remote central

Four Stone Hearth Anthropology Blog Carnival: The Fourth Of July Everything is Just Fine We've Got It Under Control In America Edition

2008-07-04T20:32:00.005+02:00

Greg Laden's Blog : Four Stone Hearth Anthropology Blog Carnival: The Fourth Of July Everything is Just Fine We've Got It Under Control In America Edition

It's up, it's running and it's at Greg Laden's blog, so if you want to check the latest edition of the anthropology blog carnival Four Stone Hearth, clicking the link above will take you straight there.

The next edition is due out in less than two weeks, although as yet there is no hosting site slated, and anyone able or willing to host the next time round is strongly encouraged to apply for the vacancy.

image from here

The Archaeology Channel - The Looting of the Iraq Museum: An Interview with Donny George - video

2008-07-04T12:23:00.000+02:00

The Archaeology Channel - The Looting of the Iraq Museum: An Interview with Donny George

Here's the latest offering from TAC, and once again we return to the scene of one of the most sustained attacks on a nation's heritage in recent years, that of Iraq, from where a vast amount of antiquities has been looted, and smuggled out into the hands of any number of greed-crazed traders and a veritable army of private collectors, all intent on taking advantage of the chaos that ensued after the US-led coalition invasion of that country back in March 2003.

Before discussing this video specifically, here's a little contextual background from a recent essay at TomDispatch, 'The Good News From Iraq' (Don't Count On It), penned by Tom Engelhardt...

"On March 19, 2003, as his shock-and-awe campaign against Iraq was being launched, George W. Bush addressed the nation.

"My fellow citizens," he began, "at this hour, American and coalition forces are in the early stages of military operations to disarm Iraq, to free its people and to defend the world from grave danger." We were entering Iraq, he insisted, "with respect for its citizens, for their great civilization and for the religious faiths they practice. We have no ambition in Iraq, except to remove a threat and restore control of that country to its own people."

Within weeks, of course, that "great civilization" was being looted, pillaged, and shipped abroad. Saddam Hussein's Baathist dictatorship was no more and, soon enough, the Iraqi Army of 400,000 had been officially disbanded by L. Paul Bremer, the head of the occupying Coalition Provisional Authority and the President's viceroy in Baghdad. By then, ministry buildings -- except for the oil and interior ministries -- were just looted shells.

Schools, hospitals, museums, libraries, just about everything that was national or meaningful, had been stripped bare. Meanwhile, in their new offices in Saddam's former palaces, America's neoconservative occupiers were already bringing in the administration's crony corporations -- Halliburton and its subsidiary KBR, Bechtel, and others -- to finish off the job of looting the country under the rubric of "reconstruction."

Somehow, these "administrators" managed to "spend" $20 billion of Iraq's oil money, already in the "Development Fund for Iraq," even before the first year of occupation was over -- and to no effect whatsoever. They also managed to create what Ed Harriman in the London Review of Books labeled "the least accountable and least transparent regime in the Middle East." (No small trick given the competition.)"

The reason I included that brief excerpt is to reiterate that whilst the pillaging of Iraq's archaeological heritage is bad enough, there has been a great deal more damage caused to the infrastructure, all done in the name of freedom, democracy and whatever other words the Bush administration deemed suitable to whip up media and public support for their disastrous - and probably illegal - assault on Iraq.

And so to the interview itself, which takes the form of an informal chat between Rick Pettigrew of TAC and Donny George, the former man in charge of the Baghdad Museum, who was eventually forced to flee to the US from Iraq because of death threats to members of his own family; had he stayed in Baghdad it's possible that Donny George might through his influence have been able to co-ordinate some sort of remedial or preventative action regarding the overall situation of looting in Iraq, and I suppose this was the reason certain people didn't want him there.

Running to around 45 minutes, the interview covers a lot of ground, and takes place in the wake of the TAC Film and Video Festival which had taken place a few days beforehand - there is no footage of events that took place in Iraq, or indeed of any of the thousands of missing artefacts or the damage done to the museum, or the thousands of looted and damaged sites elsewhere across Iraq, which was known in the past as Mesopotamia, i.e., the place-between-two rivers, which 5,000 years ago, was one of the birthplaces of what we refer to as modern civilisation.

And although I've covered some of this in previous posts, it's worth going over some of the more salient points, because the situation in Iraq has scarcely improved since I last wrote, and it's important to remind ourselves of the true scale of the destruction that has been witnessed there. In my opinion, it's as well as to warn how this disaster might well be repeated in the future, should there be further outbreaks of full-scale war and/or natural disasters at other locations across the Middle East and the world as a whole, giving similar opportunities to robbers, agents and associated collectors, eager to gorge themselves on ever larger quantities of loot and cash, at everyone else's expense.

The interview begins with the looting of the Baghdad Museum, which took place between the 10th and 12th of April 2003, and the immediate aftermath - Dr. George describes the scene as if a hurricane had hit from the inside, and then finding his office knee-deep in broken objects, desk smashed, computers and cameras all gone; to heap woe upon yet more misery, even the coffee-machine had been stolen.

We are told how in the time leading up to the invasion of Iraq, people were taking measures to protect their personal property in expectation of the mayhem that would accompany the coming war (in one instance, a friend had sealed his brand new Mercedes into his own house) - Dr. George requested that the contents of the Baghdad Museum should be put in sealed and secure storage, as had been the case in Lebanon - in 15 years of war, the Lebanese apparently didn't lose a single item from their museum inventory.

