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Frank B. Livingstone: Introduction Frank B. Livingstone, Professor Emeritus of Biological Anthropology at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, was born in Winchester, MA, on December 8, 1928, an origin [...]

Surnames (family names) show distinctive geographical patterning and in many disciplines remain an underutilized source of information about population origins, migration and identity. This paper investigates the geographical structure of surnames, using a unique individual level database assembled from registers and telephone directories from 16 European countries. We develop a novel combination of methods for exhaustively analyzing this multinational data set, based upon the Lasker Distance, consensus clustering and multidimensional scaling. Our analysis is both data rich and computationally intensive, entailing as it does the aggregation, clustering and mapping of 8 million surnames collected from 152 million individuals. The resulting regionalization has applications in developing our understanding of the social and cultural complexion of Europe, and offers potential insights into the long and short-term dynamics of migration and residential mobility. The research also contributes a range of methodological insights for future studies concerning spatial clustering of surnames and population data more widely. In short, this paper further demonstrates the value of surnames in multinational population studies and also the increasing sophistication of techniques available to analyze them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our focus in this paper is the analysis of surnames, which have been proven to be reliable genetic markers because in patrilineal systems they are transmitted along generations virtually unchanged, similarly to a genetic locus on the Y chromosome. We compare the distribution of surnames to the distribution of dialect pronunciations, which are clearly culturally transmitted. Because surnames, at the time of their introduction, were words subject to the same linguistic processes that otherwise result in dialect differences, one might expect their geographic distribution to be correlated with dialect pronunciation differences. In this paper we concentrate on the Netherlands, an area of only 40,000 km², where two official languages are spoken, Dutch and Frisian. We analyze 19,910 different surnames, sampled in 226 locations, and 125 different words, whose pronunciation was recorded in 252 sites. We find that, once the collinear effects of geography on both surname and cultural transmission are taken into account, there is no statistically significant association between the two, suggesting that surnames cannot be taken as a proxy for dialect variation, even though they can be safely used as a proxy for Y-chromosome genetic variation. We find the results historically and geographically insightful, hopefully leading to a deeper understanding of the role that local migrations and cultural diffusion play in surname and dialect diversity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Hall and Kimura (1994) studied the relation between dermatoglyphic asymmetry and male sexual orientation in a sample of 66 homosexual and 182 heterosexual men. They found that more homosexual men possessed a leftward dermatoglyphic asymmetry than did heterosexual men. In this paper, we report a comparative study about the relationship between sexual orientation and dermatoglyphic characteristics, including 60 homosexual men, 76 heterosexual men, and 60 heterosexual women, recruited from the general population, and also from a gay-rights nongovernmental organization, in Salvador, Brazil. Ulnar loops were the most frequent dermatoglyphic pattern in all groups, followed by whorls, arches, and radial loops. A chisquare analysis comparing the frequencies of the patterns in the three groups only showed an excess of ulnar loops in women (p < 0.05) and arches in men (p < 0.01), but did not reveal significant differences between homosexuals and the other groups studied. There was no significant difference between gay and straight men on total ridge count. We found a preponderance of rightward asymmetry in homosexual and heterosexual men, as well as in heterosexual women. Our results do not agree with Hall and Kimura's data indicating that more gay men possessed the minority leftward asymmetry than did straight men. There was no significant difference in leftward asymmetry in the sample studied. The results reported in this paper do not support any relation between dermatoglyphic asymmetry and male sexual orientation, and, thus, any hypothesis concerning a biological intrauterine contribution to adult sexual orientation somehow associated with dermatoglyphic development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The mitochondrial haplotype U5a1 was identified from an Eneolithic grave associated with the Afanasievo archaeological culture in Bayankhongor Province, Erdenetsogt Township, at the site of Shatar Chuluu. This is the earliest appearance of an mtDNA haplotype associated with modern European populations on the Mongol Steppe. This evidence demonstrations that people with "western" mtDNA lived on the Mongol Steppe east of the Altai Mountains before the Bronze Age and refutes the notion that the Altai Mountains were a substantial barrier to gene flow, and definitively expands the acknowledged range of the Afanasievo archaeological culture.

