Four Stone Hearth XXIV @ Paddy K's Swedish Extravaganza

The 24th edition of this blog carnival is now up and running, and with well over a dozen articles contributed by a similar number of people, there’s a very good mix of material covering a wide variety of topics, so head on over to Paddy K’s, and check it out for yourself.

As I mentioned earlier in the week, the 25th and 1st birthday edition of Four Stone Hearth is even now heading in this direction, and will be hosted here at Remote Central on October 10th, and we’re hoping for a bumper beanfeast of an edition to celebrate the passing year, and to herald the next 25 editions of the coming year. On that note, I saw that there appear to be no hosts slated from October 24th onwards, and here’s a note from Martin at Aardvarchaeology, who has this to say…

“The next open hosting slot is on 24 October. All bloggers with an interest in the subject are welcome to volunteer to me. You don’t have to be an anthropologist, but bipedalism is encouraged.”

In the meantime, many thanks once again to Paddy K for hosting the current issue, and hope to see you all on October 10th.

Four Stone Hearth - future editions

The next edition of Four Stone Hearth is due out this Wednesday, courtesy of Paddy K's Swedish Extravaganza, so there's still time to get those submissions in, if you haven't already done so.

The following 4SH will be the 25th, and as far as I can tell, this is, despite a slight calendrical discrepancy, being treated as the one which will mark the first anniversary of the blog carnival, first published last October by Kambiz, over at Anthropology.net.

To mark the occasion, it would be good (as ever) if as many people as possible could submit something, either written by you or someone else, whether you have done so in the past year, or are maybe considering sending in a post for the first time.

According to rumour and random intelligence, there are thoughts of awarding some sort of prize for the best entry, which might well involve 'c$sh', though probably not in the sort of quantities for which you'll need a suitcase to carry it home. It is hoped that readers will be able to vote for their favourite entry by means of free polling software - as Kambiz is the brains behind this, there may well be further clarification in the coming days, as the final details are determined.

The event itself will be on October 10th, here at Remote Central, but in the meantime, as mentioned at top, Paddy K is next up this Wednesday the 26th, and he's waiting to hear from you.

Primitive Wrist Bones Suggest Stronger Evidence For 'Hobbit' As New Species

Whilst there is no news yet of how this season's dig on Flores has been going, palaeoanthropologist Matt Tocheri with the Smithsonian's Human Origins Program at the National Museum of Natural History, has been examining casts of the wrist-bones of Liang Bua 1, which in his opinion are showing a surprising degree of primitive features, prompting suggestions that this is good post-cranial evidence for proposing a new species. Science Daily have this...

The evidence from the hobbit's wrist is extremely important because it demonstrates further that the hobbit indeed represents a different species of human as was originally proposed by its discoverers. It is not a modern human with some sort of pathology or growth disorder. The distinctive shapes of wrist bones form during the first trimester of pregnancy while most pathologies and growth disorders do not begin to affect the skeleton until well after that time. Therefore, pathologies or growth defects cannot adequately explain why a modern human would have a wrist that was indistinguishable from that of an African ape or primitive hominin.

This evidence suggests that modern humans and Neandertals share an earlier human ancestor that the hobbits do not. Tocheri continued, "Basically, the wrist evidence tells us that modern humans and Neandertals share an evolutionary grandparent that the hobbits do not, but all three share an evolutionary great-grandparent. If you think of modern humans and Neandertals as being first cousins, then the hobbit is more like a second cousin to both."

Very odd creatures indeed, and it's something of a mystery as to where they came from, geographically - it seems hard to imagine they evolved in Africa and headed out all the way to a remote island in Indonesia - but even assuming they evolved more locally in Asia, the puzzle of how they got across the sea in sufficient numbers for a population to be maintained for tens of thousands of years remains unsolved; if early humans in the guise of sea-faring Homo erectus really did get to Flores at c.840,000 bp, one explanation is that they could have taken some hobbits with them, but why they should wish to have done so, I have no idea. Moreover, the fact that the hobbits apparently managed to outlive H. erectus on the island, surviving to perhaps as late as 12,000 bp, is even odder - did they out-compete them, or did H. erectus up sticks and head elsewhere?

see also: A Very Remote Period Indeed - 'Of Wrists And Hobbits'

plus two links in the comments from Archaeozoo...

'Flores Hobbits Real Deal With Wrists' at Gene Expression

'Case Grows For 'Hobbit' As Human Ancestor' at NPR

Dmanisi: Human Ancestors More Primitive Than Once Thought

As there has been extensive coverage of this story over the past few days, I don't need to go into too much detail, other than to refer to a couple of posts that discuss this story with some additional comment.

The news coming out of Dmanisi in the Republic of Georgia, is that in addition to the skulls previously found there, researchers have now excavated the skeletal remains of at least 4 individuals dating from around 1.8 million bp. Although data such as brain size and implied cognitive abilities can be discerned from fossil skulls, the post-cranial material is equally vital for research, as it tells us something else about the evolutionary history of the species and the relationship of the specimens to modern humans. Science Daily have this to say...

A team of researchers, including Herman Pontzer, Ph.D., assistant professor of physical anthropology in Arts & Sciences, has determined through analysis of the earliest known hominid fossils outside of Africa, recently discovered in Dmanisi, Georgia, the former Soviet republic, that the first human ancestors to inhabit Eurasia were more primitive than previously thought.

The fossils, dated to 1.8 million years old, show some modern aspects of lower limb morphology, such as long legs and an arched foot, but retain some primitive aspects of morphology in the shoulder and foot. The species had a small stature and brain size more similar to earlier species found in Africa.

For a good and thorough analysis of the find, Kambiz at Anthropology.net has put together a very informative post, so I'd recommend heading over to read it, as well as the comments about the movement and dispersal of early human populations.

see also: John Hawks - 'Dmanisi Paleoecology'

Mourinho: Out Of The Blue And Into The Unknown

Despite my advice at the end of last season, that club owner Roman Abramovich would be ill-advised to fire manager Jose Mourinho, it would appear that either he's not a reader of this blog, or he reads but cares not for my opinions, because he's now made the biggest blunder of his tenure at Chelsea by allowing a situation to develop whereby Mourinho, the most successful manager in the club's history, was all but forced into quitting, still with another 3 years on his contract.