But Dr. George's request was ignored, on the basis that as long as Saddam was in power, the museum would be safe - and thus the sorry tale unfolded along its predicted fault-lines - Dr. George moved into the museum complex, and awoke one day to the sounds of gunfire in the locality - the US military was in town, and Dr. George expected to meet and greet the American forces, whom he imagined would take charge of the museum and thus keep it protected. Instead he was forced to leave the premises for fear of getting caught in the cross-fire, and that was the last time he saw the museum intact.

He first got word of the ransacking there when it was announced on April 12th, 2003, by the BBC, and thus it was he went with his colleague the following day to ask the local US forces to protect the museum - all to no avail.

Which is hardly surprising, given the events that had allegedly taken place on April 10th - a large crowd, numbering between 300 and 400 had assembled outside the museum, brandishing a variety of crowbars and other implements with which to break into the museum. An employee of museum saw this, and asked a nearby US tank commander to help prevent the crowd from breaking in - but despite a radioed request, permission to defend the museum was denied - and upon seeing this, the crowd immediately broke in and went on the rampage.

One slightly less publicised aspect of the looting took place in the National Library and Archives, as well as the library of Mosul, although the Baghdad Museum library survived largely intact, as Dr. George had previously been able to put 100,000 books and manuscripts into safe storage elsewhere.

As well as being horrified at the ransacking that took place, Dr. George is particularly mystified as to why what could not be stolen, was instead smashed to pieces - there seems to be no clear motive for this, because it is apparent that stealing was the prime motive for those breaking in, and simply breaking stuff they didn't take seems illogical. That may have been because someone was trying to cover up exactly what had been stolen, but it sounds more as if things just got out of hand, and people wanted to break things simply because they were there to be broken.

What disturbs Dr. George greatly is the fact that all this was done by Iraqi citizens, rather than any invading military force - and as he points out, it isn't only Iraq's history that has been looted, but the history of the modern world - he describes how the first writing took hold in early Mesopotamian civilisation and spread throughout the world - the major three world religions can trace their roots back to the same region.

One quite startling statistic emerged later in the interview, when the discussion addressed the broader situation across Iraq as a whole; satellite imagery has revealed that a total of 16 square kilometers of previously unexplored archaeological sites have been destroyed in Iraq. To put that into perspective, we're told that over the last 100 years, only 1.6 square km of properly excavated and recorded sites have been worked by qualified archaeologists - meaning that far from being isolated outbreaks of opportunistic looting, the damage being done is almost on an industrial scale.

The problem is made much worse because nobody knows for sure exactly what was taken, and as such, all that information is now lost for ever - even if artifacts were recovered in the future, the context of their discovery has been lost, meaning that exact dating and relationships with other archaeology cannot be firmly established.

It would not have been possible to protect all these sites beforehand - archaeology is a slow and painstaking business, and as Iraq in its entirety might be regarded as a vast archaeological site in its own right, it would probably have centuries for everything to be recorded and recovered. And bad as the looting of the museum in Baghdad may have been, the perception here is that by far the greatest damage has been done to the unrecorded sites across Iraq.

But given the voracious appetites of private collectors in the First World, most of whom don't care how their ill-gotten treasures are obtained, the situation will continue to exist as long as there is anything left to loot and sell. It's because of the demands of the international market, and the abject poverty of many Iraqis, that many local people are quite prepared to do the spade - (or even mechanical-digger) work, as they often have no other prospect of earning enough money to support their families.

Before the current epidemic of looting, there had been comparatively little robbing and destruction of these sites by local people, as lower demand meant there probably wasn't a great deal of money to be made, and in any case, more people were able to earn a normal living, albeit on a meagre scale. Following an outbreak of looting in the mid-1990s, the archaeological community of Iraq managed to quell and bring the situation back under control.

The final point I'm going to address is the sinister implication that the raid on the Baghdad museum was carefully planned beforehand, as it is clear that many items were specifically targeted by thieves, and Dr. George wants to warn other governments who might face similar situations in the future, either through war and even natural disaster. In his opinion, it's important for designers and builders of prestige museums to construct with security in mind, rather than just assume an electronic security system might suffice.

In times of trouble, all it takes is for the power grid to go down to render electronic security useless - similarly, museum buildings might look good if constructed from materials such as glass, but would be unable to withstand the attentions of mobs and robbers wishing to break in when law and order has broken down. This might sound like bunker mentality, but as the contents of such museums are by their very nature, irreplaceable, it makes sense to construct museums, (and probably libraries etc.) in such a way as to allow them to be quickly and completely locked down in the face of impending trouble and strife visited upon them by the outside world.

Although I've covered a few of the points raised and topics discussed therein, it's well worth taking the time to sit down and watch this talk in full - it might be too late to remedy the situation in Iraq, but at the very least, it should be possible for people to take note of these events, and take appropriate steps to try and ensure that the same thing doesn't happen again to other museums, or for other nations to have their heritage stripped away under cover of warfare instigated,for whatever nefarious reasons by misguided others.

image from here

More Evidence For Comet Over Canada That Killed Clovis and Megafauna

2008-07-03T18:15:00.002+02:00

Exploding Asteroid Theory Strengthened by New Evidence Located in Ohio, Indiana

For many years there has been a mystery as to what exactly brought about the extinction event that wiped out most of America's megafauna almost 13,000 years ago, which had previously been ascribed to the sudden arrival of humankind in the the New World - it had been suggested that a Pleistocene Overkill event had witnessed Ice Age hunters killing so many large animals that population numbers crashed beyond a point of no return.

