily on water access than vegetation viz. woody plants as is often observed for modern hunter-gatherers. As hominins at AGS performed similar butchering activities as at other Bed I sites, our results suggest they did not need the shelter of trees and thus occupied a competitive position within the predatory guild.

A review of West African monsoon penetration during Green Sahara periods; implications for human evolution and dispersals over the last three million years

Abstract Green Sahara periods (GSPs) represent episodes during which the present-day Sahara was transformed into a savannah in response to intensification of the West African monsoon (WAM). Although GSPs might have dramatically altered the size, structure, and connectivity of human populations in Africa and nearby regions of Asia, their significance for human evolution remains unknown due to the problems involved in gauging the penetration of the WAM over the Sahara at evolutionary timescales. Here I reanalyse monsoon run-off and dust records back to 3 million years ago from Eastern Mediterranean ODP Site 967, and assimilate them with North African palaeoenvironmental data to substantiate penetration of the WAM front during GSPs to latitudes beyond 28°N. These results, coupled with demographic and ecological data for modern hunter-gatherers, point to a significant expansion of human populations during GSPs compared with background desert conditions. Given the clustering of GSPs around long-term maxima in the eccentricity of the Earth’s orbit, I propose that recurrent periods of human population expansion driven by GSPs led to an increased number of favourable mutations. Along with environmental factors favourable for triggering epigenetic changes, this might have led to the rise in enhanced phenotypic plasticity that underpins the speciation of hominin lineages at times of high climate variability envisaged by the variability selection hypothesis. Clustering of GSPs around the Pliocene/Pleistocene boundary, simultaneously with a protracted period of wetter conditions in East Africa and the Sinai Peninsula, further suggests that the initial colonization of Eurasia by hominins occurred circa 2.6 Ma, much earlier than typically considered.

Hunter-gatherer carbohydrate consumption: plant roots and rhizomes as staple foods in Mesolithic Europe

ABSTRACT Carbohydrate consumption in hunter-gatherer societies has been much debated, with dietary estimates from studies of modern hunter-gatherers used as a reference standard for modern human nutrition. However, relatively little is known about the role of carbohydrates in past hunter-gatherer diets in temperate Europe because farming has been the main mode of subsistence since early prehistory. Plant roots and rhizomes provide a major source of carbohydrates and archaeological evidence indicates that these resources were gathered, perhaps routinely for food by Mesolithic hunter-gatherers in Europe. This paper considers whether roots/rhizomes in Europe contained sufficient carbohydrates and energy to be utilised as staple foods using new food composition data, and considers the suitability of roots/rhizomes for intensive exploitation. The results reveal that the carbohydrate and energy content of wild roots/rhizomes can be higher than in cultivated potatoes, showing that they could have provided a major carbohydrate and energy source for hunter-gatherers in Europe.

A woman hunter in the early Andes

Archaeology The ethnographic record of modern hunter-gatherers indicates that men were the primary, almost exclusive, hunters of big game. However, to what extent this pattern existed in prehistory has been challenged on both empirical and theoretical grounds. To examine this question, Haas et al. studied the artifacts recovered from a burial of a young woman at a site on the Andean Altiplano dated to more than 8000 years ago. Found with her was a tool kit used in animal processing and numerous projectile points, strongly indicating that she hunted. Additional examples of female hunters at late Pleistocene and early Holocene sites in the Americas were also identified, findings that support a model of relatively undifferentiated subsistence labor among early populations in the Americas. Sci. Adv. 10.1126/sciadv.abd0310 (2020).

The Centrality of Ancestral Grandmothering in Human Evolution.

When Fisher, Williams, and Hamilton laid the foundations of evolutionary life history theory, they recognized elements of what became a grandmother hypothesis to explain the evolution of human postmenopausal longevity. Subsequent study of modern hunter-gatherers, great apes, and the wider mammalian radiation has revealed strong regularities in development and behavior that show additional unexpected consequences that ancestral grandmothering likely had on human evolution, challenging the hypothesis that ancestral males propelled the evolution of our radiation by hunting to provision mates and offspring. Ancestral grandmothering has become a serious contender to explain not only the large fraction of post-fertile years women live and children's prolonged maturation yet early weaning; it also promises to help account for the pair bonding that distinguishes humans from our closest living evolutionary cousins, the great apes (and most other mammals), the evolution of our big human brains, and our distinctive preoccupation with reputations, shared intentionality and persistent cultural learning that begins in infancy.

