From Types to Populations: A Century of Race, Physical Anthropology, and the American Anthropological Association

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The Krapina Occipital Bones

The Krapina fossils are the largest collection of Neandertals known, representing a unique opportunity to examine Neandertal variation at a single place and time. Because of the nature of the assemblage, knowledge about the collection as a whole must be obtained from the analyses of the individual skeletal elements. In this work I present a summary of a subset of the Krapina fragments, the occipital remains. I review their variation and briefly discuss them in the context of Neandertal posterior cranial vault anatomy

Men among the mammoths: Victorian science and the discovery of human prehistory. By A. Bowdoin Van Riper. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1993. 267 pp. ISBN 0-226-84992-9. $16.96 (paper)

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Sixty Years of Modern Human Origins in the American Anthropological Association

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/65197/1/aa.2003.105.1.89.pd

The Krapina Occipital Bones

The Krapina fossils are the largest collection of Neandertals known, representing a unique opportunity to examine Neandertal variation at a single place and time. Because of the nature of the assemblage, knowledge about the collection as a whole must be obtained from the analyses of the individual skeletal elements. In this work I present a summary of a subset of the Krapina fragments, the occipital remains. I review their variation and briefly discuss them in the context of Neandertal posterior cranial vault anatomy

The evolution of the posterior cranial vault in the central European Upper Pleistocene.

The relationship between Neandertals and the people who followed them in Europe is one of the most interesting topics in paleoanthropology. The morphology of the occipital region has been observed to vary between Neandertals and modern humans, and historically this variation has been interpreted taxonomically. However, the actual differences in posterior cranial vault morphology between Neandertals and the earliest Upper Paleolithic Europeans has never been documented. Much of this variation may have functional significance, as this anatomical region is affected by many muscles. Therefore variation in this region may be influenced by and give insights into variation in habitual behaviors. The earliest Upper Paleolithic remains known are from central Europe, as is the largest Neandertal occipital and posterior temporal sample from a single site. All of the Neandertal and early Upper Paleolithic remains from central Europe were studied in detail. This fossil material comes from the Mousterian sites, Krapina, Vindija, and Salzgitter-Lebenstedt, the Aurignacian sites, Mladec, Stetten, and Cioclovina, and the Pavlovian sites, Pavlov, Predmosti and the Francouzska street locality in Brno. Differences in the morphology of the posterior cranial vaults in the Neandertals and the early Upper Paleolithic samples are detailed. From this analysis, systematic patterns that characterize the two samples are abstracted. These patterns suggest a functional framework that associates variation on the occipital plane of the occiput with variation on the nuchal plane, and therefore nuchal muscle variation. The two patterns can be related to two independent factors; the magnitude and expression of lambdoidal flattening, and the muscle action related variation that affects the nuchal plane. These are functionally related. The difference in lambdoidal flattening affects the vertically oriented posterior surface of the cranial vault. This surface is higher and more medially restricted in the Upper Paleolithic specimens than in Neandertals. The corresponding nuchal plane variation emphasizes the development of the superior nuchal line, reflecting the action of the first layer nuchal muscles that are active in various forms of upper limb loading. Neandertals, on the other hand, have wider and more extensive lambdoidal flattening, a shorter vertical surface to the posterior vault, and a transverse occipital torus that is different from the condition found in the earliest Upper Paleolithic sample. Neandertal morphology emphasizes the development of large second layer nuchal muscles (m. semispinalis capitis) that insert across much of the width of the occiput. These muscles are important in head stabilization and extension. I suggest that these different morphologies reflect different patterns of habitual muscle use, although not necessarily a qualitative change in behavior or the replacement of one behavior by another. The morphology supports hypotheses of anterior tooth loading in Neandertals and individual and residential mobility in Upper Paleolithic populations.Ph.D.ArchaeologyPhysical anthropologySocial SciencesUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/128680/2/9123988.pd

How Did Modern Humans Originate

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Race, Culture and Human Evolution

EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION | Recent theories over human evolution have re-energized discussions about one of this century's most politicized topics — race. In this provocative introduction to the arguments over the origins of the human species, anthropological researchers Rachel Caspari and Milford Wolpoff (wife and husband) consider human diversity, the concept of race, and the importance of culture as it affects evolutionary processes.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/55281/13/3058_ourmre.htmlhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/55281/12/pop.csshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/55281/11/main.csshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/55281/10/index.htmlhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/55281/9/button_close.gifhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/55281/8/3058_ourmre_sm.jpghttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/55281/7/3058_ourmre_lg.jpghttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/55281/6/3058_Multir_sm.jpghttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/55281/5/3058_Multir_lg.jpghttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/55281/4/3058_crania.htmlhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/55281/3/3058_crania_sm.jpghttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/55281/2/3058_crania_lg.jpghttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/55281/1/3058_Multir.htm

The many species of humanity

Naming new human species may seem to be a harmless endeavor, of little interest to all but a few specialists playing out the consequences of different evolutionary explanations of phyletic variation, but it has significant implications in how humanity is viewed because studies of race and human evolution are inexorably linked. When essentialist approaches are used to interpret variation in the past as taxonomic rather than populational, as increasingly has been the case, it serves to underscore a typological view of modern human variation. In terms of how they are treated in analysis, there often seems to be no difference between the species, subspecies, or paleodemes of the past and the populatons or races whose interrelationships and demographic history are discussed today. This is not inconsequential because both history and current practice shows that science, especially anthropology, is not isolated from society