Bodies, race, and the history of anthropology

Another overdue post from our visit to Spain this past spring...

The Museo Nacional de Antropología in Madrid has a fascinating history. The first museum in Spain to be dedicated to the study of anthropology, it was founded in 1875 as the Museum of Anatomy by Pedro González de Velasco under the patronage of King Alfonso XII. Velasco's anatomical specimens and the ethnographic artifacts collected by the Spanish government from across its then-vast empire formed the museum's original collection. Off to the left of the main entrance lies a small, nondescript room that today displays some of these items as a record of, and a tribute to, the museum's past. For me, the most interesting, and, in many ways, poignant pieces in the room was the skeleton of Augustín Luego Capilla.

Skeleton of Augustín Luego Capilla

What makes the skeleton so remarkable, and the reason why Velasco acquired it for the museum, is its size: when Capilla died at the tragically young age of 26, he stood 2.35 meters (~8 feet, 3 inches) tall. Known as the "Gigante Extremeño," or "Giant of Extramadura," Capilla earned a living as part of a circus act and, when traveling through or near Madrid in 1875, sought medical attention from Velasco. By that time he was very ill, and on December 31st he died. His mother, Josefa, apparently in gratitude for Velasco's medical care, donated her son's body to the museum for anatomical study.

Capilla's extreme stature is likely explained by pituitary gigantism, a condition caused by the excessive secretion of growth hormone and insulin-like growth factor 1. The disproportionately large mandible, abnormal bone growth around the knee joints, and enlarged hands are all symptoms of acromegaly, which is commonly associated with pituitary pathologies. Capilla is one of only a handful of acromegalic skeletons on display in western museums. Velasco also created a full body cast of Capilla's corpse before it was skeletonized (this is also on display in the museum).

Pelvic girdle of Augustín Luego Capilla showing pathological proximal
femora (note anterio-posteriorally compressed femoral heads) and acetabula.

While the skeletal material is very interesting from a paleopathological perspective, some point out, correctly I believe, how tragic Capilla's life and afterlife was and is. Being displayed today as a museum oddity, Capilla's body, one can argue, has no more dignity now than Capilla himself had as a spectacle for gawking circus-goers when he was alive. While Capilla's body was donated, this was not the case for other acromegalic skeletons, many of which were essentially stolen to be included in medical collections.

The room also houses some objects that encapsulate the rather sordid history of biological anthropology, especially its obsession with racial typology.

Die Proportionslehre der Menschlichen Gestalt,
Carl Gustav Carus, 1854. 

References:

Giménez-Roldán, S (2019). The Giant of Extramadura: acromegalic gigantism in the 19th century. Neurosciences and History 6: 38-52.

Museo del Prado

A few weeks ago (3.15), my wife Noell and I visited the Museo del Prado, which is celebrating its 200th anniversary this year. It is an impressive museum indeed. We did see most of what the museum considers to be its masterpieces. Francisco de Goya y Lucientes's El 3 de Mayo de 1808 en Madrid and its less well-known companion piece El 2 de Mayo de 1808 in Madrid are both very powerful images. The museum also has a vast collection of Renaissance and Dutch Golden Age paintings. However, I have to say that my favorite piece was Dona Juana la Loco (Queen Joanna the Mad) by Francisco Pradilla y Ortiz. What struck me most about the work is the artist's ability to capture movement, especially with the candles. Any photo I could take would not do it justice, but I do have the information panel! (Apologies for the blurry image, my phone's camera is not fantastic.)

Information panel for Pradilla y Ortiz's Dona Juana la Loco.

One thing I noticed: among the hundreds of pieces of art on display, not one that I was aware of was the work of a woman. A sign of the times, I suppose.

Research in Spain

I am very lucky to have received a Giner de los Rios fellowship from the Universidad de Alcalá for the 2018-2019 academic year.  During my stay in Spain, which will last from March to the end of April 2019, I will be working as a visiting researcher at the Instituto de Evolución Humana en África (IDEA), which is co-directed by my friend and colleague, Manuel Domínguez-Rodrigo. My main goals are to work with colleagues on the analysis of faunal material excavated from sites at Olduvai Gorge and to construct a comprehensive database of neotaphonomic studies.

My family and I have been here in Madrid for just over a week now and are enjoying what I am told is unseasonably warm weather. I will be posting now and again during our stay...