The Tlingit from Southeast Alaska belong to the Northwest Coast cultural tradition, which is defined by regionally shared sociocultural practices. A distinctive feature of Tlingit social organization is the matrilineal exogamous marriage system among clans from two opposite moieties: the Raven/Crow and Eagle/Wolf. Clan and moiety membership are determined by matrilineal descent, and previous genetic studies of Northwest Coast populations have shown a relationship between clan membership and genetic variation of matrilines and patrilines. To further understand this association, in this study mitochondrial DNA sequences from the Tlingit ( n = 154) were examined. By comparing mitochondrial DNA with moiety membership information, the authors explore the impact of marriage traditions among the Tlingit with their observable genetic variation. At the genetic level, the results support cultural persistence of Tlingit maternal moiety identity despite the negative impacts of European colonization. This study additionally illustrates the relevance of data derived from Tlingit oral traditions to test hypotheses about population history on the Northwest Coast.

The Queen Mary conference on 'Integrating Genetic and Cultural Evolutionary Approaches to Language,' and the papers in this special issue, clearly illustrate the excitement and potential of trans-disciplinary approaches to language as an evolved biological capacity (phylogeny) and an evolving cultural entity (glossogeny). Excepting the present author, the presenters/authors are mostly young rising stars in their respective fields, and include scientists with backgrounds in linguistics, animal communication, neuroscience, evolutionary biology, anthropology, and computer science. On display was a clear willingness to engage with different approaches and terminology and a commitment to shared standards of scientific rigor, empirically driven theory, and logical argument. Because the papers assembled here, together with the introduction, speak for themselves, I will focus in this 'extro-duction' on some of the terminological and conceptual difficulties which threaten to block this exciting wave of scientific progress in understanding language evolution, in both senses of that term. In particular I will first argue against the regrettably widespread practice of opposing cultural and genetic explanations of human cognition as if they were dichotomous. Second, I will unpack the debate concerning 'general-purpose' and 'domain-specific' mechanisms, which masquerades as a debate about nativism but is nothing of the sort. I believe that framing discussions of language in these terms has generated more heat than light, and that a modern molecular understanding of genes, development, behavior, and evolution renders many of the assumptions underlying this debate invalid. KEY WORDS: EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE, MODULARITY, NATIVISM, PHYLOGENY, GLOSSOGENY., Cultural and Biological Explanations of Human Cognition Humans are cultural organisms: a human raised in isolation or by non-cultural animals will be as deficient as a bird prevented from flying [...]

The papers in this special issue of Human Biology address recent research in the field of language evolution, both the genetic evolution of the language faculty and the cultural evolution of specific languages. While both of these areas have received increasing interest in recent years, there is also a need to integrate these somewhat separate efforts and explore the relevant gene-culture coevolutionary interactions. Here we summarize the individual contributions, set them in the context of the wider literature, and identify outstanding future research questions. The first set of papers concerns the comparative study of nonhuman communication in primates and birds from both a behavioral and neurobiological perspective, revealing evidence for several common language-related traits in various nonhuman species and providing clues as to the evolutionary origin and function of the human language faculty. The second set of papers discusses the consequences of viewing language as a culturally evolving system in its own right, including claims that this removes the need for strong genetic biases for language acquisition, and that phylogenetic evolutionary methods can be used to reconstruct language histories. We conclude by highlighting outstanding areas for future research, including identifying the precise selection pressures that gave rise to the language faculty in ancestral hominin species, and determining the strength, domain specificity, and origin of the cultural transmission biases that shape languages as they pass along successive generations of language learners. KEY WORDS: BIRDSONG, CULTURAL EVOLUTION, GENE-CULTURE COEVOLUTION, HUMAN EVOLUTION, LANGUAGE, SPEECH, VOCALIZATION., The papers in this special issue of Human Biology originate from a Centre for Ecology and Evolution symposium held at Queen Mary, University of London in 2009. As our title [...]