More recently we have read of how a comet is thought to have exploded high over Canada, and evidence for such a scenario has thus far been intriguing, as archaeologists across a wide range of sites on continental North America, had spotted an anomalous layer in ancient deposits, and how other researchers had debated the origins of the Carolina Bays.

Following on from all this, comes news of how in an attempt to disprove this theory, anthropologist Ken Tankersley succeeded in confirming its probable veracity; this from the University of Cincinnati...

Now University of Cincinnati Assistant Professor of Anthropology Ken Tankersley, working in conjunction with Allen West and Indiana Geological Society Research Scientist Nelson R. Schaffer, has verified evidence from sites in Ohio and Indiana – including, locally, Hamilton and Clermont counties in Ohio and Brown County in Indiana – that offers the strongest support yet for the exploding comet/asteroid theory.

Samples of diamonds, gold and silver that have been found in the region have been conclusively sourced through X-ray diffractometry in the lab of UC Professor of Geology Warren Huff back to the diamond fields region of Canada.

The only plausible scenario available now for explaining their presence this far south is the kind of cataclysmic explosive event described by West’s theory. "We believe this is the strongest evidence yet indicating a comet impact in that time period," says Tankersley...

...Tankersley was familiar through years of work in this area with the diamonds, gold and silver deposits, which at one point could be found in such abundance in this region that the Hopewell Indians who lived here about 2,000 years ago engaged in trade in these items.

Prevailing thought said that these deposits, which are found at a soil depth consistent with the time frame of the comet/asteroid event, had been brought south from the Great Lakes region by glaciers.

"My smoking gun to disprove (West) was going to be the gold, silver and diamonds," Tankersley says. "But what I didn’t know at that point was a conclusion he had reached that he had not yet made public – that the likely point of impact for the comet wasn’t just anywhere over Canada, but located over Canada’s diamond-bearing fields. Instead of becoming the basis for rejecting his hypothesis, these items became the very best evidence to support it."

Much of the work is being done in Sheriden Cave in north-central Ohio’s Wyandot County, a rich repository of material dating back to the Ice Age.

Sheriden Cave is an interesting site in its own right, as we see from the abstract of a 2005 paper titled 'Evidence of Early Paleoindian Bone Modification and Use at the Sheriden Cave Site (33WY252), Wyandot County, Ohio', from which the following abstract is taken...

The analysis of osseous (bone, antler, or ivory) beveled shafts or "rods" has become an important focus in the study of early Paleoindian tool technology. Since 1995 two carved and beveled bone rods have been recovered from Sheriden Cave in northwest Ohio in depositional strata that are radiocarbon dated to between 11,060 and 10,400 radiocarbon years B.P. These strata also contained a small, reworked, Gainey-style fluted point; cut and burned animal bone; and the remains of flat-headed peccary, caribou, giant beaver, and other taxa.

The tapered tips and overall morphology of the bone rods demonstrate that they served as projectile points as opposed to other functional types such as fore shafts. Microscopic and radiographic examinations of the bone points reveal that they were manufactured from split sections of mega-mammal bone.

These artifacts resemble bone and ivory points found at early Paleoindian sites in western North America and northern Florida but also bear significant morphological similarities to bone sugaie or javelin tips known from Upper Paleolithic sites in Europe. The close spatial and temporal associations between the Sheriden Cave artifacts suggest that they represent the remains of an early Paleoindian tool cache within a small resource extraction campsite.

We don't know what impact the putative comet would have had on the cultural life of humans living a millennia or two after the event, but it would be most interesting to know if this disaster had been passed on down the generations through word of mouth, and how this event had been interpreted. Neither will we ever know whether this catastrophe prompted the first mythologies of the New World, whether it replaced earlier ones, or even whether it even became part of mythology at all, but it's a fair bet that the story lived on in the minds of people for many generations thereafter.

Whether some or all Palaeoindians understood that a vast amount of floral and faunal life had disappeared because of a natural catastrophe, or whether they thought that humans and animals together had been punished for whatever reasons by presumably angry gods, is open to speculation - I don't know of any contemporary rock art which might depict such an event, or indeed anything else from around the world at that time that appears to directly refer to it.

However, there are at least two possible references to the events of 13 kya, expressed in the folklore of bothe the Iroquois and Pawnee Indians, and detailed in a book called 'The Cycle of Cosmic Catastrophes', of which Allen West is one of the co-authors.

I can't find an online text to copy and paste from at the moment, but the book reproduces an Iroquois myth, 'The Monster Mammoth and the Horned Serpent' from which this is a brief extract...

"Gradually, Thunder's onslaught drove the serpent back into the deepest part of the Lake (Ontario), but he could not kill it. In one final attempt, Thunder hurled down the most powerful thunderbolt ever seen. The concussion was so great that the mountains shook and entire forests blew over.

The stars broke loose from the sky, and some came falling down to Earth. Fearing for the safety of the tribe, Thunder tried to catch the stars, but he could not reach them all. The falling stars hurtled right toward the Iroquois camp, hissing with a fiery glare. With a ferocious blast and scorching heat, a star smashed into the Earth near their camp, blasting earth and trees in all directions.