It was during this period that Chelsea started shipping goals at an alarming rate, effectively handing their Premiership title to Man U. I had the impression at the time that the Board deliberately hampered JM's chances of winning anything last season, as this would give them the ideal excuse to fire him at the end in May, in order to replace him with a manager they considered capable of playing a more attractive style.This from the Guardian's 'Fiver'...

At 5pm tonight, Chelsea TV will break into its usual schedule (i.e. endless repeats of reserve matches from 2003) for a dramatic two-hour news special from Stamford Bridge, "guest starring" Jason Cundy and Scott Minto. There's certainly plenty to talk about - Roman Abramovich's crass stupidity, the sheer punchability of Peter Kenyon's cheekbones, and the fact that Chelsea are heading to the dogs faster than a sprinter addicted to greyhound-racing - but don't be surprised if the club's in-house organ prefers to stress Just How Great Everything Is At Stamford Bridge, probably to the sound of the Soviet national anthem on loop.

Although in the event Chelsea missed out on both the major competitions, they nevertheless took the FA and League Cups, the two domestic knock-out competitions, even though they have both lost their status as blue riband events over the past decade, and were probably viewed at Stamford Bridge as little more than consolation prizes.

On Wednesday, Chelsea were held 1-1 at home by Norwegian side Rosenborg, to a ground half empty, despite the European Champions League supposedly making this a prime fixture. However, the paucity of the crowd probably had as much to do with the ludicrous prices Chelsea charge at the gate - even at a specially reduced £36 entrance fee, many fans probably felt that they could save their money, and catch whatever highlights there might be on the TV. Those who stayed away were proved to have been right, as an indifferent performance was indeed capped by the odd decision to send John Terry up front for the final stages of the game, as the home side desperately chased a goal and the three points.

It is reported that JM and Abramovich had yet another row after the game, one which proved to be the breaking point for chairman and manager alike. Having been reported leaving the scene of the recent 2-0 defeat at Villa Park with a somewhat grim demeanour, it was apparent that Abramovich was far from happy at losing a game so early in the new campaign, and any hopes of Chelsea being good enough to win the European Champions League this season must have seemed very far away following the game with Rosenborg.

It's ironic that Chelsea's scorer in that game, which turned out to be Mourinho's last, was one A. Schevchenko, with a neat header, but apart from the goal, it was more of the same old same old from the striker during the rest of the match, again filling in for Drogba, who is still injured.

The indifferent form of Schevchenko has been the focus of much debate, especially as it is widely believed that the player was bought at the behest of Abramovich, who thought that the signing, along with that of Michael Ballack from Bayern, would increase Chelsea's chances of winning the UEFA Champions League. As we know, they failed once again, and in games where both were playing, their ineffectiveness gave the impression that Chelsea were playing with only nine men on the pitch - and no nine-man team ever went on to win their domestic league or major European competitions.

The rest of team against Rosenborg seemed to be misfiring as well - 20 attempts on goal, most of which weren't even on target, possibly reflecting a greater lack of confidence amongst the players themselves, who have failed to win in their last 3 outings, and with Man U away as the next fixture, that trend may well be set to continue, especially as the new manager, Avram Grant doesn't exactly have Premiership pedigree, or even a current UEFA coaching qualification. More from the Fiver...

Chelsea's first training session under new Chelsea boss Avram Grant - a light jog by all accounts - was described by the club's official website as "sharp," and the club's players "buoyant" [insert your own Alex gag here]. So what sort of manager are Chelsea getting? Well, according to sources in Israel, a country he managed until 2006, Grant is known as Mr Jammy and also for having a "big fat behind" - a phrase that, while certainly true physically, also means being lucky - a reference to Israel's fluky draws and victories during their unsuccessful World Cup 2006 qualifying campaign. Grant is also regarded as shrewd, sly and tactically cautious. Abramovich may demand a team of Harlem Globetrotters but his Chelsea will still be Mourinho's Chelsea: harder to break down than Highland Toffee, and about as appetising.

"Grant is an excellent schmoozer - he knows exactly how the media work," one source told us. "During his first training session he will get to know all the names of the press guys and remember them. Journalists will then be wined and dined, and flattered about their knowledge of football." Except the Fiver, of course.

Grant joined the club during the summer, and to borrow a cricketing metaphor, it's likely he's in the managerial spot as a night-watchman, weathering the temporary storm until Chelsea can find a more suitable replacement. As the transfer window is now closed until January, Grant, or indeed any new manager, would be unable to make any major new signings until then. The club will probably see how results go until Christmas, by which time they'll know whether they've qualified for the latter stages of the Champions League, and will also have a clearer idea of how their domestic campaign is going.

It is believed that a clause in his severance contract prohibits JM from managing another Premiership side this season, and opinion has it that he might go to Juventus - this would indeed be ironic, as the current incumbent, Claudio Ranieri, was the man he ousted to become Chelsea manager 3 years ago, and Ranieri would hardly be able to believe his misfortune, were he to find himself pushed out again by Mourinho.

Guus Hiddink is the likely long-term candidate, contracted to be manager of the Russian national side until 2008. His position is reported to be bankrolled by Abramovich, and the link to Chelsea is obvious - maybe they had been expecting to fire JM at the end of this season, and he has pre-empted the board by quitting ahead of time.

It's now Friday afternoon, and Avram Grant has been appointed permanent manager, although interestingly, no contract has been signed, so the concept of 'permanence' here appears to be undefined. At the Press conference, Bruce Buck and Peter Kenyon are said to done all the talking, but apart from toeing the party line and looking uncomfortable, little detail surrounding the exact circumstances of JM's departure were forthcoming.

