Physical Anthropology Research Articles

Видеоматериалы о беджа в интернете: локальные и глобальные измерения идентичности

Introduction. The article considers the processes of identity manifestation and construction of the Beja people on the Internet. Materials and methods. The study was carried out as part of an interdisciplinary research of the history, anthropology, geology, and ethnography of the Atbay region in northeastern Sudan, initiated by Lomonosov Moscow State University. The authors emphasize the importance of the online space for the identity manifestation of stateless cultures. The analysis of online sources is preceded by a consideration of the historical conditions and special traits of Beja self-perception. Comments from YouTube video hosting users on videos dedicated to the history and culture of the Beja people are involved as sources for the study. Results and discussion. As a result of their analysis, four main patterns of Beja identity are determined: supra-ethnic cooperation with the “Arab world”; the association of Beja with the "pancushitic" community; and "ethnic identity" limited by the boundaries of the Beja community itself. The authors conclude that the Beja identity on the Internet is constructed in two dimensions: "global" and "local". The "global" level is represented by mainly the African diaspora, the "local" one – by Internet resources that are used by residents of the East African region. The findings made in the online study are compared with the ethnographic materials collected by the authors in Atbay region among the Beja Bishariin, physical anthropology data and historical evidence. Some excerpts from an interview with Mr. Onur, who comes from the Beja Ertega tribe (acted as Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary Ambassador of the Republic of Sudan to the Russian Federation until 2022) are also included in analysis. Conclusion. As a result of comparing all types of data, the authors conclude that the Beja identity exhibits a high degree of lability. It is suggested that the reasons for such lability may be related to the historical conditions of the Beja ethnogenesis on the periphery of ancient civilizations and to the significant heterogeneity of the historical population of the Eastern Desert in all the historical periods under consideration. @ 2023. This work is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 license

Morpho-facial variations in physical features of two tribal populations of Kargil (Ladakh, India): A bio-anthropological investigation

Somatoscopy is a systematic and cumulative visual examination of the morphological features of an individual. Physical anthropologists have classified humans into certain specific groups on the basis of specific morphoscopical features, and such variations have been widely studied. Fourteen somatoscopic traits of 800 adult (>25years) Ladakhi individuals, belonging to two Kargil (India) tribal groups (Brokpas and Purigpas) were examined; four hundred (N=400) healthy individuals from each tribe i.e., 221 males and 179 females of the Brokpa tribe and 210 males and 190 females of the Purigpa tribe, comprised the present study sample. Statistically significant differences were noticed between the Brokpas and the Purigpas with respect to the frequencies distribution of their skin colour, hair form, facial contour/ profile, nasal types and presence/absence of epicanthic fold, prognathism, Darwin’s tubercle, Adam’s apple, scaphoid, attached ear lobe etc. The Brokpas exhibited significant sex differences in skin colour, eye colour, hair form, nasal septum, nasal tip, epicanthic fold, ear lobe, and Adam apple, whereas only skin colour, eye colour, ear lobe attachment, hair form, and prognathism were found significantly different in the two sexes of Purigpas. The morphological variation and sexual dimorphism in the human physical features of the two Ladakhi tribes will add to the existing knowledge regarding the anthropological characteristics of different ethnic groups of India. The differences in their morphological traits may be due to the differences in their genetic adaptations as the two tribal groups originated from two different ancient populations i.e., the Brokpas are of the European origin and the Purigpas are the descendants of the Tibeto-Mongoloids. The results of this study, however, need to be supplemented with a compressive investigation to confirm the heterogeneity in the morphological and genetic features of the two tribal groups of Ladakh (India) and the influence of differential ancestral migrations on the facial features of the individuals of the two tribal groups.

Mythological. Anthropological. Bodily. Review of A.M. Lobok's Book “The Anthropology of Myth”

This paper reviews A.M. Lobok's monograph, The Anthropology of Myth. It was published in 1997 in Ekaterinburg by the publishing house Bank of Cultural Information, but is still little known in the scientific community and belongs to the philosophical underground. This has necessitated the creation of a review work to present The Anthropology of Myth to a wider readership. Despite an almost quarter-century gap between the year of publication and the present, the reviewed monograph is one of the most interdisciplinary to date and may be of interest to researchers specialising in mythology, general myth theory, philosophical anthropology, cultural philosophy, physical anthropology, pedagogy and body studies.