Another star fell right into the Lake on top of the Horned Serpent, wounding it with a huge explosion of steam. The great serpent thrashed its tail in pain, and each whip of its tail sent gigantic waves coursing down the river valleys, and surging over the hills in a series of colossal floods." (retold from E. Johnson, 1881)

The above was taken from Chapter 19, 'The Main Craters' which posits that there were probably multiple impact sites; next we have this from Chapter 20,'Bays on the High Plains' which looks at craters similar to the Carolina Bays, but which are to be found 1200 miles away in Nebraska. Here's an excerpt from a story related by the Pawnee tribe, 'Stuck in the Mud', and addresses the topic of the vanished megafauna, whom having been made by Tirawa, the Creator, apparently went on something of a global rampage...

"Being so big and powerful, they did what they wanted.

After a while, they began fighting with each other to see who was the greatest and most powerful among them. This led to many fierce struggles, and their constant fighting tore up the forests, dug up the prairies, and knocked down the mountains. Because they were so strong, there was great destruction."

We are then told how Tirawa invoked a mighty flood, which caused all the large animals to drown, as they became bogged down in a rising sea of mud...

"...When Tirawa saw that all of them were finished, the god waved a hand over the land, causing the sun to dry out the Earth"

The first humans were then created, and from which all subsequent Pawnee were descended...

"Now when the Pawnee walk along the the riverbanks, sometimes they find giant bones sticking out of the silt and mud. These are the bones from the animals that Tirawa drowned. They are there as a reminder not to forget the Creator." (retold from Grinnell, 1889).

The January 2008 issue of 'Mammoth Trumpet' has a related (PDF) article, 'The Clovis Comet', from which this is the closing segment...

Although the jury’s still out on the matter, the clues unearthed by West and his team point toward a catastrophic impact at the end of the Clovis era.

But what happened, exactly? The details remain sketchy, but the culprit was apparently a heavily fragmented multi-kilometer-sized icy body, similar to but much larger than the Tunguska impactor, which exploded over the continental ice sheet covering northeastern
Canada.

A cushion of ice 1 to 2 miles thick, after all, might explain why an impact crater associated with the event hasn’t been found. While West admits that the absence of a crater blunts the theory, he argues that the other evidence more than makes up for it.

“We have more than 14 lines of evidence that there was an impact,” he points out. “We tell the people who don’t believe this to point to a single place in the geological record where all these markers occur that isn’t considered an impact.”

This week marked the centenary of the Tunguska event of 1908, when something much smaller exploded over Siberia, directly affecting an area of some 2,000 square km.)

As we have seen, Western Europe may well have also been affected by this comet, as research from from Lommel in Belgium, and mentioned in the MT article linked to above appear to indicate.

Here's a final snippet from the University of Cincinnati news article...

The timing attached to this theory of about 12,900 years ago is consistent with the known disappearances in North America of the wooly mammoth population and the first distinct human society to inhabit the continent, known as the Clovis civilization. At that time, climatic history suggests the Ice Age should have been drawing to a close, but a rapid change known as the Younger Dryas event, instead ushered in another 1,300 years of glacial conditions. A cataclysmic explosion consistent with West’s theory would have the potential to create the kind of atmospheric turmoil necessary to produce such conditions.

"The kind of evidence we are finding does suggest that climate change at the end of the last Ice Age was the result of a catastrophic event," Tankersley says.

Currently, Tankersley can be seen in a new documentary airing on the National Geographic channel. The film "Asteroids" is part of that network’s "Naked Science" series.

The new discoveries made working with West and Schaffer will be incorporated into two more specials that Tankersley is currently involved with – one for the PBS series "Nova" and a second for the History Channel that will be filming Tankersley and his UC students in the field this summer. Another documentary, this one being produced by the Discovery Channel and the British public television network Channel 4, will also be following Tankersley and his students later this summer.

There should be plenty more on this over the coming months and years, which hopefully will be addressed in as yet unwritten posts on this blog.

see also: The 2008 Allendale Paleoamerican Expedition

Human Evolution on Trial - Chromosomes and DNA - by Terry Toohill

2008-06-26T00:11:00.003+02:00

Human Evolution on Trial - 'Chromosomes and DNA'

Most members of the jury will have heard of genes and know they are responsible for our inherited characteristics. As you probably already know, your genes control such things as your skin, hair and eye colour, the shape and size of your face, eyes and nose, your blood group and to a large extent your general height and shape as well as many other things, such as elements of your personality (Steve Jones 2000). One of my brothers believes even the willingness, or otherwise, of individual dairy cows to come into the open side of a herringbone milking shed is inherited. Anyway it is most likely that instinctive behaviour is genetically inherited in some way. Humans have many instincts. One of them is the ability to learn a language (Ridley 2000). We’ll come back to language periodically.

Humans may have up to a hundred thousand genes although the precise figure is debated. Some say many less than half this number but, almost certainly, the complex interrelationships between genes are usually underestimated. A change in a single gene can have a huge effect. For example cultivated maize differs from its vastly different wild form in just five genes (Jobling et al 2004). The environment we are brought up in does affect the influence of our genes, and some evidence indicates it may influence the genes themselves, but we can ignore both of these possibilities for now.

Experiments have shown that genes for each of your characteristics occur in pairs, one of each pair from your mother and your father. If the two genes of a pair are different usually only one of them gives rise to your observed characteristics. This one is called the “dominant” gene. The other one remains hidden but can be passed on to any of your offspring. This gene is called “recessive”. The evidence shows that your genes are carried on your chromosomes, which are confined to the nucleus (the centre) of each cell of your body. Except for the Y-chromosome, chromosomes usually occur in pairs. In fact the jury will see that a hierarchy of pairing passes on genetic information.

