Artificial cranial deformation in Kow Swamp 1 and 5: A response to

Recently, Curnoe (2007) tested the predictions of competing models of modern human origins using three crania from Australia: Kow Swamp 1 and 5 and Keilor. The Kow Swamp specimens have long been suspected of having been altered through artificial deformation of the skull. Though Curnoe (2007) provided assurances that no evidence of deformation is present in those specimens, the current study retests the hypothesis that these Australian specimens are artificially deformed. The Australian crania are compared to known deformed individuals from New Britian through canonical variates analysis, and the resulting Mahalanobis distances are examined for statistical significance with random expectation statistics. The results show that Kow Swamp 1 and 5 have strong shape similarities to known deformed individuals, and both crania are very different in shape from Keilor. Keilor is statistically significantly different in shape from both Kow Swamp specimens and all of the known deformed specimens. These findings cast doubt on Curnoe's (2007) conclusions of a shared Australian cranial morphology as well as the retention of an archaic suite of morphologies in the Australians.     

Brief communication: Artificial cranial modification in Kow Swamp and Cohuna

The crania from Kow Swamp and Cohuna have been important for a number of debates in Australian paleoanthropology. These crania typically have long, flat foreheads that many workers have cited as evidence of genetic continuity with archaic Indonesian populations, particularly the Ngandong sample. Other scientists have alleged that at least some of the crania from Kow Swamp and the Cohuna skull have been altered through artificial modification, and that the flat foreheads possessed by these individuals are not phylogenetically informative. In this study, several Kow Swamp crania and Cohuna are compared to known modified and unmodified comparative samples. Canonical variates analyses and Mahalanobis distances are generated, and random expectation statistics are used to calculate statistical significance for these tests. The results of this study agree with prior work indicating that a portion of this sample shows evidence for artificial modification of the cranial vault. Many Kow Swamp crania and Cohuna display shape similarities with a population of known modified individuals from New Britain. Kow Swamp 1, 5, and Cohuna show the strongest evidence for modification, but other individuals from this sample also show evidence of culturally manipulated changes in cranial shape. This project provides added support for the argument that at least some Pleistocene Australian groups were practicing artificial cranial modification, and suggests that caution should be used when including these individuals in phylogenetic studies. Am J Phys Anthropol 155:173–178, 2014. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Artificial cranial deformation and fossil Australians revisited

Based on cranial characters shared by Homo erectus in Java and Homo sapiens in Australia, Australasia is widely considered the strongest case for a regional origin of modern humans. However, artificial vault deformation has been suggested to be the cause of "archaic" characters such as frontal recession in key fossil Australian crania. We use log-log plots of cranial arc versus chord measurements and we score nonmetric traits often thought to be associated with artificial deformation to make systematic comparisons across groups and deformation types to identify universal consequences of artificial deformation. Based on our large comparative sample (n = 588) apparatus-deformed crania have flatter frontals and occipitals and usually more angulated parietals in the sagittal plane than undeformed crania, regardless of deformation type. Fossil Australian samples exhibit evidence of both undeformed and deformed individuals. The sample from Coobool Creek provides evidence that undeformed individuals had more rounded frontals than recent Australians. However, many individuals from Coobool Creek, Kow Swamp, and Nacurrie exhibit modification of one or more cranial contours. The Kow Swamp individuals in particular plot with deformed crania from all regions. In addition, the frequency of hyperostotic traits such as bregmatic eminence, metopic and sagittal keels in H. sapiens is influenced by both artificial deformation and pathological hypervascularity/hyperostosis. Thus it is unwise to use cranial contours and these nonmetric traits to infer genetic relatedness between Fossil Australians and Indonesian H. erectus.     

Nacurrie 1: Mark of ancient Java, or a caring mother’s hands, in terminal Pleistocene Australia?

