----- Original Message -----
From: <hydra9@...>
To: <paleoanthropology@eGroups.com>
Sent: Thursday, September 30, 1999 9:34 PM
Subject: [paleoanthropology] Re: Blondism in Neandertal populations?


> I agree with you that the morphological evidence for rickets in
> Neandertals is ambiguous at best, but it is still extremely likely IMO
> that Neandertal individuals who had lighter skin would have had a
> significant selective advantage over those individuals who were darker
> skinned-- especially during the long glacial periods. Even today in a
> tropical area like India, the wealthier Moslem populations, who tend to
> stay indoors more than upper class and lower class Hindus (and are
> therefore less frequently exposed to direct sunlight), have
> significantly higher rates of rickets (up to 70 out of a thousand in
> individuals under 20). Rickets can cause the deformation of the legs,
> spine, and most importantly the pelvis which can make giving birth a
> lot more dangerous for women. Rickets can even cause death from a
> malfunctioning of the the nervous system, if severe enough. With100,000
> plus years of living in high latitudes and in dark caves with most of
> their bodies probably covered with skins or furs would probably make
> dramatic depigmentation amongst the Neandertals practically unavoidable
> just through differential reproduction alone IMO. And, again, there is
> no extant human population today that has even come close to enduring
> the incredibly long period of survival in high latitudes as the
> Neandertals.

Marcel:

Anne G here again, and as usual, not discounting you at all.  I just wanted
to point out that the "rickets" idea is too ambiguous to be supportable, at
least with the present state of knowlege.  I wouldn't disagree with you in
the least that Neandertals may very well have had light skins and light
eyes.  They *did* live in a cold, clammy Ice Age, after all, in some very
unstable environments, furthermore.  And even today, if you happen to visit
Arctic islands, you will notice that the wolves living there, in addition to
having shaggier fur, somewhat shorter legs and ears, also are white or
nearly white and have lighter eyes than their lupine counterparts farther
south.
Anne G

Anne Gilbert wrote:
>
> Marcel:
>
> It could well be that Neandertals became "depigmented", as you put
it, in
> response to low light levels in Western Eurasia during the various
Ice Ages.
> Dr. C.L. Brace has posited this as being very possible.  Therefore,
it may
> well be that the "usual" portraits of Neandertals being kind of
darkish
> skinned and darkish eyed are wrong.  But I would also not put too
much stock
> in studies that claimed Neandertals had rickets.  This "idea" goes
clear
> back to Rudolf Virchow, who proclaimed the very first Neandertal(the
one
> from the Neander Valley) to be a "rickety" Mongolian Cossack fleeing
> Napoleon(IIRC), who crawled up a cliff, divested himself of his
clothes, and
> died in the cave where his bones were found.  Neandertals had
somewhat bowed
> legs, but this is thought by many, including Erik Trinkaus, to be
part of
> their overall robust physique and generally high levels of physical
> activity.
>
> Just thought you might want to know,
> Anne G
>
I agree with you that the morphological evidence for rickets in
Neandertals is ambiguous at best, but it is still extremely likely IMO
that Neandertal individuals who had lighter skin would have had a
significant selective advantage over those individuals who were darker
skinned-- especially during the long glacial periods. Even today in a
tropical area like India, the wealthier Moslem populations, who tend to
stay indoors more than upper class and lower class Hindus (and are
therefore less frequently exposed to direct sunlight), have
significantly higher rates of rickets (up to 70 out of a thousand in
individuals under 20). Rickets can cause the deformation of the legs,
spine, and most importantly the pelvis which can make giving birth a
lot more dangerous for women. Rickets can even cause death from a
malfunctioning of the the nervous system, if severe enough. With100,000
plus years of living in high latitudes and in dark caves with most of
their bodies probably covered with skins or furs would probably make
dramatic depigmentation amongst the Neandertals practically unavoidable
just through differential reproduction alone IMO. And, again, there is
no extant human population today that has even come close to enduring
the incredibly long period of survival in high latitudes as the
Neandertals.

Marcel Williams
9/30/99

References:

Human Biology & Behavior: An Anthropological Perspective (1990)
Mark L. Weiss and Alan E. Mann

----- Original Message -----
From: Steve Hemphill <Steve@...>
To: <paleoanthropology@egroups.com>
Sent: Thursday, September 30, 1999 3:43 AM
Subject: [paleoanthropology] Re: Neandertal-Cro-Magnon hybridization?


> Slit eyes, that's an interesting theory.  I'm not sure I can follow it
though.  For
> example, wolves don't have slit eyes.
>
> Maybe the reason none of the herbivores evolved good night vision (by
which I
> presume you mean slit eyes) is because they hid at night and fed during
the day...

You are at least partially right.  Many members of the cat family(including
domestic cats)are "crepuscular" hunters --- that is, they hunt during
twilight and sometimes night hours.  Thus, their eyes are adapted to seeing
in low levels of light, hence the "slit" appearance.  Members of the dog
family, however, are not adapted like this, and have round pupils in their
eyes because they are adapted to hunt during the day, and they do(although
they can hunt at night in the Arctic, for obvious reasons).  There is no
particular reason, in my view, to assert therefore, that Neandertals were
like cats.  More likely, if their evolution paralleled anything, it was
probably that of members of the raccoon family.  Raccoons eat anything
biodegradable, and they can live just about anywhere.  But I somehow don't
think Neandertals were much like raccoons, either.  Like ourselves, they
were generalist in their eating and hunting habits, and like ourselves, they
started out as "generalized" hunter-gatherers.
Anne Gilbert

----- Original Message -----
From: <hydra9@...>
To: <paleoanthropology@eGroups.com>
Sent: Wednesday, September 29, 1999 11:36 PM
Subject: [paleoanthropology] Blondism in Neandertal populations?


Some studies suggest that rickets was quite common amongst Neanderthal
populations. Rickets is usually the result of a lack of vitamin D in
the diet due to the lack of exposure to ultraviolet light from the sun.
Most humans produce enough vitamin D in their skin by exposing
themselves to sunlight. But the darker skin populations who live in
higher latitudes tend to produce less vitamin D in their skins and have
a higher frequency of rickets than do lighter skinned populations. And
it is probable that Neandertals  covered a great deal of their bodies
with animal skins to stay warm during the sever glacial periods and
lived in dark caves probably as protection against the frigid
temperatures--  behavior which would have further exacerbated  vitamin
D deficiency in Neandertals. Therefore, in order to maximize vitamin D
production under conditions of limited UV radiation,  Neandertals must
have become extremely depigmented in order to optimize their adaptation
to their prolonged high latitude environment . Adjunctive
characteristics usually associated with  dramatic depigmentation such
as-- blond hair and blue eyes-- if not universal,  must have been far
more common amongst  Neandertal populations than is seen in any modern
European populations today.

Marcel:

It could well be that Neandertals became "depigmented", as you put it, in
response to low light levels in Western Eurasia during the various Ice Ages.
Dr. C.L. Brace has posited this as being very possible.  Therefore, it may
well be that the "usual" portraits of Neandertals being kind of darkish
skinned and darkish eyed are wrong.  But I would also not put too much stock
in studies that claimed Neandertals had rickets.  This "idea" goes clear
back to Rudolf Virchow, who proclaimed the very first Neandertal(the one
from the Neander Valley) to be a "rickety" Mongolian Cossack fleeing
Napoleon(IIRC), who crawled up a cliff, divested himself of his clothes, and
died in the cave where his bones were found.  Neandertals had somewhat bowed
legs, but this is thought by many, including Erik Trinkaus, to be part of
their overall robust physique and generally high levels of physical
activity.

Just thought you might want to know,
Anne G

Obviously neither of have seen the eye, and I certainly am willing to consider
any
point that cannot be disproved.  There is the mental image of Satan, hairy, with
the cat's eyes, but possibly only from a movie...  This is the quintessence of
the
Scientific Method.  It must be proven, whatever it is.  Subconscious images
affect
our judgment more than virtually all would admit.

Still, we have no evidence.  This actually seems quite unusual, considering the
frequency of the... "corroborating evidence"?

The range of appearance of current H sapiens is such that those images of
artists
of Neandertal wander our streets today.  Except the cat eyes.  Possibly this is
a
linked genetic/conscious gene?

It seems to me, from a Darwinistic vantage, the ONLY question is whether or not
the
copulation could have promulgated a successful tree.  Most certainly there were
such attempts at succession of the chromosome.

It reminds me of a true brainteaser:
The chicken does not evolve, only the egg evolves.
Is the egg, therefore, the tool of the Chicken, or is the chicken the tool of
the
Egg?

