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In this paper I explore the various attempts to integrate anthropology-and anthropologists-within the wider synthesis of evolution in the interval of time between 1927 and 1962 by tracking intersecting individuals and groupings at critical junctures such as conferences, commemorative events, and collaborative publications. I focus on the discipline as a unit of historical analysis and on a series of rhetorical arguments used to discipline and bound areas of study that grounded the secular philosophy of evolutionary humanism. I trace the beginnings of an originary narrative and offer a kind of prehistory of what was first referred to as "human evolution" and then "biological anthropology" an area of study that brought humans into the discipline of evolutionary biology. I examine the key roles played by "architects" of the evolutionary synthesis-such as Theodosius Dobzhansky, Julian Huxley, G. G. Simpson, and Ernst Mayr-and their relations with the anthropologists Sherwood Washburn, Ashley Montagu, and Sol Tax at pivotal meetings such as the Cold Spring Harbor meeting of 1950, the Darwin centennial at the University of Chicago in 1959, and a number of Wenner-Gren symposia culminating with the Burg Wartenstein symposium (no. 19) that saw the emergence of the new "molecular anthropology"

Several hypotheses have been put forward about the origins and evolution of the inhabitants of the Aleutian Islands. Both Hrdlička [The Aleutian and Commander Islands and Their Inhabitants (Philadelphia: Wistar Institute of Anatomy and Biology, 1945)] and Laughlin ["The Alaska gateway viewed from the Aleutian Islands," in Papers on the Physical Anthropology of the American Indian, W. S. Laughlin, ed. (New York: Viking Fund, 1951), 98-126] analyzed cranial morphology and came to somewhat different conclusions using a typological approach and limited analytical methods. Subsequent investigations using morphological data have not significantly improved our understanding of Aleut prehistory. More recently, radiocarbon dating and mitochondrial DNA analyses have shed light on Aleut genetic variation and changes over time, but better morphological methods using multivariate statistical analysis have not yet been used. We analyzed craniometric data using multivariate procedures and found that Aleuts demonstrate significant changes in cranial morphology over time, and these changes correspond to Hrdlička's observations but may not necessarily reflect in-migration. The morphological changes were concentrated in the very aspects of morphology that are easily observable and that Hrdlička most often measured, namely, cranial length, breadth, and height, but they were obscured when craniometric variation as a whole was analyzed. Also, we found that the morphological changes over time were not related to the changes in haplogroup frequencies over time, suggesting that migration into the Aleutians did not play a significant role in producing the morphological changes. However, craniometric variability apparently increases over time, suggesting in-migration, localized selection, and/or greater environmental heterogeneity. Our results contradict Laughlin's observations but may be more in line with his hypothesis of in situ evolutionary changes absent gene flow. In addition to selection, gene flow, and gene drift, however, sociocultural changes must also be considered as a factor in why morphology changed over time.

All along the nineteenth century different anthropological exhibitions were held in many countries, in which people from a number of indigenous communities, especially transported from their homeland for the occasion, were exhibited publicly, both for citizenship’s instruction and for specialist’s in vivo studies on Human Biology. This paper presents a brief description of some of these scientific shows, and tries to relate them to contemporary human biology theories., Durante todo el siglo XIX se celebraron en numerosos países diversas exposiciones de carácter «científico» en las que miembros de diferentes comunidades indígenas, especialmente transportadas desde sus tierras, eran exhibidos públicamente, tanto para instrucción del público lego como para el estudio in vivo por parte de especialistas en biología humana. Este trabajo presenta una breve descripción de algunas de estás exhibiciones y trata de ponerlas en relación con el discurso teórico de la biología humana del periodo.

The Kirsten Skeletal Collection is curated in the Division of Anatomy and Histology, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Stellenbosch University, South Africa. It comprises the largest documented cadaver-derived South African coloured skeletal collection in the world. Our aim in this paper is to present an inventory and characterise the identified skeletons in the Kirsten Skeletal Collection as well as provide a descriptive indication of what researchers can expect to encounter at the anthropology unit at Stellenbosch University. The skeletal material was derived mainly from the cadaver donation programme of the Division of Anatomy and Histology over a 58-year period (1957–2015). All pertinent information for each individual skeleton is entered into a database and a full skeletal inventory is established. The skeletal database registry was analysed to demonstrate the distribution of age, sex and population affinity of individuals in the collection. Currently, this collection consists of 1161 skeletons with known records. Despite differences in the age and sex composition, the skeletal profile in general reflects mainly the profile of the Western Cape population. Most individuals were born between 1920 and 1950, placing the Kirsten Skeletal Collection in the early to mid-20th century. The age at death for the greatest proportion (41.8%) of individuals was between 40 and 60 years. Current biological profile techniques in age, ancestry and sex estimation can be improved and, among others, new regional and ancestral specific standards for the biologically unique and diverse South African coloured population can be developed. Significance: We present the largest documented skeletal collection of the South African coloured population in the world. This work contributes to the skeletal reference database for use by physical anthropologists and others.