There has been a protracted debate over the evidence for intentional cranial modification in the terminal Pleistocene Australian crania from Kow Swamp and Coobool Creek. Resolution of this debate is crucial to interpretations of the significance of morphological variation within terminal Pleistocene-early Holocene Australian skeletal materials and claims of a regional evolutionary sequence linking Javan Homo erectus and Australian Homo sapiens. However, morphological comparisons of terminal Pleistocene and recent Australian crania are complicated by the significantly greater average body mass in the former. Raw and size-adjusted metric comparisons of the terminal Pleistocene skeleton from Nacurrie, south-eastern Australia, with modified and unmodified H. sapiens and H. erectus, identified a suite of traits in the frontal, parietal, and occipital bones associated with intentional modification of a neonate’s skull. These traits are also present in some of the crania from Kow Swamp and Coobool Creek, which are in close geographic proximity to Nacurrie, but not in unmodified H. sapiens or Javan H. erectus. Frontal bone morphology in H. erectus was distinct from all of the Australian H. sapiens samples. During the first six months of life, Nacurrie’s vault may have been shaped by his mother’s hands, rather than though the application of fixed bandages. Whether this behaviour persisted only for several generations, or hundreds of years, remains unknown. The reasons behind the shaping of Nacurrie’s head, aesthetics or otherwise, and why this cultural practice was adopted and subsequently discontinued, will always remain a matter of speculation.     

A Hominin Femur with Archaic Affinities from the Late Pleistocene of Southwest China

The number of Late Pleistocene hominin species and the timing of their extinction are issues receiving renewed attention following genomic evidence for interbreeding between the ancestors of some living humans and archaic taxa. Yet, major gaps in the fossil record and uncertainties surrounding the age of key fossils have meant that these questions remain poorly understood. Here we describe and compare a highly unusual femur from Late Pleistocene sediments at Maludong (Yunnan), Southwest China, recovered along with cranial remains that exhibit a mixture of anatomically modern human and archaic traits. Our studies show that the Maludong femur has affinities to archaic hominins, especially Lower Pleistocene femora. However, the scarcity of later Middle and Late Pleistocene archaic remains in East Asia makes an assessment of systematically relevant character states difficult, warranting caution in assigning the specimen to a species at this time. The Maludong fossil probably samples an archaic population that survived until around 14,000 years ago in the biogeographically complex region of Southwest China.     

Late Pleistocene human remains from Wezmeh Cave, western Iran

Paleontological analysis of remains from Wezmeh Cave in western Iran have yielded a Holocene Chalcolithic archeological assemblage, a rich Late Pleistocene carnivore faunal assemblage, and an isolated unerupted human maxillary premolar (P(3) or possibly P(4)). Species representation and U-series dating of faunal teeth place the carnivore assemblage during oxygen isotope stages (OIS) 3 and 2, and noninvasive gamma spectrometry dating of the human premolar places it at least as old as early OIS 2. The human premolar crown morphology is not diagnostic of late archaic versus early modern human affinities, but its buccolingual diameter places it at the upper limits of Late Pleistocene human P(3) and P(4) dimensions and separate from a terminal Pleistocene regional sample. Wezmeh Cave therefore provides additional Paleolithic human remains from the Zagros Mountains and further documents Late Pleistocene human association with otherwise carnivore-dominated cave assemblages.     

Archaic and modern human distal humeral morphology

The morphology of the proximal ulna has been shown to effectively differentiate archaic or premodern humans (such as Homo heidelbergensis and H. neanderthalensis) from modern humans (H. sapiens). Accordingly, the morphology of adjacent, articulating elements should be able to distinguish these two broad groups as well. Here we test the taxonomic utility of another portion of the elbow, the distal humerus, as a discriminator of archaic and modern humans. Principal components analysis was employed on a suite of log-raw and log-shape distal humeral measures to examine differences between Neandertal and modern human distal humeri. In addition, the morphological affinities of Broken Hill (Kabwe) E.898, an archaic human distal humeral fragment from the middle Pleistocene of Zambia, and five Pliocene and early Pleistocene australopith humeri were assessed. The morphometric analyses effectively differentiated the Neandertals from the other groups, while the Broken Hill humerus appears morphologically similar to modern human distal humeri. Thus, an archaic/modern human dichotomy-as previously reported for proximal ulnar morphology-is not supported with respect to distal humeral morphology. Relative to australopiths and modern humans, Neandertal humeri are characterized by large olecranon fossae and small distodorsal medial and lateral pillars. The seeming disparity in morphological affinities of proximal ulnae (in which all archaic human groups appear distinct from modern humans) and distal humeri (in which Neandertals appear distinct from modern humans, but other archaic humans do not) is probably indicative of a highly variable, possibly transitional population of which our knowledge is hampered by sample-size limitations imposed by the scarcity of middle-to-late Pleistocene premodern human fossils outside of Europe.     