Genetic Dispersion is a tool of Life.  Check this out:
http://faculty.washington.edu/wcalvin/bk5/bk5.htm

Steve H

"Dr Michael A. Crawford" wrote:

> Hello Steve,
>
> Wolves and dogs in general are not pure obligate carnivores like the
> cats.
>
> Cats evolved an absolute requirement for vitamin A preformed.. They
> cannot make vitamin A from the plant precursor carotenoid like other
> mammals.
>
> You are quite right of course Neanderthals could have been like wolves
> but then like the dog family they would have been much more adaptable.
> It does not prove anything but if Neanderthals became extinct then they
> were probably inflexible.
>
> You see the interesting story is that the herbivorous stream radiated
> into several different sub-species but with distinct similarities within
> the stream.  The cats did the same. But the herbivores, despite the
> obvious advantages of night vision never jumped across to develop superb
> night vision.  They could not. Even if the genetic change occurred for a
> cats eye, the herbivore could not make it because the flow of high
> concentration preformed vitamin A simply was not there. No matter how
> good the architects blue print, you cannot put up the building without
> the bricks. Or: if you only have wood you can only build wooden
> buildings.
>
> That logic explains the separation of the two streams.
>
> If the Neanderthals were obligate carnivores then the many genetic
> twists which enabled the cats eye to evolve would have been similarly
> possible.
>
> They may not have been true cats eyes but they would have had very good
> vision.  After all this same trend can be seen in the birds.  Owls are
> superb examples of highly developed visual and  auditory systems.  They
> eat small mammals which are very rich in vitamin A and DHA. They are in
> some senses like dolphins.  They can catch their prey using eye sight.
> They can also catch mice underneath the snow using three dimensional
> sound. The richness falls off the bigger you get. None-the-less, think
> of the superb vision and motor  control of a buzzard or eagle first to
> see a mouse or lamb from a great distance to close the wings, swoop down
> at greatly increasing speed, stall, release the talons in perfect timing
> and swing back up into the sky (without crashing into the ground) with
> the prey  caught struggling in its grasp.
>
> As with the big cats and Neanderthals, this is more than just good
> vision it is a superbly operating control and peripheral nervous system.
> You do not see this behaviour in the herbivorous birds. Pheasants are
> bred for shooting at for this reason. Very small birds like the humming
> bird are OK because small animals can make lots of  vitamin A and indeed
> DHA. The ability falls off as animals evolve larger and larger body
> sizes because protein synthesis outstrips the ability to make the
> membrane lipids involved. Hence you end with big muscles but not much
> brain.  This effect has been demonstrated experimentally and by
> comparative studies. Vitamin A blindness is well understood and the
> discreet effect of DHA on vision and  cognitive development has been
> demonstrated in studies on preterm infants.
>
> None of this means that Neanderthals had slit eyes. However, the shape
> of their brain is much more like that of a lion than Homo. It is a large
> brain but it sweeps back possibly representing greater motor and
> occipital development as opposed the frontal development of H sapiens.
>
> So yes, Neanderthal eyes may have been wolf like but they would have
> been very, very good eyes. They would have been able to see in the dark
> and more likely to be heavily pigmented to protect the highly developed
> and exquisitely sensitive retina during the day. (That would be
> especially true if they were not slit eyes!).  I think the balance of
> evidence favours the yellow, slit eyes.  It is more romantic anyway.
>
> Kind regards and thanks for you comments
>
> Michael
>
> n message <37F33EB6.56B23B30@...>, Steve Hemphill
> <Steve@...> writes
> >Slit eyes, that's an interesting theory.  I'm not sure I can follow it
though.
> >For
> >example, wolves don't have slit eyes.
> >
> >Maybe the reason none of the herbivores evolved good night vision (by which I
> >presume you mean slit eyes) is because they hid at night and fed during the
> >day...
> >
> >"Dr Michael A. Crawford" wrote:
> >
> >> Well the likely hood is that Neanderthals were more similar to the big
> >> cats.  They hunted animals, big ones, and ate meat, lots of it. So they
> >> would have slit eyes like the cats.
> >>
> >> The evolution of the cats was described by us as one example of
> >> Nutrition and Evolution (Keats New Caanan). Think for a moment about the
> >> tow great lines of secondates that emerged in Africa and elsewhere, The
> >> carnivores and Herbivores.
> >>
> >> Why was it that if the big cats hunted at night none of the herbivores
> >> evolved good night vision which would have been a significant advantage?
> >>
> >> The reason is that they could not.
> >>
> >> The vitamin A and docosahexaenoic acids (DHA) required for super  vision
> >> were not part of their food  chain. The big cats got the life time's
> >> effort of its prey in converting beta carotene to  vitamin A and
> >> linolenic acid to DHA in one sitting.
> >>
> >> Please note the first morsel the big cats eat is the liver where these
> >> nutrients are stored in large quantities.
> >>
> >> This means that a trophoblast and embryo would be bathed in high
> >> proportions of A and some DHA. This would effect gene transcription
> >> which generation after generation resulted in the carnivorous stream.
> >> (Note pregnant women are today advised not to eat liver because of the
> >> teratogenic effect of its high content of vitamin A)
> >>
> >> There is no evidence as far as I know of a gazelle  turning into a
> >> carnivore.  It is true that the fetus of all mammals acts as a super
> >> carnivore but in the case of the herbivores the early products of
> >> conception, embryo and fetus would not receive the large quantities of A
> >> and the DHA which would be the case in carnivores. The carnivorous
> >> stream bears clear evidence of a greater development of the nervous and
> >> vascular system than the herbivores throughout (viz compare the hoof
> >> with the articulated claw).
> >>
> >> This story explains the inability of random mutation to come up with a
> >> cross over and hence the separation of the two streams.
> >>
> >> It is just possible that the Neanderthals were the human equivalent of
> >> the big cats as they stuck to land products.  Hence they could have had
> >> yellow, slit eyes like cats.
> >>
> >> Cro Magnon would have had a similar but importantly  different influence
> >> operating. I believe there is some evidence that 60,000 years ago they
> >> walk into Europe wearing necklaces made from sea shells.  As coastal
> >> migrators they would have eaten large amounts of sea foods (see John
> >> Parkington's evidence of huge shell middens at the Klasies river mouth
> >> +180,00 - 80,000 years ago). This would have supplied the trace elements
> >> and DHA in high concentrations. The DHA would be 20 -100 times that in
> >> the herbivore livers. Hence the cerebral expansion.
> >>
> >> Michael Crawford.
> >
> >
> >------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> >eGroups.com home: http://www.egroups.com/group/paleoanthropology
> >http://www.egroups.com - Simplifying group communications
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
> --
> Dr Michael A. Crawford
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> eGroups.com home: http://www.egroups.com/group/paleoanthropology
> http://www.egroups.com - Simplifying group communications

Here's an interesting link about the possibility of cannibalism amongst
Neandertals.
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/science/DailyNews/neanderthal990930.html

Marcel Williams

Marc,

Thanks but No Cro-Magnons were fish eaters!!


Michael

In message <00d701bf0b7d$fc17d0e0$ad15bed4@...>, Marc
Verhaegen <Marc.Verhaegen@...> writes
>>Well the likely hood is that Neanderthals were more similar to the big
>cats. They hunted animals, big ones, and ate meat, lots of it. So they would
>have slit eyes like the cats.
>
>Michael, you're kidding, aren't you? I don't know anything on slit eyes,
>except that slits can be opened further than circular pupils, that's why
>they're more frequent in nocturnal animals. Vertical slits are seen in
>nocturnal animals that move a lot vertically, like cats. Horizontal slits
>are seen in nocturnals that live in more open environments. (Slits have the
>disadvantage of losing a large part of the visual field.)
>
>Probably Neandertals ate meat, but probably not as much as CroMagnons. We
>don't know whether Neandertals really hunted (they might have used traps,
>but IMO they were much too heavy to be active hunters). But we do know they
>cut cattails (probably for food - cattails grow in shallow water). We know
>they sometimes (esp. the males) had extensive ear exostoses - and ear
>exostoses in humans are +-only seen in frequent divers in cold water (less
>than ca.18C). We know some of them ate turtles & molluscs & fish (among
>other food). Probably they ate plant food (which fossilises less easily).
>
>Some researchers think that the CroMagnons replaced the Neandertals at a
>moment when the climate became cooler. In any case, the CroMagnons with
>their more slender build were more active & faster than their predecessors.
>(It's unlikely - tough not impossible - Neandertals & CroMagnons mixed
>genes. In the recent Proc.Natl.Acad.Sci.USA issue with the paper on the
>Portuguese so-called half-Neandertal-half-sapiens hybrid fossil 25,000ya,
>there was also an introductory paper that said the fossil was probably
>purely sapiens. I agree with what Anne G is saying on these matters.)
>
>You say big cats eat the liver first. I don't know anything about that, but
>I once observed a cat eating a mouse. Very systematically: it divided the
>mouse in 3 parts: first the head & thorax, then the abdomen, then the lower
>body. When it had eaten the 2d part it spit out something which as far as I
>could see was the liver. Perhaps the cat was avoiding vit.A or other
>intoxications? The owners of the cat told me it was a very good hunter & it
>always ate mice in the same way.
>.......
>
>>Please note the first morsel the big cats eat is the liver where these
>nutrients are stored in large quantities.
>
>.......
>>Cro Magnon would have had a similar but importantly  different influence
>operating. I believe there is some evidence that 60,000 years ago they walk
>into Europe wearing necklaces made from sea shells.  As coastal migrators
>they would have eaten large amounts of sea foods (see John Parkington's
>evidence of huge shell middens at the Klasies river mouth +180,00 - 80,000
>years ago). This would have supplied the trace elements and DHA in high
>concentrations. The DHA would be 20 -100 times that in the herbivore livers.
>Hence the cerebral expansion.
>
>Neandertals too seem to have used sea shells (for neck laces?). And they
>even had somewhat larger brains than sapiens.
>
>
>
>Michael, Marcel tells us that you just published a paper Crawford MA, Bloom
>M, Broadhurst CL, Schmidt WF, Cunnane SC, Galli C, Gehbremeskel K, Linseisen
>F, Lloyd-Smith J, Parkington Lipids 1999;34 Suppl:S39-47
>- could you please send us here the abstract or so? what are the
>implications for human evolution IYO?
>
>
>Marc - http://www.flash.net/~hydra9/marcaat.html
>http://allserv.rug.ac.be/~mvaneech/Symposium.html
>http://jurix.rechten.rug.nl/rth/ess/ess50.htm
>
>
>
>
>
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>eGroups.com home: http://www.egroups.com/group/paleoanthropology
>http://www.egroups.com - Simplifying group communications
>
>
>
>