Academic research focusing on the population and culture history of the Aleut (Unangan) people began in the late 19th century and continues to the present. The papers in this special issue of Human Biology summarize the latest results from archaeological, linguistic, genetic, and morphometric research approaches that bear on our current understanding of Unangan history and prehistory. Although these new analyses have provided a level of description and resolution previously unattainable, explanatory models and mechanisms for the patterned variation observed over time in the biological and cultural record of the Aleutian region remains elusive. Bringing the diverse data sets into concordance to represent an integrated synthesis of Aleut population and culture history and of Unangan origins and their relationships with other groups in the region remains a goal for future investigators. KEY WORDS: ALEUTS, UNANGAN, ALEUT (UNANGAN) PREHISTORY, ALEUTIAN ARCHIPELAGO., The collection of papers is this special issue of Human Biology is intended to synthesize the state of knowledge regarding the origin and dispersal of human populations throughout the Aleutian [...]

In the field of archaeology, demography has sometimes seemed something of a phantom science. Many explanatory models in archaeology have taken population density as a central theme. But the quantitative precision and broad sweep of the resulting formulations, scientific enough in their intentions, have often been undermined by the difficulties in the practice of estimating population densities for the prehistoric or early historic past. Indeed, even for the Classical world, where historical and literary texts as well as inscriptions are available to supplement the settlement remains still visible on the ground, the estimation of population has been a field of controversy for more than a century (Beloch 1886). Problems of estimation have undermined those quantitative intentions of the would-be scientist. Yet despite these practical problems, the attractions of the explanations already proposed have been considerable. When Gordon Childe (1936) outlined his two great revolutions in prehistory--the Neolithic revolution and the urban revolution--they were formulated with explicit reference to the demographic effects of what Childe took as his prototype: the Industrial Revolution. They have been greatly influential in much further work. For instance, in Lewis Binford's 'Post-Pleistocene Adaptations' (Binford 1968), one of the pioneering articles of the new archaeology of 40 years ago, population density was explicitly regarded as the key parameter. In the years that followed, influenced partly by Esther Boserup's Conditions of Agricultural Growth (Boserup 1965), many archaeologists tended to take population increase as a prime mover for changes in the cultural system. So it is no surprise that, in the present volume, Richerson, Boyd, and Bettinger take Darwin's account of his reading of Malthus's Essay on the Principle of Population (Malthus 1798) for their epigraph in a paper in which increasing population density is again seen as a key variable. More recently, broad formulations have been proposed that are explicitly quantitative. Indeed, since Ammerman and Cavalli-Sforza set out their wave of advance model for the spread of the Neolithic way of life to Europe (Ammerman and Cavalli-Sforza 1973), the coming of farming (especially to Europe) has become a locus classicus for demographic discussions in the field of archaeology. Indeed it remains so here in the papers of Shennan and Bentley, Layton, and Tehrani. [FIGURE 1 OMITTED] The impact of molecular genetics, likewise, has brought demographic questions into clearer focus, for population history can now be recognized as the key area of overlap and interaction in the eagerly awaited (but not yet achieved) synthesis between the field of molecular genetics and the fields of prehistoric archaeology and historical linguistics (Figure 1) (see Renfrew 1992). In interpreting molecular genetic data, and in particular the bearing of current DNA data (from living populations) on