Archaic humans versus giant hyenas in Pleistocene Europe

María Patrocinio-Espigares and her colleagues have published an interesting study claiming to have identified evidence for competition between archaic humans and giant hyenas for access to a mammoth carcass from a site in Spain dated to over one million years ago. The site, Fuente Nueva-3, is found near the southern Spanish village of Orce, which is an extremely rich area for early Pleistocene fossils, including those of hominins. In fact, Fuente Nueva-3 and a nearby site, Barranco León, dated to 1.3 and 1.4 million years ago, respectively, currently preserve the oldest well accepted evidence for hominin occupation in all of Europe.

The excavations at Fuente Nueva-3 have been ongoing for well over a decade, but this paper reports on a partial skeleton of Mammuthus meridionalis, a species of mammoth, found in association with a few stone tools and, intriguingly, some coprolites (that is, fossilized poop). The materials were deposited near the edge of an ancient lake, and the authors argue that the mammoth (an old female) probably died of natural causes. The skeleton is relatively complete; only the legs and the head are missing.

Photo (A) and map (B) showing the distribution of mammoth bones, stone tools, and coprolites from Fuenta Nueva-3 . From Espigares et al. (2013: Figure 4).

Butchery marks (cutmarks from stone knives and percussion marks and notches from breaking open bones for marrow; although, some of the so-called percussion notches look a lot like the carnivore-created notches I've seen from modern assemblages) and tooth marks are pretty common on many bones from levels above and below the mammoth skeleton, but none whatsoever have been discovered on the mammoth bones in question. Nevertheless, the authors contend that the carcass was butchered by hominins, who removed the legs for consumption elsewhere, and later partly consumed by giant short-faced hyenas (Pachycrocuta brevirostris; they do not, however, tell us how they know the coprolites are those of a hyena).

I suppose this is possible. The authors correctly note that proboscideans are so big, and are covered by so much tough soft tissue, that butchery and tooth marks are unlikely to be inflicted. Pachycrocuta, though, as a recent paper by many of the same authors tells us, was about one-and-a-half times bigger than modern spotted hyenas and probably better adapted to bone-cracking than any other mammal that ever existed (Palmqvist et al., 2011) so, if anything would have left tooth marks on a mammoth-sized carcass, you would think it would be Pachycrocuta. I'll let the authors summarize their thoughts (Patrocinio-Espigares et al., 2013: 122; see the drawing by the very talented Mauricio Antón below for a reconstruction):

The Upper Archaeological Level of Fuente Nueva-3, dated around 1.3 Ma, provides the oldest evidence of a probable competition between Homo and Pachycrocuta, the two major bone-modifying and accumulating agents during early Pleistocene times in Europe. The evidence lies in the finding of an incomplete skeleton of M. meridionalis surrounded by 34 coprolites and 17 lithic artifacts. The skewed spatial distribution of these elements, the physical characteristics of the coprolites and the absence of the elephant limbs and cranium suggest that both hominins and hyenas scavenged the carcass of this megaherbivore, following a sequence of consumption in which the hominins arrived first, dismembered and transported the limbs, and probably also the cranium, and later the hyenas consumed the rest of the elephant carcass.

Original caption: Reconstruction of the possible sequence of interaction between hominins (A) and hyenas (B) during the exploitation of the carcass of M. meridionalis. From Patrocinio-Espigares et al. (2013: Figure 7). 

These conclusions are all based on indirect evidence (stone tools that may or may not have been used to butcher the animal, coprolites that may belong to hyenas that may have fed on the carcass). Either way, this does bring up the interesting issue of how hominins and carnivores interacted: were they competitors on the landscape for carcasses? Was this competition direct (i.e., fighting over access to carcasses) or indirect (one removing edible carcasses from the environment that the other in turn could not exploit)? Researchers have in fact suggested that competition from large carnivores went a long way towards preventing hominin populations from permanently colonizing Eurasia until after 600,000 years ago or so.

References:

Palmqvist, P, Martínez-Navarro, B, Pérez-Claros, JA, Torregrosa, V, Figueirido, B, Jiménez-Arenas, JM, Patrocinio-Espigares, M, Ros-Montoya, S, De Renzi, M (2011). The giant hyena Pachycrocuta brevirostris: modelling the bone-cracking behavior of an extinct carnivore. Quaternary International 243, 61-79.

Patrocinio-Espigares, M, Martínez-Navarro, B, Palmqvist, P, Ros-Montoya, S, Toro, I, Agustí, J, Sala, R (2013). Homo vs. Pachycrocuta: earliest evidence of competition for an elephant carcass between scavengers at Fuente Nueva-3 (Orce, Spain). Quaternary International 295, 113-125.