--
Dr Michael A. Crawford

Hello Steve,

Wolves and dogs in general are not pure obligate carnivores like the
cats.

Cats evolved an absolute requirement for vitamin A preformed.. They
cannot make vitamin A from the plant precursor carotenoid like other
mammals.

You are quite right of course Neanderthals could have been like wolves
but then like the dog family they would have been much more adaptable.
It does not prove anything but if Neanderthals became extinct then they
were probably inflexible.

You see the interesting story is that the herbivorous stream radiated
into several different sub-species but with distinct similarities within
the stream.  The cats did the same. But the herbivores, despite the
obvious advantages of night vision never jumped across to develop superb
night vision.  They could not. Even if the genetic change occurred for a
cats eye, the herbivore could not make it because the flow of high
concentration preformed vitamin A simply was not there. No matter how
good the architects blue print, you cannot put up the building without
the bricks. Or: if you only have wood you can only build wooden
buildings.

That logic explains the separation of the two streams.

If the Neanderthals were obligate carnivores then the many genetic
twists which enabled the cats eye to evolve would have been similarly
possible.

They may not have been true cats eyes but they would have had very good
vision.  After all this same trend can be seen in the birds.  Owls are
superb examples of highly developed visual and  auditory systems.  They
eat small mammals which are very rich in vitamin A and DHA. They are in
some senses like dolphins.  They can catch their prey using eye sight.
They can also catch mice underneath the snow using three dimensional
sound. The richness falls off the bigger you get. None-the-less, think
of the superb vision and motor  control of a buzzard or eagle first to
see a mouse or lamb from a great distance to close the wings, swoop down
at greatly increasing speed, stall, release the talons in perfect timing
and swing back up into the sky (without crashing into the ground) with
the prey  caught struggling in its grasp.

As with the big cats and Neanderthals, this is more than just good
vision it is a superbly operating control and peripheral nervous system.
You do not see this behaviour in the herbivorous birds. Pheasants are
bred for shooting at for this reason. Very small birds like the humming
bird are OK because small animals can make lots of  vitamin A and indeed
DHA. The ability falls off as animals evolve larger and larger body
sizes because protein synthesis outstrips the ability to make the
membrane lipids involved. Hence you end with big muscles but not much
brain.  This effect has been demonstrated experimentally and by
comparative studies. Vitamin A blindness is well understood and the
discreet effect of DHA on vision and  cognitive development has been
demonstrated in studies on preterm infants.

None of this means that Neanderthals had slit eyes. However, the shape
of their brain is much more like that of a lion than Homo. It is a large
brain but it sweeps back possibly representing greater motor and
occipital development as opposed the frontal development of H sapiens.

So yes, Neanderthal eyes may have been wolf like but they would have
been very, very good eyes. They would have been able to see in the dark
and more likely to be heavily pigmented to protect the highly developed
and exquisitely sensitive retina during the day. (That would be
especially true if they were not slit eyes!).  I think the balance of
evidence favours the yellow, slit eyes.  It is more romantic anyway.

Kind regards and thanks for you comments


Michael



n message <37F33EB6.56B23B30@...>, Steve Hemphill
<Steve@...> writes
>Slit eyes, that's an interesting theory.  I'm not sure I can follow it though.
>For
>example, wolves don't have slit eyes.
>
>Maybe the reason none of the herbivores evolved good night vision (by which I
>presume you mean slit eyes) is because they hid at night and fed during the
>day...
>
>"Dr Michael A. Crawford" wrote:
>
>> Well the likely hood is that Neanderthals were more similar to the big
>> cats.  They hunted animals, big ones, and ate meat, lots of it. So they
>> would have slit eyes like the cats.
>>
>> The evolution of the cats was described by us as one example of
>> Nutrition and Evolution (Keats New Caanan). Think for a moment about the
>> tow great lines of secondates that emerged in Africa and elsewhere, The
>> carnivores and Herbivores.
>>
>> Why was it that if the big cats hunted at night none of the herbivores
>> evolved good night vision which would have been a significant advantage?
>>
>> The reason is that they could not.
>>
>> The vitamin A and docosahexaenoic acids (DHA) required for super  vision
>> were not part of their food  chain. The big cats got the life time's
>> effort of its prey in converting beta carotene to  vitamin A and
>> linolenic acid to DHA in one sitting.
>>
>> Please note the first morsel the big cats eat is the liver where these
>> nutrients are stored in large quantities.
>>
>> This means that a trophoblast and embryo would be bathed in high
>> proportions of A and some DHA. This would effect gene transcription
>> which generation after generation resulted in the carnivorous stream.
>> (Note pregnant women are today advised not to eat liver because of the
>> teratogenic effect of its high content of vitamin A)
>>
>> There is no evidence as far as I know of a gazelle  turning into a
>> carnivore.  It is true that the fetus of all mammals acts as a super
>> carnivore but in the case of the herbivores the early products of
>> conception, embryo and fetus would not receive the large quantities of A
>> and the DHA which would be the case in carnivores. The carnivorous
>> stream bears clear evidence of a greater development of the nervous and
>> vascular system than the herbivores throughout (viz compare the hoof
>> with the articulated claw).
>>
>> This story explains the inability of random mutation to come up with a
>> cross over and hence the separation of the two streams.
>>
>> It is just possible that the Neanderthals were the human equivalent of
>> the big cats as they stuck to land products.  Hence they could have had
>> yellow, slit eyes like cats.
>>
>> Cro Magnon would have had a similar but importantly  different influence
>> operating. I believe there is some evidence that 60,000 years ago they
>> walk into Europe wearing necklaces made from sea shells.  As coastal
>> migrators they would have eaten large amounts of sea foods (see John
>> Parkington's evidence of huge shell middens at the Klasies river mouth
>> +180,00 - 80,000 years ago). This would have supplied the trace elements
>> and DHA in high concentrations. The DHA would be 20 -100 times that in
>> the herbivore livers. Hence the cerebral expansion.
>>
>> Michael Crawford.
>
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>eGroups.com home: http://www.egroups.com/group/paleoanthropology
>http://www.egroups.com - Simplifying group communications
>
>
>
>

--
Dr Michael A. Crawford

An  interesting cranio-dental characteristic of  Australopithecus is
the extreme anterior position of the root of  the zygomatic arch which
usually ranges above the M1/P4 to the P3 amongst australopithecine
species. In Homo and Pongo the root of the zygomatic arch is typically
above the M1 while in the gorilla and chimpanzee the root is typically
above the M1/M2. In Hylobates and Symphalangus, it is usually
positioned above the M2. I’m looking for information on the
cranio-dental position of the root of the zygomatic arch in the  fossil
hominoids  Ouranopithecus and Dryopithecus (Rudapithecus).