Y-chromosome

Each single chromosome, of each pair, consists of a double string of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) mixed with proteins. DNA is actually a string of what are called nucleotides attached to a series of alternating sugars and phosphoric acid (technically the nucleotide is the combination of all three chemicals). Just four types of nucleotides are present in the chain. In DNA they are adenine, thiamine, guanine and cytosine or A, T, G and C. Each strand of DNA is a string of up to a hundred million of these four nucleotides in various sequences giving a total of about three billion for the total human genome (see for example Stringer and McKie 1996). In the paired strand of nucleotides in each chromosome the adenine in one strand is always joined by hydrogen bonds to thiamine in the other, and guanine in one is joined to cytosine in the other strand (A-T, G-C). This means that chromosomes are easily able to replicate themselves. When the double strand of DNA splits each separate strand must replicate the other strand. Therefore the two new chromosomes, or double strands of DNA, are exactly the same as the original chromosome. The defence has included drawings of dividing strands of DNA in the genetic maps presented later (see for example map 2).

The main visible aspect of the function of DNA is the form we take as a developing foetus, our general shape and what type of creature we are. However in many parts of our body throughout our life DNA continually reproduces itself. This replaces our worn out tissue. But mistakes do occur and cancers can result.

In fact mistakes in the sequence of nucleotides in the DNA are reasonably common and are called mutations. Even identical twins have a few dozen differences in their total DNA (Cavalli-Sforza 1995). Harmless mutations in your reproductive cells are passed on to your descendants. These mutations lead to variation in the genetic makeup of individuals, and ultimately of different populations. In some cases it has been possible to work out the sequence in which such mutations have occurred. We’ll come back to this soon.

Apart from reproductive (sperm and egg) cells each cell of the human body has 46 chromosomes, made up of 23 pairs. Chromosome pair 23 is either a pair of X-chromosomes or a single X and a single Y chromosome. This determines whether you are female (XX) or male (XY). This is not true for all creatures. In birds and butterflies for example it is the female that has the equivalent of the XY combination.

Reproductive cells have only one of each pair of each chromosome, i.e. for humans 23 chromosomes including either a single X or a single Y. When fertilization occurs the normal condition of pairs is restored, one of each pair from each parent. Individual chromosomes are not passed unaltered from generation to generation though. Pieces can cross between the pairs of chromosomes during the formation of the reproductive cells. Because of this, genes from each parent can be thought of as mixing sort of randomly for the next generation. Gene linkages do occur, basically because genes close together on the chromosome are less likely to be separated (Jobling et al 2004). For example the genes for blond hair and blue eyes usually go together in humans, although they do show some independence.

During the formation of reproductive cells the pair of X-chromosomes in women behaves in much the same way as all the other pairs of chromosomes do, they mix. But, because there is no corresponding part on the X-chromosome for it to join with, most of the Y-chromosome is passed virtually unchanged from father to son. And virtually all genes on the single X-chromosome in men, which can come only from their mother, are expressed. This is why such things as baldness in men come through the mother’s side. Scientists have worked out the sequence of nucleotides in sections of what is called the non-recombining portion of the Y-chromosome (NRY). The differences reveal how closely related male members of different populations are. Scientists have constructed a family tree for the human Y-chromosome (“MtEve” [The Trees]). Large sections of it came from such witnesses for the defence as Hammer and Horai (1995), Karafet et al (1999), Underhill et al (2001) and Ke et al (2001). We are getting to know a great deal about migration of at least the male half of the human population. But we cannot automatically assume these movements always indicate population migrations that included women. It is not only married men who migrate to new regions. Any man who travels a lot can spread his genes, including his Y-chromosome, quite widely. For many reasons women’s genes usually spread more slowly.

Nuclear DNA

DNA is ultimately responsible (via RNA) for making proteins. Living matter is made up largely of protein. Matt Ridley (2000) writes “almost everything in the body, from hair to hormones, is either made of proteins or made by them”. Proteins are just long chains of amino acids. Twenty amino acids are commonly found in nature. Each amino acid is, in effect, coded for by a particular sequence of three nucleotides on the DNA. The pattern of nucleotides on the DNA therefore ensures a particular protein always has the same sequence of amino acids; but any mutation in the DNA can change some aspect of the protein it is responsible for and even the creature itself. It has been shown statistically most mutations seem not to have any effect though (Lewin 1999).

Any harmful protein change would usually be eliminated during foetal development, or possibly even before conception. Mutations that provide an advantage for any individual with it are probably very few and far between. Harmless protein changes move slowly through a population, as individuals with the mutation move around and leave descendants. But particular mutations are usually concentrated in particular geographical regions. The book “History and Geography of Human Genes” by Cavalli-Sforza et al (1994) can provide many hours of contemplation. It contains about 500 maps of the distribution through the world of various genetically controlled blood proteins and enzymes. Further processing of this data by a system called “principal component analysis” has provided maps of mutations that tend to occur together in clumps. The map of the first principal component for each region shows the distribution of the greatest level of genetic variation within that region.

Because, by definition, the maps pick up only genes that display regional variation the two opposite extremes are usually each concentrated in separate regions, but they merge gradually into each other. Once the regional genetic combination that makes up the first principal component is removed the next most common one (second principal component) is revealed, often showing a completely different pattern, and so on.