The relative roles of maternal survival and inter-personal violence as selection pressures on the persistence of Neanderthal hypercoagulability alleles in modern Europeans

Background: Simonti et al. reported variation in the frequency of Neanderthal alleles found in modern humans and argued that they may have provided an evolutionary advantage. One such allele is SNP rs3917862, associated with hypercoagulability. rs3917862 can be deleterious, but can also help prevent blood loss.Aim: To investigate two possible selective pressure hypotheses for rs3917862 surviving to higher frequencies: deaths from interpersonal violent trauma and childbirth.Subjects and methods: Mortality data from modern hunter-gatherers models the living conditions and causes of death of humans and Neanderthals at the point of admixture.Results: National census data indicates a positive correlation between the presence of rs3917862 and decreased maternal mortality ratios. When the maternal mortality ratio is modelled using GDP, births attended by skilled assistants and the presence of rs3917862, women are 0.1% more likely to die in childbirth in populations lacking rs3917862. Deaths due to violence show no correlation with rs3917862.Conclusion: These findings challenge the idea that Neanderthal admixture has negatively impacted the overall health of modern humans. Maternal survival may have acted as a selective pressure for the persistence of hypercoagulability alleles in modern Europeans. Understanding the role of hypercoagulability in childbirth, and the role of rs3917862, could help to reduce maternal mortality ratios.

Hunter-Gatherers Maintain Assortativity in Cooperation despite High Levels of Residential Change and Mixing

Widespread cooperation is a defining feature of human societies from hunter-gatherer bands to nation states [1, 2], but explaining its evolution remains a challenge. Although positive assortment of cooperators is recognized as a basic requirement for the evolution of cooperation, the mechanisms governing assortment are debated. Moreover, the social structure of modern hunter-gatherers, characterized by high mobility, residential mixing, and low genetic relatedness [3], undermines assortment and adds to the puzzle of howcooperation evolved. Here, we analyze four years of data (2010, 2013, 2014, 2016) tracking residence and levels of cooperation elicited from a public goods game in Hadza hunter-gatherers of Tanzania. Data were collected from 56 camps, comprising 383 unique individuals, 137 of whom we have data for two or more years. Despite significant residential mixing, we observe a robust pattern of assortment that is necessary for cooperation to evolve; in every year, Hadza camps exhibit high between-camp and low within-camp variation in cooperation. We find little evidence that cooperative behavior within individuals is stable over time or that similarity in cooperation between dyads predicts their future cohabitation. Both sets of findings are inconsistent with models that assume stable cooperative and selfish types, including partner choice models. Consistent with social norms, culture, and reciprocity theories, the strongest predictor of an individual's level of cooperation is the mean cooperation of their current campmates. These findings underscore the adaptive nature ofhuman cooperation-particularly its responsiveness to social contexts-as a feature that is important in generating the assortment necessary for cooperation to evolve.

Environmental factors drive language density more in food-producing than in hunter-gatherer populations.

Linguistic diversity is a key aspect of human population diversity and shapes much of our social and cognitive lives. To a considerable extent, the distribution of this diversity is driven by environmental factors such as climate or coast access. An unresolved question is whether the relevant factors have remained constant over time. Here, we address this question at a global scale. We approximate the difference between pre- versuspost-Neolithic populations by the difference between modern hunter-gatherer versusfood-producing populations. Using a novel geostatistical approach of estimating language and language family densities, we show that environmental-chiefly climate factors-have driven the language density of food-producing populations considerably more strongly than the language density of hunter-gatherer populations. Current evidence suggests that the population dynamics of modern hunter-gatherers is very similar to that of what can be reconstructed from the Palaeolithic record. Based on this, we cautiously infer that the impact of environmental factors on language densities underwent a substantial change with the transition to agriculture. After this transition, the environmental impact on language diversity in food-producing populations has remained relatively stable since it can also be detected-albeit in slightly weaker form-in models that capture the reduced linguistic diversity during large-scale language spreads in the Mid-Holocene.