Marcel Williams
9/30/99

References:

Walker, Leakey, Harris , Brown (1986) 2.5 myr Australoithecus boisei
from west of Lake Turkana, Kenya, Nature vol. 322,  August 1986

Terry Harrison (1986) A Reassessment of the Phylogenetic Relationships
of Oreopithecus bambolii, Journal of Human Evolution 15, 541-583

>Well the likely hood is that Neanderthals were more similar to the big
cats. They hunted animals, big ones, and ate meat, lots of it. So they would
have slit eyes like the cats.

Michael, you're kidding, aren't you? I don't know anything on slit eyes,
except that slits can be opened further than circular pupils, that's why
they're more frequent in nocturnal animals. Vertical slits are seen in
nocturnal animals that move a lot vertically, like cats. Horizontal slits
are seen in nocturnals that live in more open environments. (Slits have the
disadvantage of losing a large part of the visual field.)

Probably Neandertals ate meat, but probably not as much as CroMagnons. We
don't know whether Neandertals really hunted (they might have used traps,
but IMO they were much too heavy to be active hunters). But we do know they
cut cattails (probably for food - cattails grow in shallow water). We know
they sometimes (esp. the males) had extensive ear exostoses - and ear
exostoses in humans are +-only seen in frequent divers in cold water (less
than ca.18°C). We know some of them ate turtles & molluscs & fish (among
other food). Probably they ate plant food (which fossilises less easily).

Some researchers think that the CroMagnons replaced the Neandertals at a
moment when the climate became cooler. In any case, the CroMagnons with
their more slender build were more active & faster than their predecessors.
(It's unlikely - tough not impossible - Neandertals & CroMagnons mixed
genes. In the recent Proc.Natl.Acad.Sci.USA issue with the paper on the
Portuguese so-called half-Neandertal-half-sapiens hybrid fossil 25,000ya,
there was also an introductory paper that said the fossil was probably
purely sapiens. I agree with what Anne G is saying on these matters.)

You say big cats eat the liver first. I don't know anything about that, but
I once observed a cat eating a mouse. Very systematically: it divided the
mouse in 3 parts: first the head & thorax, then the abdomen, then the lower
body. When it had eaten the 2d part it spit out something which as far as I
could see was the liver. Perhaps the cat was avoiding vit.A or other
intoxications? The owners of the cat told me it was a very good hunter & it
always ate mice in the same way.
.......

>Please note the first morsel the big cats eat is the liver where these
nutrients are stored in large quantities.

.......
>Cro Magnon would have had a similar but importantly  different influence
operating. I believe there is some evidence that 60,000 years ago they walk
into Europe wearing necklaces made from sea shells.  As coastal migrators
they would have eaten large amounts of sea foods (see John Parkington's
evidence of huge shell middens at the Klasies river mouth +180,00 - 80,000
years ago). This would have supplied the trace elements and DHA in high
concentrations. The DHA would be 20 -100 times that in the herbivore livers.
Hence the cerebral expansion.

Neandertals too seem to have used sea shells (for neck laces?). And they
even had somewhat larger brains than sapiens.



Michael, Marcel tells us that you just published a paper Crawford MA, Bloom
M, Broadhurst CL, Schmidt WF, Cunnane SC, Galli C, Gehbremeskel K, Linseisen
F, Lloyd-Smith J, Parkington Lipids 1999;34 Suppl:S39-47
- could you please send us here the abstract or so? what are the
implications for human evolution IYO?


Marc - http://www.flash.net/~hydra9/marcaat.html
http://allserv.rug.ac.be/~mvaneech/Symposium.html
http://jurix.rechten.rug.nl/rth/ess/ess50.htm

Slit eyes, that's an interesting theory.  I'm not sure I can follow it though. 
For
example, wolves don't have slit eyes.

Maybe the reason none of the herbivores evolved good night vision (by which I
presume you mean slit eyes) is because they hid at night and fed during the
day...

"Dr Michael A. Crawford" wrote:

> Well the likely hood is that Neanderthals were more similar to the big
> cats.  They hunted animals, big ones, and ate meat, lots of it. So they
> would have slit eyes like the cats.
>
> The evolution of the cats was described by us as one example of
> Nutrition and Evolution (Keats New Caanan). Think for a moment about the
> tow great lines of secondates that emerged in Africa and elsewhere, The
> carnivores and Herbivores.
>
> Why was it that if the big cats hunted at night none of the herbivores
> evolved good night vision which would have been a significant advantage?
>
> The reason is that they could not.
>
> The vitamin A and docosahexaenoic acids (DHA) required for super  vision
> were not part of their food  chain. The big cats got the life time's
> effort of its prey in converting beta carotene to  vitamin A and
> linolenic acid to DHA in one sitting.
>
> Please note the first morsel the big cats eat is the liver where these
> nutrients are stored in large quantities.
>
> This means that a trophoblast and embryo would be bathed in high
> proportions of A and some DHA. This would effect gene transcription
> which generation after generation resulted in the carnivorous stream.
> (Note pregnant women are today advised not to eat liver because of the
> teratogenic effect of its high content of vitamin A)
>
> There is no evidence as far as I know of a gazelle  turning into a
> carnivore.  It is true that the fetus of all mammals acts as a super
> carnivore but in the case of the herbivores the early products of
> conception, embryo and fetus would not receive the large quantities of A
> and the DHA which would be the case in carnivores. The carnivorous
> stream bears clear evidence of a greater development of the nervous and
> vascular system than the herbivores throughout (viz compare the hoof
> with the articulated claw).
>
> This story explains the inability of random mutation to come up with a
> cross over and hence the separation of the two streams.
>
> It is just possible that the Neanderthals were the human equivalent of
> the big cats as they stuck to land products.  Hence they could have had
> yellow, slit eyes like cats.
>
> Cro Magnon would have had a similar but importantly  different influence
> operating. I believe there is some evidence that 60,000 years ago they
> walk into Europe wearing necklaces made from sea shells.  As coastal
> migrators they would have eaten large amounts of sea foods (see John
> Parkington's evidence of huge shell middens at the Klasies river mouth
> +180,00 - 80,000 years ago). This would have supplied the trace elements
> and DHA in high concentrations. The DHA would be 20 -100 times that in
> the herbivore livers. Hence the cerebral expansion.
>
> Michael Crawford.

On Wed, 29 Sep 1999 20:59:14 -0600 Steve Hemphill
<Steve@...> wrote:

> Oops - I posted this to the wrong thread...
>
I did think it looked out of place!

> I heard an interesting theory on the Neandertal.
>
> The concept is that blue eyes take extremely long to develop genetically.  The
> arctic clans from northern asia and north america don't have blue eyes.  The
> only people with blue eyes are of northern european ancestry.
>
But the people of northern Asia and America are relative
new comers. Neanderthals existed across most of
central northern Asia (about as far as China). As far as
I'm the more Mongoloid peoples spread into these regions
recently. Remember northern Europeans have been occupying
cold northerly climates for at least 40 ka while other
people occupying northerly areas (eastish of the Urals)
have been there about a third of the time. Stduies into
body shape show that it took a considerable length of time
for modern humans to start to adapt to their environment.

> The hypothesis is that anyone with blue (or green or hazel) eyes gets them
from
> their Neandertal ancesters.
>
> This is one of those concepts that seems intuitively obvious outside of the
lab
> (for those that wander into reality).  With the countless combinations of the
> meetings of homo sapiens and neandertals, it seems thoroughly improbable that
> cross-fertilization never took place.
>
It would be very difficult to prove and all genetic studies
on modern Europeans show a recent origin for their DNA. It
is though an interesting idea and you would expect that
some Neanderthal DNA would be selected for esp. if it
confers some kind of advantage in evolving rapidly to cope
with Ice Age conditions (e.g. body shape, skin
pigmentation, fat layers, etc.)

> The binary question of yes or no is a much easier question than the question
of
> how many times and in what situations.  As elsewhere in nature, the
probability
> of a lone male of one and a lone female of the other meeting and coupling
> somewhere, sometime, is astronomically high.  The question is how many times?
> 10? 100? 1000?
>
Human beings will always find a way.

	 Dan

Well the likely hood is that Neanderthals were more similar to the big
cats.  They hunted animals, big ones, and ate meat, lots of it. So they
would have slit eyes like the cats.

The evolution of the cats was described by us as one example of
Nutrition and Evolution (Keats New Caanan). Think for a moment about the
tow great lines of secondates that emerged in Africa and elsewhere, The
carnivores and Herbivores.

Why was it that if the big cats hunted at night none of the herbivores
evolved good night vision which would have been a significant advantage?

The reason is that they could not.

The vitamin A and docosahexaenoic acids (DHA) required for super  vision
were not part of their food  chain. The big cats got the life time's
effort of its prey in converting beta carotene to  vitamin A and
linolenic acid to DHA in one sitting.

Please note the first morsel the big cats eat is the liver where these
nutrients are stored in large quantities.