Roger Green, probably the most influential figure in the field of Oceanic prehistory over the past 50 years, died in Auckland on October 4, 2009, aged 77. (1) Although best known for his archaeological work on human settlement of the Pacific, Green also made important contributions to Oceanic historical linguistics, especially to the synthesis of linguistic evidence with that of other historical disciplines. Green's scholarly career grew into a kind of giant banyan tree, spreading in many directions while providing open spaces and shelter for others. In the Pacific his archaeological field projects spanned Polynesia, from Mangareva, Tahiti, and Samoa to New Zealand and Hawai'i, and Melanesia, from Fiji and the Southeast Solomons to Watom, in the Bismarck Archipelago. Along the way, he nurtured scores of up-and-coming scholars, as advisor, teacher, project leader, backer in matters of grant-getting, job application referee, coauthor, critical reader of drafts, and so on. Green's linguistic conrnfoitions were of two main kinds. First, he wrote a number of substantial papers and coauthored a major book dealing with Oceanic (chiefly Polynesian) historical linguistics and what this tells us about Oceanic culture history. Of his 300 or so publications, about 15 focus on linguistic evidence, while many others treat linguistic issues to a lesser or greater degree. Second, he planned and directed multidisciplinary projects in which historical linguistic research was one major strand. In this entrepreneurial role, he played a large part in sparking off a golden age of Polynesian linguistics--the burst of descriptive and comparative research that took place in the 1960s and '70s. Roger Curtis Green was born in Ridgewood, New Jersey, on March 15, 1932, but spent most of his childhood in Watertown, in upstate New York. His father, Robert, and his mother, Eleanor, had degrees in engineering and English, respectively, but in the Great Depression neither could find work in their chosen fields, and the family moved to Watertown when Robert found work there. By the age of 11, Roger had decided he wanted to become an archaeologist and work on Native American prehistory. The family took his wishes seriously. After the sudden death of Roger's father in 1947, Eleanor moved with her children to Albuquerque, New Mexico, so that Roger could finish high school there and qualify for in-state tuition at the University of New Mexico, which offered a program in archaeology. After gaining a BA in Anthropology and a BSc in Geology from UNM, Roger began graduate studies at Harvard in 1955. Both at UNM and Harvard, Roger was schooled in the Boasian tradition of anthropology in which this field was regarded as consisting of four subfields: cultural (or social) anthropology, archaeology, linguistics, and physical anthropology. From an early time, he aimed to do what he called "holistic archaeology" or "culture history," integrating the testimonies of all relevant historical disciplines. (Later, he preferred to call it "historical anthropology.") He took enough courses in descriptive linguistics to gain a basic knowledge of its methods, and taught himselfthe fundamentals of historical linguistics. In his first couple of years at Harvard, Roger had no thought of working in the Pacific. He was learning from the famed Americanist, Gordon Willey, about the new "settlement pattern" archaeology, which focused on settlement and artifact scatters across a landscape, and he had in mind to continue working in the American Southwest, where since his undergraduate days at UNM he had accumulated a considerable amount of data and fieldwork experience. BECOMING A POLYNESIANIST. It was a social anthropologist at Harvard, Douglas Oliver, who caused Roger to become a Polynesianist. Oliver was then beginning a long-term anthropological study of the Society Islands. Roger took some courses from him, including a seminar on Polynesia, and Oliver invited him to join his project and do settlement pattern archaeology on Mo'orea. …

This paper reviews the concept of morphogenetic fields within the dentition that was first proposed by Butler (Butler PM. Studies of the mammalian dentition. Differentiation of the post-canine dentition. Proc Zool Soc Lond B 1939;109:1-36), then adapted for the human dentition by Dahlberg (Dahlberg AA. The changing dentition of man. J Am Dent Assoc 1945;32:676-90; Dahlberg AA. The dentition of the American Indian. In: Laughlin WS, editor. The Physical Anthropology of the American Indian. New York: Viking Fund Inc.; 1951. p. 138-76). The clone theory of dental development, proposed by Osborn (Osborn JW. Morphogenetic gradients: fields versus clones. In: Butler PM, Joysey KA, editors Development, function and evolution of teeth. London: Academic Press, 1978. p. 171-201), is then considered before these two important concepts are interpreted in the light of recent findings from molecular, cellular, genetic and theoretical and anthropological investigation. Sharpe (Sharpe PT. Homeobox genes and orofacial development. Connect Tissue Res 1995;32:17-25) put forward the concept of an odontogenic homeobox code to explain how different tooth classes are initiated in different parts of the oral cavity in response to molecular cues and the expression of specific groups of homeobox genes. Recently, Mitsiadis and Smith (Mitsiadis TA, Smith MM. How do genes make teeth to order through development? J Exp Zool (Mol Dev Evol) 2006; 306B:177-82.) proposed that the field, clone and homeobox code models could all be incorporated into a single model to explain dental patterning. We agree that these three models should be viewed as complementary rather than contradictory and propose that this unifying view can be extended into the clinical setting using findings on dental patterning in individuals with missing and extra teeth. The proposals are compatible with the unifying aetiological model developed by Brook (Brook AH. A unifying aetiological explanation for anomalies of tooth number and size. Archs Oral Biol 1984;29:373-78) based on human epidemiological and clinical findings. Indeed, this new synthesis can provide a sound foundation for clinical diagnosis, counselling and management of patients with various anomalies of dental development as well as suggesting hypotheses for future studies.

This paper traces the presence, absence, and shifting connotations of the term ‘race’ and the idea of human classification in representations of indigenous Oceanian people by navigators, naturalists and artists on 18th-century British and French voyages. These ambiguous usages signified hardening European attitudes to human difference, as the holistic, ‘environmentalist’ explanations of the natural history of man lost ground to the differentiating physicalism of the new sciences of biology and physical anthropology. However, by correlating the generation of ideas with particular embodied encounters, I question the presumption that voyagers’ representations of indigenous people were entirely determined by preconceptions derived from received knowledge and prevailing discourses. I suggest instead that indigenous behaviour and demeanour left latent countersigns in the language, tone and content of such travel literature and art — on which the emergent metropolitan science of man drew heavily to justify its d...

KEYWORDS Population genetics; breeding population; glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase deficiency; haemoglobin variants; climatic factors ABSTRACT The discipline of Biological Anthropology (or Human Biology) incorporates study of biology and environmental factors, as well as the forces of micro-evolution leading to macro-evolution, which ultimately influences the structure of human populations. In the present paper and attempt has been made to study the distribution of Glucose-6-Phosphate Dehydrogenase Deficiency and Abnormal Haemoglobins (HBS and HBE) frequencies among the people of India, which are analysed in relation to ecological, socio-economic and linguistic factors.

The subject of this paper is the physical anthropological analysis of the osteological material discovered in the year 2010 in the sites B0_7-B0_8 during salvage excavations conducted on the future route of the highway section Arad-Timișoara. In most cases the taphonomic factors did not allow for the preservation of the skeleton, but teeth were present in a much better condition and therefore dental analysis was conducted in order to determine not only the age at death of the individuals but also to identify existing pathologies. Though the amount of information that could be drawn from the analysis was small due to the absence of the skeleton, the dentition provided data that can be useful both for the interpretation of the findings from the site, and for future analysis of other osteological materials assigned to the Sarmatian population.

Diet is key to understanding the paleoecology of early hominins. We know little about the diets of these fossil taxa, however, in part because of a limited fossil record, and in part because of limitations in methods available to infer their feeding adaptations. This paper applies a new method, dental topographic analysis, to the inference of diet from fossil hominin teeth. This approach uses laser scanning to generate digital 3D models of teeth and geographic information systems software to measure surface attributes, such as slope and occlusal relief. Because it does not rely on specific landmarks that change with wear, dental topographic analysis allows measurement and comparison of variably worn teeth, greatly increasing sample sizes compared with techniques that require unworn teeth. This study involved comparison of occlusal slope and relief of the lower second molars of Australopithecus afarensis (n=15) and early Homo (n=8) with those of Gorilla gorilla gorilla (n=47) and Pan troglodytes troglodytes (n=54). Results indicate that while all groups show reduced slope and relief in progressively more worn specimens, there are consistent differences at given wear stages among the taxa. Early Homo shows steeper slopes and more relief than chimpanzees, whereas A. afarensis shows less slope and relief than any of the other groups. The differences between the two hominin taxa are on the same order as those between the extant apes, suggesting similar degrees of difference in diet. Because these chimpanzees and gorillas differ mostly in fallback foods where they are sympatric, results suggest that the early hominins may likewise have differed mostly in fallback foods, with A. afarensis emphasizing harder, more brittle foods, and early Homo relying on tougher, more elastic foods.