Avram Grant is already being regarded as an Abramovich yes-man, i.e. someone who will let the Chairman pick the team and decide which players should be bought and sold. Although Grant claims to be his own man, there are very few who will believe that to be true, not least the players themselves, who may well regard Grant as being at least partly responsible for the departure of Mourinho. There is reported to be widespread unrest amongst the players, many of whom were persuaded to join the club because of the high regard in which they held the manager, Florent Malouda being the most recent. Drogba is said to be furious, Lampard who has continually put off signing a new contract could well head to Barcelona, whilst the Portuguese defenders, Ferreira and Carvalho aren't likely to hang around too long either.

In short, the club and team are looking at going into melt-down - the season is effectively over, as I can't see them maintaining a potent challenge, particularly at the moment with all the injuries to their star players - plus, they're not exactly keen on the new manager either, who might only be allowed to manage the team for 12 games as he doesn't have the necessary coaching licence. It has been suggested that one of the best things the team could do right now would be to go on an extended run of draws and defeats, thus forcing the board into ousting Grant as soon as possible, and although it's unlikely that professional players would act in such a way, the chances are they might even struggle to finish in the top four, thus missing out on Champions League football next season.

That would be disastrous for the club as they'd find it that much harder to attract a decent manager, but I think the behaviour of Abramovich has already made that job more difficult. If Avram Grant is perceived to be in the pocket of the chairman, other managers of the calibre Chelsea need to attract would be deterred at the thought of their not having complete control of team affairs - they would reason that if even Chelsea's most successful manager ever could be undermined in this way, what hope would there be for anyone else taking the job? However, with a pay-packet likely to be similar to the reported £5.2 million p/a given to JM, there will be no shortage of job-applicants

In a fair and just world, Abramovich should be the one quitting, being obliged to hand over £5 billion to JM in the club car-park, before being whisked away to a gulag like Leeds Utd., there to be employed by another ex-Chelsea chairman, Ken Bates, who almost single-handedly brought the club to its financial knees during his time there. More from the Fiver, this time, Friday's edition...

COMRADE5! [that's supposed to be one of them Russian S's] DO NOT FEAR! Your club is in the safe hands of Avram Grant! The Fiver is still funny! That thing happens to a lot of men when they're tired! Jose Mourinho will not be setting up a breakaway state in north London! Yup, that's right. According to Lahn's Lahn E'ning Stannah, Spurs' interest in the Special One has led to him being given a £16m pay-off on condition that he doesn't sign a contract with another Premier League club until next season, by which time Atlético Madrid, Barcelona or Gillingham will presumably have snapped His Portugueseness up.

COMRADE5! DO NOT FEAR! Shots will continue to be ballooned over the bar at Stamford Bridge! Lame fat gags will continue to appear in tea-timely emails! Oh, and Not Actually That Fat, Fat Frank (Lampard) has been offered £135,000 a week to stick around Stamford Bridge and stabilise the dressing room (although he could do that by not walking about etc and so on).

COMRADE5! DO NOT FEAR! Plenty of people get excited when Lorraine Kelly leans over on breakfast TV! We have been inundated with job applications from short men carrying buckets of water! "I am free, on the market, but as Avram Grant has been named, the question is not topical," zut allors-ed Didier Deschamps today. "I do not know whether he is there as a stand-in or not. We'll have to see in the future."

The water reference to Deschamps has its source in a comment by Eric Cantona, can't recall when, who was apparently so unimpressed with his compatriot's abilities on the field of play that he likened him to a water-carrier. But Deschamps and everyone else in football, will certainly be wondering how Grant, with no experience at all of managing a Premiership side, or even a top-flight European club, has suddenly found himself a managerial berth on the bench at Stamford Bridge, and there are very few who would expect to see him still there at the start of next season - I'd be surprised to see him there at the start of next year, but then again, Chelsea have had a bad habit in the past of hanging on too long to under-achieving managers.

For his part, Mourinho is apparently saying he next wants to manage in either Germany or Italy - he's not interested in the Portugal job, doesn't want to coach in Spain, and unless he goes to Bayern Munich, it's more likely we'll see him in Italy. In the longer term, he could well return to England, and one person who would definitely recommend him as a worthy successor would be Alex Ferguson at Old Trafford. He's been in charge at Man U longer than anyone can clearly remember, and sooner or later he's going to have to retire - Queiroz, the assistant manager brought in as a possible replacement for Ferguson has recently said he wants away from Old Trafford, and it wouldn't surprise me in the least to see Mourinho pitch up there in a year or two.

Once there he could be reasonably assured he'd be left alone and allowed to get on with his work - one of the reasons Man. U. have been so successful over the last decade and more is that the Board have stuck with Ferguson all through that time, and let him pick his own sides from the pool of players he has brought into the club. They even let him fire Beckham, with whom he had fallen out, whereas Mourinho would never have been allowed to sell Schevchenko or Ballack without express orders from on high. At Arsenal it's the same story, with Wenger having sole discretion over team affairs - at both these clubs, ownership has recently changed hands, but the philosophy of the hands-off Chairman appears to be intact - the point being, if you want a successful club, you need first of all to hire the right person, and then leave them to get on with the job, and it is this point that Abramovich has failed to appreciate.

Maybe following his recent divorce, Abramovich is trying to exert some control over his life by causing chaos and confusion in the lives of others; however, he has stuck admirably to one paradigm - never apologise, never explain, and the silence from his direction has been deafening. In fairness to him, he never claimed the glory when Chelsea won back to back Championships, but when a club is as deeply in crisis as his, now would have been a good time to break that precedent, and speak publicly to those fans who pay a hefty wedge of money each season to watch their team - and the thousands of others who have now been priced out of attending games at Stamford Bridge, but nevertheless maintain an interest.

But for Chelsea fans of old, life continues pretty much as it has done for the last 35 years or more - a team that promises much yet consistently fails to deliver, playing under a manager of uncertain provenance, who himself has one eye constantly over his shoulder, wondering what next lunacy will come winging his way in a board-room memo, forwarded via the boot-room.