An Australasian test of the recent African origin theory using the WLH-50 calvarium

This analysis investigates the ancestry of a single modern human specimen from Australia, WLH-50 (Thorne et al., in preparation; Webb, 1989). Evaluating its ancestry is important to our understanding of modern human origins in Australasia because the prevailing models of human origins make different predictions for the ancestry of this specimen, and others like it. Some authors believe in the validity of a complete replacement theory and propose that modern humans in Australasia descended solely from earlier modern human populations found in Late Pleistocene Africa and the Levant. These ancestral modern populations are believed to have completely replaced other archaic human populations, including the Ngandong hominids of Indonesia. According to this recent African origin theory, the archaic humans from Indonesia are classified as Homo erectus, a different evolutionary species that could not have contributed to the ancestry of modern Australasians. Therefore this theory of complete replacement makes clear predictions concerning the ancestry of the specimen WLH-50. We tested these predictions using two methods: a discriminant analysis of metric data for three samples that are potential ancestors of WLH-50 (Ngandong, Late Pleistocene Africans, Levant hominids from Skhul and Qafzeh) and a pairwise difference analysis of nonmetric data for individuals within these samples. The results of these procedures provide an unambiguous refutation of a model of complete replacement within this region, and indicate that the Ngandong hominids or a population like them may have contributed significantly to the ancestry of WLH-50. We therefore contend that Ngandong hominids should be classified within the evolutionary species, Homo sapiens. The Multiregional model of human evolution has the expectation that Australasian ancestry is in all three of the potentially ancestral groups and best explains modern Australasian origins.     

Into Eurasia: A geometric morphometric re-assessment of the Upper Cave (Zhoukoudian) specimens

Since the discovery of the human remains from the Upper Cave of Zhoukoudian in the 1930s there has been speculation over their affinities. In particular, the degree to which the three adult crania exhibit recent East Asian morphology, as well as their degree of within-group variability, has long been debated. Several early researchers described a resemblance to East Asian populations, but these findings have been for the most part rejected by more recent metric and non-metric analyses. Nevertheless, the Upper Cave specimens have not been classified conclusively into any recent modern human population to which they have been compared, and classification results differ for each cranium. Here, the question of the affinities of Upper Cave 101 and 103, the two better-preserved crania, is examined from the perspective of the Late Pleistocene human fossil record using the methodology of 3-D geometric morphometrics. The degree of morphological variation between the two specimens is also evaluated within the context of recent population variability. Neurocranial and facial morphology are analyzed separately so as to maximize comparative samples. Results show a morphological resemblance of the Upper Cave material to Upper Paleolithic Europeans. It is proposed that the Upper Cave specimens retain important aspects of modern human ancestral morphology, and possibly share a recent common ancestral population with Upper Paleolithic Europeans, in accordance with the Single Origin model of modern human origins.     

Chin morphology and sexual dimorphism in the fossil hominid mandible sample from Klasies River Mouth

The site of Klasies River Mouth (KRM) in South Africa has produced a small sample of early Upper Pleistocene hominid remains that have been a focus for discussions of the origins of modern humans. Despite certain primitive characteristics exhibited by these fossils, proponents of a single recent origin have attributed them to early modern humans. Critics of this hypothesis have emphasized the significance of the archaic features evident in this sample, including the absence of pronounced chins among the mandibular specimens. This study compares the size range and chin morphology exhibited by the KRM mandibles with that of Neandertals, Upper Pleistocene humans, and recent humans. The extreme sexual dimorphism documented among the KRM fossils reflects the presence of a very small individual, and previous efforts to classify the KRM sample as archaic on the basis of their robusticity have failed to address the significance of this diminutive hominid. While each KRM fossil falls within the 95% envelope of variability established for chin development in a comparative modern sample, a similarly low frequency of pronounced chins is very unlikely to be found in any recent human population. The morphological pattern of the KRM mandibles is clearly distinct from that of Neandertals and of recent humans. © 1996 Wiley-Liss, Inc.     