AbstarctThe aim of this paper is to examine the potential for forensic archaeology to develop in Australia. A brief history of the development of the discipline is provided highlighting the ways in which archaeological principles and techniques have been used in North America and Britain to enhance the investigation of crime and disaster scenes. While a number of practitioners with expertise in biological anthropology have assisted police in forensic-related work involving human remains in Australia or its near neighbours, little use has been made of the archaeologist in the investigation of domestic forensic cases. The frequency of homicides and minimal knowledge about what exactly forensic archaeology encompasses are considered as possible reasons for the limited use of forensic archaeology in Australia. International case studies clearly illustrate the benefits of including an archaeologist in the investigation of a crime and/or disaster scene. It is argued that Australia should learn from these case s...

This article describes how Karin Mark’s (1922–1999) monograph Physical Anthropology of Finno-Ugric Peoples, a bulky and beautifully designed book, (Tallinn: Academy of Sciences Press and Institute of History, Tallinn University, 2014, 542 pp.), reached publication.For better understanding of the background, short summaries are given of the research activities of three major Estonian anthropologists – Prof. Juhan Aul, Karin Mark and Leiu Heapost.When analysing the materials collected from 1955–1976 and preparing her life’s work for print as Origin of Finno-Ugric Peoples According to Anthropological Data, K. Mark passed away, and the book was unfinished. Only the unique collections of materials and manuscripts based on their analysis remained.Based on these, Leiu Heapost began to compile, enlarge and edit K. Mark’s monograph that by today has been published under the new title. Why did L. Heapost decide to do it, what were her aims, by which principles was she guided, where did she consider it necessary to make corrections and additions, etc.? Answers to all of this can be found in the materials L. Heapost included in the monograph compiled by her.It is certain that the unique materials collected by K. Mark and published 15 years after her death open new prospects for researchers for further indepth studies of the theme.

Anthropmetric data have always been of interest for scientists. They have also great practical value for different groups of people: tailors, designers and also health care specialists. Anthropological data are different in different geographical areas and also change in time. That is why it is important to save also results of older anthropometrical measurements. In Estonia the anthropometrical measurements have been made by different researchers since the 18th century. The Group of Physical Anthropology at the University of Tartu (initiated by prof Helje Kaarma) was especially active in gathering anthropometric data. The data were saved in the Anthropometic Register. Unfortunately, the register had no financial support and so its activities stopped. In summer 2016 the group of people interested in saving the historical anthropometric data started revitalising the Register of Anthropological Data. Hopefully, it will be possible to use the Estonian Social Science Data Archive for this purpose.

Neanderthal lives were not easy, and, given the levels of physical exertion they seem to have experienced habitually, bringing them often into contact with physical trauma, it would not be surprising if such phenomena played a major role in the way in which Neanderthals perceived the world. This is the underlying theme of this paper, which is organized into two parts. After presenting data on Neanderthal ontogeny and lifecycles, an attempt is made to integrate these broadly with the archaeological record and intepret both in terms of the constitution of society by Neanderthal individuals. In this sense it is in the main a purely interpretative work, representing the author's reading of the biometric and archaeological data. Given that linguistic and/or external means of information storage and communication were probably poor or absent in Neanderthal society, it is suggested that the phases of the Neanderthal lifecycle and events of physical trauma experienced ubiquitously within it played the major role in the negotiation of individual identities within Neanderthal bands, and ultimately were a major factor in the constitution of Neanderthal society.

The six papers reviewed by T. D. Stewart in the July 1952 issue of American Antiquity (Vol. XVIII, No. 1, pp. 71-72; also reviewed in the American ]ournal of Archaeology, Vol. 56, No. 4, October 1952, pp. 234- 236, by E. K. Reed) were given in the symposium on new methods and techniques of interpretation of the physical anthropology of the American Indian constituting the second half of the Viking Fund's Fourth Summer Seminar in Physical Anthropology, August 29 to September 3, 1949 (the first half being devoted to the Australopithecinae of South Africa). Abstracts of all papers were published in the Yearbook of Physical Anthropology, Vol. 4, 1948, New York (Viking Fund), 1949. In addition to the six papers presented in full in Physical Anthropology of the American Indian (ed. W. S. Laughlin, published by the Viking Fund, New York, 1951), these were: Morris Steggerda, “Anthropometry of the living American Indian“; Charles E. Snow, “The Sequence of Physical Types in North America“; and T. D. McCown, “The sequence of physical types in California.” Final discussion, of methods and theoretical considerations, was presided over by Stewart as moderator.

The human being is not only characterized by the ability of abstract thinking, upright walking and speaking, but also by a strong and differentiate functional asymmetry. The great majority are right-handers, showing a left-cerebrally dominance for language and praxis. It is very important to know the period when the human laterality of functions is evolved. Human beings of all races and cultures appear to have been predominantly right-handed since the earliest records were made. The time when right-handedness emerged in human evolution is a matter of some dispute. Because of poor record-keeping in prehistoric times, statements about the evolution of laterality in human beings must be based largely on speculation. The present review summarizes the prehistoric data concerning handedness and cerebral laterality. It is confirmed that laterality is not evolved in the last thousand years but it seems that lateralization of functions is the result of a protracted process elapsing perhaps several million years ago. Moreover this paper discusses the genesis and reasons of laterality.

Recent research on the possible external origins of the new developments in technology, society, culture and civilisation that took place in Yayoi Japan has concluded that there was substantial migration from East Asia, specifically Korea. This paper presents vidence from dental, cranial and DNA studies which suggests that there was another group, from island Southeast Asia (present-day Indonesia), in the Yayoi population.