Zeresenay Alemseged Looks For Humanity's Roots

Many thanks to Natasha Dantzig, from TED - 'Technology, Entertainment Design', who forwarded me the links to this talk from the 2007 TED Conference at Monterrey, given by palaeoanthropologist Zeresenay Alemseged, of the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig, who discusses the 3.3 million year-old fossil specimen A. afarensis, known as 'Selam', found by himself and colleagues in December 2000.

The discovery was made in his native Ethiopia, at Dikika in the Afar Depression, a few miles from where the most famous A.afarensis of all, 'Lucy' was found - and despite being dubbed' Lucy's Baby' in the popular press, it is estimated that Lucy actually lived 120,000 years after the time of Selam - a name which translates to 'peace'.

This video is a little over 16 minutes in length, during which Zeresenay Alemseged states how he believes that only fossil evidence can fill in the gaps of the genetic record we have of our earliest ancestors, and to this end he has spent many years in the field scouring the Afar Depression, whose chief features appear to be extreme heat bearing down on a parched, desolate landscape, upon which it is difficult at first glance to imagine any human or large mammal surviving for more than about 5 minutes.

However, it is thanks to the other fossils found in the area, of elephant, monkeys, rhinoceros and pigs, that the palaeoanthropologists had definite clues indicative of a very different climate that would have existed over 3 million years ago, one that was capable of supporting a sizeable suite of large fauna.

The fossil skull itself took 5 years to extract from the sandstone matrix in which it was embedded - and by analysing features in the skeleton and skull, the researchers were able to conclude that Selam had been bipedal, but still adapted to tree-climbing - more importantly, whereas all the previous Australopithecus afarensis fossil specimens had belonged to adults, Selam was a 3 year-old child - i.e. a hominid in the early developmental stages of its life. As it was determined that her brain was still growing at this age, the team concluded that a long childhood for A. afarensis was indicated, which in turn was interpreted to mean that the infant needed this time to learn from her parents a large set of complex social mores and acceptable behaviours, before being able to take her place in that society as an adolescent, and later as an adult.

This video is very well put together and presented by Zeresenay Alemseged, and it's a great testament to the skill and dedication of him and his team, in that not only was this uniquely preserved skull found in the first place, but that after 5 years of painstaking work, they were able to present to the world such a complete picture of how a juvenile A. afarensis would have looked 3.3 million years ago, as well as demonstrating the likelihood that Selam's species, A. afarensis may have experienced a higher degree of social complexity and cohesion in their lives than might be expected, or at least one that ostensibly links them behaviourally to us in a recognisable way.

However, as this linked NYT article points out, although we have fossils such as Selam, Lucy and a host of others dating back from over 3 million to maybe 6 million years or more, there is a long and unexplained gap in the hominid fossil record between 3 million and 2 million years bp, during which time it is believed that species Homo began to replace Australopithecus, and it is by no means clear by what evolutionary process this happened.

The video itself ends with Zeresenay Alemseged, asking whether we modern humans are up to the challenge of managing the planet into the future, whilst also calling for Africans to take a more positive view of Africa, rather than perceiving it as a nation dependent on foreign aid and support - although this would obviously require some effort on the part of the outside world to stop regarding Africa as a commodity over which they hold eternal domain by some sort of divine right.

This link to the 'Technology, Entertainment, Design' front page will take you a vast number of video talks from numerous speakers from across a very wide swathe of professions, interests and philosophies, and once I've had a chance to watch a few, more posts reviewing other speakers could appear here in the future.

Should you wish to download the videos, you can subscribe via iTunes, by typing in 'TED' as a podcast search - you can embed them onto your site or blog, or simply head over to the site where you can search by theme, talk title, or speaker, using a good dynamic interface, that's free of clutter and full of good content.

Earth May Survive Sun’s Demise in 5 Billion Years

Only another 5 billion years to go till the Sun explodes - this from the NYT...

"Astronomers are announcing that they have discovered a planet that seems to have survived the puffing up of its home star, suggesting there is some hope that Earth could survive the ageing and swelling of the Sun.

The planet is a gas giant at least three times as massive as Jupiter. It orbits about 150 million miles from a faint star in Pegasus known as V 391 Pegasi. But before that star blew up as a red giant and lost half its mass, the planet must have been about as far from its star as Earth is from the Sun — about 90 million miles — according to calculations by an international team of astronomers led by Roberto Silvotti of the Observatorio Astronomico di Capodimonte in Naples, Italy.

But the oddest aspect of this story is the idea that the Earth will somehow attempt evasive action as the Sun begins it transition from star to red giant - as we see...

"When our own Sun begins to graduate from a hydrogen-burning main sequence star to a red giant, two effects will compete, the astronomers said. As the Sun blows off mass to conserve angular momentum, Earth will retreat to a more distant, safer orbit. At the same time, tidal forces between Earth and the expanding star will try to drag the planet inward, where it could be engulfed. The latter effect, in particular, is difficult to compute.

As a result, Mario Livio of the Space Telescope Science Institute said of the inner planets, “Earth’s fate is actually the most uncertain because it is at the border line between being engulfed and surviving.”

I have no idea how the Earth will migrate to a more distant orbit, but in any case, as the next quote demonsrates, there are some days when it matters not whether you stay home or head outside - it's going to be a difficult one wherever you are...

"A particularly dangerous time for Earth, Dr. Silvotti said, would be at the end of the red giant phase when the Sun’s helium ignites in an explosive flash. In the case of V 391 Pegasi, that explosion sent a large fraction of the star’s mass flying outward.

“This is another reason why the survival of a planet in a relatively close orbit is not trivial,” he said.

I included the lyric at top, because it and this story reminded me of the character Trevindor, in 'Nemesis', by Arthur C. Clark, who finds himself jettisoned millions of years into the future by his own society as a punishment for a philosophical disagreement he's had with the ruling elite. He arrives by simply taking one step in his time, and with the next he is suddenly far into the future, on an Earth that is by now dry, dusty and arid, oceans evaporated, and almost completely devoid of life.

By use of a craft sent on from his own era, he spends much of his time flying alone over an Earth that has all but expired, scouring the landscapes and horizons for anything that may yet still live, and at one point finds what is (almost) the last living thing, I think a tuft of grass, surviving somehow in the middle of nowhere - he gives it as much of his drinking water as he can, before re-boarding his craft, and heading off towards the end of the story.

