Giving a talk at the Virginia Museum of Natural History

I am travelling to Martinsville, VA, tomorrow to deliver a talk at the Virginia Museum of Natural History. I was contacted a few months ago by the museum's executive director, Dr. Joe Keiper, to participate in their 2nd Thursday Science Talks program. This year's theme is "From Cosmology to Conservation: Your World and Your Place in It." In the spirit of that theme, I will be discussing what I think Neandertals can teach us about the concept of "Race" among modern humans. Here are the talk's particulars:

A Neandertal's Perspective on the Existence of "Races" Among Modern Humans

For many years, anthropologists have grappled with the central paradox of "Race." On the one hand, the nature of human variation seriously undermines the biological reality of racial categories. On the other hand, it is evident that one's race, as a marker of status, identity, or heritage, is real and, thus, really matters. In this presentation, we will step back nearly 35,000 years, when the last Neandertals roamed Ice Age Eurasia, to explore what these extinct humans can teach us about race and, ultimately, what it means to be human in today's world.

Looking forward to it! 

Back from DC

As I said earlier, I was in Washington, D.C. last Wednesday and Thursday. I drove in a few hours before my talk was scheduled on Wednesday and decided, after checking in to my hotel (the 100-year-old Hotel Harrington, highly recommended for its location), to visit the National Archives. I was excited for two reasons. First, I really enjoy history, and second, I am a huge fan of the movie National Treasure, parts of which are shot (or at least are supposed to take place) in the archives. It was amazing. I was able to see the original Declaration of Independence (which is much, much more faded than the movie makes it out to be), Constitution, and Bill of Rights. They also have a copy of Magna Carta that dates to 1297 (the reign of King Edward I, who confirmed the rights laid out in the original 1215 version). No photos inside, unfortunately, but I did get this one from the outside:

National Archives from Pennsylvania Avenue. The temporary exhibit was

"Spirited Republic: Alcohol in American History." 

Wednesday afternoon I spoke to the Anthropology Department for the Smithsonian's Paleoanthropology Seminar on our recent work at Olduvai Gorge. I gave the talk a cutsey title, "New Perspectives on Old Bones and Stones at Olduvai Gorge." That night I was treated to an excellent meal and great conversation by my hosts.

Thursday morning I was up early so I could visit the Woodrow Wilson House, which is a Georgian Revival on S Street SW where the Wilsons lived together from 1921, when the president completed his second term, until the president's death in 1924. His second wife, Edith, continued to inhabit the home until her own death in 1961. She graciously left the house and all its furnishings to the National Trust for Historic Preservation. It is beautiful, and the folks who run the house provided a wonderful tour (thanks Fay!) with a lot of interesting tidbits (they have Woodrow Wilson's famous fur coat, for example, which is made of kangaroo and wombat, and the huge tapestry given to Woodrow by the government of France apparently had a few too many exposed breasts and butts for Edith's liking). I was able to get some nice photos of the home:

A painting of an Armenian girl, done by her uncle, that hangs in the Wilson
sitting room. It was given to Woodrow Wilson in recognition of his service 
to the Armenian people.

The Wilson library. If you look just above the top row of books on the left, you
will see a rolled up screen, which the Wilsons would drop in order to watch 
movies.

Later that day, I met Briana at the museum to participate in an informal chat with Smithsonian volunteers about Neandertals. It turns out that I was on site for a little get together celebrating the five-year anniversary of the opening of the Smithsonian's David H. Koch Hall of Human Origins. Rick Potts, who was the driving force behind the exhibit, talked a bit about the trials and tribulations associated with getting everything up and running (as you can imagine, it was a ton of work). Check out the awesome cake (those familiar with the hominin fossil record will notice the dental abscess, which was fashioned to resemble the Broken Hill, or Kabwe, specimen from Zambia):

Cake commemorating the five year anniversary of the Hall of Human Origins
at the Smithsonian.

After we had nibbled on cake, I sat down with several of the Hall's volunteers to talk about some of our work in Denmark and Armenia on Neandertals. They were all extremely well informed on the latest information, particularly the paleogenetics, and it was a lot of fun discussing things with them.

Just back from Georgia

I just returned from a really great workshop entitled "The Role of the Southern Caucasus on Early Human Evolution and Expansion−Refuge, Hub or Source Area?" that was held at the Georgian National Museum in Tbilisi from October 15-20. The workshop was organized by the project The Role of Culture in Early Expansions of Humans, whose main goal, according to their website "is to explain the reasons for different hominin expansions." The whole experience was excellent, and I was able to see a few good friends and learn about the latest research in the southern Caucasus. The Dmanisi team also announced the newest hominin cranium (the timing, I think, was not a coincidence). I'll blog about this in more detail soon....   