Forensic social anthropology: an Australian perspective

AbstractIf forensic physical anthropology is the science of biological processes and related medico‐legal investigations, then forensic social anthropology is the science of cultural processes and relatedsocio‐legal investigations. This article lays out the terms, definitions, and application of forensic specialization in social anthropology as it is practised in Australia. The objective of this exercise is to equip both physical and social anthropologists with a consilient model for the joint engagement of their parent discipline in legal proceedings where cultural processes are deemed relevant by a court or other legally empowered body. As demonstrated in Australia, the potential applications of forensic social anthropology range across a variety of matters involving both civil and criminal investigation. Such matters include systematic land expropriation, child removal, forced population movement, modern‐day slavery, unlawful detention, and other important social phenomena. The questionable legality of these kinds of phenomena is not isolated to Australia but is, rather, of international significance.

Szwajcarska geneza antropologii i etnologii Jana Czekanowskiego (1882-1965) i Stanisława Poniatowskiego (1884-1945)

SWISS GENESIS OF ANTHROPOLOGY AND ETHNOLOGY BY JAN CZEKANOWSKI (1882-1965) AND STANISŁAW PONIATOWSKI (1884-1945) The history of Polish science still has many gaps. This is the case of Jan Czekanowski and Stanisław Poniatowski. They both studied physical anthropology at the University of Zurich. This article explains the reason for their ethnographic and ethnological research, which they successfully conducted in these disciplines. In addition, the questions of how they got to Switzerland and what prompted the choice of the field of study are answered. The political context of both scholars going to study in Switzerland is taken into account. For the first time in Polish literature on the subject, a complete list of scholars and courses that they studied at the University of Zurich is provided. The list is reconstructed on the basis of sources located in archives and libraries in Zurich.

:Mildred Trotter and the Invisible Histories of Physical and Forensic Anthropology

Previous articleNext article No AccessRecentEmily K. Wilson. Mildred Trotter and the Invisible Histories of Physical and Forensic Anthropology. 232 pp., illus., notes, index. Boca Raton, Fla.: CRC Press, 2022. $42.95 (paper); ISBN 9781003252818. Cloth and e-book available.Amanda DominguesAmanda Domingues Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Isis Volume 114, Number 2June 2023 Publication of the History of Science Society Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/724870 For permission to reuse, please contact [email protected]PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Victim identification through skeletal remains: A review

Investigative authorities use forensic anthropology to examine human skeletal remains in order to identify unidentified human remnants. Anthropology alone is the study of man, but also includes culture, language, and physical remains of humans. Forensic anthropology is used to help with the recovery of human remains and to interpret trauma. Asian, African, and European people, as well as the living and the dead, are all of interest to anthropologists. Anthropologists are also fascinated with a wide range of human characteristics, such as their technology, family dynamics, cultures, and linguistic. Forensic otology is a branch of forensic anthropology. The field began in the 19th century. Mathieu or fill published a textbook on measurements of arm bones in 1835. E.A Bertillon proposed an anthropometric system for personal identification in 1885. A branch of physical anthropology is forensic anthropology. In this analysis, criminal cases are solved using skeletal analysis and other archaeology methods. Experts in forensic anthropology focus on examining hard tissues like bones. They are also skilled at locating and recovering buried bodies. In this review we are going to discuss about the ways of identification of a victim by found skeletal remains

A comparative probabilistic analysis of human and chimpanzee rotator cuff functional capacity.