our understanding of earlier system states, the application of simulation studies has been particularly important (Matsumura et al. 2008). Several papers here, including those of Steele and Bocquet-Appel and Tuffreau, recognize that agent-based simulations can now take their place along with analytical studies (for instance, using differential equations) among the most promising avenues for progress. The difficulty of producing valid and usable data for populations and population densities remains, however, a central theme in the present volume, notably in the paper by Andrew Chamberlain. An interesting approach, developed here by Felix Riede, is the use of radiocarbon dates as population proxies, a method suited to the investigation of population change, if not to the estimation of population density in absolute terms. The problem of evaluating population density recurs in Stephen Shennan's choice of the European early Neolithic for special study, for which the excellence of the data from the Aldenhovener Platte for the Danubian (LBK) early Neolithic is utilized. The same issue and data set appear again in the interesting paper by Zimmermann, Hilpert, and Wendt, who confront the disturbing thought, originating with Herbert Jankuhn (1977), that the gaps on the archaeological distribution map often seen between well-documented areas may not simply be lacunae in the data, as is sometimes assumed. If they were the result of patchy preservation, they might be open to resolution by means of averaging procedures, using the 'best' data as typical. Instead, they may be real gaps: genuinely empty spaces situated between competing tribal groups. The conflicting assumptions here are not easy to resolve. These concerns about the nature of the data perhaps suggest that caution is still needed in dealing with some of the more sophisticated mathematical modeling methods outlined in various papers in this special issue. Nonetheless, and despite these cautionary lessons, there are original and stimulating approaches to quantitative thinking in several of the papers in this special issue. These range from the careful treatment of the effects of macroclimatic variations on Neanderthal hominins (Bocquet-Appel and Tuffreau) to the significance of increasing population density on innovation rates in the post-Pleistocene (Richerson, Boyd, and Bettinger). One positive aspect is the attention being given to demographic factors in the modeling of language change, featured in the papers by Kandler, Vogt, and Wichmann and Holman. Only a decade ago Daniel Nettle, in his pioneering work Linguistic Diversity (1999), seemed a lone voice in this field with his emphasis on population sizes. It is encouraging to see the relevant factors being analyzed with both linguistic and computing competence. The application of quantitative methods in the field of historical linguistics has developed considerably in recent years (Forster and Renfrew 2006), and the central role of demographic questions for the understanding of historical linguistics is likely to become more apparent. A notable feature in a number of the papers in this special issue is the effort to make agent-based modeling scenarios sufficiently complex to the extent that they can begin to model the considerable complexity of real-life situations. An excellent example is offered by the systematic introduction of kinship and marriage considerations into the modeling of DNA scenarios, as applied (once again) to the early Neolithic of Europe, by Bentley, Layton, and Tehrani. Only by consideration of such factors can the social realities that underlie patterns of demographic change be adequately modeled. There is much to celebrate here, and encouraging progress is being made to bridge the gaps between theory and data. KEY WORDS: DEMOGRAPHY, POPULATION DENSITY, AGENT-BASED MODELS, HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS, MOLECULAR GENETICS., Received 28 May 2009; accepted for publication 29 May 2009. Literature Cited Ammerman, A. J., and L. L. Cavalli-Sforza. 1973. A population model for the diffusion of early farming in [...]

