Loose Ends

I was very touched by your kindness at the end of my last lecture. Applause is not something we academics encounter very much in our day-to-day work, so I was a little taken aback by your generosity and probably a little lost for words! But not now: thank you all very much indeed.

A Questions Page: It would probably be sensible to ceate a separate page for asking subject-related questions that I haven't blogged about. That way they'll be easier to track down (assuming you ask any!). But if you want to ask a question on anything I have blogged about, use the 'Comment' link under that particular blog. Here's the link for unrelated questions:

Submit your wider questions here

Answering Essay Questions: As a rider to one of my earlier blogs ("Digging deeper" - see below) about answering essay questions, I want to emphasise that I don't have a 'set answer' in mind when I'm marking exam essays. Just as "there are many ways to skin a cat", so there are many good ways to answer an exam question, particular at third year level with only an hour to do it in. I love being surprised by what you know, particularly if you aren't just re-hashing what you got from me in the first place! But of course, all 'good' answers address the question properly and include the key points, though they may be constructed differently, interpret the relevant data in contrasting ways and reach different conclusions at the end. Disagreeing with others, or even with me, is fine if you can marshall sound arguments and evidence. I like originality, providing you can back up your claims in a balanced, scientific way.

Postgraduate Degrees: After my last lecture, I was asked by several of you about postgraduate opportunities in the field of evolutionary anthropology, both at masters and doctorate level. There are several, and over the years many students from this course have gone on to do postgraduate courses (mostly at master's level) in other universities. If this is something you are considering, the best approach is to locate someone working in a field you would like to work in and contact them directly. When you do so, be pro-active and have some ideas and suggestions, thereby showing that you are a cut above the average applicant! Here are some links as a start:

Sheffield; University College, London; Oxford; (Departments are merging at Oxford - see here); Cambridge; Durham; Liverpool (Dunbar - neanderthals); Liverpool (Dunbar - australopithecines); Liverpool John Moore's; FindAPhD.com; FindAMasters.com.

The Eloquent Ape

What a nice idea! That's us, by the way. Its part of the title of a recent 'Nature Reviews Genetics' paper about language evolution (Fisher and Marcus, 2006). Its full title is: "The eleoquent ape: genes, brains and the evolution of language." Although its got some heavy duty genetics in it (beyond the scope of our course), there are bits of the paper that could be useful, precisely because it is a 'review'. These include the abstract, the intro section, the next section called "approaching language evolution" and parts of the section entitled "molecular windows into language origins", which considers the implications of the FOXP2 discovery. Boxes 1 and 2 might be useful too, in the sense that they might help you refresh your thoughts on some basic issues.

Baboons Out of Africa: a Parallel Journey?

Here’s an interesting rider to the ‘Out of Africa’ story. A recent John Hawks blog alerted me to a paper I hadn't seen when it was first published, perhaps because it appeared in a journal called Molecular Ecology, not one of my regular foraging grounds (Winney et al, 2004). But it was interesting nonetheless because it reported a comparative study of mtDNA from two regional populations of Hamadryas baboons, one in Arabia and the other in Eritrea on the African side of the Red Sea. Since they are basically an African species, how close genetically were the two populations? Could the Arabian monkeys (as has been suggested) be the descendents of monkeys transported there by humans some 4500 years ago (the ancient Egyptians worshipped Hamadryas baboons)? Or were they the descendents of natural migrant populations from East Africa that had colonised Arabia at some more remote time in the past?

Winney and his colleagues review these questions and reach the conclusion that the baboons were not transported to Arabia by humans, did not get there recently and did not use the northern route. Instead, it seems, “the hamadryas baboons reached Arabia via land bridges that have formed periodically during glacial maxima at the straits of Bab-el-Mandeb in the southern Red Sea.” In other words, they got there by the same southern route that Oppemheimer and others are suggesting was the 'out of Africa' route used by migrating modern humans. Which is fascinating. But when did all this happen? Did modern humans and the baboons leave Africa together (roughly speaking), or at different times? Winney et al conclude that “a southerly route, via a land bridge, is most probable. Land bridges are thought to have formed five times during the past 500 kyr at approximately 18, 130, 270, 340 and 440 kyr ago (Rohling et al. 1998; Siddall et al. 2003).”