Anthropology and raciology : on an interview with H.V. Vallois Summary. — As a follow up to the previous publication of interviews with Henri-Victor Vallois and Gustave Malécot, this paper seeks to correct some of the errors or misleading comments made. Indeed, it repudiates the alleged existence of a strong difference between a Continental European and an Anglo-Saxon conception of biological anthropology. In spite of early criticisms of the concept of race in Anthropology in the United States, some leading anthropologists and geneticists there had admitted the applicability of the concept of race to Mankind, even relying on genetic population theory to base theirs classifications on., Résumé. — La récente publication des entretiens avec Henri-Victor Vallois et Gustave Malécot comporte des erreurs ainsi que des affirmations discutables quant à l'histoire de la raciologie et à la différence entre une anthropologie européenne continentale et une anthropologie anglo-saxonne. Ainsi, aux États-Unis, d'influents anthropologues ou généticiens admirent l'applicabilité à l'Homme du concept de race. La génétique a même servi à cette fin., Ducros Albert. Anthropologie et raciologie : à propos d'une interview de Henri-Victor Vallois. —Anthropology and raciology: on an interview with H.V Vallois. In: Bulletins et Mémoires de la Société d'anthropologie de Paris, Nouvelle Série. Tome 9 fascicule 3-4, 1997. pp. 319-328.

Charles Darwin is universally associated with promoting the concept of organic evolution, but there have been persistent currents of denigration and misunderstanding that began with his own contemporaries and continue to the present, prominently represented today in paleontology and especially in biological anthropology where he has been described as a dull, timid, and mindless collector of trivia—“blotting paper, soaking up life's ink.” On the other hand, qualified analysts of literary style, philosophy, and the history of science have concluded, after careful analysis of his writings, that Darwin's contributions were of the highest caliber in each of the realms in question. His work was carried out with a full understanding of the highest standards of the thought and documentation of his intellectual predecessors and contemporaries. The significant roots of his orientation are to be found in the outlook of the Scottish Enlightenment. Just as the physical sciences represent a continuation at the professional level of “Scottish Realism,” Charles Darwin should be seen as the means by which that orientation was projected into what has become the biological sciences. Yrbk Phys Anthropol 40:91–111, 1997. © 1997 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

As one way of thinking about physiological anthropology, let us survey it from a historical viewpoint. At the beginning of the 19th century, Blumenbach, considered the father of Physical Anthropology, wrote his "Handbook of Comparative Anatomy and Physiology." The subsequent research conducted and papers written by researchers such as Broca and Martin pointed in the direction of physiological anthropology; furthermore, the research carried out by the American researchers Demon and Baker had a physiological anthropology "feel." The courses in Physiological Anthropology taught by Tokizane exerted a major influence on physiological anthropology in Japan. The precursor of the Japan Society of Physiological Anthropology, organized by Sato in 1978, was extremely significant in the effect that it had on the subsequent development of physiological anthropology. The holding of the biennial International Congress of Physiological Anthropology, along with the allocation of the Research sub-field of Physiological Anthropology in the Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research, would seem to suggest that the field of physiological anthropology is set to increasingly grow and evolve.

The first objective of this study is to examine temporal patterns in ancient dog burials in the Lake Baikal region of Eastern Siberia. The second objective is to determine if the practice of dog burial here can be correlated with patterns in human subsistence practices, in particular a reliance on terrestrial mammals. Direct radiocarbon dating of a suite of the region’s dog remains indicates that these animals were given burial only during periods in which human burials were common. Dog burials of any kind were most common during the Early Neolithic (,7–8000 B.P.), and rare during all other time periods. Further, only foraging groups seem to have buried canids in this region, as pastoralist habitation sites and cemeteries generally lack dog interments, with the exception of sacrificed animals. Stable carbon and nitrogen isotope data indicate that dogs were only buried where and when human diets were relatively rich in aquatic foods, which here most likely included river and lake fish and Baikal seal (Phoca sibirica). Generally, human and dog diets appear to have been similar across the study subregions, and this is important for interpreting their radiocarbon dates, and comparing them to those obtained on the region’s human remains, both of which likely carry a freshwater old carbon bias. Slight offsets were observed in the isotope values of dogs and humans in our samples, particularly where both have diets rich in aquatic fauna. This may result from dietary differences between people and their dogs, perhaps due to consuming fish of different sizes, or even different tissues from the same aquatic fauna. This paper also provides a first glimpse of the DNA of ancient canids in Northeast Asia.

The main processes invoked to explain the demise of Homo neanderthalensis are the effects of adverse climatic conditions in the northern hemisphere during Marine Isotope Stage 3 (MIS 3) and the outcome of the interaction with Anatomically Modern Humans (AMHs). Evidence for the co-existence of these two hominins, however, is elusive and, therefore, verifying the role which these processes might have played in the extirpation of Neandertals remains a topic of heated debate. A site which can contribute to throw light on the replacement of H. neanderthalensis by AMHs is Riparo Mezzena, a rockshelter in northern Italy, where late Mousterian lithic industries were found in association with human remains. This paper reviews the results of recent investigations on the lithic assemblages and human bones recovered during excavation campaigns which took place in 1957 and 1977. The study of the physical anthropology of the skeletal remains, in conjunction with palaeogenetic analyses on mitochondrial and nuclear DNA, have proven that the occupiers of Riparo Mezzena were Neandertals. The first radiocarbon date for the site, obtained on collagen extracted from a bovid from the lowermost part of the stratigraphic sequence (Layer III) and presented here (34,540 +/- 655 C-14 uncal BP), attests that Riparo Mezzena was occupied during the Middle-to-Upper Palaeolithic transition period. The anthropogenic deposits at the site actually accumulated when the nearby site of Grotta di Fumane was occupied by humans who produced Proto-Aurignacian lithic industries. This suggests that Neandertals and AMHs probably co-existed for a short period of time in northern Italy, possibly competing for resources within the confined territory of the Monti Lessini. These findings arising from new research on the collections of Riparo Mezzena have important implications not only for the study of the Middle-to-Upper Palaeolithic transition in Italy, but also for the understanding of the process through which AMHs replaced H. neanderthalensis.

Research in skeletal biology has a long history in Turkey, but the shift towards the study of contemporary people has recently been stimulated by the need for appropriate techniques for forensic application. There is an increasing need for data to determine if population-specific standards for age and stature estimation and sex determination are necessary and if so, to develop them. The purpose of this paper is to outline the development of forensic anthropology in Turkey. As has been the case elsewhere, forensic anthropology has its roots in physical anthropology. In Turkey, distinguished pioneers in physical anthropology, such as Sevket A. Kansu and Muzaffer S. Senyürek, focused on the skeletal biology of the historic and prehistoric inhabitants of Anatolia. Today, research programs are under way in the Institute of Forensic Medicine in Istanbul and the Department of Physical Anthropology in Ankara to include the collection of data on modern Turks. A number of projects dealing with various aspects of forensic anthropology are already in progress, e.g., development of age and sex determination standards for the Turkish population. In addition, several graduate students have also chosen research topics in this field.