Maybe there will be a day when there is one human left alive here, who knowing this, takes a tour of the sites that played so prominently in the human drama, flying out over Olduvai, across to Orce and down to Dmanisi, waving goodbye to each one and many others besides, on behalf of the subsequent cast of humans in their billions, who having left the building earlier, were unable to be along for the ride at this final curtain call.

image from here

Current Anthropology: Volume 48, Number 5

The latest issue of Current Anthropology has recently come online, with an introduction by Benjamin Orlove, from the Editorial, 'Current Approaches to Hybridity'
Page 631 ...

Three of the papers in this issue examine specific cases of hybridity. Though different in many ways, they share a set of elements that offer a view of current anthropological discussions of a concept that achieved wide recognition in the 1990s. They carry forward some key ideas of earlier writing on hybridity, particularly the insight that the boundaries between categories are difficult to maintain, the understanding of the political importance of such boundaries, and the awareness of the fruitfulness of cultural performance as a site in which the mixing of categories can be examined.

The newer work represented here considers new sites, such as science and law, and moves beyond the core racial and ethnic categories of colonial and post-colonial rule to consider other categories, particularly the biological categories of humans and animals. It shows the complexity of the space of ideologies and action. Most important, it argues that the political work of hybridity is not merely to challenge present dominant hierarchies but also to bring into view the multiple and uncertain possibilities of the future.

...and here are the contents for this issue...

Anthropological Currents
Page 633 FREE ACCESS

Current Applications
Page 635 FREE ACCESS


ARTICLES

Hybridity

The Once and Future "Apeman"
Chimeras, Human Evolution, and Disciplinary Coherence
Joseph S. Alter
Page 637

Good to Think?
Creolization, Optimism, and Agency
Aisha Khan
Page 653


Negotiating Jurisprudence in Tribal Court and the Emergence of a Tribal State
The Lac du Flambeau Ojibwe
Larry Nesper
Page 675


Shell Artefact Production at 32,000-28,000 BP in Island Southeast Asia
Thinking across Media?
Katherine Szabo, Adam Brumm, and Peter Bellwood
Page 701

REPORTS

Initial Occupation of the Pacific Coast of Chile during Late Pleistocene Times
Donald Jackson, Cesar Mendez, Roxana Seguel, Antonio Maldonado, and Gabriel Vargas
Page 725


"Taming" Rocks and Changing Landscapes
A New Interpretation of Neolithic Cupmarks
Leore Grosman and Naama Goren-Inbar
Page 732

Possible Gouty Arthritis in Lapita-Associated Skeletons from Teouma, Efate Island, Central Vanuatu
H. R. Buckley
Page 741


Testosterone and Marriage among Ariaal Men of Northern Kenya
Peter B. Gray, Peter T. Ellison, and Benjamin C. Campbell
Page 750

"Kissing Cousins"
Consanguineous Marriage and Early Mortality in a Reproductive Isolate
Suzanne E. Joseph
Page 756

BOOKS

Scale and Agency in Forest Anthropology (Moran and Ostrom's Seeing the Forest and the Trees)
Michael J. Sheridan
Page 765

Memoirs from the Field (Bedoucha's Eclipse de lune au Yemen)
Steven C. Caton
Page 766


Structure and Identity in the Study of Japan (West's Law in Everyday Japan)
Christoph Brumann
Page 767


Death in Mexico (Lomnitz's Death and the Idea of Mexico)
Donald F. Stevens
Page 769

Material Culture: Meaning or Handling? (Knappett's Thinking Through Material Culture)
Jean-Pierre Warnier
Page 770


Books Received
Page 771

Erratum
Page 636

Parramatta River, Sydney: Human Settlement May Go Back 30,000 Years

Interesting story from Sydney, where archaeologists working on what was initially believed to be a 5,000 year-old Australian Aborigine site, dug a little deeper, and found what may be evidence of human activity going back more than 30,000 years...

"... the most extraordinary discovery was charcoal, possibly from ancient campfires, found about a metre beneath the surface, and very close to some artefacts. Radiocarbon dating showed that the tiny fragments, with a total volume equalling "about 10 pinheads" were 30,735 years old, give or take 400 years. Four other charcoal samples, recovered from shallower depths, gave increasingly younger ages, with the uppermost dated at 3270 years, plus or minus 35 years.

The age pattern suggested Aborigines had been routinely camping on the site for at least 300 centuries. "It's proof of the perseverance of Aboriginal culture."

Last week there was a report from Israel, near Mount Carmel, detailing the site at Misliya Cave, which the discoverers believe was in use from 250,000 bp until 10,000 years ago, although in this case the archaeologists are proposing that modern tools found there were the product of anatomically modern humans. Assuming that the dating and analysis at both sites is correct, it's quite interesting to consider that there may have been even more sites that have seen human occupation, either continuous or continual, over so many thousands of years.

In the case of Sydney, it may be possible that an Aborigine cultural tradition could have lasted over that period of time, if it is accepted that an Upper Palaeolithic parietal painting tradition lasted for at least 20,000 years in Europe, suddenly ceasing at the end of the Magdalenian, for an unknown reason - in Europe this era has been ascribed term 'Azilian', signifying a perceived decline of an era, in which a degree of apparent artistic austerity has been discerned - I'm not aware of a similar break in the artistic traditions of Australia at that time. This from The Sydney Morning Herald...

"It is the oldest evidence yet found of humans occupying what is now metropolitan Sydney. Aboriginal burial sites at Lake Mungo, in south-western NSW, have been dated at 40,000 years, The archaeologist who led the dig, Jo McDonald, said the previous oldest evidence of human habitation around Sydney had been found in the Blue Mountains (14,700 years), at Kurnell (12,500), and near the old Tempe House on the Cooks River (10,700).

"We have always thought that humans arrived much earlier in Sydney, having made their way down the coast from northern Australia and moving inland up major rivers like the Hawkesbury and Parramatta rivers. But most of that earlier occupation evidence was drowned on the coastal plain when the sea level rose to its current height around 7000 years ago."