This means that a trophoblast and embryo would be bathed in high
proportions of A and some DHA. This would effect gene transcription
which generation after generation resulted in the carnivorous stream.
(Note pregnant women are today advised not to eat liver because of the
teratogenic effect of its high content of vitamin A)

There is no evidence as far as I know of a gazelle  turning into a
carnivore.  It is true that the fetus of all mammals acts as a super
carnivore but in the case of the herbivores the early products of
conception, embryo and fetus would not receive the large quantities of A
and the DHA which would be the case in carnivores. The carnivorous
stream bears clear evidence of a greater development of the nervous and
vascular system than the herbivores throughout (viz compare the hoof
with the articulated claw).

This story explains the inability of random mutation to come up with a
cross over and hence the separation of the two streams.

It is just possible that the Neanderthals were the human equivalent of
the big cats as they stuck to land products.  Hence they could have had
yellow, slit eyes like cats.

Cro Magnon would have had a similar but importantly  different influence
operating. I believe there is some evidence that 60,000 years ago they
walk into Europe wearing necklaces made from sea shells.  As coastal
migrators they would have eaten large amounts of sea foods (see John
Parkington's evidence of huge shell middens at the Klasies river mouth
+180,00 - 80,000 years ago). This would have supplied the trace elements
and DHA in high concentrations. The DHA would be 20 -100 times that in
the herbivore livers. Hence the cerebral expansion.

Michael Crawford.




In message <37F2D201.8CA8E502@...>, Steve Hemphill
<Steve@...> writes
>Oops - I posted this to the wrong thread...
>
>I heard an interesting theory on the Neandertal.
>
>The concept is that blue eyes take extremely long to develop genetically.  The
>arctic clans from northern asia and north america don't have blue eyes.  The
>only people with blue eyes are of northern european ancestry.
>
>The hypothesis is that anyone with blue (or green or hazel) eyes gets them from
>their Neandertal ancesters.
>
>This is one of those concepts that seems intuitively obvious outside of the lab
>(for those that wander into reality).  With the countless combinations of the
>meetings of homo sapiens and neandertals, it seems thoroughly improbable that
>cross-fertilization never took place.
>
>The binary question of yes or no is a much easier question than the question of
>how many times and in what situations.  As elsewhere in nature, the probability
>of a lone male of one and a lone female of the other meeting and coupling
>somewhere, sometime, is astronomically high.  The question is how many times?
>10? 100? 1000?
>
>Steve H
>
>
>
>Anne Gilbert wrote:
>
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: <hydra9@...>
>> To: <paleoanthropology@eGroups.com>
>> Sent: Tuesday, September 28, 1999 9:58 PM
>> Subject: [paleoanthropology] Neandertal-Cro-Magnon hybridization?
>>
>> Does anyone out there know how frequently occipital buns appear  in
>> modern European populations relative to other modern human populations?
>> And what are your opinions on the possibility or impossibility of
>> Neandertal - Cro-Magnon hybridization?
>>
>> Marcel:
>>
>> I presume you know about the Lapedo find in Portugal that is dated to about
>> 25,000 years ago.  This is presumably long after Neandertals disappeared,
>> but Erik Trinkaus and Joao Zilhao believe it to be a "hybrid" of Neandertal
>> and Cro-Magnon, based on its apparent mosaic of characteristics.  Dr. Brace
>> also believes(if I'm not putting words into his mouth), that the Lapedo Kid
>> shows a mixture of "modern" and "Neandertal" traits, but he believes
>> "moderns" and Neandertals were one large population(apologies to Dr. Brace
>> if I'm oversimplifying things here).  As far as *I'm* concerned, I believe
>> such things are possible.  Whether they happened or not is something
>> paleoanthropologists have been arguing about for a very long time.  And I
>> don't think they are about to stop now.
>> Anne G
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> Join theglobe.com the premiere online community! Take advantage of
>> FREE homepages, Stock quotes, News, Chat, Games and more! Interact
>> with people just like you! http://clickhere.egroups.com/click/1042
>>
>> eGroups.com home: http://www.egroups.com/group/paleoanthropology
>> http://www.egroups.com - Simplifying group communications
>
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>eGroups.com home: http://www.egroups.com/group/paleoanthropology
>http://www.egroups.com - Simplifying group communications
>
>
>
>

--
Dr Michael A. Crawford  PhD, CBiol, FIBiol, FRCPath
Institute of Brain Chemistry and Human Nutrition
University of North London,
166-220 Holloway Rd
London N7 8DB
Tel + 44 171 753 3162 fax 171 753 3164

As some of you know from my  postings on other forums, I’ve always
found it curious that western artist--  and the media-- usually portray
Neandertals as sort of short and stocky dark haired and sometimes even
brown skinned Amerindian-like populations. But if the prevailing theory
of human skin pigmentation in relation to solar ultraviolet radiation
is correct, then the Neandertals must have been the most depigmented
population of humans ever to exist. While so called modern populations
appeared in Europe only about 35,000 to 40,000 years ago, Neandertals
first appeared in Europe between 150,000 to 200,000 years ago. They
lived in severe high latitude conditions during lengthy glacial
periods-- far longer-- than what modern northern and central Europeans
endured over the last 40 thousand years,  experiencing these conditions
for at least 4 to 8 times longer than modern Europeans.
Some studies suggest that rickets was quite common amongst Neanderthal
populations. Rickets is usually the result of a lack of vitamin D in
the diet due to the lack of exposure to ultraviolet light from the sun.
Most humans produce enough vitamin D in their skin by exposing
themselves to sunlight. But the darker skin populations who live in
higher latitudes tend to produce less vitamin D in their skins and have
a higher frequency of rickets than do lighter skinned populations. And
it is probable that Neandertals  covered a great deal of their bodies
with animal skins to stay warm during the sever glacial periods and
lived in dark caves probably as protection against the frigid
temperatures--  behavior which would have further exacerbated  vitamin
D deficiency in Neandertals. Therefore, in order to maximize vitamin D
production under conditions of limited UV radiation,  Neandertals must
have become extremely depigmented in order to optimize their adaptation
to their prolonged high latitude environment . Adjunctive
characteristics usually associated with  dramatic depigmentation such
as-- blond hair and blue eyes-- if not universal,  must have been far
more common amongst  Neandertal populations than is seen in any modern
European populations today.

Marcel Williams
9/29/99

Oops - I posted this to the wrong thread...

I heard an interesting theory on the Neandertal.

The concept is that blue eyes take extremely long to develop genetically.  The
arctic clans from northern asia and north america don't have blue eyes.  The
only people with blue eyes are of northern european ancestry.

The hypothesis is that anyone with blue (or green or hazel) eyes gets them from
their Neandertal ancesters.

This is one of those concepts that seems intuitively obvious outside of the lab
(for those that wander into reality).  With the countless combinations of the
meetings of homo sapiens and neandertals, it seems thoroughly improbable that
cross-fertilization never took place.

The binary question of yes or no is a much easier question than the question of
how many times and in what situations.  As elsewhere in nature, the probability
of a lone male of one and a lone female of the other meeting and coupling
somewhere, sometime, is astronomically high.  The question is how many times?
10? 100? 1000?

Steve H



Anne Gilbert wrote:

> ----- Original Message -----
> From: <hydra9@...>
> To: <paleoanthropology@eGroups.com>
> Sent: Tuesday, September 28, 1999 9:58 PM
> Subject: [paleoanthropology] Neandertal-Cro-Magnon hybridization?
>
> Does anyone out there know how frequently occipital buns appear  in
> modern European populations relative to other modern human populations?
> And what are your opinions on the possibility or impossibility of
> Neandertal - Cro-Magnon hybridization?
>
> Marcel:
>
> I presume you know about the Lapedo find in Portugal that is dated to about
> 25,000 years ago.  This is presumably long after Neandertals disappeared,
> but Erik Trinkaus and Joao Zilhao believe it to be a "hybrid" of Neandertal
> and Cro-Magnon, based on its apparent mosaic of characteristics.  Dr. Brace
> also believes(if I'm not putting words into his mouth), that the Lapedo Kid
> shows a mixture of "modern" and "Neandertal" traits, but he believes
> "moderns" and Neandertals were one large population(apologies to Dr. Brace
> if I'm oversimplifying things here).  As far as *I'm* concerned, I believe
> such things are possible.  Whether they happened or not is something
> paleoanthropologists have been arguing about for a very long time.  And I
> don't think they are about to stop now.
> Anne G
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Join theglobe.com the premiere online community! Take advantage of
> FREE homepages, Stock quotes, News, Chat, Games and more! Interact
> with people just like you! http://clickhere.egroups.com/click/1042
>
> eGroups.com home: http://www.egroups.com/group/paleoanthropology
> http://www.egroups.com - Simplifying group communications

----- Original Message -----
From: <hydra9@...>
To: <paleoanthropology@eGroups.com>
Sent: Tuesday, September 28, 1999 9:58 PM
Subject: [paleoanthropology] Neandertal-Cro-Magnon hybridization?