An international jury composed of Guido Barbujani (Italy), David Caramelli (Italy), Roberto Macchiarelli (France), John Relethford (U.S.A.), and Alan Goodman (U.S.A.) selected the article entitled Genetic Architecture of a Small, Recently Aggregated Aleut Population: Bering Island, Russia by Rohina Rubicz, Mark Zlojutro, Guangyun Sun, Victor Spitsyn, Ranjan Deka, Kristin Young, and Michael Crawford as the best contribution to the 82 volume of Human Biology (2010). This research paper appeared in a special double issue, entitled Origins of the Populations of the Aleutian Islands guest edited byMichael Crawford, DixieWest (both at theUniversity of Kansas, Manhattan, Kansas), and Dennis O’Rourke (University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah). Rohina Rubicz is a postdoctoral researcher at the Texas Biomedical Research Institute (formerly the Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research), San Antonio, Texas. She received her Ph.D. in biological anthropology (population genetics) in 2007 from the University of Kansas. As a graduate student she used molecular genetic markers (mitochondrial, Y chromosome, and autosomal DNA) to investigate questions concerning the peopling of the Americas, the co-evolution of genes and languages (Rubicz et al. 2002), and the origins of Aleuts and their relationship to other North American and Siberian populations (Rubicz et al. 2003; Zlojutro et al. 2006). Rohina’s current research applies statistical genetic methods to the study of complex phenotypes, including the role of host genetics in susceptibility to infectious disease, and the relationship between infection and risk factors for chronic diseases of aging (i.e., cardiovascular disease and diabetes) in Mexican Americans. She also continues her work in population genetics, with a recent publication on genetic substructure among the peoples of Beringia (Rubicz et al. 2010).

The 10th TRACE conference (Tree Rings in Archaeology, Climatology and Ecology) was organized by the Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique (INRA) - Centre d'Orléans Unité Amélioration, Génétique et Physiologie Forestières, on May 11th – 14th 2011 in the “Muséum des Sciences Naturelles” in Orléans, France.[br/] TRACE is an initiative of the ‘Association of Tree-Ring Research’ (ATR) and provides a scientific platform for young scientists, simultaneously maintaining a high scientific level. More than 100 scientists working on tree-ring related topics participated conference, coming from Austria, Belgium, Canada, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Iran, Italy, Latvia, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Spain and Switzerland, among which 65 student[br/] [...] This volume of TRACE Proceedings contains 16 short papers and gives an overview of the wide spectrum of fields in tree-ring research.

One of the hallmarks of the human species is our capacity for cumulative culture, in which beneficial knowledge and technology is accumulated over successive generations. Yet previous analyses of cumulative cultural change have failed to consider the possibility that as cultural complexity accumulates, it becomes increasingly costly for each new generation to acquire from the previous generation. In principle this may result in an upper limit on the cultural complexity that can be accumulated, at which point accumulated knowledge is so costly and time-consuming to acquire that further innovation is not possible. In this paper I first review existing empirical analyses of the history of science and technology that support the possibility that cultural acquisition costs may constrain cumulative cultural evolution. I then present macroscopic and individual-based models of cumulative cultural evolution that explore the consequences of this assumption of variable cultural acquisition costs, showing that making acquisition costs vary with cultural complexity causes the latter to reach an upper limit above which no further innovation can occur. These models further explore the consequences of different cultural transmission rules (directly biased, indirectly biased and unbiased transmission), population size, and cultural innovations that themselves reduce innovation or acquisition costs.

This paper discusses attempts to popularize scientific knowledge about anthropology through exhibitions of natives in the United States and Brazil from the nineteenth century to the beginnings of the twentieth century. In the First Brazilian Anthropological Exposition (Rio de Janeiro, 1882), a group of Botocudos was characterized in a manner that can be related to the reification of the myth of the savage, an important part of the European culture that played a significant role in the construction of anthropological knowledge in the nineteenth century. From the analyses of such exhibitions, we derive implications for science popularization and education, concerning the ideological undertones of scientific knowledge.

This paper attempts to provide a general overview about the way in which Brazilian medicine and physical anthropology gave a naturalistic approach to the idea of race and to the «problem» posed by the mixture of races in the country during the second half of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, coinciding with the introduction of evolutionism in Brazil., El presente artículo trata de mostrar una visión panorámica sobre el modo en que la medicina y la antropología física brasileñas trataron la cuestión de las «razas» y el mestizaje durante la segunda mitad del siglo XIX y principios del siglo XX, a la vez que los principios evolucionistas pasaban a ser aceptados por la ciencia nacional.

Biological anthropology is a unique scientific field in which, possibly more than in other sciences, progress depends on the effective integration and synthesis of data and evidence from a wide variety of disciplines. Combining the complexity and depth of modern biology with a desire to understand the unique historical event that is the origin of our own species, significant advances in biological anthropology often develop from the creative application of new methods developed in one scientific discipline to questions posed by researchers with entirely different interests. In addition, some of the most important advances during the history of human evolutionary studies have come from individual investigators who reframed traditional questions in light of new comparative evidence drawn from the living primates. Clifford Jolly‘s long and remarkably successful career illustrates the value and impact of integrating evidence and concepts from disparate fields in the service of the broad goals of biological anthropology. He has made substantive and lasting contributions to the interpretation of the human fossil record, to both knowledge of and methods used in the study of natural populations of living primates, to laboratory procedures for investigating those primates, and certainly to the conceptual framework that biological anthropologists employ to understand evolutionary diversity within and among primate species. In order to celebrate the many significant contributions Cliff has made and continues to make to our broad field of study, and to highlight the current exciting state of biological anthropology in general, we organized a conference designed to bring together active researchers from a variety of subfields in which he has worked. This section of Current Anthropology presents a series of five papers first presented at that conference. The conference, titled “Evolutionary Anthropology at the Interface,” was a two-day event held in New York in October 2007

Apresenta um conjunto de fontes documentais que integram o Arquivo de Antropologia Física, de responsabilidade do Setor de Antropologia Biológica do Museu Nacional/UFRJ. O arquivo contém importante documentação sobre o Primeiro Congresso Brasileiro de Eugenia, realizado em 1929, no Rio de Janeiro, em comemoração ao centenário da Academia Nacional de Medicina. Além de originais dos trabalhos apresentados no evento - alguns inéditos -, constam também nesse arquivo documentos reunidos pela secretaria do Congresso, como convocações para a sua realização, ficha dos inscritos, correspondências, recortes de jornais e revistas com artigos sobre eugenia, bem como moções, relatórios e atas finais, constituindo acervo fundamental para a compreensão da história da eugenia no Brasil. The article presents a set of documental sources that are part of the physical anthropology archive administered by the National Museum's biological anthropology sector (UFRJ). The archive holds important documentation on the first Brazilian congress of eugenics, held in Rio de Janeiro in 1929, in celebration of the National Academy of Medicine centennial. In addition to the originals of papers presented at the event (some unpublished), the archive also contains a series of documents compiled by the congress organizers, including announcements of the event, attendee registrations, correspondence, newspaper and magazine clippings of articles on eugenics, as well as motions, reports, and final minutes, all of which makes this collection invaluable in understanding the history of eugenics in Brazil.