Do you see the problem? None of these dates appears to coincide with the dates being proposed for a human exodus via the southern route by Oppenheimer (2003) and others (ie 60-80,000 years BP). However, beware of taking these glacial maxima dates too literally. They will all have error bars around them, and Winney et al themselves acknowledge that the genetically predicted minimum divergence dates for Arabian and African hamadryas baboons (85-119,000 years BP) “matches closely the second-most recent sea-level low-stand” – ie 130,000 years BP (see above). If that’s the case, then Oppenheimer’s dates are not as far removed from the low-stand dates as at first might appear. Oppenheimer is aware of Rohling’s work – indeed, he commends it - but his thesis appears not to be dependent on a complete drying up of the Red Sea. So it seems that we weren't the only primate to leave Africa this way. You’ll find oppenheimer's discussion of the probable crossing date on pages 78-83 of his book, Out of Eden.

But (I've just discovered) the story doesn't end there! A paper just published in the Journal of Biogeography emphatically states: "This paper … unequivocally demonstrates that palaeoceanographic and palaeoecological data are incompatible with the existence of Red Sea land bridges since the Miocene … Based on our data we conclude that post-Miocene dispersals through route 2 (ie the southern route) could not have been across land bridges, but instead they involved sweepstake rafting, anthropogenic transport, or in the case of modern humans, seafaring" (Fernandes et al, 2006). Which leaves us with a challenging question: could our ancestors 60-80,000 years ago really have used boats to get themselves across the straits of Bab-el-Mandeb?

An Update on the Hobbit

Everyone seems to be blogging these days, including the New Scientist, Nature and Scientific American. Kate Wong of the Scientific American is a keen observer of the Hobbit (Homo floresiensis) story, and has recently posted a couple of blogs from the annual meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists in March that you may find interesting. Others may follow once she's sorted out her notes. Her first two blogs (Part 1 and Part 2) are about aspects of the 'microcephaly debate', both sides of which seem to be attracting distinguished supporters. Could good old natural selection have produced something 'adaptive' that resembled microcephaly but wasn't a disease? One conference contribution says 'possibly yes', in the light of some data from Orang utans. Interesting stuff. The signs are that this debate will run and run.

Incidentally, Kate Wong has also posted a blog on Tim White's new Australopithecus anamensis fossils, which you'll find here. These fossils were the subject of my previous blog.

More New Fossils!

The Easter vac often coincides with new developments in evolutionary anthropology, and this year is no exception. I drew your attention to one such development in my last blog (see below). Since then, another report has hit the headlines (BBC Online News), triggered this time by a publication in Nature by Tim White and his colleagues, who think they may have found fossils relating to the first emergence of the Australopthecines (Nature, 13 April 2006). They assign the new fossils to Australopithecus anamensis, but these anamensis remains are older than the specimens found by Maeve Leakey and her team in Kenya (Leakey et al. 1995). Furthermore, they appear - according to White et al - to neatly plug the time-gap between Leakey’s fossils and the earlier Ardipithecus material from Ethiopia. In Tim White’s own words, as reported by the BBC:

“I think you could argue...what we're monitoring here is the genesis of that second stage of human evolution - the genesis of Australopithecus”.

Oh no! Not Another New Fossil!

I wonder how many of you saw the news last week of a new fossil discovery in Ethiopia? You've guessed it - another "missing link" (BBC News report)! But to be fair, this one sounds very interesting, partly because of where it was found (in the Afar region of Ethiopia), partly because of its age (reportedly between 500,000 and 250,000 years old) and partly because of its apparently intermediate phylogenetic affinities (between Homo erectus and Homo sapiens). The fossil cranium was found by Asahmed Humet while he and scientists from Indiana University's Stone Age Institute were conducting "an archaeological and geological reconnaissance survey" in the Gawis river drainage basin in Afar (The Stone Age Institute).

