Nutrition and Health in Human Evolution-Past to Present

Anyone who wants to understand the biological nature of humans and their special characteristics must look far back into evolutionary history. Today\u27s way of life is drastically different from that of our ancestors. For almost 99% of human history, gathering and hunting have been the basis of nutrition. It was not until about 12,000 years ago that humans began domesticating plants and animals. Bioarchaeologically and biochemically, this can be traced back to our earliest roots. Modern living conditions and the quality of human life are better today than ever before. However, neither physically nor psychosocially have we made this adjustment and we are paying a high health price for it. The studies presented allow us to reconstruct food supply, lifestyles, and dietary habits: from the earliest primates, through hunter-gatherers of the Paleolithic, farming communities since the beginning of the Anthropocene, to the Industrial Age and the present. The comprehensive data pool allows extraction of all findings of medical relevance. Our recent lifestyle and diet are essentially determined by our culture rather than by our millions of years of ancestry. Culture is permanently in a dominant position compared to natural evolution. Thereby culture does not form a contrast to nature but represents its result. There is no doubt that we are biologically adapted to culture, but it is questionable how much culture humans can cope wit

Prevalence of taurodontism in a modern Austrian sample

Taurodontism is a dental condition characterized by an abnormality in the tooth root formation, believed to be caused by defects in the invagination of the Hertwig epithelial sheath during root development. It is characterized by an enlarged, apically displaced pulp chamber, short roots, and a lack of constriction at the enamel-cementum junction. Taurodontism is classified into three degrees: hypo-, meso- and hypertaurodontism. The data was collected by measuring the height of the pulp chamber in relation to the length of the pulp chamber roof to the apex of the longest root in multirooted teeth. In this study, 1,000 panoramic radiographs (PAN) from a dental practice in Upper Austria were evaluated according to the classification of Shifman and Chanannel (1978). Hypotaurodontism was not recorded. Among the subjects evaluated, 5.9% were affected by taurodontism, and the prevalence of taurodontic teeth was 1.4%. It was found that slightly more women than men exhibited the presence of taurodontism. Mesotaurodontism was identified in 43 subjects (4.3%), hypertaurodontism in eight subjects (0.8%), and both forms were present in eight cases (0.8%). The anomaly occurred significantly more frequently in the maxilla than in the mandible. The prevalence of taurodontism varies considerably worldwide due to several factors: the use of different classifications, sample sizes, variable inclusion and exclusion criteria, and population genetic reasons. Clinically, taurodontism complicates procedures such as extractions, endodontic, prosthodontic, periodontal and orthodontic treatments, which underscores its relevance in dental practice

Age-at-death estimation in archaeological samples: Differences in population means resulting from different aging methods can be predicted from the mean ages of method-specific reference samples

Age mimicry is a well-known phenomenon in the application of osteological age-estimation methods. Age mimicry refers to the fact that predicting age-at-death from a specific trait (age indicator) based on the relation observed in a specific reference sample implies that age estimates to some degree reflect the age structure of the reference sample. In particular, the estimated population mean in a target population in which an age-estimation method is applied is shifted towards the mean in the method-specific reference sample. Consequently, differences in population means between different age-estimation methods in the same target population may be due to differences in mean age of the reference samples used to develop the age-estimation methods. We aim at quantifying the expected magnitude for such differences. Fifteen different traditional age-estimation methods were applied to a sample of 675 adult individuals from the early medieval cemetery of Mannheim-Seckenheim. The relation of the observed estimated population age means and the mean age in the reference samples was analyzed by linear regression. We find that up to 80% of the variation in the estimated population age means can be explained by the variation of the mean age in the reference samples. Furthermore, differences in the magnitude of 3 to 4 years in the mean age between two reference samples can imply a 1-year difference in estimated target population age means. Because large differences in mean age between reference samples used to develop different age-estimation methods are common, some care is needed in interpreting differences between individual age estimates or population mean age estimates in cases where different age-estimation techniques are used