The object of this paper is to summarise the results of an anthropological biological survey made in Ig5o-6 on the breeding populations of an area including Rwanda, Burundi, and part of the Kivu province of the ex-Belgian Congo (Hiernaux i956; ig60; i963; i964; i965a). The author was based at the Astrida (now Butare) centre of the Institut pour la Recherche Scientifique en Afrique centrale (IRSAC), where he derived benefit from the presence of several ethnologists, a linguist, a demographer, and an economist. The paper will start with a few general remarks on the prospects of survey work in physical anthropology and on its strategy. On one point, taxonomy, it will extend beyond the geographical frame considered, and include some preliminary and partial results of research now in progress. The object of study of physical anthropology is the biological diversity of Man. This can be approached in various ways. Mathematicians working on models, atid biologists experimenting on mice have made contributions of prime importance for the theoretical understanding of human diversity. When all the published quantified information on the biological characters of ethnic groups living in Africa south of the Sahara is considered, discarding only those samples which are too small or are not representative, about half of the area is a terra incognita from this point of view. Data exist on 460 groups, but there is no one variable common to them all (Hiernaux ms.). We evidently need more data on more populations if we are to solve those anthropological problems which cover a wide African area, such as the taxonomy of Man in Africa, or the associations between environmental and biological variables. The Human Adaptability Committee of the International Biological Programme has been wise in recommending more extensive surveys on biological characters everywhere in the world, like the one in central Africa dealt with here. While the lack of data is still so great that any survey will collect something of interest, some areas are, however, more interesting than others. These are areas in which there are wide variations of both environment and gene pools. There is a fair probability that the investigator starting a survey in such a part of the world will find situations approximating a latin square in design, or at least comprising several cells of it. The simplest latin square, one with four cells, would consist of two genetically different populations living in two different biotopes. Such a situation would allow one to analyse the overall diversity into that part due to genetical causes and that part due to the influence of the environment on the phenotype. The Rwanda area is favourable in this respect: its inhabitants display an extreme intergroup diversity, and ecologically it is a contact area where the equatorial forest and the eastern savannah meet. It also receives influences from the north along the Nile and from the south along the Great Lakes rift.

The objective of the present paper is to give some data in medical imaging and 3D reconstruction applied in bio-anthropological field. Scanner CT images are a powerful tool to explore internal structures, to reconstruct incomplete bones and to give biomechanical interpretation based on bone morphology. Further, we propose to argument a cultural hypothesis relatively to a deliberate treatment concerning a human bone, Nous présentons quelques applications de l’imagerie médicale et de la reconstitution 3D dans le domaine de l’anthropologie biologique. L’acquisition et l’exploitation d’images scanner CT permettent d’accéder aux structures internes, de reconstituer des parties manquantes et d’exploiter des caractéristiques bio-mécaniques. Nous proposons également l’argumentation d’une hypothèse culturelle en relation avec un aménagement pratiqué sur un os humain.

KEYWORDS Colour vision defect; X-linked trait; population differences; relaxed natural selection ABSTRACT The discipline of Biological Anthropology (or Human Biology) incorporates study of biology and environmental factors, as well as the forces of micro-evolution leading to macro-evolution, which ultimately influences the structure of human populations. In the present paper and attempt has been made to study the distribution differences in Red and Green Colour Vision Deficiency in India, which are analysed in relation to ecological, socio-economic and linguistic factors. The frequency of colour defects is 0.036 in population groups of India (males only) which varies from complete absence to 0.231. The validity of the hypothesis of relaxation of selection among different ethnic groups explains to some extent the status of colour blindness in tribal population groups i.e. low frequency among them as compared to other ethnic groups particularly caste groups, but still it has to be substantiated with further data.

In this paper, I give a brief history of the development of the school of critical medical anthropology (CMA) and trace its influences on both biocultural synthesis and clinically applied medical anthropology. I show how CMA has had a profound influence on biological and medical anthropology and how it has shaped our understandings of the relationships between biology and economics. I argue that although a critical perspective of health and well-being has been an important and necessary addition to both biological anthropology and clinically applied medical anthropology. we ought to be careful to trace how rather than simply assert that economics influence biology and health. I also argue that CMA's political economic perspective utilizes a narrow understanding of culture, and that biocultural synthesis could do well to look beyond a materialist view of culture and engage other theoretical schools in cultural anthropology. Finally. I show one such potential line of engagement between the disciplines by paralleling the concept of adaptation in biological anthropology to the concept of complicity in medical anthropology.

Gabriel W. Lasker died on August 27, 2002 from complications of kidney disease. He was 90 years old. Lasker was one of the leading figures in anthropology after World War II. He helped create the population approach in biological anthropology, which rejected concepts of fixed racial typology in favor of variation and plasticity in adaptation. He developed the methodology of using family surnames in studies of human genetics and migration. Lasker served the profession as the editor of major journals and books and as an officer in its societies. Born in England, Lasker came to the United States with his family in 1916. His early education was in various progressive private schools. After attending the University of Wisconsin Experimental College for 2 years, he transferred to the University of Michigan, where he graduated with a B.A. in 1934, but without any major or any coursework in anthropology. He did some research with his mother (Margaret Naomi Ward Lasker, a biochemist) and published his first paper with her in Human Biology in 1936. Because of the Depression, he was unable to find regular employment. He did find a job in China, where he lived for 2 years (1934–1936), teaching English to Chinese railroad workers at Chian T’ung University in Peking (now Beijing) and studying the Chinese language. In an autobiographical note published in a special issue of Human Biology in 1982, Lasker explains that his father led him to China. Bruno Lasker (a prominent social scientist with expertise in Asia) advised his son that “anyone who knew Chinese could always have a job.” While in China, several contacts with faculty at the American Medical College of Peking led the younger Lasker to an interest in physical anthropology. With support of those faculty, Lasker applied to Harvard and was accepted into the graduate program. Lasker wrote that since he “never had a course in anthropology I had no bad record in the subject and Ernest Hooton was willing to take me on. . .” Lasker received his M.A. in 1940 and a Ph.D. in 1945. The title of his dissertation was Physical Characteristics of Chinese: A Study of Physical Differences and Developments Among Chinese at Home and Abroad. Hooton’s approach to physical anthropology represented the then dominant view of human physical “types” and identifiable “races.” While writing his thesis, Lasker consulted with Franz Boas and H.L. Shapiro, who advocated the view that human biology and anatomy were plastic. Lasker tried to incorporate both perspectives of human biology in his dissertation, which led Hooton to proclaim that it was “the biggest damn thesis I have ever seen; really two theses (haw, haw, haw); the one I wanted and the one you wanted to write yourself (haw, haw!).”

