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Humeral morphology has been shown to reflect, in part, habitual manipulative behaviors in humans. Among Central European agricultural populations, long-term social change, increasing task specialization, and technological innovation all had the potential to impact patterns of habitual activity and upper limb asymmetry. However, systematic temporal change in the skeletal morphology of agricultural populations in this region has not been well-characterized. This study investigates diachronic patterns in humeral biomechanical properties and lengths among 174 adult Central European agriculturalists through the first ∼ 5400 years of farming in the region. Greater asymmetry in biomechanical properties was expected to accompany the introduction of metallurgy, particularly in males, while upper limb loading patterns were expected to be more similar between the Bronze and Iron Ages. Results revealed a divergence in the lateralization of upper limb biomechanical properties by sex between the Early/Middle Neolithic and Early/Middle Bronze Age. Neolithic females had significantly more variable properties than males in both humeri, while Bronze Age female properties became homogeneous and very symmetrical relative to the right-biased lateralization of contemporaneous males. The Bronze Age to Iron Age transition was associated with morphological change among females, with a significant increase in right-biased asymmetry and a concomitant reduction in sexual dimorphism. Relative to biomechanical properties, humeral length variation and asymmetry were low though some significant sexual dimorphism and temporal change was found. It was among females that the lateralization of humeral biomechanical properties, and variation within them, changed most profoundly through time. This suggests that the introduction of the ard and plow, metallurgical innovation, task specialization, and socioeconomic change through ∼ 5400 years of agriculture impacted upper limb loading in Central European women to a greater extent than men.

It is assumed that the transition from the Late Eneolithic to the Early Bronze Age in Central Europe was associated with substantial changes in subsistence and the perception of gender differences. However, the archeological record itself does not entirely support this model. Alternatively, this transition may be interpreted as a continuous process. We used asymmetry in external dimensions, and asymmetry in size and distribution of cortical tissue of humeri to elucidate the nature of this transition with respect to differences in manipulative behavior. The total sample of 67 individuals representing five archaeological cultures was used. The results indicate that the pattern of asymmetry of the humeral external measurements and the cross-sectional parameters taken at 35% of humeral biomechanical length remain stable during the Late Eneolithic and Early Bronze Age. However, females of both periods show fluctuating asymmetry for all of the cross-sectional parameters, but directional asymmetry for biomechanical length. Males are nonsignificantly shifted from the line of equivalence for biomechanical length, but exhibit directional asymmetry for the cortical area and polar moment of area. Only distal articular breadth yields fluctuating asymmetry for both females and males in both periods. Thus, the transition from the Late Eneolithic to the Early Bronze Age can be seen as a continuous process that probably affected only a limited part of human activities. We interpret the differences between females and males of both periods as evidence of gender-specific activities; males might have been associated with extra-domestic agricultural labor that resulted in asymmetrical manipulative loading and females with domestic labor with symmetrical manipulative loading in both periods., ((c) 2007 Wiley-Liss, Inc.)

Mechanical interpretations of Neandertal skeletal robusticity suggest extremely high activity levels compared to modern humans. Such activity patterns imply high energy requirements; yet it has been argued that Neandertals were also inefficient foragers. The present study addresses this apparent conflict by estimating energy needs in Neandertals and then evaluating those estimates in the context of energetic and foraging data compiled for contemporary human foragers and nonhuman primates. Energy demands for Neandertals were determined by first predicting basal metabolic rates (BMR) from body weight estimates using human standards developed by the World Health Organization [FAO/WHO/UNU (1985) Energy and Protein Requirements. Report of the Joint FAO/WHO/UNU Export Committee, Geneva: WHO]. Total daily energy expenditure (kcal/day) was then estimated assuming high levels of physical activity (i.e., 2--3 x BMR), comparable to those observed among subsistence-level populations today. These estimates of energy requirements (ranging from 3000--5500 kcal/day) were then used to determine Neandertal foraging efficiency assuming (1) minimal survival-level foraging returns, and (2) daily foraging times longer than those observed among any contemporary foraging group and comparable to a nonhuman primate. Even with these extremely conservative parameters, estimates of Neandertal foraging efficiency (approximately 800--1150 kcal/h foraged) were comparable to those observed among living hunter-gatherers. These results indicate that if Neandertals did have heavy activity levels, as implied by their skeletal robusticity, they would have required foraging efficiencies within the range observed among modern groups. Thus, Neandertals could have been either highly active or poor foragers, but they could not have been both., (Copyright 2001 Academic Press.)

Brain research, and neuroscience in general, seems to meet cultural needs rather than therapeutic necessities. There is no evidence indeed that recent findings--even if they are important--will have therapeutic application in the short run. Although indirect and direct costs of neurological and psychiatric diseases are outrageous, clinical research in these fields is not at all encouraged. Research in neuroscience seems above all interested in challenging some cultural paradigm. Likewise another great and similar venture, the Human Genome (HUGO) Project, also brain research seems to be a scientific enterprise which primarily aims at grounding human diversities on biological diversities. Yet can biology ever substitute the multiculturalist dream?

The current penetration of psychology, psychiatry, and sociology by neurobiologists is traced from its slow inception in the nineteenth century to the exponential explosion of information in recent decades, which has shown that behavior is a biosocial phenomenon, resulting from interactions between the brain and the environment. Therefore, to exclude either from the equation is to invite error.