Does anyone out there know how frequently occipital buns appear  in
modern European populations relative to other modern human populations?
And what are your opinions on the possibility or impossibility of
Neandertal - Cro-Magnon hybridization?

Marcel:

I presume you know about the Lapedo find in Portugal that is dated to about
25,000 years ago.  This is presumably long after Neandertals disappeared,
but Erik Trinkaus and Joao Zilhao believe it to be a "hybrid" of Neandertal
and Cro-Magnon, based on its apparent mosaic of characteristics.  Dr. Brace
also believes(if I'm not putting words into his mouth), that the Lapedo Kid
shows a mixture of "modern" and "Neandertal" traits, but he believes
"moderns" and Neandertals were one large population(apologies to Dr. Brace
if I'm oversimplifying things here).  As far as *I'm* concerned, I believe
such things are possible.  Whether they happened or not is something
paleoanthropologists have been arguing about for a very long time.  And I
don't think they are about to stop now.
Anne G

>"marc verhaegen" <marc.verhaegen@...> wrote:

>>original article: http://www.egroups.com/group/paleoanthropology/?start=8
I just read this: German daily 'Die Welt' of 29th September carries an
article on the oldest human skulls discovered out of Africa. The almost
complete skulls from the Dmanisi site in Georgia  are said to be 1.8 million
years old. The director of the joint Georgian-German excavation team
Gerhard Bosinski is quoted saying that  early human evolution might have
taken place not only in Africa, but also in Eurasia. The article in online
at http://www.welt.de at the 'Wissenschaft' section. Lutz Szemkus.     That
means that the oldest H.erectus known today is the Mojokerto child (river
delta) & (slightly later?) the Dmanisi skull (lakeside), then perhaps still
near the Tethys sea (1.8my). H.ergaster of Nariokotome (swamp) is somewhat
later (1.6my).

>Since Homo seems to first appear in sub-Saharan Africa during a dry glacial
period that began sometime between 2.5 and 2.8 million years ago, it seems
unlikely that Homo could have migrated out of Africa across the ultra dry
Sahara IMO. Even if early Homo managed to migrate down river from
sub-Saharan Africa along the Nile during this glacial period, it still seems
unlikely that they could have migrated significantly beyond the Nile Delta
across the extremely dry and extremely cold (at night) deserts of the
middle-east to other global regions until the warmer and wetter interglacial
period began sometime between 2.0 and 2.2? million years ago.


Well, the definition of early Homo is not clear. Bernard Wood in a recent
paper in Science doubted whether H.habilis sensu stricto was Homo (IMO it's
some kind of gracile australopith, more akin to Lucy) & even whether
H.rudolfensis was Homo (ER-1470 could have been some kind of robust a'pith
with an enlarged brain). IOW the first undoubted Homo is perhaps the
Mojokerto child & the Dmanisi skull 1.8mya (H.ergaster in Nariokotome in
Kenya is ca.200,000 years younger). If that is true (not sure but certainly
not impossible), the first Homo comes from a former beach in SE-Asia.

The a'piths on the other hand are only found in Africa. But since they have
a lot more apelike features than humanlike features, several PAs think they
might be no closer to humans than they are to gorillas or chimps. If that is
so (and IMO the a'piths should be excluded from human ancestry), it's even
possible that our ancestors ca.2mya did not come from Africa, but had lived
for some time in the Near East or along the Indian Ocean coasts or so. After
all, gibbons live in Asia, orangs live in Asia, the Miocene great apes lived
in Arabia, Europe, Turkey, India... It's not impossible that the ancestors
of chimps & gorillas also came from Arabia or Eurasia & only entered Africa
in the Pliocene (possibly as australopithecines).

Marc - http://www.flash.net/~hydra9/marcaat.html
http://allserv.rug.ac.be/~mvaneech/Symposium.html
http://jurix.rechten.rug.nl/rth/ess/ess50.htm

I heard an interesting theory on the Neandertal.

The concept is that blue eyes take extremely long to develop genetically.  The
arctic clans from northern asia and north america don't have blue eyes.  The
only people with blue eyes are of northern european ancestry.

The hypothesis is that anyone with blue (or green or hazel) eyes gets them from
their Neandertal ancesters.

This is one of those concepts that seems intuitively obvious outside of the lab
(for those that wander into reality).  With the countless combinations of the
meetings of homo sapiens and neandertals, it seems thoroughly improbable that
cross-fertilization never took place.

The binary question of yes or no is a much easier question than the question of
how many times and in what situations.  As elsewhere in nature, the probability
of a lone male of one and a lone female of the other meeting and coupling
somewhere, sometime, is astronomically high.  The question is how many times?
10? 100? 1000?

Steve H


Marc Verhaegen wrote:

> I just read this:
>
> German daily 'Die Welt' of 29th September carries an article on the
> oldest human skulls discovered out of Africa. The almost complete skulls
> from the Dmanisi site in Georgia  are said to be 1.8 million years old.
> The director of the joint Georgian-German excavation team  Gerhard
> Bosinski is quoted saying that  early human evolution might have
> taken place not only in Africa, but also in Eurasia.
> The article in online at http://www.welt.de at the 'Wissenschaft'
> section. Lutz Szemkus
>
> That means that the oldest H.erectus known today is the Mojokerto child
> (river delta) & (slightly later?) the Dmanisi skull (lakeside), then perhaps
> still near the Tethys sea (1.8my). H.ergaster of Nariokotome (swamp) is
> somewhat later (1.6my).
>
> Marc
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Special offer for eGroups Users: 100 Business Cards FREE!
> Visit iPrint.com - The Internet iPrint Shop today to get
> your set!  http://clickhere.egroups.com/click/1025
>
> eGroups.com home: http://www.egroups.com/group/paleoanthropology
> http://www.egroups.com - Simplifying group communications

On Tue, 28 Sep 1999 21:58:58 -0700 hydra9@... wrote:

> Here’s an interesting letter I found in an old  May 1996
> journal of National Geographic.
>
> Neandertals
>
> I found myself chuckling while reading the engrossing
> article on Neandertals (January 1996). I think that my
> siblings and I may harbor Neandertal genes. We all
> inherited an occipital bun, a bulge at the base of the
> skull typical of classic Neandertals, from my father’s
> side of the family, who came from Lithuania. Being of
> European extraction makes it possible for me to have
> Neandertal ancestors. Perhaps Neandertals and modern humans
> did more than coexist for 10,000 years. If we could extract
> DNA for comparison with modern humans, that would solve
> part of the riddle of what happened to the Neandertals and
> where we got our bumps.
>
> Benard J. Lane, SR.
> Pleasant Garden, North Carolina
>
> Does anyone out there know how frequently occipital buns
> appear  in modern European populations relative to other
> modern human populations? And what are your opinions on the
> possibility or impossibility of Neandertal - Cro-Magnon
> hybridization?
>
I've seen this reproduced in sci.anthropology or another
one of those NGs in the past. I don't know what the current
frequency of occipital buns is in Europe but if you read
the classic paper on the matter:

Trinkaus, E. & LeMay, M. (1982) Occipital bunning among
later Pleistocene hominids. American Journal of Physical
Anthropology. 57 (1). 27 - 35.

then it is clear that bunning occurs at similar levels to
the early European moderns in a number of populations which
could be alternative ancestors other than the Neanderthals.
Most traits which are 'typically Neanderthal' occur in
earlier groups, the best example I can think of is the
suprainaic fossa (also on the occipital) which appears in
most hominid populations from 500 ka onwards at a frequency
I estimate at about 25%. It is only amongst the 'classic'
Neanderthals that this jumps to close to 100% (I think
there is one exception). Going back to bunning I would
guess that the frequency dropped through the Holocene as
populations became less robust but it doesn't suprise me
that some families still have the feature but I don't see
any reason why it should indicate some kind of Neanderthal
genetic contribution. Thanks to people like Frayer and
Wolpoff I've been able to read some of the best claims for
Neanderthal genetic continuity and initially the arguements
seem pretty clear but on a wider reading of the literature
there is nothing unequivocal that suggests such an input.
I'm sure it probably did happen even if they were of
different species but it is very difficult to prove. An
interesting recent study is that of Trinkaus and co on the
UP-associated Saint-Césaire Neanderthal:

Long Bone Shaft Robusticity and Body Proportions of the
Saint-Césaire 1   Châtelperronian Neanderthal
Trinkaus E., Churchill S.E., Ruff C.B., Vandermeersch B.
Journal of Archaeological Science, July 1999, vol. 26, no.
7, pp. 753-773.