Hunter‐gatherer studies and human evolution: A very selective review

The century long publication of this journal overlapped major changes in the sciences it covers. We have been eyewitnesses to vast changes during the final third of the last century and beginning of this one, momentous enough to fundamentally alter our work separately and collectively. One (NBJ) from animal ethology, another from western North American archaeology (JOC), and a third (KH) from cultural anthropology came to longtime collaboration as evolutionary ecologists with shared focus on studying modern hunter-gatherers to guide hypotheses about human evolution. Our findings have radically revised hypotheses each of us took for granted when we began. Our (provisional) conclusions are not the consensus among hunter-gatherer specialists; but grateful that personal reflections are invited, we aim to explain how and why we continue to bet on them.

Ablaze in Pleistocene Italy

Anthropology As engravers know, boxwood is dense and hard. Neandertals knew this too. Nevertheless, wooden artifacts are vulnerable to decay, and such finds are rare and exciting. During excavations for a spa in central Italy, Aranguren et al. found remains of elephants, together with remnants of more than 50 burnt wooden sticks dating from around 170,000 years ago. Back then, this area consisted of patches of hotspring wetlands surrounded by grass and box shrub ( Buxus sempervirens ), through which elephant and deer roamed. The Neandertals apparently selected boxwood for its hardness and charred it to make shaping of the tough wood with flint tools a little easier. The tools appear to be multipurpose digging sticks with rounded handles and pointed tips. Tools of similar dimensions and technology were, until recently, also part of the essential equipment of modern hunter-gatherers. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 10.1073/pnas.1716068115 (2018).

On the coevolution of social norms in primitive societies

We study the evolutionary origin of a social norm of the kind “cooperate frequently and share fully” observed in modern hunter–gatherers. In order to do this, a two-stage game in which a pie has first to be produced and then divided is proposed. We assume that the bargaining rule is sensitive to investment behavior and to the degree of property rights protection. We show that, when a unique stochastically stable outcome exists, a norm of investment and a norm of division coevolve supporting the efficient investment profile and the egalitarian distribution of the surplus, respectively. The conditions needed for norms to coevolve depend on whether property rights over the fruits of one’s own independent investment are secured or not.

Maximum likelihood estimate of life expectancy in the prehistoric Jomon: Canine pulp volume reduction suggests a longer life expectancy than previously thought.

Recent theoretical progress potentially refutes past claims that paleodemographic estimations are flawed by statistical problems, including age mimicry and sample bias due to differential preservation. The life expectancy at age 15 of the Jomon period prehistoric populace in Japan was initially estimated to have been ∼16 years while a more recent analysis suggested 31.5 years. In this study, we provide alternative results based on a new methodology. The material comprises 234 mandibular canines from Jomon period skeletal remains and a reference sample of 363 mandibular canines of recent-modern Japanese. Dental pulp reduction is used as the age-indicator, which because of tooth durability is presumed to minimize the effect of differential preservation. Maximum likelihood estimation, which theoretically avoids age mimicry, was applied. Our methods also adjusted for the known pulp volume reduction rate among recent-modern Japanese to provide a better fit for observations in the Jomon period sample. Without adjustment for the known rate in pulp volume reduction, estimates of Jomon life expectancy at age 15 were dubiously long. However, when the rate was adjusted, the estimate results in a value that falls within the range of modern hunter-gatherers, with significantly better fit to the observations. The rate-adjusted result of 32.2 years more likely represents the true life expectancy of the Jomon people at age 15, than the result without adjustment. Considering ∼7% rate of antemortem loss of the mandibular canine observed in our Jomon period sample, actual life expectancy at age 15 may have been as high as ∼35.3 years.

Policy Note: “Ancient Instincts — Implications for Water Policy in the 21st Century”