Studying these maps gives us an indication of the migration of different human populations around the world and the defence will call on Cavalli-Sforza’s maps many times as evidence in favour of the defendant. Of course humans, like all species, share the vast majority of their genes with each other. That is why we all look roughly the same but this case will concentrate mainly on those genes that vary within each species and group of species.

Although DNA evidence is readily accepted in Courts of Law to establish close relationships or the identity of individuals it does seem as though many of us are unwilling to accept DNA evidence of relationships in the present case. Of course the same mutation at the same point on the DNA molecule in two different individuals at different times may lead to our misinterpretation of the evidence in some cases.

So at conception you received genes from each parent in the ratio of 50:50. Some research suggests that the egg is able to select the best sperm, but the selection of genes from each parent is basically random. So when you were conceived you took half your genes from your father and half from your mother which, mixed together, make up your characteristics.

Dominant and Recessive Genes

Each of your genes provides two possibilities, one from your mother and one from your father. Any gene always expressed as a characteristic is called the dominant gene. By convention the dominant gene is written with a capital letter, e.g. “B”. The lower case letter, “b”, is used for the recessive (the one that usually doesn’t show). Because each individual has two genes for each characteristic the only possible combinations are “BB”, “Bb”, “bB” and “bb”. You can put the gene from your mother or your father first but be consistent. It sometimes makes a difference whether the gene comes from the mother or the father (Jones 2000). The reasons for this are complex and needn’t concern us. “BB” and “bb” are called “homozygous” (the same gene on each chromosome) and “Bb” and “bB” are called “heterozygous” (different gene on each chromosome).

Dominance can actually be complete or incomplete. In the case of complete dominance the first three examples above would all look the same for that characteristic. Just the one individual in four with the combination “bb” would look different. In cattle the black colour is dominant. In that case “B” could represent a dominant gene for the colour black and “b” represent a recessive gene for the colour white. The combination “bb” would be the only one that would produce a white animal. The other combinations would all be black.

A particular gene always occurs at a particular section of a chromosome. In each individual only two options are available because they have pairs of chromosomes, one of each pair from each parent. But in the population as a whole there may be many different genes available for that place. Human blood groups, for example, have three options on the chromosome: A, B and O.

Four blood groups exist: O, A, B or AB. O is recessive and so always homozygous (oo) but A and B can be homozygous (AA and BB) or heterozygous with O (Ao and Bo). AB is an example of incomplete dominance. This is what makes us all so different. And in the case of the B and b example a gene for a reddish-brown colour could be available as well as genes for black or white. This complicates things but dominance may still be complete. Black may be dominant over both red and white, and red dominant over white for example.

Some genes are co-dominant or cumulative: the heterozygous “Bb” or “bB” can be sort of halfway between the homozygous “BB” and “bb”. For the example of black and white given above the heterozygous individuals would be some shade of grey. With the addition of the red gene a combination of red and black could give a dark brown or bay colour, and red and white a fawn or dun colour. In some cases heterozygous individuals (“Bb” or “bB”) are actually at an advantage over either homozygous extreme. This is one of the things that ensure “hybrid vigour” or “heterosis”. In practice, though, characteristics that vary along a continuum between two extremes are usually the product of several different pairs of genes at different places even on different chromosomes, which individually demonstrate complete dominance.

In actual fact black is not the dominant colour in all animals. For example white is dominant in cats. In this particular case the gene that gives rise to the white also leads to deafness and white cats, especially males, are usually deaf (Jones 2000). This means there has been what is called “selection” against white cats, otherwise all cats would be white (I would bet there has also been selection against white cats for other reasons as well. Except in snow a white cat is easier to see when it is hunting or being hunted for instance).

The concept of selection has been borrowed from farming. Farmers control which individuals in their dairy herd, for example, will be able to leave more genes in the form of descendants. They do this by “selecting” which animals to either breed from or get rid of. In effect nature does much the same thing with animals and plants. If individuals with a particular characteristic are less successful at breeding those without the characteristic will make up the population numbers. This is called natural selection.

Selection keeps disadvantageous mutations at a low level. But if a dominant gene appears in a population it obviously spreads very rapidly through the generations if individuals with it leave more offspring that in turn leave more offspring etc. A recessive gene spreads more slowly because selection can operate only on individuals where the gene is expressed, i.e. those born with a double recessive. If individuals with a double recessive leave more offspring after many generations the whole population will have become double recessive. The dominant gene will then be extinct. By that time another advantageous recessive may have arisen in the population at the same point on the chromosome. In this way a recessive gene can become dominant but not, of course, over any gene it had previously been recessive to. The defence will expand on this in “Hybrid vigour and Inbreeding” [Wave Theory of Evolution].

And I’m afraid it is not really even that simple. Many animals have genes that make the two colours paler, appear in patches, stripes or spots on their bodies, and some even have three colours. Calico, or tortoiseshell, cats for example can have three colours. Most genes for colour in cats happen to be carried on the X-chromosome. To get a tortoiseshell and white cat there has to be a red gene on one X-chromosome and a black gene on the other X-chromosome as well as other genes that promote patching with white. Because males have only one X-chromosome tortoiseshell cats are usually female. Any males that are tortoiseshell-coloured must have an extra X-chromosome and they are sterile.