Recent advances in computed tomography (CT) and genetics provide new insights into the morphology and biology of anatomical traits, particularly in the dentition. As we move towards a fuller understanding of the genetic and developmental bases for dental traits, we need to reassess the taxonomic and evolutionary variation of established characters. Quantitative genetic analyses indicate that the degree of expression of upper and lower primate cingular remnants are genetically interdependent. This has serious evolutionary implications that need to be explored for fossil hominids. Studies of Carabelli's cusp, a cingular remnant on hominid upper molars, have been advanced through both genetic and CT analyses setting the stage for such an investigation. But its mandibular morphological homologue, the protostylid has not been similarly studied. This paper represents the first step towards a quantitative understanding of the variation and evolution of this trait in early hominids. Since the first discoveries of Australopithecus specimens in South Africa more than sixty years ago, cingular features on lower molars have played a significant role in the description and comparison of hominid taxa. This largely qualitative history is reviewed. Because the modern human classification system for protostylid variation does not adequately describe the variation seen in Australopithecus samples, a quantification scheme with six expression states is established. Using this new protocol, protostylid variation in six species of Australopithecus is assessed. Results from these analyses show that the distribution of the degree of protostylid expression in these species is highly varied. When first, second, and third molar samples are considered separately, the distribution of expression states is found to differ considerably within the same species. These results provide a foundation for further genetic and developmental research on the evolutionary history of the hominid dentition.

ABSRACT The discipline of Biological Anthropology (or Human Biology) incorporates study of biology and environmental factors, as well as the forces of microevolution leading to macro-evolution, which ultimately influences the structure of human populations. In the present paper and attempt has been made to study the distribution of serum proteins–KM and GM frequencies among the people of India, which are analysed in relation to ecological, socio-economic and linguistic factors.

Cancer, one of the world's leading causes of death today, remains almost absent relative to other pathological conditions, in the archaeological record, giving rise to the conclusion that the disease is mainly a product of modern living and increased longevity. This paper presents a male, young-adult individual from the archaeological site of Amara West in northern Sudan (c. 1200 BC) displaying multiple, mainly osteolytic, lesions on the vertebrae, ribs, sternum, clavicles, scapulae, pelvis, and humeral and femoral heads. Following radiographic, microscopic and scanning electron microscopic (SEM) imaging of the lesions, and a consideration of differential diagnoses, a diagnosis of metastatic carcinoma secondary to an unknown soft tissue cancer is suggested. This represents the earliest complete example in the world of a human who suffered metastatic cancer to date. The study further draws its strength from modern analytical techniques applied to differential diagnoses and the fact that it is firmly rooted within a well-documented archaeological and historical context, thus providing new insights into the history and antiquity of the disease as well as its underlying causes and progression.

Osteosarcoma is the most common primary malignant tumor of bone usually occurring in young adolescent and children. This disease has a poor prognosis, because of the metastases in the period of tumor progression, which are usually developed previous to the clinical diagnosis. In this paper, a 2000-year-old ancient bone remain with osteogenic sarcoma was analyzed searching for tumor biomarkers which are closely related to this disease. After a specific extraction SDS-PAGE gel electrophoresis followed by tryptic digestion was performed. After the digestion the samples were measured using MALDI TOF/TOF MS. Healthy bone samples from same archaeological site were used as control samples. Our results show that in the pathological skeletal remain several well known tumor biomarkers are detected such as annexin A10, BCL-2-like protein, calgizzarin, rho GTPase-activating protein 7, HSP beta-6 protein, transferrin and vimentin compared to the control samples. The identified protein biomarkers can be useful in the discovery of malignant bone lesions such as osteosarcoma in the very early stage of the disease from paleoanthropological remains.

The article provides an overview of the activities of the Centre for Physical Anthropology at the University of Tartu from its foundation in 1993 to the present.

The worldwide spread of a novel influenza A (H1N1) virus in 2009 showed that influenza remains a significant health threat, even for individuals in the prime of life. This paper focuses on the unusually high young adult mortality observed during the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918. Using historical records from Canada and the U.S., we report a peak of mortality at the exact age of 28 during the pandemic and argue that this increased mortality resulted from an early life exposure to influenza during the previous Russian flu pandemic of 1889-90. We posit that in specific instances, development of immunological memory to an influenza virus strain in early life may lead to a dysregulated immune response to antigenically novel strains encountered in later life, thereby increasing the risk of death. Exposure during critical periods of development could also create holes in the T cell repertoire and impair fetal maturation in general, thereby increasing mortality from infectious diseases later in life. Knowledge of the age-pattern of susceptibility to mortality from influenza could improve crisis management during future influenza pandemics.

Rural development initiatives across the developing world are designed to improve community well-being and livelihoods. However they may also have unforeseen consequences, in some cases placing further demands on stretched public services. In this paper we use data from a longitudinal study of five Ethiopian villages to investigate the impact of a recent rural development initiative, installing village-level water taps, on rural to urban migration of young adults. Our previous research has identified that tap stands dramatically reduced child mortality, but were also associated with increased fertility. We demonstrate that the installation of taps is associated with increased rural-urban migration of young adults (15–30 years) over a 15 year period (15.5% migrate out, n = 1912 from 1280 rural households). Young adults with access to this rural development intervention had three times the relative risk of migrating to urban centres compared to those without the development. We also identify that family dynamics, specifically sibling competition for limited household resources (e.g. food, heritable land and marriage opportunities), are key to understanding the timing of out-migration. Birth of a younger sibling doubled the odds of out-migration and starting married life reduced it. Rural out-migration appears to be a response to increasing rural resource scarcity, principally competition for agricultural land. Strategies for livelihood diversification include education and off-farm casual wage-labour. However, jobs and services are limited in urban centres, few migrants send large cash remittances back to their families, and most return to their villages within one year without advanced qualifications. One benefit for returning migrants may be through enhanced social prestige and mate-acquisition on return to rural areas. These findings have wide implications for current understanding of the processes which initiate rural-to-urban migration and transitions to low fertility, as well as for the design and implementation of development intervention across the rural and urban developing world.