Neandertals suffered from cancer, too

A new article in PLoS ONE by Janet Monge and her colleagues reports the discovery of fibrous dysplasia on a 120,000-year-old Neandertal individual from Krapina. Fibrous dysplasia is a benign cancerous disorder that manifests as abnormal bone growth.

Krapina 120.71 in caudal view (a). The large lesion is located above the tubercular facet and extends laterally. The trabeculae have been destroyed and the cortex appears expansive. The thin cortical bone forming the superior surface of the cavern was broken away postmortem. (b) Krapina 120.6 shows the normal pattern of bony trabeculae in the medullary space. The surface irregularities are postmortem. Caption from Monge et al. (2013: Figure 1).

What's really interesting here is that these sorts of disorders are very rare in the archaeological record. The earliest examples were, until now, only about 1,000-4,000 years old. While it's difficult to determine what caused the tumor, it does demonstrate that these sorts of abnormalities are not found solely with modern pollutants that are often thought to be responsible for the high rates of cancers among contemporary populations.

References:

Monge, J, Kricun, M, Radovčić, J, Radovčić, D, Mann, A, Frayer, DW. Fibrous dysplasia in a 120,000+ year old Neandertal from Krapina, Croatia. PLoS ONE 8, e64539.

Neandertals on TV

Just a quick note to let readers know that PBS is premiering two documentaries on Neandertals tonight, both of which highlight the very latest science on these extinct humans. One is called "Decoding Neanderthals" and focuses on the new genetic and archaeological data, while the other is part of PBS's "Secrets of the Dead" series and focuses on the forensic-type information gleaned from Neandertal fossils. I've seen a bit of the "Decoding Neanderthals" show (you can view it for free on PBS's website), and it appears to be pretty good.

Neandertals in Denmark? Maybe not...

There has been quite a bit of discussion about the range and, thus, the colonization abilities of Neandertals. Traditionally, the Neandertal world was thought to be limited to western, central, and eastern Europe, north Africa, and western Asia, with Uzbekistan representing the group's easternmost outpost. However, more recent mitochondrial DNA analyses of human fossils from Siberia effectively extended the known Neandertal range some 2,000 km to the northeast, and excavations at other sites now show that they inhabited a wide variety of habitats, including coastal areas and relatively rugged mid-altitude zones. Basically, Neandertals appear to have been much more adaptable that we've historically given them credit for.

My colleagues and I just published a study, which was funded by Aarhus University, on some ~120,000-year-old fallow deer skeletons from Denmark that were thought for many years to have been butchered. Butchered animals bones, of course, mean that humans were around and, given the age of the finds, Neandertals were considered the most likely culprit. If the remains were indeed butchered, this would have been the earliest and best evidence for a human presence in the region before the end of the last Ice Age (about 18,000 years ago).

After having looked the bones over, however, we were forced to conclude that there is no definitive evidence that Neandertals, or anyone else for that matter, butchered these animals. The bones are indeed broken, and one of them does show marks that could be interpreted as originating from a stone knife. The reason we're so cautious is that no compelling reason exists to attribute the breakage or the mark to anything other than natural processes.

Reconstruction of a rather sunburned Neandertal (courtesy of Berlingske Tidende)

Although this isn't huge, international news, it did make quite a splash in the Danish media. You can check out some of these stories (if you don't speak Danish, I suggest Google Translate, it does a fair job):

• Here's the Aarhus University press release
• Stories from the larger national newspapers Berlingske Tidende and Politiken, and the smaller, regional newspaper Jyske Vestkysten

One of the main problems here is that Danish archaeology has traditionally been dominated by later prehistoric and Medieval research. So, no one has really take the time to look for well-preserved Paleolithic sites. Luckily, Trine Kellberg Nielsen, a Ph.D. student at Aarhus and one of the co-authors on our fallow deer study, has recently received support to systematically examine the issue of a Neandertal occupation of Denmark. Hopefully her work will help turn up definitive evidence...

UPDATE 3.28.13

Here is a poster that Trine recently presented highlighting her plans for future work in Denmark. The most interesting aspect will involve paleoenvironmental reconstructions that will attempt to highlight areas most likely to have been occupied by Neandertal groups.