A note on the KNM-ER 999 hominid femur

The KNM-ER 999 hominid femur, in light of improved knowledge of later Pleistocene human postcranial morphology and ongoing reassessments of the emergence of modern humans in Africa, appears morphologically aligned with early modern humans rather than with late archaic humans. This is reflected especially in its having a clear pilaster, a proximally positioned minimum diaphyseal breadth (thereby lacking a proximo-medial diaphyseal buttress) and an exceptionally high neck-shaft angle. In these features, and especially the fast, it shows affinities to the Levantine Qafzeh-Skhul early modern human sample. However, the uncertainty regarding its stratigraphic provenience (early Late Pleistocene versus early Holocene) makes its relevance to the emergence of modern humans in Africa tenuous.     

Last Glacial Maximum ages for robust humans at Kow Swamp, southern Australia

The Kow Swamp people are a fossil population of robust modern humans. We report optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) ages on sediments from Kow Swamp that are at odds with radiocarbon ages obtained previously for the site. The calibrated 14C ages place the Kow Swamp people in the period 15-9 ka. Our single aliquot OSL ages suggest that they lived around the time of the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) between 22 and 19 ka. An LGM age for the Kow Swamp people is supported by palaeoenvironmental reconstruction. The shoreline silt, in which most of them were interred, was deposited by high lake levels between 26 and 19 ka. Few robust people were left after 19 ka when a sand lunette formed. Climate change may explain the demise of this unusual genetic population.     

Reconstructing recent human evolution.

The two most distinct models of recent human evolution, the multiregional and the recent African origin models, have different retrodictions concerning specific archaic-recent population relationships. The former model infers multiple regional archaic-modern connections and the ancient establishment of regional characteristics, whereas the latter model implies only an African archaic-all modern relationship, with recent (late Pleistocene) development of regionality. In this paper, four late archaic groups from Europe, southwest Asia, Africa and East Asia are compared with various fossil and recent Homo sapiens crania or cranial samples. The results of Penrose shape comparisons narrowly favour a late archaic African-modern special relationship over an East Asian-modern one, with European and southwest Asian Neanderthal groups much more distant. No specific archaic-recent regional relationships are indicated in the shape analyses, nor in separate examinations of patterns of regionality, which indicate a recent origin for present day regionality. The Skhul-Qafzeh sample provides an excellent shape intermediate between the archaic and recent samples.     

Morphological affinities of the Sal'a 1 frontal bone

The human frontal bone from Sal'a, Slovak Republic, has previously entered into discussions of the morphological patterns of Central European Neandertals and the origins of early modern humans in that region. A morphological reassessment of its supraorbital region and a morphometric analysis of its overall proportions indicate that it falls well within expected ranges of variation of Late Pleistocene Neandertals and is separate from European earlier Upper Paleolithic early modern human crania. It is similar to the Qafzeh-Skhul sample in some metrical and supraorbital robusticity measures, but it contrasts with them in mid-sagittal curvature and supraorbital torus morphology. In the context of its probable oxygen isotope stage 5 age based on inferred biostratigraphic associations, it should not be employed directly for arguments relating to the emergence of modern humans in Central Europe.     

Modern human origins: continuity, replacement, and masticatory robusticity in Australasia

Morphological evidence for a Multiregional (MR) model of human origins is suggested by a series of “linking traits” seen in the crania of late Javanese Homo erectus from Ngandong and anatomically modern Australian crania. A few studies that consider the genetic, structural, or functional aspects of these regional traits suggest their appearance is heavily influenced not by shared phylogeny but by a common “strong” masticatory pattern. Using dental occlusal areas, external mandibular metrics, internal biomechanical properties of the mandibular corpus measured from CT scans, and nonmetric traits associated with the attachment of masticatory muscles, we test the hypothesis that Australians exhibit evidence of a “strong” masticatory pattern. We use a mixed-sex comparative human sample (n = 415) that includes precontact Alaskans from Point Hope and the Aleutian Islands, Californians, Peruvians, an urban forensic sample, and the late Pleistocene Afalou-Taforalt sample. In comparison with recent humans known to exhibit such patterns, Australian mandibles show none of the expected changes related to producing and dissipating heavy occlusal loads. This is true regardless of whether external or internal mandibular dimensions are considered, albeit Australians show large occlusal areas and relatively large section modulus indices. Thus, a prime functional argument proposed for the origin of some Australian regional features is not supported by these data.     

