Cannibalism: Early American Settlers Ate Each Other

The winter of 1609-1610 was a pretty horrible time to be a resident of Jamestown, the early English settlement in what is now coastal Virginia. How horrible? Aside from the rampant disease, the starvation, and attacks by surrounding native tribes, people were also EATING EACH OTHER.

So confirms new forensic evidence found at the Jamestown settlement site. Written accounts of the so-called Starving Time claimed that Jamestown settlers resorted to cannibalism to survive, but this is the first forensic corroboration of it. Scientists working with Bill Kelso, director of archeology for the Jamestown Recovery project, uncovered partial human remains -- a mutilated skull and a disarticulated leg -- in a midden heap mingled among the butchered remains of horses and dogs.

Suspicious markings on the bones suggested that this body had also been butchered. Anthropologist Douglas Owsley, of the Smithsonian Institution, conducted isotopic tests on the bones, revealing that the skull and leg belonged to an English girl, and the bones' physical characteristics showed that she was about 14 years old when she died. A variety of tool marks in the bone show someone, first tentatively and then forcefully, trying to deflesh her skull. A sharp puncture through the left temple and subsequent cracking show that someone eventually worked up the nerve or strength to pry her skull open. Finer knife marks along the cheekbone and jawline suggest that someone purposefully cut flesh off of the skull.

Owsley and colleagues compared these marks to those from other known cases of human cannibalism and found remarkable similarities--enough to conclude that this 14-year-old girl, who the scientists have dubbed "Jane," was cannibalized by other colonists after her death of (presumably) natural causes--a desperate, last-ditch effort to save the rest of the settlement from extinction.

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（source：popsci）

Is French Canadians’Increased Tay-Sachs A Case of Gene-Culture Co-evolution?

Tay-Sachs is a rare autosomal recessive genetic disorder. Research in the late 20th century demonstrated that Tay–Sachs disease is caused by a genetic mutation in the HEXA gene on (human) chromosome 15.

In 1887, American neurologist Bernard Sachs of Mount Sinai Hospital, New York ,noted an increased disease prevalence in the Eastern European Ashkenazi Jewish population.

Peter Frost , Université Laval,Quebec City,Canada, questioned:Is the increased Tay-Sachs prevalence in the Eastern EuropeanAshkenazi Jewish population a case of gene-culture co-evolution?The following is the general ideas:

Tay-Sachs, an inherited neurological disorder, is unusually common among French Canadians from eastern Quebec. Two alleles are responsible, one being specific to the north shore of the St. Lawrence and the other to the south shore. This pattern of convergent evolution suggests the presence of a selection pressure limited to eastern Quebec. Both alleles probably arose after the British conquest of Quebec in 1759 or at least were uncommon previously. To explain the high incidence of Tay-Sachs among Ashkenazi Jews, some authors have invoked heterozygote advantage, i.e., heterozygous individuals enjoy a higher rate of neuronal growth, and thus greater learning capacity, without the neurological deterioration of homozygous individuals. Such an advantage would have helped Ashkenazim perform the mental effort required for work in trade and crafts. A similar situation may have developed in eastern Quebec, where the relative scarcity of British and American merchants made it easier for French Canadians to enter occupations that required literacy, numeracy, and future time orientation.

(source:SCIRP)

All kinds of disputes on “Out of Africa” Theory

The Out of Africa hypothesis argues that every living human being is descended from a small group in Africa, who then dispersed into the wider world displacing earlier forms such as Neanderthal. The Out-of-Africa theory was bolstered in the early 1990s by research on mitochondrial DNA studies by Allan Wilson and Rebecca Cann which suggest that all humans ultimately descended from one female: the Mitochondrial Eve.

In 2007,there is a research claimes that ancient big drought in Africa supports Out of Africa hypothesis. However,there are more voice that against the hypothesis.For example，”Out of Africa is a low-level of pseudoscience”” Out of Africa results from the ignorance”.Why there are so much disapproval?Maybe the following article can provide clues:

Our consideration of human haplogroups, and our analysis of the dynamics of the Y-chromosome nucleotide flow from primates to humans during the evolution of genus Homo has shown that a common ancestor of the majority of present day human males, both African and non-African, lived approximately 160,000 years ago. The haplogroup of this common ancestor has been identified as the α-haplogroup, which is equivalent or close to haplogroups A1/A1b in the current phylogeny. The archaic lineages (currently summarily designated A0) descend from an ancestor who lived no later than 180,000 years ago, and probably much earlier. The α-haplogroup and the A0 lineages have significantly different nucleotide patterns, and they certainly did not descend one from another. Furthermore, our research points up the areas of mutations in Y-chromosome in H. sapiens, which allows us to use chimpanzee MSY (the male-specific region of the Y-chromosome) as a proxy for genus Homo’s common α-haplogroup ancestor. When we studied slow mutating 16-marker haplotypes, we discovered that chimpanzees and present day humans had a common ancestor 5.5 ± 0.9 million years before the present. It is clear that, when they are compared to loci in other primates, such as gorillas, orangutans, and macaques, many human Y-chromosome loci have been conserved from our common ancestor. Results of our analysis of haplotypes, conserved (ancestral) nucleotides, and SNPs suggest that there is no reason to believe that ancestors of non-Africans (β-haplogroup, i.e. haplogroup BT and its downstream haplogroups) descended from haplogroups A0, A1a, or any other African haplogroup. The data are adequately described by a model which shows that the African lineages and non-African lineages diverged from the α-haplogroup approximately 160,000 years before the present and that the Y-chromosomes of the two groups have evolved independently (in terms of Y-chromosome) since then. We have no indication of where the common ancestor of the α-haplogroup lived; he could just as easily have lived in Europe, in Asia, or in the Middle East, as in (less likely) Africa. We believe that all the presuppositions posited in support of the Out-of-Africa hypothesis fail to hold up under simple scrutiny. This study shows that the Out-of-Africa hypothesis has not been adequately substantiated. The common assertion that “anatomically modern humans came out of Africa some 70,000 years ago” has never been convincingly calculated or determined otherwise; our research suggests that it is incorrect.

It is only the general idea of the article ,you can read more at:< Re-Examining the Out-of-Africa Theory and the Originof Europeoids (Caucasoids). Part 2. SNPs, Haplogroups and Haplotypes in the YChromosome of Chimpanzee and Humans >.

(source:SCIRP/Anthropology)

Research of pathology -A Probable Case of Secondary Infection

Palaeopathology research is of great difficulty for 2 reasons:1) Most of the ancient biological remains retaines only a skeleton part(Including the fossil),with only a small amount of the soft tissue left(such as ancient human mummies, frozen corpse, wet wax and peat tanning corpse,ect);2) Some pathological information can not be extracted for the preservation of the human skeleton various with different regions.Although with so many problems that hard to solve,scientists still devote themselves to the study.Because the study of the history of a disease, will contribute to the modern human for the prevention and treatment of the disease.A research from SCIRP presents a case study of differential diagnosis of pathological conditions which have been observed on the bones of the skeleton of a 30 - 34 years old female from Tell Masaikh (Syria).And use morphological, histological, radiological and molecular methods to assess the pathological lesions.In the end,the research illustrates the complications associated with differential diagnosis of pathological conditions from ancient bones.