Early Practice
The evolution of hominin bipedalism in two steps
Gayani Senevirathne et al.
Nature, forthcoming
Abstract:
Bipedalism is a human-defining trait. It is made possible by the familiar, bowl-shaped pelvis, whose short, wide iliac blades curve along the sides of the body to stabilize walking and support internal organs and a large-brained, broad-shouldered baby. The ilium changes compared with living primates are an evolutionary novelty. However, how this evolution came about remains unknown. Here, using a multifaceted histological, comparative genomic and functional genomic approach, we identified the developmental bases of the morphogenetic shifts in the human pelvis that made bipedalism possible. First, we observe that the human ilium cartilage growth plate underwent a heterotopic shift, residing perpendicular to the orientation present in other primate (and mouse) ilia. Second, we observe heterochronic and heterotopic shifts in ossification that are unlike those in non-human primate ilia or human long bones. Ossification initiates posteriorly, resides externally with fibroblast (and perichondral) cells contributing to osteoblasts, and is delayed compared with other bones in humans and with primate ilia. Underlying these two shifts are regulatory changes in an integrated chondrocyte–perichondral–osteoblast pathway, involving complex hierarchical interactions between SOX9–ZNF521–PTH1R and RUNX2–FOXP1/2. These innovations facilitated further growth of the human pelvis and the unique formation of the ilium among primates.
Why Africa Has No Houses and Other Questions for Deep History
Clive Gamble
Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society, forthcoming
Abstract:
Africa has the oldest artefacts and evidence for fire. It is where Homo sapiens evolved and developed novel technologies before dispersing into the rest of the world some 70ka ago. There is, however, no reliable evidence in Africa for artificial shelters and dwellings older than 20ka. This paper sets out to understand why such basic architecture appears so late in a continent with great environmental variation and a deep history of innovation. The approach combines evidence from micro and macro scales of analysis. The micro scale uses ethnoarchaeological studies of Africa’s small circular houses to examine how and why gender separates their occupants both spatially and through their access to food stores. At the macro scale, the absence of food stores among Africa’s extant hunters and gatherers is predicted from environmental factors that apply to the whole continent. Without food storage there are no significant dwellings. I then turn to the archaeological evidence for the appearance of dwellings and storage from Africa and the Levant, a contiguous region where huts are known at 23ka. The evidence for dwellings in Europe is then considered. While dwellings are earlier here than in Africa and the Levant none are reliably older than 32ka. They are found with evidence for food storage. The paper explores the implications of this chronological framework for a major transition in hominin evolution that, before agriculture, involved intensification in subsistence combined with storage, and a novel architecture of gendered spaces now found worldwide.
Selection at the GSDMC locus in horses and its implications for human mobility
Xuexue Liu et al.
Science, 28 August 2025, Pages 925-930
Abstract:
Horsepower revolutionized human history through enhanced mobility, transport, and warfare. However, the suite of biological traits that reshaped horses during domestication remains unclear. We scanned an extensive horse genome time series for selection signatures at 266 markers associated with key traits. We detected a signature of positive selection at ZFPM1 -- known to be a modulator of behavior in mice -- occurring ~5000 years ago (ya), suggesting that taming was one of the earliest steps toward domestication of horses. Intensive selection at GSDMC began ~4750 ya with the domestication bottleneck, leading regulatory variants to high frequency by ~4150 ya. GSDMC genotypes are linked to body conformation in horses and to spinal anatomy, motor coordination, and muscular strength in mice. Our results suggest that selection on standing variation at GSDMC was crucial for the emergence of horses that could facilitate fast mobility in human societies ~4200 ya.
Inflammaging is minimal among forager-horticulturalists in the Bolivian Amazon
Jacob Aronoff et al.
Proceedings of the Royal Society: Biological Sciences, August 2025
Abstract:
An increase in chronic systemic inflammation in later life, termed inflammaging, is implicated in health risk. However, it is unclear whether inflammaging develops in all human populations, or if it is the product of environmental mismatch. We assessed inflammaging in Tsimane forager-horticulturalists of the Bolivian Amazon, using serum cytokines in a primarily cross-sectional sample (1134 samples from n = 714 individuals, age 39–94, 51.3% female). IL-6 was positively associated with age (β = 0.013, p < 0.01). However, other pro-inflammatory markers, including IL-1β and TNF-α, did not increase with age (β = −0.005 and β = −0.001, respectively). We then compared the Moseten, a neighbouring population that has experienced greater market integration (423 samples from n = 380 individuals, age 39–85, 48.2% female). The Moseten also showed a positive age association for IL-6 that attenuated at later ages (age β = 0.025, p < 0.01; age2 β = −0.001, p < 0.05). Further, IL-1β and TNF-α were both positively associated with age (β = 0.021, p < 0.05 and β = 0.011, p < 0.01, respectively). Our results demonstrate minimal inflammaging in the Tsimane, highlighting variation across populations in this age-related process. They also suggest that inflammaging is exacerbated by lifestyle shifts.
A Datura Ritual Complex in the Mississippian Southeast
Adam King et al.
American Antiquity, forthcoming
Abstract:
In the American Southwest and northern Mexico, it has long been argued that ceramic vessels with exterior surfaces that are covered with small nodes are Datura seed pod effigies. Datura is a genus of flowering plants containing psychoactive alkaloids that, when consumed, can induce hallucinations. Scholars have argued that these noded vessels were part of a ritual complex originating in Mexico and spreading throughout the Southwest. In his 2012 article, Lankford hypothesized that this ritual complex made its way into the southeastern United States based on the presence of the ceramic type Fortune Noded in the Mississippi River Valley. In this article, we evaluate three hypotheses suggested by Lankford. Our absorbed residue study did not support his first hypothesis that Fortune Noded vessels were directly related to Datura consumption. However, existing archaeological data do support the idea that a ritual complex including noded vessels moved through the Caddoan region to the Central Mississippi Valley. Those data also confirm Lankford’s final hypothesis that Datura was used in Mississippian period contexts in the Central Mississippi Valley. We conclude that Lankford’s hypothesis has merit and suggest that noded vessels and other ritual equipment be considered inalienable objects that moved through a network of ritual practitioners.
Superstitious Beliefs in the Necropolises of the Huelva Coast: Peculiarities of the Premature Death of Children, Outcasts and Women
Lucía Fernández Sutilo
Cambridge Archaeological Journal, forthcoming
Abstract:
All societies throughout time have shown a greater or lesser degree of superstition when facing the traumatic event of death. Roman society was no exception, especially when numerous religious currents participated in the funerary rituals, sharing their own conception and beliefs. The following lines present a brief overview of children’s death, especially premature ones, from the early Imperial to the late Imperial period, when they became more highly regarded. It is followed by the traumatic or marginal deaths of some individuals whose behaviour, illnesses or ways of dying were suspicious for their closest people: the article closes with the treatment given to certain women. All the deaths in this research aroused suspicions among their relatives or the authorities, who did not hesitate to practise rituals to calm them in the afterlife and ensure that they did not return to life as evil spirits. In this article we will focus on the practices that developed in the city of Onoba and its hinterland or influential area; a Roman colony located in the westernmost part of the province of Baetica, a port city of enormous importance for the Empire given its importance as a gateway for minerals coming from the Urium mines.