The papers in this special issue of Human Biology, which derive from a conference sponsored by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Center for the Evolution of Cultural Diversity, lay some of the foundations for an empirical macroevolutionary analysis of cultural dynamics. Our premise here is that cultural dynamics--including the stability of traditions and the rate of origination of new variants--are influenced by independently occurring demographic processes (population size, structure, and distribution as these vary over time as a result of changes in rates of fertility, mortality, and migration). The contributors focus on three sets of problems relevant to empirical studies of cultural macroevolution: large-scale reconstruction of past population dynamics from archaeological and genetic data; juxtaposition of models and evidence of cultural dynamics using large-scale archaeological and historical data sets; and juxtaposition of models and evidence of cultural dynamics from large-scale linguistic data sets. In this introduction we outline some of the theoretical and methodological issues and briefly summarize the individual contributions. KEY WORDS: CULTURAL TRANSMISSION, DEMOGRAPHY, DISPERSAL, CARRYING CAPACITY, PREHISTORIC EUROPE, LANGUAGE CHANGE., The papers in this special issue of Human Biology are derived from a conference sponsored by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Center for the Evolution of Cultural Diversity [...]

The 2016 Gabriel W. Lasker Award is presented to B Keith L. Hunley b and B Graciela S. Cabana b for their paper "Beyond Serial Founder Effects: The Impact of Admixture and Localized Gene Flow on Patterns of Regional Genetic Diversity" ([2]). The 2017 Gabriel W. Lasker Award is presented to B Alexandre M. Harris b and B Michael DeGiorgio b for their paper "Admixture and Ancestry Inference from Ancient and Modern Samples through Measures of Population Genetic Drift" ([1]). Beyond serial founder effects: The impact of admixture and localized gene flow on patterns of regional genetic diversity. [Extracted from the article]

A recent workshop entitled "The Family Name as Socio-Cultural Feature and Genetic Metaphor: From Concepts to Methods" was held in Paris in December 2010, sponsored by the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) and by the journal Human Biology. This workshop was intended to foster a debate on questions related to the family names and to compare different multidisciplinary approaches involving geneticists, historians, geographers, sociologists and social anthropologists. This collective paper presents a collection of selected communications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Walker et al. ["Growth rates and life histories in twenty-two small-scale societies," Am. J. Hum. Biol. 18:295-311 (2006)] used life history theory to develop an innovative explanation for human diversity in stature. Short stature could have been selected for in some human populations as a result of the advantage of an earlier growth cessation and earlier reproduction in a context of high mortality. Migliano et al. ["Life history trade-offs explain the evolution of human pygmies," Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 104:20,216-20,219 (2007)] recently published an important article that tested this hypothesis to explain short stature in human pygmy populations. However innovative this work may be, we believe that some of the data and results presented are controversial if not questionable. As problematic points we note (1) the use of an arbitrary threshold of height (155 cm) to categorize populations into pygmies and nonpygmies; (2) the use of demographic data from Philippine pygmy groups that have experienced dramatic cultural and environmental changes in the last 20 years, and (3) the use of demographic data concerning African pygmy groups because good systematic data on these groups are not available. Finally, we report here mathematical errors and loopholes in the optimization model developed by Migliano and colleagues. In this paper we suggest alternative trade-offs that can be used to explain Migliano's results on more reliable bases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although much attention has been given to statistical genetic methods for the initial localization and fine mapping of quantitative trait loci (QTLs), little methodological work has been done to date on the problem of statistically identifying the most likely functional polymorphisms using sequence data. In this paper we provide a general statistical genetic framework, called Bayesian quantitative trait nucleotide (BQTN) analysis, for assessing the likely functional status of genetic variants. The approach requires the initial enumeration of all genetic variants in a set of resequenced individuals. These polymorphisms are then typed in a large number of individuals (potentially in families), and marker variation is related to quantitative phenotypic variation using Bayesian model selection and averaging. For each sequence variant a posterior probability of effect is obtained and can be used to prioritize additional molecular functional experiments. An example of this quantitative nucleotide analysis is provided using the GAW12 simulated data. The results show that the BQTN method may be useful for choosing the most likely functional variants within a gene (or set of genes). We also include instructions on how to use our computer program, SOLAR, for association analysis and BQTN analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents an update on "F7 Gene and Clotting Factor VII Levels," by José Manuel Soria et al., published in 2005. The paper aims to identify the genetic determinants of factor VII plasma levels with the dissection of the first human quantitative trait loci (QTL). A systematic resequencing study of the entire F7 locus was initiated to identify F7 genetic variants for factor VII level variability. It says that the focus on thrombotic disease will lead to better diagnosis, prevention and treatment.

The article presents an update on "Quantitative Trait Nucleotide Analysis Using Bayesian Model Selection," by John Blangero et al., published in 2005. The paper was based on the feasibility of gene-centric complete sequence variation on a larger scale. It focused on the initial localization of human quantitative trait loci (QTLs) with the use of linkage-based variance components to obtain an initial genomic lozalization of the most important QTLs for a specific trait.

The article presents an update on "Human Genetic Diversity and the Nonexistence of Biological Races," by Jeffrey C. Long and Rick Kittles, published in 2003. The paper used generalized hierarchical models nesting small units into larger units like individuals, populations, and geographic regions. The comparison of a sequence of nested models allowed the identification of human demographic features which had the greatest effect on the distribution of generic variation.