Computational musculoskeletal modeling represents a valuable approach to examining biological systems in physical anthropology. Probabilistic modeling builds on computational musculoskeletal models by associating mathematical distributions of specific musculoskeletal features within known ranges of biological variability with functional outcomes. The purpose of this study was to determine if overlap in rotator cuff muscle force predictions would occur between species during the performance of an evolutionarily relevant horizontal bimanual arm suspension task. This necessitated creating novel probabilistic models of the human and chimpanzee glenohumeral joint through augmentation of previously published deterministic models. Glenohumeral musculoskeletal features of anthropological interest were probabilistically modeled to produce distributions of predicted human and chimpanzee rotator cuff muscle force that were representative of the specific anatomical manipulations. Musculoskeletal features modeled probabilistically included rotator cuff origins and deltoid insertion, glenoid inclination, and joint stability. Predicted human rotator cuff muscle force distributions were mostly limited to alternating between infraspinatus and teres minor, with both 100% and 0% muscle force predicted for both muscles. The chimpanzee model predicted low-to-moderate muscle force across all rotator cuff muscles. Rotator cuff muscle force predictions were most sensitive to changes of muscle origins and insertions. Results indicate that functional rotator cuff overlap is unlikely between chimpanzees and humans without greater modifications of the glenohumeral musculoskeletal phenotypes. The results also highlight the low efficacy of the human upper extremity in overhead, weight-bearing tasks, and propensity for rotator cuff injury.

Introduction

Introduction

Morphology, evolution, and the whole organism imperative: Why evolutionary questions need multi-trait evolutionary quantitative genetics.

Since Washburn's New Physical Anthropology, researchers have sought to understand the complexities of morphological evolution among anatomical regions in human and non-human primates. Researchers continue, however, to preferentially use comparative and functional approaches to examine complex traits, but these methods cannot address questions about evolutionary process and often conflate function with fitness. Moreover, researchers also tend to examine anatomical elements in isolation, which implicitly assumes independent evolution among different body regions. In this paper, we argue that questions asked in primate evolution are best examined using multiple anatomical regions subjected to model-bound methods built from an understanding of evolutionary quantitative genetics. A nascent but expanding number of studies over the last two decades use this approach, examining morphological integration, evolvability, and selection modeling. To help readers learn how to use these methods, we review fundamentals of evolutionary processes within a quantitative genetic framework, explore the importance of neutral evolutionary theory, and explain the basics of evolutionary quantitative genetics, namely the calculation of evolutionary potential for multiple traits in response to selection. Leveraging these methods, we demonstrate their use to understand non-independence in possible evolutionary responses across the limbs, limb girdles, and basicranium of humans. Our results show that model-bound quantitative genetic methods can reveal unexpected genetic covariances among traits that create a novel but measurable understanding of evolutionary complexity among multiple traits. We advocate for evolutionary quantitative genetic methods to be a standard whenever appropriate to keep studies of primate morphological evolution relevant for the next seventy years and beyond.

RESEARCH ON SOME ANTHROPOMETRIC MEASUREMENTS AND INDEXES OF HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS IN CAN THO CITY FROM 2019 TO 2021

Background: Anthropometry is a part of physical anthropology, a science that allows the study of measurement methods on the human body and the use of mathematics to analyze the measured results in order to find patterns about human physical development. Measurement of the human body is one of the methods of assessing the general health and nutritional status of an individual or a population. Objectives: to confirm the anthropometric measurements and indexes of high school students in Can Tho city from 2019 to 2021. Materials and methods: a longitudinal section descriptive study in 400 high school students in Can Tho city from September 2019 to September 2021. The sample size was selected according to the cluster sampling method. Results: The growth in weight, vertical height, sitting height in our study was more than the growth over 20 years ago of students in the longitudinal study by Tham Thi Hoang Diep, the difference was statistically significant with p<0.05. The weight of male and female both increased gradually over the years. Compared with the report of Nguyen Phi Hung in Can Tho city in 1999 the average weight, vertical high and sitting high also increased for each age group, the difference was also statistically significant with p<0.01. BMI index of male and female are similar at each age, the difference is not statistically significant with p>0.05. BMI is in the normal range according to the WHO grading scale for ages 5-19. the physical fitness of Vietnamese students is equivalent to that of China, higher than African countries but still lower than other countries in the Europe and America. Compared with the research results of Nguyen Phi Hung and Le Dinh Van more than 20 years ago, our study has a significant growth in length. Lower extremities were at the level of long legs after puberty (statistically significant difference p<0.01 for each age). Conclusions: The anthropometric measurements and indexes of male students are higher than that of female students (p<0.05). The anthropometric measurements and indexes are significantly improved compared to previous studies (p<0.05). Skelie indexes in the study show that children have long to very long legs (from 90 to over 100). Thus, the height growth, mainly the length of the lower limbs, is significantly improved. The physical fitness of Vietnamese students is equivalent to that of China, higher than African countries but still lower than other countries in the Europe and America.