Background: The energy that animals devote to locomotion has been of intense interest to biologists for decades and two basic methodologies have emerged to predict locomotor energy expenditure: those based on metabolic and those based on mechanical energy. Metabolic energy approaches share the perspective that prediction of locomotor energy expenditure should be based on statistically significant proxies of metabolic function, while mechanical energy approaches, which derive from many different perspectives, focus on quantifying the energy of movement. Some controversy exists as to which mechanical perspective is “best”, but from first principles all mechanical methods should be equivalent if the inputs to the simulation are of similar quality. Our goals in this paper are 1) to establish the degree to which the various methods of calculating mechanical energy are correlated, and 2) to investigate to what degree the prediction methods explain the variation in energy expenditure.\ud \ud Methodology/Principal Findings: We use modern humans as the model organism in this experiment because their data are readily attainable, but the methodology is appropriate for use in other species. Volumetric oxygen consumption and kinematic and kinetic data were collected on 8 adults while walking at their self-selected slow, normal and fast velocities. Using hierarchical statistical modeling via ordinary least squares and maximum likelihood techniques, the predictive ability of several metabolic and mechanical approaches were assessed. We found that all approaches are correlated and that the mechanical approaches explain similar amounts of the variation in metabolic energy expenditure. Most methods predict the variation within an individual well, but are poor at accounting for variation between individuals.\ud \ud Conclusion: Our results indicate that the choice of predictive method is dependent on the question(s) of interest and the data available for use as inputs. Although we used modern humans as our model organism, these results can be extended to other species.

The problems of modern human origins have received much attention recently: data from molecular genetics, physical anthropology and archaeology have been linked by some authors to formulate a coherent argument for ‘Out of Africa’. This paper makes a critical evaluation of the archaeological record, raising issues concerning the nature of the evidence, and emphasizing the need to consider how the different datasets are related. In relation to East Asian evidence it suggests that chronology can ultimately be used for ‘scheduling’ the events associated with the origins of a ‘modern’ behavioural complex which seems to involve new classificatory systems and changes in social organization.

KENNEDY, K. A. R., T. DISOTELL, W. J. ROERTGEN, J. CHIMENT, AND J. SH ERRY. I986. Biological anthropology of Upper Pleistocene hominids from Sri Lanka: Batadomba lena and Beli lena Caves. Ancient Ceylon 6: I 65 -265. KENNEDY, K. A. R., S. U. DERANIYAGALA, W. J. ROERTGEN, J. CHIMENT, AND T. DISOTELL. I987. Upper Pleistocene fossil hominids from Sri Lanka. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 72:44I-6 I. KLEIN, R. G. I974. Environment and subsistence of prehistoric man in the southern Cape Province, South Africa. World Archaeology 5:249-84. LUKACS, J. R. 1976. "Dental anthropology and the biological affinities of an Iron Age population from Pomparippu, Sri Lanka," in Ecological backgrounds of South Asian prehistory. Edited by K. A. R. Kennedy and G. L. Possehl, pp. 197-215. Occasional Papers and Theses of the South Asia Program, Cornell University, 4. MILLER, S. F. I972. The Imbangala nd the chronology of early central African history. Journal of African History 13:549-74. MUELLER-DOMBOIS, D. I968. Ecogeographic analysis of a climate map of Ceylon with particular eference to the vegetation. The Ceylon Forester 8 (3-4):39-58. POSSEHL, G. L. AND P. C. RISSMAN. I985. The chronology of prehistoric India from earliest times to the Iron Age. MS. SENEVIRATNE, S. I984. The archaeology of the Megalithic Black and Red Ware complex of Sri Lanka. Ancient Ceylon 5:237

This paper describes an elective anthropology course1 for eighth grade students taught in 1974-75 and 1975-76 in the Lincoln Senior Elementary School, Stockton, California. The course is offered as part of the science rather than social studies program, and thus emphasizes physical anthropology and archaeology with laboratory and field methods. The content, although difficult, is within the grasp of motivated average and above eighth grade students. Evaluation, utilizing an informal teacher constructed inventory, indicates that 66% of the response to the 1975-76 course were rated good or excellent on a five-point scale. Forty-seven of the respondents would recommend the course to someone else, but nine would not. Community as well as pupil acceptance has been favorable, and it is planned to continue offering the course as a science elective. Training in anthropology is necessary to teach a course with the laboratory and scientific focus in the course described.

This paper attempts to assess the distinctive contribution that biological anthropologists can make to human nutritional studies. Two prime areas are identified. One is in holistic ecological investigations, especially those focusing on energy and nutrient flow systems, where the integrative anthropological approach yields a unique view of how human populations interrelate with their environments. The second concerns the analysis of the biological causes and effects of the variability in nutritional health and well-being which exists within populations. This variability may be an important vehicle of natural selection, but even where it is solely of environmental origin it can provide valuable ecological insight about the structure of human populations. It is concluded that whilst a start has been made in the first area of research practically nothing has been done in the second.

In this paper an attempt is made to show why initiation and/or puberty rites occur in so many societies and why they take the shape they do. To do this I have used concepts derived from social and physical anthropology and from psychoanalysis. The rites are seen as part of a general human concern with categorization and the attribution of power/danger to what is not classifiable. The particular problem lies in the metamorphosis from the sexual world of adulthood and the threatening nature of sex to all peoples. Sex is seen to be threatening because of the mental connection between it and death, knowledge of mortality being a unique human quality. The connection seems to be made as a result of (a) the cessation of oestrus in humans and (b) the adoption of an upright posture, necessitating anal cleansing. The nature of feces is associated with decomposition; it is also associated with the genitals. Fears about incest also encourage the idea that sex is dirty, and thus there is an association made between se...

This paper is a part of the genetic study of the people of Assam (eastern India), initiated by the Anthropometry and Human Genetics Unit, Indian Statistical Institute, Calcutta, India, and the Dept. of Human Biology/Physical Anthropology, University of Bremen, W. Germany. The results of 1. allele distribution of five red cell enzyme polymorphisms in ten Assamese populations, 2. heterogeneity of allele frequencies and extent of gene differentiation among these populations, and 3. standard genetic distances are presented here. A total of 1024 blood samples was screened for aP, E D, AK, ADA and LDH enzyme systems for Brahmins, Kalitas, Kaibartas, Rajbanshis, Muslims, Ahoms, Chutiyas, Kacharis, Karbis (Mikirs) and Sonowals, of which the latter three are tribes. The gene diversity (FST) is smallest (0.0035) for pa and highest (0.1604) for HbE. The total FST value (0.0399 +/- 0.0141) appears to be statistically significant. From distance analysis two major clusters with sub-clusters in each are visible, which are in conformity with the ethnohistory of these populations.