Genetic information therefore is carried in a way that allows an almost infinite variety of possibilities. A number of genes are available for each point on the chromosome and a number of points on the chromosome can carry similar genes. There are also genes responsible for switching on or off other genes. In fact most characteristics are almost certainly the result of a series of such genes (Ridley 2000). For any characteristic there is a sort of hierarchy of genes. Whether a gene is dominant or incompletely dominant is probably also ultimately under genetic control.

For practical purposes we can regard populations, or whole species, as being simply collections of genes, or nuclear DNA, in various proportions. The study of this is called population genetics and the defence will use information gained from studying cattle to explain the idea many times during this case. Because a great deal of information is available for cattle they are ideal for the study of practical genetics. Not only have desirable qualities been bred for; the change each generation can actually be measured.

Meat quality, weight and growth rates for beef cattle progeny can be measured accurately. In dairy cows milk production, protein and fat percentage in the milk, overall size, temperament, teat placement and udder shape are all to some extent genetically controlled and can be measured, or at least subjectively judged. All these individual traits have what is called a bell curve distribution. As you move away from the most common type in any direction numbers fall off in the shape of a bell. The further from the majority you get the fewer individuals there are. The jury will eventually understand how we can see that in effect each individual gene travels through a population on its own independent wave.

My grandfather milked Shorthorn and Red Devon cattle breeds. By the time my uncles took over the farm Jersey cattle had become the fashion. But they didn’t need to buy a whole new herd. They just formed a sequence of hybrids with Jersey bulls. After three cow generations the herd was ⅞ Jersey (“Pedigrees” [Ancestry]). They looked like Jerseys but when I was a child some cattle in the herd still had pink noses or were brindled, a throwback to the earlier breeds. Their fathers had Shorthorn or Red Devon ancestry too.

When Friesian cattle then became popular it was again possible to gain a Friesian herd by the same method. But the mitochondrial DNA of many Friesian cows in the New Zealand dairy herd goes right back to Shorthorn or Red Devon cattle.

Mitochondrial DNA

So far we have been dealing with nuclear DNA, the DNA responsible for your genes. But there is another type of DNA in your body. It is called mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA). This DNA is not involved with the formation of genes (Jones 2001) and it occurs as a circular molecule (the ends are connected). Human mitochondria each consist of just sixteen and a half thousand pairs of the nucleotides: A, T, G and C. Each cell of the human body may have up to ten thousand molecules of mtDNA but most have far fewer. Mitochondria occur outside the nucleus and are known as the powerhouse of the cell.

They produce the proteins responsible for digestion within the cell. These proteins are involved in the production of ATP (adenosinetriphosphate) from various acids produced in the body. This process takes up oxygen and produces carbon dioxide and water. In the vast majority of individuals all the mitochondria in every cell have exactly the same DNA but mutations do occur. If the mutation happens in an egg cell it is passed on to the offspring.

The egg cell needs its mitochondria for metabolism and cell division but the sperm’s mtDNA is effectively discarded and lost at fertilization (Jobling et al 2004). Therefore the mtDNA is passed unchanged from only the mother to the child for thousands of generations. In fact the mtDNA does change over time (mutations). The rate of this change and the regularity of the change have been greatly debated by scientists; i.e. does it have a sort of half-life? How much does it change, say, in a thousand years? Is the change totally random or does selection act on these changes? It is now generally accepted that some sections of mtDNA change quite rapidly and regularly, and it has been shown that one parent-child comparison in forty has a mitochondrial mutation (Jones 2000). Because there is a great deal of mtDNA in each individual, and it is a relatively short chain, it has been the easiest DNA to extract and to study.

Like the Y-chromosome, the sequence of the nucleotides in sections of the mtDNA has been worked out for individuals of many species. The accumulation of differences in the sequences can be used to indicate the relationship of various groups of animals and humans through their mother’s ancestry. If the mtDNA is only a little different it is presumed they are closely related and of course this would be so, no matter what the rate of mutation.

Again, like the Y-chromosome, examination of the mutations in human mtDNA has been used to construct an evolutionary, or family, tree. From this it has been concluded we all descend from a single woman who lived in Africa. We will meet her again and see her family tree in “MtEve” [The Trees]. But before then the defenve needs to explain a few more things.

Studies of the changes in mitochondrial DNA and the Y-chromosome have been very useful in helping us understand our origin but we need to consider other evidence before we jump to conclusions. The first thing we need to consider, and explain, is the present distribution of human genetic variations.

Witnesses Called

Cavalli-Sforza, Luigi Luca, Menozzi, Paolo and Piazzi, Alberto (1994) The History and Geography of Human Genes. Princeton University Press, New Jersey.

Cavalli-Sforza, Luigi Luca and Cavalli-Sforza, Francesco (1995) The Great Human Diasporas. Addison- Wesley

Hammer, Michael F. and Horai, Satoshi (1995) Y Chromosomal DNA Variation and the Peopling of Japan. Am. J. Hum. Genet. 56: 951-962

Jobling et al (2004) Human Evolutionary Genetics. Garland Science, New York.

Jones, Martin (2001) The Molecule Hunt. The Penguin Press, London.

Jones, Steve (2000) Almost Like a Whale. Anchor, London.

Karafet et al (1999) Ancestral Asian Source(s) of New World Y-chromosome Founder Haplotypes. Am. J. Hum. Genet. 64: 817-831.

Ke et al (2001) African Origin of Modern Humans in East Asia. Science Vol. 292 1151-1152

Lewin, Roger (1999) Patterns in Evolution. Scientific American Library, New York.

