All,
Here are a few items (my biased selection) from Evolutionary Anthropology, 2003, which should be of interest. The actual papers can be read
HERE.
Apologies if some of these have already been brought up.
Jacques Cinq-Mars
Eshleman, Jason A., Ripan S. Malhi, and David Glenn Smith. 2003. Mitochondrial DNA studies of Native Americans: Conceptions and misconceptions of the population prehistory of the Americas. Evolutionary Anthropology 12(1): 7 – 18.
Abstract:
A decade ago, the first reviews of the collective mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) data from Native Americans concluded that the Americas were peopled through multiple migrations from different Asian populations beginning more than 30,000 years ago.[1] These reports confirmed multiple-wave hypotheses suggested earlier by other sources and rejected the dominant Clovis-first archeological paradigm. Consequently, it appeared that molecular biology had made a significant contribution to the study of American prehistory. As Cann[2] comments, the Americas held the greatest promise for genetics to help solve some of the mysteries of prehistoric populations. In particular, mtDNA appeared to offer real potential as a means of better understanding ancient population movements. A decade later, none of the early conclusions remain unequivocal. Nevertheless, in its maturity, the study of Native American mtDNA has produced a volume of reports that still illuminate the nature and timing of the first peopling and postcolonization population movements within the New World.
Keywords: mtDNA • Native Americans • migrations • ancient DNA
Copyright © 2003 Wiley-Liss, Inc., A Wiley Company.
Hoffecker, John F. Scott A. Elias. 2003. Environment and archeology in Beringia. Evolutionary Anthropology 12(1): 34 – 49.
Abstract:
The occupation of Beringia remains one of the most complex problems in human paleoecology. This is because of the wide array of variables that are likely to have affected the timing and character of settlement in the now partially submerged land that lies between the Lena and Mackenzie Rivers. At a minimum, these variables include changing sea levels and coastlines, advancing and retreating glaciers, changing fauna and flora (including trees), and evolving human adaptations to high-latitude environments. Humans occupied Beringia during the interval between the end of the Last Glacial Maximum cold peak (ca. 20,000 cal BP) and the beginning of the Holocene (11,600 cal BP), when all of these variables were in an almost constant state of flux.
Keywords: Pleistocene • Bering Land Bridge • archeology
Copyright © 2003 Wiley-Liss, Inc., A Wiley Company.
Marean, Curtis W. and Jessica C. Thompson. 2003. Research on the origins of modern humans continues to dominate. Evolutionary Anthropology 12(4): 165 – 167.
No abstract.
Copyright © 2003 Wiley-Liss, Inc., A Wiley Company
Shea, John J. 2003. Neandertals, competition, and the origin of modern human behavior in the Levant. Evolutionary Anthropology 12(4): 173 – 187.
Abstract:
The East Mediterranean Levant is a small region, but its paleoanthropological record looms large in debates about the origin of modern humans and the fate of the Neandertals. For most of the twentieth century, the Levantine paleoanthropological record supported models of continuity and evolutionary transition between Neandertals and early modern humans. Recent advances in radiometric dating have challenged these models by reversing the chronological relationship between Levantine Neandertals and early modern humans. This revised chronostratigraphy for Levantine Middle Paleolithic human fossils raises interesting questions about the evolutionary relationship between Neandertals and early modern humans. A reconsideration of this relationship moves us closer to understanding the long delay between the origin of morphologically modern-looking humans during the Middle Paleolithic (>130 Kyr) and the adaptive radiation of modern humans into Eurasia around the time of the transition from the Middle to Upper Paleolithic (50 to 30 Kyr).
Keywords: Neandertals • Levant • modern human origins • Middle Paleolithic
Copyright © 2003 Wiley-Liss, Inc., A Wiley Company
d'Errico, Francesco. 2003. The invisible frontier. A multiple species model for the origin of behavioral modernity. Evolutionary Anthropology 12(4 ): 188 – 202.
Abstract:
Two contradictory theories of human cognitive evolution have been developed to model how, when, and among what hominid groups behavioral modernity emerged. The first model, which has long been the dominant paradigm, links these behavioral innovations to a cultural revolution by anatomically modern humans in Europe at around 40,000 years ago, coinciding with the first arrival of our species in this region.1-4 According to this model, the sudden and explosive character of this change is demonstrated by the appearance in the archeological record of previously unseen carvings, personal ornaments, musical instruments, depictions on cave walls, and new stone and bone technology. A variant of this model sees behavioral modernity resulting from a rapid biological change, a brain mutation producing no apparent change in skull anatomy, which occurred in Europe or, more probably, in Africa at ca. 50,000 years ago.56.
Keywords: Middle Stone Age • Mousterian • Neandertals • symbolism • modern humans
Copyright © 2003 Wiley-Liss, Inc., A Wiley Company
Hockett, Bryan and Jonathan Haws. 2003. Nutritional ecology and diachronic trends in Paleolithic diet and health. Evolutionary Anthropology 12(5): 211 – 216.
Abstract
Modern nutritional studies have found that diverse diets are linked to lower infant mortality rates and longer life expectancies in humans. This is primarily because humans require more than fifty essential nutrients for growth and cell maintenance and repair; most of these essential nutrients must come from outside food sources rather than being manufactured by the body itself; and a diversity of food types is required to consume the full suite of essential nutrients necessary for optimal human health. These principles and their related affects on human adaptations and demography are the hallmarks of a theoretical paradigm defined as nutritional ecology. This essay applies concepts derived from nutritional ecology to the study of human evolution. Principles of nutritional ecology are applied to the study of the Middle-to-Upper Paleolithic transition in order to broadly illustrate the interpretive ramifications of this approach. At any stage in human evolution, those hominid populations that chose to diversify their subsistence base may have had a selective advantage over competitors who restricted their diet principally to one food type, such as terrestrial mammals.
Copyright © 2003 Wiley-Liss, Inc., A Wiley Company
Uinuk-Ool ,Tatiana S., Naoko Takezaki, and Jan Klein. 2003. Ancestry and kinships of native Siberian populations: The HLA evidence. Evolutionary Anthropology: 12(5): 231 – 245..
No abstract.
Keywords: genetic variability • haplogroup • migration • dispersal • molecular anthropology
Copyright © 2003 Wiley-Liss, Inc., A Wiley Company