How Physical and Molecular Anthropology Interplay in the Creation of Biological Profiles of Unidentified Migrants

The skeletal sex and ancestry of unidentified human crania can be inferred both from physical and from molecular features. This paper depicts and discusses the experiences of physical and molecular anthropologists on a set of commingled crania from the largest Mediterranean shipwreck disaster on 18 April 2015, in order to facilitate identification of human crania. Twenty-one disarticulated crania that were recovered from the above-mentioned shipwreck were analyzed to estimate skeletal sex and ancestry, following a physical and a molecular pipeline. The physical analyses applied morphological and metric methods that provided posterior probabilities for the crania to be classified into a sex or ancestral group. The molecular analyses were performed on petrous bones via a shotgun sequencing approach that allowed us to determine the sex of each individual and to retrieve the complete mitochondrial genome, Y chromosome single nucleotide polymorphisms, up to 597573 SNPs across the human genome from each individual. The morphometric sex analyses showed that most crania belonged to male individuals, although some estimations remained uncertain or undetermined. Inconsistent results were obtained for ancestry estimation as well, since morphological methods classified the crania mostly as European/White, in contrast to the most numerous African forms determined by craniometric analyses. This quite agreed with molecular analyses that identified only African males. Overall, undetermined and contrasting results were obtained between disciplines, preventing the creation of reliable and sound biological profiles that could provide guidance on the sex and ancestral group of the victims. Therefore, the times may not be mature for a merger of physical and molecular anthropology. However, future investigations of this research avenue would pave the way to the possible development of novel tools, methods, and wider reference databases that could address the limitations of both disciplines.

Interdisciplinary research on the lynx that inhabited the Japanese archipelago

The excavation of archaeological remains improves understanding of past societies and their influence on the societies of today. It can also teach us about the changing climate and its impact on the migration of mammals. Professor Takao Sato, Department of Archaeology and Ethnology, Faculty of Letters, Keio University, Japan, has extensive experience in performing excavations and interdisciplinary research that combines archaeology, physical anthropology, palaeontology and geology on the Shitsukari-Abe Cave in Aomori, Japan. A key focus is on the large wild cats that once lived in the Japanese archipelago, with a focus on the extinction of the lynx. Sato believes that one of the factors that led to the local extinction of the lynx was human activity. He and his team set out to excavate Shitsukari-Abe Cave in an effort to discover the first Palaeolithic human bones associated with stone tools and animal bones in the four major islands (Hokkaido, Honshu, Shikoku and Kyushu). In a world first, the researchers have obtained the numerical age of the Japanese lynx and are also shedding light on the previously unknown phylogenetic information and diet. The team is employing an interdisciplinary approach that involves specialists in different fields of zooarchaeology, archaeology, palaeontology and phylogeography to comprehensively discuss the phylogeny and ecology of the lynx that inhabited the Japanese archipelago and their relationship with humans.

Biometry against Fascism: Geoffrey Morant, Race, and Anti-Racism in Twentieth-Century Physical Anthropology

This essay introduces an anthropological practice that remains largely unexplored in the historical literature on racial science: biometrics. In the early twentieth century, biometricians analyzed skull measurements using novel statistical methods to demonstrate racial biological differences. Drawing on new archival material, the essay reveals how these biometric data practices challenged racist anthropology. Between 1934 and 1952, Geoffrey Morant, an expert on biometry and race in Karl Pearson’s Biometric Laboratory in London, mobilized biometry to debunk Nazi racial theories. He informed the public about Nazism’s fallacies in The Races of Central Europe (1939) and his UNESCO pamphlet The Significance of Racial Differences (1952). Unlike anti-racism campaigners such as Ashley Montagu, however, Morant did not dismiss the biological reality of race in his fight against Nazi racism. The essay shows that the coexistence of anti-racist and racializing practices was not paradoxical but, rather, an important feature of the anthropological study of human variation in the twentieth century.