Erik Trinkaus, Christopher B. Ruff, Steven E. Churchill,
and Bernard Vandermeersch      Locomotion and body
proportions of the Saint-Césaire 1 Châtelperronian
Neandertal. PNAS 1998 95: 5836-5840.

And I think the discussion in Trinkaus et al., 1998 is
relevant to this issue:

"Locomotor Patterns. At the same time, the degree of
structural anteroposterior reinforcement of the femoral
midshaft of at least recent humans parallels degrees of
mobility, such that, on average, males exhibit greater
midshaft anteroposterior reinforcement than females,
including among Pleistocene Homo (33), and pre-industrial
populations inhabiting more accentuated terrains exhibit an
emphasis on anteroposterior femoral strength (39). The
greater femoral midshaft anteroposterior strength in the
early modern human sample therefore suggests a higher
average level of habitual mobility (contrasts in terrain
per se are not relevant because the two reference groups
occupied most of the same regions, and, if there are any
differences in habitual terrain, it is more likely that
the Neandertal sample experienced a steeper topography
because many of the early modern human remains derive from
the more open central European plains). With respect to
this, Saint-Césaire 1 falls clearly with the early modern
humans and separate from the Neandertals.

Of interest, this shift in femoral diaphyseal structural
reinforcement occurred without the development of a
pilaster (the modern human solution) but instead involved
the hypertrophy and dorsal expansion of the medial buttress
(the archaic Homo solution). "

i.e. this UP Neanderthal had a higher degree of mobility
but rather than the skeltal structure being 'modern' it is
a classic case of exaption - which is a reasonable 'design'
solution if they had to rapidly respond to a situation.

	 Just a thought,
			 Dan

Since Homo seems to first appear  in sub-Saharan Africa during a dry
glacial period that began sometime between 2.5 and 2.8 million years
ago, it seems unlikely that Homo could have migrated out of Africa
across the ultra dry Sahara IMO. Even if early Homo managed to migrate
down river from sub-Saharan Africa along the Nile during this glacial
period, it still seems unlikely that they could have migrated
significantly beyond the Nile Delta across the extremely dry and
extremely cold (at night) deserts of the middle-east to other global
regions until the warmer and wetter interglacial period began sometime
between 2.0 and 2.2? million years ago.
Marcel
*****
"marc verhaegen" <marc.verhaege-@...> wrote:
original article:http://www.egroups.com/group/paleoanthropology/?start=8
> I just read this:
>
> German daily 'Die Welt' of 29th September carries an article on the
> oldest human skulls discovered out of Africa. The almost complete
skulls
> from the Dmanisi site in Georgia  are said to be 1.8 million years
old.
> The director of the joint Georgian-German excavation team  Gerhard
> Bosinski is quoted saying that  early human evolution might have
> taken place not only in Africa, but also in Eurasia.
> The article in online at http://www.welt.de at the 'Wissenschaft'
> section. Lutz Szemkus
>
> That means that the oldest H.erectus known today is the Mojokerto
child
> (river delta) & (slightly later?) the Dmanisi skull (lakeside), then
perhaps
> still near the Tethys sea (1.8my). H.ergaster of Nariokotome (swamp)
is
> somewhat later (1.6my).
>
> Marc
>
>
>

Here’s an interesting letter I found in an old  May 1996 journal of
National Geographic.

Neandertals

I found myself chuckling while reading the engrossing article on
Neandertals (January 1996). I think that my siblings and I may harbor
Neandertal genes. We all inherited an occipital bun, a bulge at the
base of the skull typical of classic Neandertals, from my father’s side
of the family, who came from Lithuania. Being of European extraction
makes it possible for me to have Neandertal ancestors. Perhaps
Neandertals and modern humans did more than coexist for 10,000 years.
If we could extract DNA for comparison with modern humans, that would
solve part of the riddle of what happened to the Neandertals and where
we got our bumps.

Benard J. Lane, SR.
Pleasant Garden, North Carolina

Does anyone out there know how frequently occipital buns appear  in
modern European populations relative to other modern human populations?
And what are your opinions on the possibility or impossibility of
Neandertal - Cro-Magnon hybridization?

Marcel Williams

The paper in Die Welt of 29.9.99 on the Dmanisi skull in Georgia 1.8my:

Älteste Menschenschädel jenseits von Afrika

Deutsche Forscher präsentierten 1,8 Millionen Jahre alte Funde aus
Georgien - Neue Spekulationen über Evolution



Neuwied - Die beiden mit etwa 1,8 Millionen Jahren ältesten menschlichen
Schädel, die bislang auf eurasischem Boden entdeckt wurden, sind am Dienstag
in Neuwied erstmals präsentiert worden. Forscher des Römisch-Germanischen
Zentralmuseums Mainz (RGZM) und georgische Wissenschaftler hatten den
bedeutenden Urmenschenfund in Georgien gemacht. Die etwa 1,8 Millionen Jahre
alten Schädel sind fast vollständig erhalten.

Jetzt stelle sich die Frage, ob die früheste Menschheitsentwicklung nicht
nur in Afrika, sondern auch in Eurasien stattgefunden habe, erklärte
Ausgrabungsleiter Gerhard Bosinski, Direktor der Forschungsstelle
Altsteinzeit des RGZM. Der Fundplatz, der in einem Vulkangebiet liegt, wird
seit 1991 von Wissenschaftlern des Archäologischen Zentrums der Georgischen
Akademie der Wissenschaften Tiflis sowie von Archäologen des RGZM
untersucht.

Schon 1991 sei im georgischen Dmanisi ein 1,7 bis 1,8 Millionen Jahre alter
menschlicher Unterkiefer gefunden worden, hieß es. Außerdem hätten die
Forscher auf dem Gelände des eiszeitlichen Siedlungsplatzes Steinwerkzeuge
und Tierknochen geborgen. Ob die neuen Funde von männlichen oder weiblichen
Urmenschen stammen, sei noch nicht klar, sagte Bosinski. Die Schädel sollen
in der Werkstatt des RGZM konserviert werden.

Bisher wurde zumeist Afrika als Wiege der frühesten Menschheitsgeschichte
angesehen. Die neuen Funde deuten jedoch darauf hin, dass es außer in Afrika
auch in Eurasien Vorformen des Menschen gegeben hat. Die afrikanischen Funde
sind noch älter als die georgischen. Die Entwicklung begann dort mit dem
Australopithecus anamensis dessen früheste Form vor rund 4,2 Millionen
Jahren lebte.

Zwischen 3 700 000 und 2 100 000 vor Christus folgte der Australopithecus
afarensis. Er ist besser bekannt unter dem Namen "Lucy", An den Schienbeinen
ist zu erkennen, dass sich alle diese Tiere bereits auf zwei Beinen
bewegten. Aber sie konnten auch geschickt auf den Bäumen klettern. Somit
standen ihnen zwei Lebensräume offen, in denen sie nach Nahrung suchen
konnten: die Wälder und die Savannen.

Als gesichert gilt heute, dass aus der Gattung Australopithecus vor rund 2,5
Millionen Jahren die Gattung Homo hervorgegangen ist. Einen wichtigen
Schritt zum modernen Menschen machte Homo erectus. Er stellte vor 1,8
Millionen Jahren die ersten Faustkeile her. Das Gehirnvolumen wurde größer.
Gleichzeitig entwickelte sich die Sprache. Bislang nahmen Wissenschaftler
an, dass erst zu diesem Zeitpunkt die erste Auswanderungswelle aus Afrika
erfolgte. Die ältesten Funde außerhalb reichten 1,4 Millionen Jahre zurück.
Die jetzt in Georgien entdeckten Schädelknochen sind jedoch noch 400 000
Jahre älter.

Auch der frühe Homo sapiens tauchte vor rund 500 000 Jahren vermutlich
zuerst in Afrika auf. Die modernen Menschen (Homo sapiens sapiens) sind erst
rund 120 000 Jahre alt. Sie hatten ein sehr komplexes Sozialverhalten,
fertigten aufwändige Steinwerkzeuge und hinterließen kunstvolle
Höhlenmalereien.

Mensch und Affe haben einen gemeinsamen Urahn. Daran gibt es keinen Zweifel.
In welchen Schritten sich die Entwicklung zum Menschen tatsächlich vollzog,
bleibe bis heute zum größten Teil Spekulation, meint der Berliner
Evolutionsbiologe Professor Ulrich Zeller. Und jeder neue Skelettfund reiße
eher neue Wissenslücken in dieser Disziplin auf. dpa/CE

I just read this:

German daily 'Die Welt' of 29th September carries an article on the
oldest human skulls discovered out of Africa. The almost complete skulls
from the Dmanisi site in Georgia  are said to be 1.8 million years old.
The director of the joint Georgian-German excavation team  Gerhard
Bosinski is quoted saying that  early human evolution might have
taken place not only in Africa, but also in Eurasia.
The article in online at http://www.welt.de at the 'Wissenschaft'
section. Lutz Szemkus

That means that the oldest H.erectus known today is the Mojokerto child
(river delta) & (slightly later?) the Dmanisi skull (lakeside), then perhaps
still near the Tethys sea (1.8my). H.ergaster of Nariokotome (swamp) is
somewhat later (1.6my).