Paleoamerican morphology in the context of European and East Asian late Pleistocene variation: implications for human dispersion into the New World

Early American crania show a different morphological pattern from the one shared by late Native Americans. Although the origin of the diachronic morphological diversity seen on the continents is still debated, the distinct morphology of early Americans is well documented and widely dispersed. This morphology has been described extensively for South America, where larger samples are available. Here we test the hypotheses that the morphology of Early Americans results from retention of the morphological pattern of Late Pleistocene modern humans and that the occupation of the New World precedes the morphological differentiation that gave rise to recent Eurasian and American morphology. We compare Early American samples with European Upper Paleolithic skulls, the East Asian Zhoukoudian Upper Cave specimens and a series of 20 modern human reference crania. Canonical Analysis and Minimum Spanning Tree were used to assess the morphological affinities among the series, while Mantel and Dow-Cheverud tests based on Mahalanobis Squared Distances were used to test different evolutionary scenarios. Our results show strong morphological affinities among the early series irrespective of geographical origin, which together with the matrix analyses results favor the scenario of a late morphological differentiation of modern humans. We conclude that the geographic differentiation of modern human morphology is a late phenomenon that occurred after the initial settlement of the Americas.     

The Watinglo mandible: A second terminal Pleistocene Homo sapiens fossil from tropical Sahul with a test on existing models for the human settlement of the region

This paper analyses a fossil human mandible, dated to circa 10 ka, from Watinglo rockshelter on the north coast of Papua New Guinea. The fossil is metrically and morphologically similar to male mandibles of recent Melanesians and Australian Aborigines. It is distinguished from Kow Swamp and Coobool Creek male mandibles (Murray Valley, terminal Pleistocene) by being smaller and having different shape characteristics, as well as smaller teeth and a slower rate of tooth wear. It pairs with the Liang Lemdubu female (Late Glacial Maximum, Aru Islands) in suggesting that the morphology of the terminal Pleistocene inhabitants of tropical Sahul was gracile compared to their contemporaries within the southern Murray drainage. An explanatory scenario for this morphological contrast is developed in the context of the Homo sapiens early fossil record, Australasian mtDNA evidence, terminal Pleistocene climatic variation, and the possibility of multiple entry points into Sahul.     

陕西公王岭蓝田直立人内耳迷路的复原及形态特点

1964年在陕西公王岭发现的蓝田人头骨的形态比周口店直立人和印度尼西亚爪哇直立人原始,其厚重的骨壁及较小的脑量,落入了早期人属成员的变异范围。最新测年结果将蓝田人的生存年代从原先普遍接受的距今115万年提早到大约163万年前,接近能人和南方古猿生存年代变异范围的下限,蓝田人是迄今为止我国发现的有确定年代数据的最早的古人类化石。本文采用高分辨率CT技术对蓝田人的颞骨岩部进行了扫描,对骨性内耳迷路进行了3D虚拟复原,通过与和县直立人、欧洲古老型智人、早期人属成员、南方古猿非洲种、粗壮傍人和现代人内耳迷路的21项测量项目的对比和分析,结果显示蓝田人内耳迷路的测量数据与南方古猿非洲种最接近,其次为现代人和欧洲古老型智人,而与早期人属成员和粗壮傍人相差较大。主成分分析结果显示,蓝田人内耳迷路与早期人属成员、欧洲古老型智人、南方古猿非洲种及现代人都有重叠区域,距离最近的是南方古猿非洲种Sts 5,其次为和县直立人和南方古猿非洲种Sts 19,而与粗壮傍人距离较远。本文研究提供了中更新世中国古人类内耳迷路的形态数据,为进一步探讨蓝田人体质特征演化上的意义提供了参考资料。