Water Economics and PolicyVol. 02, No. 02, 1671002 (2016) Policy NookNo AccessPolicy Note: “Ancient Instincts — Implications for Water Policy in the 21st Century”Dale WhittingtonDale WhittingtonDepartments of Environmental Sciences & Engineering and City & Regional Planning, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USAManchester Business School, UKLee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore, Singaporehttps://doi.org/10.1142/S2382624X16710028Cited by:7 PreviousNext AboutSectionsPDF/EPUB ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack CitationsRecommend to Library ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmail References Appleton, J [1996] The Experience of Landscape.. Chichester, New York: Wiley, pp. 282. Google Scholar Barraque, B [2012] Return of drinking water supply in paris to public control, Water Policy 14, 903–914. Crossref, Google Scholar Chomsky, N [2016] What Kind of Creatures Are We? New York: Columbia University Press, pp. 107. 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Hall, Edith Zagona and Dale Whittington16 October 2020 | Nature Communications, Vol. 11, No. 1An Overview of the Water Sector in MENA RegionSlim Zekri and Aaisha Al-Maamari21 January 2020Exploring the sanitation success, sanitation technology and diarrhoeal mortality nexus in Sub-Saharan AfricaMuchaneta Munamati, Innocent Nhapi and Shepherd Misi1 Dec 2019 | Physics and Chemistry of the Earth, Parts A/B/C, Vol. 114Living in a Post-Water WorldDavid Zetland1 Jan 2019 | SSRN Electronic Journal, Vol. 33 Recommended Vol. 02, No. 02 Metrics History Published: 24 June 2016 PDF download

Folsom Stone Tool Distribution at the Mountaineer Block C Dwelling: Indoor and Outdoor Spaces as Activity Areas

Spatial analysis of the Mountaineer Block C Folsom tool assemblage is presented to investigate how a dwelling structure may have influenced where prehistoric people decided to work. Although no statistically significant difference in the toolkits from inside and outside contexts was found, patterns of significance were detected among individual tool types, particularly scrapers and projectile points. These tool types were apparently utilized more often in certain locations. We offer comparisons from the ethnographic and ethnohistoric records of modern hunter–gatherer behavior at campsites, and suggest significant differences in tool distribution occurred when activities were dictated by amount of space required and when processing byproducts would have contaminated indoor spaces. An overall lack of difference in indoor/outdoor tool assemblages supports the idea that dwellings did not necessarily determine use of space by prehistoric peoples, and activities and sets of activities were carried out in both indoor and outdoor spaces.

Teaching and Learning Subsistence Skills: Did Premodern Hominins Use Language to Do It?

Two recent studies—the first by MacDonald & Roebroeks (2013), the second by Tallerman (2013)—draw inferences about the social use of language by premodern hominins from data about the linguistic behaviour of modern hunter-gatherers and other modern people with traditional cultures. Such inferences cannot be sound, though, unless they meet a particular requirement: they need appropriate warrants. These have to serve as conceptual bridges that span the ontological gap between the behaviours and capacities of modern humans and those of the premodern hominins concerned. Interestingly, both MacDonald & Roebroeks and Tallerman make a serious attempt to support their respective inferences with the aid of such conceptual bridges. The present article inquires whether these bridges are strong enough to serve this purpose, and argues that both bridges have components that are harmful to their solidity. In the process of arguing this, the article pursues the question of the conditions under which uniformitarian assumptions can be used as components of the substructure of the conceptual bridges needed for underpinning inferences about the use of language in the teaching and learning of subsistence skills by premodern hominins. More generally, the article elucidates an important limitation of the ethnographic record as a putative window on the evolution of language.

Elephants are people, people are elephants: Human–proboscideans similarities as a case for cross cultural animal humanization in recent and Paleolithic times

Human and elephants shared habitats and interacted from Paleolithic times to the present day. It appears that pre-historic hunter–gatherers were wise enough to understand that elephants are cohabiters of the human race and not a product to be exploited in an uncontrolled way. The understanding of the long tradition of human and elephant relationship and kinship may change the mind-set of modern humans to lead to carry on the important relationship between man and elephant in particular, and man and nature in general, and prevent future extinctions of all species involved.This study is conducted in the spirit of the newly developed multidisciplinary study field of ‘Ethnoelephantology’ that studies human and elephant relationships and strives to protect the endangered species. In order to have better understanding of this unique relationship we will explore it through the study of food taboos in modern hunter–gatherers societies. More so, in this study we detected multiple striking similarities between elephant and man in several fields, such as physical, behavioral/social and conceptual. The importance of this study is in providing a new and better perspective about human and animal relationship, specifically elephants. We suggest that the physical and social uniqueness of the elephant, and its unique resemblance to man in so many aspects, alongside its pivotal role as a major food source, is what makes it appropriate for serving as a cosmological and conceptual beacon, mostly conceived in recent hunter–gatherers societies by the concept of taboo. Although detecting food taboos in the deep past are not possible, we believe that the archaeological evidence presented in this paper could indicate that human–elephant interactions in the past were complex, and were not based solely on human perception of the elephant as a food and raw material source.