Although Australia itself wasn't buried under ice during the Würm Glacial, it is apparent that it was certainly affected by the rising sea-levels which followed, and other recent finds, particularly in Australia, America and Britain have suggested that archaeology of significant research value exists off-shore in areas that were on dry land prior to the Great Melt.

Visit to Atapuerca - Part 1 - Travel Notes, Museo y Parque Arqueologico, Sept 13, 2007

Having spent several fruitless hours and minutes trying to find out how to get from Burgos to Atapuerca by means of bus, I decided to head down to Burgos to see what gave, and if it was indeed possible to get to the site. As it was only a 2 hour journey down the autopista from Bilbao, I duly jumped on an early morning bus, in the hope of making the 11 am tour of the caves at Atapuerca - unable to raise on anyone there on the phone, I knew I'd be pushed for time, as the bus didn't get to Burgos until 10.30, and I still had no idea if and when there was a local bus from there to the site - in Spain, there are numerous autobus companies, so you need to check who goes where before you travel; it's often the case that you use one of the bigger operators between large towns and cities, with smaller, more local companies going to the rural places. The next few paragraphs are travel-related, so if you want to skip forward to the museum, it's about 6 paras down from here.

In the event, I arrived at Burgos, located the relevant local operator at the bus-station, only to be told there were no buses to Atapuerca till the following day - she told me load of other stuff, possibly something vitally important, not a word of which I could understand, and unable even to get hold of even a weekly time-table from her, I gave up as the clock was ticking. This meant hailing a cab - I had been prepared for this, following the advice of a friend who had visited Atapuerca a couple of years back, and who had shared a cab to get out there - so I'd duly taken some extra cash to pay for the 2 cab rides I'd need to take in and out, which came in at around 50 euros total, so if you can find someone to share the fare with, so much the better. Way extravagant of me, but under the circumstances, and the destination being Atapuerca etc., it was just one of those times when a little extra expenditure was necessary to complete the trip.

It might seem surprising that somewhere like Atapuerca isn't much better connected to the bus system, but I get the impression that there isn't very much demand for the rural autobus in this part of the world, as most people seem to drive, or have access to a car.

If you do find yourself taking a cab on another bus-less day, it's worth remembering when you arrive at Atapuerca itself, to re-book the cab-driver, (or at least get his phone number as I did), to come and collect you at the end of your visit - there are no cabs to be hailed on-site, no sign of a bus stop anywhere along the route, and it's a good 20 minute drive back Burgos, which translates to a long walk back into town - although hitching is technically illegal in Spain, it might be an option, but I wouldn't rely on it.

Allow yourself two hours minimum at the site, depending on what you're planning to do there - the guided tour is about 2 hours, probably slightly over, the archaeology park 1 hour and 15 minutes. Although I spent about an hour in the museum, it could be done in about half that, if so desired.

For this trip I'd decided that a proof-of-concept approach was in order, - i.e. to prove that it was humanly possible for me to get to Atapuerca, local bus or no. As for the local bus company who do the Atapuerca run, I'd been unable to find an online time-table as their website is under construction, no-one answered their phone, the Atapuerca website hadn't responded to my email enquiry, and even a post at a relevant travel forum had failed to shed any light - it was beginning to bug me to the extent that I'd decided the best bet was to just try and get there, and pick up some relevant information along the way. Burgos itself is well worth walking around, particularly the Cathedral, so my worst-event scenario meant that even if couldn't make it out to Atapuerca, there'd be something to make the trip worthwhile in Burgos itself.

Having somewhat luckily found a cab - there were none where I arrived, and a walk round the block didn't produce any. I just happened to glance over my shoulder as I was deciding to head for a nearby cafeteria, as a cab pulled up, containing two extremely elderly passengers, who quite understandably took about 5 minutes getting out - sometimes there's nothing you can do to hurry things along, but eventually they were done, and we got going.

Arriving some 20 minutes later at the visitor centre in Atapuerca village, I found I'd missed the morning tour, and didn't have time to wait half the day for the 5.30 one to roll round, so I booked a further visit on another day for that, and contented myself by signing up for the museum and archaeology park tour.

The visitor centre is good, plenty of printed information and helpful staff, even a small gift shop, as well as a dvd documentary which you can sit down and watch, and I was pleased to see that the Atapuerca newspaper is still in print - it seems to be issued on a quarterly basis, and is free, but I still can't quite work out how to get hold of it from anywhere other than the site itself. It's primarily in Spanish, with articles from people such as Juan Luis Arusaga, including progress reports at the site and other related news in abundance.

Exposición Atapuerca - the Museum

As you enter, you're greeted by the two clay-model guys dismembering an imminent clay-model meal, plus there's a looped dvd documentary, part Spanish, part English, with various of the archaeologists discussing what has been found at Atapuerca over the years, the way in which the excavations have been conducted and the finds interpreted, all the stuff you'd generally expect. Additionally, there are numerous display panels, in which it can be seen how the caves were formed, how they came to be discovered, and how by being sealed for hundreds of thousands of years, has helped to preserve the unique and extremely old hominid remains that came to light when a British railway company commenced a construction project there many moons ago.

There's a double display featuring a replica of Lucy, the real of fossil remains of whom are currently on tour in the US, a few feet along from Homo ergaster. Progressing through the museum along a sort of time and event line, you encounter a good range of replica crania from throughout prehistory, as well as quite a few of the finds from caves such as Gran Dolina, Sima de los Huesos and so on with teeth, jaw-bones and skull fragments featuring prominently.

I was quite struck by seeing so many different crania displayed together, and some of the extraordinary configurations hominid skulls that have manifested themselves these past 3 or 4 million years, and also the times at which some of them cropped up. For example Paranthrobus robustus apparently lived as recently as 1.8 - 1.3 million years ago, during the time that H. habilis and H. erectus were up and running, and yet looks nothing remotely like either of them.