Ridley, Matt (2000) Genome. Harper Collins, New York.

Stringer, Christopher and McKie, Robin (1996) African Exodus. Random House, UK.

Underhill et al (2001) Y-Chromosome Haplotypes and Implications for Human History in the Pacific. (pdf) Human Mutation 17: 271-280.

Spain v. Italy - 'La Gran Ocasión' (nil-nil at half-time)

2008-06-22T21:39:00.013+02:00

Noticias - Real Federación Española de Fútbol,

Despite not having beaten Italy in any official match for 88 years, the Spanish press are talking this one up, as there is a real belief that Euro 2008 could be Spain's best chance of winning an international competition for the first time in their history.

As kick-off is but a few minutes away, there isn't much time for a pre-match analysis of any great depth, save to say that unless Italy's Luca Toni manages a sprint at anything even approaching 3 mph, the Spanish defence should be able to sit back and relax as Torres, Villa et al do the business up front.

But have Spain played their best football too soon in the group stages, and will Italy, like Germany, save their best form for the knock-out stages? If this game lives up to the high standards we've seen over the last couple of weeks, this should be an outstanding match - and one which hopefully won't go to penalties, the worst way for any team to exit such a competition. 3-2 Spain would be my snap prediction.

Half time - not looking good for Spain - they're being frozen out by an Italian side determined to give them no time or space on the ball, and the ref is having a nightmare - late on, David Silva was scythed down on the edge of the box, only for Herbert Fandel to brush aside vociferous claims for a free kick. They're going to need a slice of luck to get through this, or at the very least, a dash of magic, because otherwise Italy will grind out a 1-0, or win it on penalties.

More at the end of the game if I manage to stay awake for long enough.

Full-time: Spain 0-0 Italy Spain win 4-2 on penalties

Somewhat improbably, Spain made it through to the semi-finals; having spent 120 minutes playing for the penalty shoot-out, Italy were in the end beaten at their own game, missing two of their spot kicks, as a result of Iker Casillas guessing correctly and making two good saves.

Spain next face Russia, (again) on Thursday, and if they are to progress they will need to be a lot more tactically adept than they were tonight. Both they and Italy played the entire game from box to box, and with no effective wide player, the Spanish attack was continually sucked into the the black hole that comprised the massed defence of the Italians, whose negativity as a side could probably only have been surpassed by players composed of anti-matter.

The Russians will pose a formidable obstacle in the path of Spain's possible road to victory, but as they play with a similar philosophy to Spain of more open and attacking play, it's unlikely that this semi-final will go all the way to penalties.

So for this time round it's "ciao Italia", and apart from their fans, there will be few neutrals who mourn their exit from Euro 2008 - had they prevailed tonight, it's likely they would have bored us all the way to the final by defending superbly for 120 minutes in both games, whilst creating absolutely nothing in the way of captivating entertainment.

And if Spain do beat Russia, it's likely they'll go head to head with Germany in the final - a side who don't always play futbol espactular, but do have a knack of pulling something out of the hat on that special occasion.

see also: The Fiver 23 June edition:: Brilliant Russians, and Stubbly Spaniards

from which this is taken...

"Marca dedicated 42 pages to the 0-0 draw, while AS settled for a more restrained 29, only spoiling the effect slightly with this contribution from objective journalist Tomás Roncero: "Take that historic inferiority complex! Take that Spanish victimism! Take that Buffon and Cassano! Take that June 22 curse! Take that 88-year jinx against the unbeatable Italians! Take that pessimists! Take that disbelievers! Take that Tassotti! Take that Pagliuca! And long live King Juan Carlos of Spain!"

Fernando Torres was just as ebullient, insisting: "This moment will be mythical for generations," while journalist Juanma Trueba claimed: "One day we'll look back on this day as the one that changed our history," he wrote, possibly in the heat of the moment. The Fiver sincerely hopes the Spaniards didn't treat last night's game as their final. But the stubbly kiss it received on the way out of the Duke of Wellington last night leaves it in grave doubt.

Four Stone Hearth #43 @ Paddy K's Swedish Extravaganza

2008-06-18T15:01:00.005+02:00

Four Stone Hearth #43 @ Paddy K's

The new Four Stone Hearth is up and running, and from what I've read so far, there's a very nice mix of some thought provoking posts, especially the one at Neuroanthroplogy which unleashes a virulent attack on the hapless meme, as defined by Dennett and Blackmore - the meme which suggests that the idea of memes is a good one has clearly failed to make any impact on Greg Downey, who makes some very good points about why he thinks memetics has no basis in scientific reality.

The 44th incarnation of 4SH will spontaneously manifest itself at Greg Laden's a couple of weeks from now - see you there.

Four Stone Hearth 43 June 18th - Call For Submissions

2008-06-15T21:04:00.004+02:00

Four Stone Hearth the forty-third this way cometh, and will be hosted at PK's Swedish Extravaganza this Wednesday, June 18th, so there's still plenty of time to send along any posts of an anthropological nature to this blog carnival, in the manner suggested at the 4SH site...

Four Stone Hearth is published bi-weekly, Wednesdays in odd-number weeks. If you would like to host the carnival, please write to Martin Rundkvist.

If you would like to submit content to the next issue of the carnival, please write to the keeper of the blog in question or to Martin. You are encouraged to submit other bloggers' work as well as your own.