Modelling a scale-based strontium isotope baseline for Hungary

Strontium isotope analysis has recently proven to be a useful tool to elucidate population movements and subsistence strategies in ecological and archaeological sciences. The interpretation depends on the size, type, availability, and preservation of the sample and the reliability of the produced strontium isotope baseline. However, collecting quantitatively and qualitatively suitable baseline samples is considered a challenging task in archaeological research. To meet these challenges, we introduce an innovative analytical technique, which enables the analysis of small sample sizes from heterogeneous site distribution and environmental settings. This article integrates multivariate environmental modelling and bioarchaeological data of 49 sites to establish the first scale-based differentiation between site-specific and micro-regional strontium isotope baselines with various sample sizes in Hungary. In future mobility studies, this approach will allow distinguishing human and faunal movement ranges on different geographical scales.Strontium isotope analysis has recently proven to be a useful tool to elucidate population movements and subsistence strategies in ecological and archaeological sciences. The interpretation depends on the size, type, availability, and preservation of the sample and the reliability of the produced strontium isotope baseline. However, collecting quantitatively and qualitatively suitable baseline samples is considered a challenging task in archaeological research. To meet these challenges, we introduce an innovative analytical technique, which enables the analysis of small sample sizes from heterogeneous site distribution and environmental settings. This article integrates multivariate environmental modelling and bioarchaeological data of 49 sites to establish the first scale-based differentiation between site-specific and micro-regional strontium isotope baselines with various sample sizes in Hungary. In future mobility studies, this approach will allow distinguishing human and faunal movement ranges on different geographical scales

Reconstructing Bronze Age diets and farming strategies at the early Bronze Age sites of La Bastida and Gatas (southeast Iberia) using stable isotope analysis

The El Argar society of the Bronze Age in the southeast of the Iberian Peninsula (2200-1550 cal BCE) was among the first complex societies in Europe. Its economy was based on cereal cultivation and metallurgy, it was organized hierarchically, and successively expanded its territory. Most of the monumentally fortified settlements lay on steeply sloped mountains, separated by fertile plains, and allowed optimal control of the area. Here, we explore El Argar human diets, animal husbandry strategies, and food webs using stable carbon and nitrogen isotope analysis of charred cereal grains as well as human and animal bone collagen. The sample comprised 75 human individuals from the sites of La Bastida (n = 52) and Gatas (n = 23), 32 domesticated and wild animals as well as 76 barley and 29 wheat grains from two chronological phases of a total time span of ca. 650 years. The grains indicate extensive cereal cultivation under rain-fed conditions with little to moderate application of manure. Especially at La Bastida, crops and their by-products contributed significantly to the forage of the domesticated animals, which attests to a strong interrelation of cultivation and animal husbandry. Trophic level spacing and Bayesian modelling confirm that human diets were largely based on barley with some contribution of meat or dairy products. A cross-sectional analysis of bone collagen suggests that children were breastfed until about 1.5-2 years old, and infants from Gatas may have suffered from more metabolic stress than those at La Bastida. Adults of both sexes consumed similar diets that reflect social and chronological variation to some extent. Despite significantly higher δ13C and δ15N values at La Bastida than at Gatas, the isotopic data of the staple crops and domestic animals from both sites indicate that such differences do not necessarily correspond to different average human diets, but to agricultural strategies. These results urge for a reassessment of previous isotope studies in which only human remains have been taken into account. The study highlights that disentangling the complex influences on human isotope compositions requires a firm set of comparative data

Early Neolithic executions indicated by clustered cranial trauma in the mass grave of Halberstadt

The later phase of the Central European Early Neolithic witnessed a rise in collective lethal violence to a level undocumented up to this date. This is evidenced by repeated massacres of settled communities of the Linearbandkeramik (ca. 5600-4900 cal bc), the first full farming culture in this area. Skeletal remains of several dozen victims of this prehistoric warfare are known from different sites in Germany and Austria. Here we show that the mass grave of Halberstadt, Germany, a new mass fatality site from the same period, reveals further and so far unknown facets of Early Neolithic collective lethal violence. A highly selected, almost exclusively adult male and non-local population sample was killed by targeted blows to the back of the head, indicating a practice of systematic execution under largely controlled conditions followed by careless disposal of the bodies. This discovery significantly increases current knowledge about warfare-related violent behaviour in Early Neolithic Central Europe