The questionable contribution of the Neolithic and the Bronze Age to European craniofacial form
Below is the Abstract of an article by C. Loring Brace et al. I don’t at all follow the reasoning of the article or the comment on it also reproduced below. Perhaps readers here will have more success than I have had.
Many human craniofacial dimensions are largely of neutral adaptive significance, and an analysis of their variation can serve as an indication of the extent to which any given population is genetically related to or differs from any other. When 24 craniofacial measurements of a series of human populations are used to generate neighbor-joining dendrograms, it is no surprise that all modern European groups, ranging all of the way from Scandinavia to eastern Europe and throughout the Mediterranean to the Middle East, show that they are closely related to each other.
The surprise is that the Neolithic peoples of Europe and their Bronze Age successors are not closely related to the modern inhabitants, although the prehistoric/modern ties are somewhat more apparent in southern Europe. It is a further surprise that the Epipalaeolithic Natufian of Israel from whom the Neolithic realm was assumed to arise has a clear link to Sub-Saharan Africa.
Basques and Canary Islanders are clearly associated with modern Europeans. When canonical variates are plotted, neither sample ties in with Cro-Magnon as was once suggested. The data treated here support the idea that the Neolithic moved out of the Near East into the circum-Mediterranean areas and Europe by a process of demic diffusion but that subsequently the in situ residents of those areas, derived from the Late Pleistocene inhabitants, absorbed both the agricultural life way and the people who had brought it.
Emailed comment from Hermann G. W. Burchard (), Prof. Appl. Math., Dept. of Mathematics, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, OK
The PNAS Abstract above states that neither Cromagnon nor other late immigrants into Europe have had much of an influence on (genetically founded) facial types, but all such immigrants were absorbed by the descendants of “late pleistocene,” i.e., paleolithic Europeans.
Not a surprise this, to those who have studied carefully skeletal details of paleo-Europeans. One may now return to a long-held view (esp in France) that regional evolution occurred from H sapiens neanderthalensis, although that subspecies is not explicitly named, (resident from the Atlantic to the Hindukush). Of course, Chinese anthropology had long seen things in similar fashion.
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Might wanna post this one: some nations don’t need immigrant help.....
http://economist.com/world/asia/displaystory.cfm?story_id=5323427&no_na_tran=1
This seems to be suggesting that an indegenous European population absorbed waves of non-European immigrants in the Neolithic period and in the Bronze Age, and that the incoming population was genetically subsumed by the indigenes.
Is it not equally possible that the Bronze Age Europeans were supplanted by subsequent waves of immigration and that modern Europeans are the descendants of post Bronze Age invaders?
Posted by Calvin on Monday, December 26, 2005 at 01:12 PM | #
Is it not equally possible that the Bronze Age Europeans were supplanted by subsequent waves of immigration and that modern Europeans are the descendants of post Bronze Age invaders? (—Calvin)
But the post Bronze Age is the dawn of history and there’s no historical record of that except the Huns—who didn’t supplant the Euros of the time, though they are thought to have left a few genes in some places—and perhaps the Turks in the Balkans and the Moors in Iberia—who also didn’t supplant the local population but certainly left a few genes scattered around. Or do you mean the theory that the Germanic tribes originated in Central Asia and got pushed into Europe by the Huns or their relatives?
Posted by Fred Scrooby on Monday, December 26, 2005 at 01:47 PM | #
I’m not sure of the time framework Fred, but didn’t the Celts invade Europe in the Iron Age?
I’m thinking that a massive Celto-Teutonic invasion may have supplanted the neolithic/Bronze Age population?
Speculation that the modern Europeans are descended from Neanderthals would leave us once more in search of the elusive missing link.
Posted by Calvin on Monday, December 26, 2005 at 02:14 PM | #
“I’m not sure of the time framework Fred, but didn’t the Celts invade Europe in the Iron Age? I’m thinking that a massive Celto-Teutonic invasion may have supplanted the neolithic/Bronze Age population?” (—Calvin)
Weren’t the Celts already there in the Iron Age, the Germanics getting pushed against them from homelands further east (pushed by Turkic peoples of the Central Asian steppes), squeezing the Celts westward? Of course this is all open to question as long as the original Indo-European homeland is in dispute. There’s at least one theory claiming it was in northern Europe and another in the Balkans region of Europe though of course most scholarship places it in various areas east of Europe.
But if the modern Euro face and head originated in Central Asia, does the article imply those peoples also evolved from Neanderthals? In other words, it seems to be implying that wherever that type of face and head originated, it evolved from a precursor which must have been Neanderthal since it says that type of face and head is not related to the Near- and Middle-Eastern neolithic, therefore didn’t spread “demically” from there.
“Speculation that the modern Europeans are descended from Neanderthals would leave us once more in search of the elusive missing link.” (—Calvin)
Excellent point. We don’t seem to hear of that many intermediate skeletons—almost none, in fact. The only one I can recall hearing about was that one of a child said to resemble something intermediate between H. sapiens sapiens and Neanderthals. If we Euros evolved in situ from Neanderthals where have all the intermediate skeletons been hiding? And where did the neolithic Middle-Eastern populations come from? Did they evolve from Middle-Eastern Neanderthals? If not, why not?
Finally, what is the article implying in its comment about the Natufians having a link to Negroes?
Posted by Fred Scrooby on Monday, December 26, 2005 at 03:56 PM | #
The whole issue is much confused by the fact that an interest in ancestral origins on the part of Europeans (but not on the part of any other ethnic groups) is now deemed racist.
In this case the cranio-facial evidence seems to be contradicted by DNA evidence.
http://www.bnp.org.uk/news_detail.php?newsId=687
Posted by Calvin on Monday, December 26, 2005 at 05:12 PM | #
“the cranio-facial evidence seems to be contradicted by DNA evidence” (—Calvin)
In the last paragraph of the abstract posted by John Ray it seems to say the cranio-facial results agree with the DNA findings but in the next-to-last paragraph it does seem to say the opposite (unless there is merely some clumsy wording going on—not exactly unknown in many of these scientific journals, where editing quality as regards clarity of wording and “style” is often poor). I don’t subscribe to the journal, so can’t see what the actual article says—but I plan on getting a copy of it, and I’ll post the relevant conclusions.
Posted by Fred Scrooby on Monday, December 26, 2005 at 06:16 PM | #
From Calvin’s link:
What seems to set Japan apart from other countries is that few Japanese are all that worried about the effects that hordes of robots might have on its citizens. Nobody seems prepared to ask awkward questions about how it might turn out.
Lol. Now that’s just plain funny.
Posted by Svigor on Monday, December 26, 2005 at 06:47 PM | #
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