Or the way that two finds from Koobi Fora, H. rudolfensis, KNM ER 1470 and H. habilis, KNM ER 1813, look so radically different from one another. Although they were in two separate display cases, I'd have been tempted to include them in a display together, with a note attached pointing out how such differences between hominid species living at the same time, clearly demonstrate that the steps-up-the-ladder model of human evolution, so commonly mis-quoted by opponents of the theory of human evolution, clearly doesn't apply here, or indeed across the wider picture.

There was some interesting discussion on what have been perceived to be the differences in skeletal and cranial architecture exhibited by archaic male and female humans, notably H. heidelbergensis, while the oldest objects from the site on show were from Gran Dolina and Sima de los Huesos, belonging to specimens of Homo antecessor, particularly the teeth and cranial material.

My overall impression of the Museum is that it was well thought out and designed, good exhibits, with plenty of background information that was for the most part easy for me to read and understand, and gives a good grounding for people who aren't completely familiar with the story of Atapuerca, as well as putting it in a more global context - particularly useful for those thinking of going on the 2-hour tour to the caves, but need to brush up a little on the overall picture, as well as those who might be seeing all this for the first time.

I've put some related images up at Picasa, but once again, as at Santander, I had an indifferent time with the camera, as the problem of reflecting glass cases, spotlights and strong contrasts meant that quite a lot of the exhibits were unable to be successfully imaged, resulting in the rather disjointed and incomplete nature of the picture album.

Parque Arqueológico

A few hundred metres from the main reception area, they've set up a park, in which visitors are led on a guided tour and mini-lectures addressing various aspects of Stone Age life, and you're taken through a series of locations, where one topic is discussed by the tour leader. For example, the first demonstration involved a short talk about how the first stone tools, crudely chipped from rocks, eventually took us all the way to the satellite, illustrated here by a mock-up made from tin-foil and assorted materials, placed on the hay-stack behind him.

There is a level of audience participation, and here's a quick guide as to what you might expect to be involved in. The first one is detaching a flake from a large cobble, pretty easy, and they give you a leather wrap to protect your fingers etc. There is the negative hand stencil, at the rock art wall, where the audience volunteer gets to put their hand on a wall while the lecturer blows pigment to create the negative stencil. You can try your hand at swinging something like a bull-roarer to make an impressive buzzing sound by whirling something on a twirled string, and then it's off to the spear-throwing and assorted weaponry area.

First we got to see how something like the Schöningen spears would have flown through the area, and for this part several spectators were required, with everyone hurling their spear through the air in unison, with varying degrees of success. The spear-thrower was next, and our leader impressed us all by hurling a bamboo spear adorned with feathered flights way into the distance - the spectator volunteer didn't quite have the knack, and I'd have given him another go with a little more instruction - it's basically about flicking the wrist and elbow correctly as you throw, as far as I can tell, and that's probably the one I'd volunteer for next time round if I do that tour again - on the day, I was feeling distinctly groggy as I hadn't slept well the night before, so for these events, I remained a spectator only - btw, enthusiastic audience applause after each spectator demo event is compulsory at all times, no exceptions.

The last participatory event was firing an arrow into one of the haystacks, after which, it was off to a replica Neolithic hut, where the rudiments of fire making were demonstrated - I think there was a replica dolmen as well, but that didn't feature this time round.

Again, the tour was in Spanish, and although I understood most of the early art and Neanderthal lectures, next to the Shanidar replica, about how similar they were to us and how no-one knows why they became extinct, large parts of what he was saying at some of the other demonstrations completely passed me by, but the other 15 or so people on the tour seemed to be responding to his questions and I got the impression that it was enjoyed by all present - and because a lot of it is graphically demonstrated anyway, you can still get something of the essence just by watching.

And that was pretty much it - by now it was around 2.30 pm, and when I got back to the reception area , everything was closed, presumably for lunch. The one place I couldn't understand being closed was the restaurant across the way - bit of an odd business model, I thought, keeping a restaurant shut in the lunch hour, presumably so the proprietors could have lunch and a siesta, but then again, I'm not in the catering industry, so what do I know?

Even the gift shops were shut, and all that remained to be done was to call my cab-driver from earlier to ask him to come and collect me. On the way back into town he told me some of the more historical sites worth visiting in and around Burgos, and I'll definitely set aside a day for a walk round another time.

I'm scheduled for a return fixture in the next week, and assuming I make it on time, I'll be taking the tour around the actual cave sites, or at least those that are on view to the public - in any event, I'll hopefully be able to post Part 2 of the Atapuerca visits not too long after I've completed the mission.

Picasa album

update 17/09/07 - My second visit has had to be postponed for the time being, and I don't yet know how soon I'm going to be able to get back down there, but hopefully I'll post something in the not too distant.

Four Stone Hearth XXIII up @ John Hawks Anthropology Weblog

John Hawks has posted the 23rd Four Stone Hearth, so many thanks to him for hosting another excellent edition. I've read a couple of posts, and there are some very interesting links leading on from some of those stories, but I'm pushed for time, so I'll have to go into more detail in a later post.

The next and 24th edition will be appearing on September 26th at Paddy K's 'Swedish Extravaganza', and anyone wishing to submit content can do so via Four Stone Hearth.

I think the October 24th edition of 4SH will mark the first anniversary of this blog carnival, and there are thoughts of marking this auspicious occasion in some way - I'll post more details on this as they become apparent.

So in the meantime, my advice is to head over to Four Stone Hearth 23, and read the current batch of submissions.

See you all on the 26th.

image of four stones from here

Royal Tyrrell Museum - Expedition Mongolia

Last one for the day, and this time, via Afarensis, we're off to the remote Gobi Desert in Mongolia, which over the years has produced a vast amount of dinosaur fossils - and for this year's season of digging, the palaeontologists from the Royal Tyrell Museum have decided to post updates of their expedition. Here's a look at what they're up to...

As part of the 2007 International Dinosaur Project, Eberth and Therrien have joined other leading scientists in a project to visit and explore known fossil locations in the Gobi Desert.