The cranium is largely intact (braincase, upper face and upper jaw), but broken neatly into two pieces (Fossil photo). Given the recent re-dating of the Omo crania from southern Ethiopia to around 200,000 years BP and the discovery of the Bouri erectus in 2002 with a date of around one million years BP (Nature, 2002), the excitement being generated by this latest find is understandable. It certainly fits neatly into an important and fascinating 'gap' in the fossil record. It'll become even more fascinating when the dating for this fossil becomes more precise. Take a look at the reports yourself and see what you think.

Could the oldest European have lived in Devon?

Early fossils of anatomically modern humans from Europe are surprisingly rare. So news of a new one is always good to hear - if its true. Currently, the oldest modern human fossils known are those discovered recently by Erik Trinkaus and his colleagues in Romania (Trinkaus 2002, 2003) and dated to between 34-36,000 years BP.

Now, however, there is a new contender for the position - a piece of jawbone that has resided in the Torquay Museum for nearly 80 years (see BBC News report). This partial maxilla known as "Kent's Cavern 4" after the cave in which it was found remained unnoticed for 60 years, until in the 1980s it was recognised as an early human. Carbon dating revealed that it was about 31,000 years old, but this has been revised recently to between 37-40,000 years BP, substantially older than the Romanian fossils.

Research is ongoing, so the jury is still out. Since KC4 is older than other modern human fossils from Europe, could it in reality be a neanderthal? If its status as a true modern human is confirmed, it will be the oldest European specimen of our species yet discovered. So here's a question for you: how well would that date fit in with the 'colonisation of Europe' story we were uncovering the other day based on mitochondrial DNA?

UPDATE: See John Hawks' comments on KC4 at his anthropology blog.

Thinking deeply and letting it show

I promised in an earlier blog to think aloud at some point about the meaning of 'deep' or 'depth' in expressions like 'deep learning' or 'understanding in depth'. Since I'm urging you to aspire to this kind of learning, it’s only fair that I should at some point explain what I mean by it! Once I’ve explained what I mean, it should become clear why I’m urging you to aspire to it and what I will be hoping to see when I read your exam essays. I hope the analogies I use are illuminating rather than patronising, but if you’ve heard them all before just skip over the detail. However, don’t skip over my thoughts on what constitutes a ‘good exam essay’!

On digging deeper ...

How’s it Going? Feedback on your feedback

Many thanks to all of you for completing the ‘How’s it going?’ questionnaire. Your feedback has been really informative. Here’s my feedback on your feedback.

Student-centred teaching. All of you apparently understand the ‘student-centred’ ethos that underpins the course, and most of you seem to prefer that kind of approach. A few of you are a little less certain about its implications, but no one is really anti. Should problems arise in the future for any of you, get in touch directly in the lab, or email me, and don’t delay. But remember, I’m a ‘guide on the side’, not a ‘sage on the stage’, so I will try to ‘help you find the answer’ rather than pontificate in an all-knowing way. Sometimes I won’t know the answer, so we can work it out together! Either way – if at first you don’t succeed, come back for more! In the lab, don’t expect us to pester you all the time. If you have a question, pester us – that’s what ‘student-centred’ means – you take the initiative, we respond, rather than the other way around.

More on feedback ...

Conference Presentations

Wow! What a week – all kinds of commitments and distractions that momentarily took my eye off the anthropology ball. But not for long, of course. If any of you have been waiting with bated breath for last week’s powerpoints, I apologise for the delay in putting them up on the website. They’re up now, and you’ll notice that the handout powerpoints are now downloadable in advance if you want them. They are often shorter than the full version, so they’re not an alternative to attending the lectures! I’ll say more about Powerpoint in my next blog. For the moment I want to focus on the mini-conference.

I enjoyed the conference immensely, not because it was a laugh a minute (though there were lots of laughs) or breathtakingly scholarly (though there was even some of that), but because it gave me a useful insight into your work generally and some reassurance that your anthropological thinking was developing along broadly the right lines. With any luck, you all found it useful in some way too. So well done to everyone who took part. In particular, congratulations to Group B for winning the incredibly desirable prize, and to Groups F and E for storming in so close behind them. Keep up the good work. More ...