Climbing influences entheseal morphology in the humerus of mice: An experimental application of the VERA methodology

AbstractObjectivesWhen studying hominin skeletal remains, anthropologists commonly assume that the morphology of entheses (muscle and tendon attachment sites) is influenced by physical activity patterns during life. Here, we use samples of mice from a prior experiment (Siegel & Jones [1975] American Journal of Physical Anthropology 42:141–144) to test this assumption. Specifically, we investigate the effects of habitual climbing on entheses of the humerus using a recently developed protocol for analyzing entheseal morphology called the “Validated Entheses‐based Reconstruction of Activity” (VERA) method.Materials and MethodsIn the original experiment, young mice were raised for approximately 9 weeks in one of two experimental conditions: a cage designed to limit locomotion to terrestrial quadrupedalism over a flat surface (n = 22), or a cage designed to impel animals to cling to a suspended wire mesh apparatus and limit their locomotion to climbing (n = 21). We μCT‐scanned the humeri of these mice and used the VERA method to assess the morphology of the deltoid tuberosity, greater tubercle, lesser tubercle, and supinator crest.ResultsSignificant differences in entheseal morphology were detected between climbers and non‐climbers when using both multivariate statistics to assess all entheses simultaneously and univariate statistics to assess each enthesis individually.DiscussionOur results provide new support for the general use of entheseal morphology for inferring hominin physical activity patterns in the past. Furthermore, based on our results, we propose that analyzing entheseal morphology using the VERA method may be a promising strategy for future research on the importance of climbing in hominin locomotor evolution.

ЗЛОВЕЩАЯ ДОЛИНА - ОБРАТНАЯ СТОРОНА. ВЫЯВЛЕНИЕ ЧЕРТ И ПРОПОРЦИЙ ЛИЦА, КОТОРЫЕ ВЫЗЫВАЮТ У НАБЛЮДАТЕЛЯ ЧУВСТВО ТРЕВОГИ. ЧАСТЬ 1: ОБЗОР ЛИТЕРАТУРЫ

The uncanny valley effect is being studied today mainly from the point of view of psychology. In the present study, this effect is considered from the standpoint of physical anthropology: an attempt was made to identify facial features and proportions, facial indices that make the observer feel fear and anxiety. Respondents will be asked to select the most sinister images of faces belonging to robots, animated characters etc. A number of parameters will be measured on the faces of the characters, which the respondents call the most terrible. These parameters will be compared with the proportions of human faces in order to find significant differences. In order to check the identified proportions and indices, the presence of which on the face instills a sense of anxiety in the observer, a sample of respondents will be presented for evaluation of images of human faces that have been changed in a graphic editor (artificially endowed with those proportions and indices that, as the first study revealed, give the face creepiness). Also, during the study, the connection between the uncanny valley effect and such a mechanism for perceiving a visual image as the construction of a perceptual hypothesis will be tested.

МОРФОЛОГИЧЕСКИЕ ТИПЫ СКИФОВ СЕВЕРНОГО ПРИЧЕРНОМОРЬЯ В АСПЕКТЕ ИХ ГЕНЕЗИСА

The question of the anthropological composition of the Scythians in connection with the eastern migration impulses is considered in the article by systematizing and interpreting the data of physical anthropology according to the craniological material of the Northern Black Sea region and adjacent territories. Anthropological material does not show the movement from adjacent and more distant eastern territories in the Pre-Scythian and Scythian times of large groups of the population, differing in craniological parameters from the autochthonous population.

The "Greenberg Controversy" and the Interdisciplinary Study of Global Linguistic Relationships.