Marc

> An excellent  online article by Peter Ungar and Mark Teaford entitled, 'A
paleontological perspective on the evolution of human diet' can be found
online at:
http://www.cast.uark.edu/local/icaes/conferences/wburg/posters/pungar/satalk
.htm         In that article, they reiterate what has been commonly accepted
in the paleoanthropological community over the last few decades that “...
evidence suggest a dietary shift in the early australopithecines indicating
an  improved ability to consume hard, abrasive foods compared with their
hominoid forebearers. Changes in diet-related adaptations from
Australopithecus anamensis to A. afarensis to A.africanus suggest that hard,
abrasive foods became increasingly important through the Pliocene.”
Assuming that the types of hard, abrasive food items utilized by the
australopithecines during the Pliocene and Pleistocene of East Africa still
exist today in that region, what exactly were those food items? What were
the specific-- hard object-- food items of East Africa (fruits, nuts, seeds,
ect.) that australopithecines utilized in their diets that caused their
canines to atrophy and their molars to become so thick with enamel? What did
Australopithecus eat?

Yes, what exactly did the different a'pith species eat? very interesting
question, only partly answered by the Ungar-Teaford paper.

Note that the same increase in enamel thickness is seen in the later Miocene
dryopith-like fossils in Eurasia, when the climate became cooler & the
milieu more open, just as in E+S-Africa 5-7my later (seasonal variation &
deciduous forests): Ourano=Graecopith & Ankarapith also hade superthick
enamel, like the robust a'piths. Electron microscopic studies suggest the
robust a'pith diet included more wood (bark, stems, reed or bamboo stalks,
nuts...). DuBrul once compared the differences between gracile & robust
a'piths with those between the usual bears & the giant panda (more
orthognathic face, broader cheekteeth, premolar molarisation...), who eats
bamboo. Probably the hard food of Ourano-Ankarapith & the robust a'piths was
something they had to eat in the dry or cold season when few fruits were
available.

You can find my provisional opinion on the a'pith diet in our contribution
to http://allserv.rug.ac.be/~mvaneech/Symposium.html

Marc - http://www.flash.net/~hydra9/marcaat.html
http://jurix.rechten.rug.nl/rth/ess/ess50.htm

That URL for Peter Ungar and Mark Teaford entitled,
A paleontological perspective on the evolution of human diet. can be found =
online at:
  http://www.cast.uark.edu/local/icaes/conferences/wburg/posters/pungar/sata=
lk.htm

Marcel
******
hydra-@... wrote:
original article:http://www.egroups.com/group/paleoanthropology/?start=5
> An excellent  online article by Peter Ungar and Mark Teaford entitled,
> 'A paleontological perspective on the evolution of human diet' can be
> found online at: http://www.cast.uark.edu/local/icaes/conferences/wburg
> /posters/pungar/satalk.htm
>
> In that article, they reiterate what has been commonly accepted in the
> paleoanthropological community over the last few decades that “
>
> “... evidence suggest a dietary shift in the early australopithecines
> indicating an  improved ability to consume hard, abrasive foods
> compared with their hominoid forebearers. Changes in diet-related
> adaptations from Australopithecus anamensis to A. afarensis to A.
> africanus suggest that hard, abrasive foods became increasingly
> important through the Pliocene.”
>
> Assuming that the types of hard, abrasive food items utilized by the
> australopithecines during the Pliocene and Pleistocene of East Africa
> still exist today in that region, what exactly were those food items?
> What were the specific-- hard object-- food items of East Africa
> (fruits, nuts, seeds, ect.) that australopithecines utilized in their
> diets that caused their canines to atrophy and their molars to become
> so thick with enamel? What did Australopithecus eat?
>
> Marcel Williams
> 9/27/99
>

An excellent  online article by Peter Ungar and Mark Teaford entitled,
'A paleontological perspective on the evolution of human diet' can be
found online at: http://www.cast.uark.edu/local/icaes/conferences/wburg
/posters/pungar/satalk.htm

In that article, they reiterate what has been commonly accepted in the
paleoanthropological community over the last few decades that “

“... evidence suggest a dietary shift in the early australopithecines
indicating an  improved ability to consume hard, abrasive foods
compared with their hominoid forebearers. Changes in diet-related
adaptations from Australopithecus anamensis to A. afarensis to A.
africanus suggest that hard, abrasive foods became increasingly
important through the Pliocene.”

Assuming that the types of hard, abrasive food items utilized by the
australopithecines during the Pliocene and Pleistocene of East Africa
still exist today in that region, what exactly were those food items?
What were the specific-- hard object-- food items of East Africa
(fruits, nuts, seeds, ect.) that australopithecines utilized in their
diets that caused their canines to atrophy and their molars to become
so thick with enamel? What did Australopithecus eat?

Marcel Williams
9/27/99

Here’s some interesting passages from 1997 from Dr. Harrison and Dr.
Rook on my favorite fossil primate Oreopithecus bambolii:

“The V1 fauna from Baccinello occurs in  a lignite layer. This
assemblage is considered equivalent to the Oreopithecus-bearing faunas
from coal mines at Casteani, Montemassi, and Ribolla in southern
Tuscany. The remains of Oreopithecus bambolii are extremely abundant in
V1, and this species represents one of the commonest mammals at the
site....

Evidence for a primarily aquatic setting and a humid forested
environment is provided by the extensive lignite accumulations, the
common occurrence of skeletal remains in anatomical connection, the
abundance of fossil crocodiles, chelonians, and freshwater mollusks,
and the occurrence of otters...The area was evidently poorly drained,
and the forested areas were interspersed with numerous freshwater pools
and shallow lakes....

Interestingly, there is also a corresponding decline in the abundance
of Oreopithecus in V2, which might imply a relatively narrow ecological
preference by this taxon for swampy, forested habitats...

Oreopithecus is an exceedingly common element of the fauna at sites
such as Baccinello, and we can deduce from this that Oreopithecus
probably occurred in quite high densities....

Another possibility is that Oreopithecus was exploiting aquatic or
wetland plants, such as water lilies, reeds, sedges, cattail,
pondweeds, horestails, and stoneworts, all of which are abundantly
represented in the pollen spectrum from Baccinello. However, in this
case, we might have anticipated a more derived postcranium, with
greater specialization, perhaps, for terrestrial locomotion or hindlimb
suspension that would have enabled Oreopithecus to forage close to the
waters edge.”


This is from Terry Harrison and Lorenzo Rook’s chapter (16) on
Oreopithecus in the 1997 book Function, Phylogeny, and Fossils.

Obviously, the most recent--  postcranial-- evidence of  bipedalism and
  australopithecine-like precision grips are clear indications that
oreopithecines were exploiting aquatic food resources by wading and
grasping in shallow water. More interesting articles and links related
to Oreopithecus can be found at my  Oreopithecus site at:
http://www.flash.net/~hydra9/oreopithecus.html


And don’t forget to check out the paleoprimatology links section at:
http://www.egroups.com/docvault/paleoanthropology/Links?autocreate=1

Marcel Williams
9/26/99

I’m in the middle of  a research paper on the phylogeny of extant and
  extinct hominoids and I can’t seem to find any information on the
  number of lumbar vertebrae in Australopithecus afarensis or early Homo
  (Homo habilis). I understand that a female australopithecine specimen
  from Sterkfontein had six lumbar vertebrae (a characteristic that is
  rare in great apes and modern humans )-- but was this number of lumbar
  vertebrae (6) typical of all australopithecine species and of early
  Homo?  Any information and references concerning this matter would be
  much appreciated.

  Marcel Williams
  New Odyssey Magazine
  http://www.flash.net/~hydra9

The scientific method is naturalistic. It denies the supernatural, and
declares that all phenomena are traceable to natural causes. It uses as
few concepts as possible. The simplest available explanation should be
prefered, that is , the one which involves the fewest or least
complexly related concepts that are adequate. - Andrew Salter (1949)

In other words, all questions, concepts, and opinions related to
primatology and human evolution are welcome as long as they remain in
the realm of science and scientific possibility.

Marcel Williams
New Odyssey Magazine
http://www.flash.net/~hydra9

A forum for the scientific  discussion of 
human origins and primate evolution.

Group Manager: paleoanthropology-owner@egroups.com

To subscribe, send a message to paleoanthropology-subscribe@egroups.com or go to the e-groups's home page at http://www.egroups.com/group/paleoanthropology/