This five-week expedition will allow Dr. Eberth and Dr. Therrien to compare dinosaur environments and fossil preservation across the southern Gobi Desert to dinosaur sites in western Canada. A key area of research will be to understand how such different environments could yield unusually large numbers of well-preserved dinosaur skeletons, eggs, and bones.

I'm not exactly sure how the land-masses of the world were configured during the hundreds of millions of years that dinosaurs were alive, and what that would have meant for their various evolutionary stories, or whether they can tell to some extent by comparing similar fossils from such distant places. But here's a look at some of their finds at Khermeen Tsav...

"Good dinosaur bones have been relatively hard to find so far, but Khermeen Tsav has revealed itself to be a haven for dinosaur nests: 4 nests, 1 from a herbivorous ornithopod and 3 nests from parrot-like oviraptorid, have been found in 2 days! Even better, one of the oviraptorid eggs even contains the bones of an unborn embryo!"

Even walking through the arid landscape of the Gobi, has given one of the team some insights, as we see from this entry on September 12th...

"But the paleontologists are not the only ones to be happy in Khermeen Tsav; Dave is thrilled with what the rocks have to say. He has been walking through the extensive badlands, nearly 10km a day, and has discovered the secret story of the rocks.

By looking at the big pattern and tiny details of the rocks, Dave has reconstructed the landscape in which the dinosaurs lived, a complex arrangement of rivers and dunes. Dave is trying to measure as many rock outcrops as possible in the last 3 days we will spend in Khermeen Tsav in order to document his model. Needless to say that he will be working overtime."

I can't imagine that working in such an environment is easy, even with the modern technology that now accompanies such expeditions, and it's been said before that to be a Palaeontologist in the field, a degree of dedication is needed that exceeds what many would consider within themselves - and the fact that they've taken the time to post reports up on the web, after what must have been some fairly gruelling days in the field, says much about their dedication. Well worth reading through the entire diary, going back to August 19th, as the various people involved gathered together in preparation, up until the present day, from their new site of excavations at Khermeen Tsav.

image of oviraptor nest from the linked site

Pinilla del Valle: Two Neanderthal Molars Found With Wear From Tooth-picks

I was checking John Hawks' blog to see if Four Stone Hearth was up yet, and instead came across this story of a Neanderthal site known as the Shelter of Navalmaillo, outside Madrid, in Spain, where it transpires, they were flossing their teeth with some regularity, as reported in El Pais, who also include a nice image of the teeth themselves. But first, some detail from Reuters, also quoted by John Hawks...

"Two molar teeth of around 63,400 years old show that Neanderthal predecessors of humans may have been dental hygiene fans, the Web site of newspaper El Pais reported on Tuesday.

The teeth have "grooves formed by the passage of a pointed object, which confirms the use of a small stick for cleaning the mouth," Palaeontology Professor Juan Luis Asuarga told reporters, presenting an archaeological find in Madrid.

The fossils, unearthed in Pinilla del Valle, are the first human examples found in the Madrid region in 25 years, the regional government's culture department said."

Interesting that they must have flossed their teeth so regularly that the wear marks are apparent - archaic humans were probably only too aware that to leave bits of rotten meat and other foods between their teeth could lead to nasty and extremely painful gum and tooth infections. However, as has been noted, tooth decay as we know it was largely non-existent, until we began in modern times eating lots of easily digested starches, and more recently, the avalanche of sugar that has swept across human dentition worldwide.

Rather than spend the rest of the night trying to translate the Spanish version in El Pais, I hit the Google translate button, so here's the gist of some of what they have to say, as well as some comment from Juan Luis Arsuaga, palaeoanthropologist, and author of 'The Neanderthal's Necklace'.

Arsuaga himself is confident that more remains, possibly belonging to the same individual, within the excavated deposit at Navalmaillo, whilst the teeth themselves are believed to have belonged to a Neanderthal male, aged about 30 years. Found in the same context, were the remains of various fauna...

"With them, the meat of the animals that cooked to the fire, mostly herbívoros chewed: gamos, red deer, corzos, uros, (aurochs) horses and even rhinos."

Apart from reminding me that I need to buy a proper Spanish/English dictionary, it is apparent that they were enjoying a rich diet, during a climate that is described as being a relatively warm interglacial one. Not sure I'd relish the thought of eating rhino, which I imagine would be tough and not that appetising, but obviously the cuisine back then included all sorts of items we might not have considered eating ourselves.

At another level in the deposits, there are indications that later people were occupying the site at 55,000 bp - around 25 years ago, the most recent similar finding hitherto, was a site dating to 90,000 bp.

The age of the teeth could not be determined by C14 dating, as that is only good up to 40,000 years, and it would appear that dating has been ascribed according to the context of the stratigraphy, and the other fossils of creatures who were known to be alive at corresponding dates.

In this, the third summer of excavations at the site, the fossil remains of a diverse range of fauna have been recovered...

"This summer, the excavations have obtained bones of lynges, smaller wolves, red deers and animals. Astrágalo - a bone of the leg of a rhino is dumb witness of the existence of these animals in the Madrilenian mountain range. Also the brown bears inhabited mounts.

“We found fossils of the first brown bears of Europe”, counts Arsuaga, “which has important applications in the conservation of these species, since data obtained in the deposit are used to help to create plans of protection of the fauna”. The investigators confirm the existence of uros, (aurochs) a palaeolíthic animal similar to an enormous and heavy cow."

It sounds like a fascinating site, and here's some final detail on another aspect of the research there, which so far has entailed contributions form 80 people across a wide spectrum of disciplines...

"The geologists of the equipment have elaborated a digital model of the land that allows to define the landscape. According to Baquedano, the establishment of Neanderthals and of hyenas in the valley of the Lozoya responds to that the views/(opinions?) from the deposits are privileged/(correct?).

“When the inferior/lower grass withered, the herbívores ascended to mountains from the Jarama towards the Lozoya river”, adds Baquedano. “From this establishment they could see the herds. People dined on those animals"

Hopefully I'll be able to add something in the future which is more coherent than this Googled translation, assuming of course the story is reported more widely, or my translating skills improve dramatically.

image from El Pais