This paper examines the controversy that followed the 1987 publication of Joseph Greenberg's book, Language in the Americas, attending to the role of language and linguistic research within overlapping disciplinary traditions. With this text, Greenberg presented a macro-level tripartite classification that opposed then dominant fine-grained analyses recognizing anywhere from 150 to 200 distinct language families. His proposal was the subject of a landmark conference, examining strengths and weaknesses, the unpublished proceedings of which are presented here for the first time. For specialists in the anthropological and comparative-historical study of Indigenous American languages, Greenberg's intervention highlighted the tension between language, conceived as an abstract object of study, and languages, understood to be carriers of specific cultural knowledge. For physical anthropologists and archaeologists, his theory was initially fortuitous on programmatic, substantive, and methodological grounds. The essay will show how interdisciplinary appeals were figured by supporters as a virtue, and by critics as a vice. The essay further highlights ethical reasons for integrating historical narratives of science and the humanities.

A diagrammatics of race: Samuel George Morton's ‘American Golgotha’ and the contest for the definition of the young field of anthropology

Between the last decades of the 18th century and the middle of the 19th century, something of paramount importance happened in the history of anthropology. This was the advent of a physical anthropology that was about the classification of ‘human races’ through comparative measurement. A central tool of the new trade was diagrams. Being inherently about relations in and between objects, diagrams became the means of defining human groups and their relations to each other – the last point being disputed between the monogenists and the polygenists. James Cowles Prichard, a proponent of the comparative historical approach, was able to do without images in his pioneering Researches Into the Physical History of Man of 1813, but the third edition, which appeared in five volumes between 1836 and 1847, was richly illustrated with ‘ethnic types’ and skulls, including diagrams. What was happening is a process I engage with in detail for Samuel George Morton, who collected and distributed human skulls as lithographs in Crania americana (1839) and Crania aegyptiaca (1844). Along with the paper skulls travelled detailed instructions of how to look at them through a set of lines and to set their individual parts in relation to each other as well as to those of other types. Drawing on Johann Friedrich Blumenbach and Peter Camper, the Crania thus played a pivotal role in establishing what I call a diagrammatics of race – a diagrammatics that became overtly political with Types of Mankind (1854), which was written in Morton's honour by Josiah Nott and George Gliddon.

Cephalic Measurements of Different Tribal Groups of Udaipur District of Southern Rajasthan, India

Introduction: Cephalometry is an important part of physical Anthropology and medicine which is used for the determination of the morphological characteristics of the head. Cephalometric results can also be of great assistance in evaluating patients while imaging, in the filed of paediatrics, craniofacial surgery and study growth patterns. Aim: To determine cephalic measurements (head circumference and auricular head height) in tribes of Udaipur Rajasthan and also to find out gender-based differences, if any. Materials and Methods: This anthropometric study was carried out in the Department of Anatomy, RNT Medical College, Udaipur, Rajasthan. The subjects were 500 tribal people (269 male and 231 female) aged between 21 to 50 years. Head circumference (cm) and auricular head height (cm) were measured using Todd’s Head spanner and measuring tape to nearest 1 mm. Data were subjected to statistical analysis to find out Mean±SD and Independent group t-test was used for comparing two independent groups. The p-value <0.05 was considered to be statistically significant. Results: Overall, there were 269 (53.8%) tribal males and 231 (46.2%) females with mean age 33.10±8.64 and 34.67±8.17, respectively. The mean values of head circumference (cm) in Bheel, Damor, Garasia, Kathodi and Meena were 56.17±0.85, 56.13±1.11, 55.99±0.90, 56.53±1.08 and 56.26±1.13, respectively. The mean auricular head height (cm) in Bheel, Damor, Garasia, Kathodi and Meena were 13.20±0.39, 13.17±0.43, 12.99±0.24, 13.51±0.45 and 13.17±0.41, respectively. The values for mean head circumference (cm) and auricular head height (cm) were 56.19±1.02 and 13.17±0.40, respectively, in all study participants. The mean head circumference (cm) and auricular head height (cm) of tribal males were significantly higher (56.45±1.03 and 13.32±0.40, respectively) than females (55.87±0.90 and 13.00±0.32, respectively). Conclusion: Significant differences exist in mean values of head circumference and auricular head height between the tribal males and females, which indicates gender differences with significantly higher values for all anthropometric parameters in the male counterpart.