This past Sunday I took my sister to see The Human Family Tree (2009) presented as part of the Redpath Museum documentary film series. While my sister enjoyed it thoroughly, I was somewhat disappointed. Throughout the movie, I was wondering why it was a complete rehash of a documentary I had seen years earlier called Journey of Man (2003). Even the presenter looked the same. Turns out, it was almost the same documentary, and not surprisingly, the presenter was also the same individual: Dr. Spencer Wells, an American geneticist and anthropologist. The Human Family Tree has received glowing reviews on Amazon, and indeed appeared to be promising at first– but in my opinion left much to be desired.

Journey of Man was a rather groundbreaking film back in 2003. The Human Family Tree, however, basically covered the exact same ground that had been covered six years prior adding only nicer graphics and more human narratives. Of course I understand not wanting to make a film based only on new conjectures that may very well prove to be wrong, but it would have been interesting to learn how recent developments in genetics, fossil discoveries, and new paleoclimatic data fit in the bigger picture of early human migration. Not that there is anything wrong with being wrong– had the film been produced a year later, they could have included the rather startling evidence that non-African humans have 1-4% of the genome in common with Neanderthals (instead of insisting that the Neanderthals died out).

While I understand one can’t possibly delve into scientific intricacies in a 90 minute film, the Multiple Dispersal Model and the exact mechanisms and time-line of early human migration remain subjects of intense debate between archaeologists, paleoanthropologists, geneticists, and others. When I watch a scientific documentary, I appreciate a look at different views, or at the very least a mention of existing debates in the field– this doesn’t detract, but rather adds to the merit of the work being described. The film’s discussion of genetics was also incredibly vague and simplistic, some of the “fluff” could have been cut to provide a more satisfying overview for those of us who are interested in the nitty-gritty, without alienating the rest of the audience.

Towards the end, The Human Family Tree was as subtle as a jackhammer in conveying its overarching message, that is: we all come from Africa, color is skin deep, we’re all the same. Kum ba yah. In the movie they introduced New Yorkers of many different ethnicities from one street, all interested in learning about their ancestral heritage. Their narrative was wonderfully constructed at first (I remarked to my sister “This is cute!”), but after a while, the human factor overwhelmed the flow of the film and detracted from what should have been the focus– the science. Modern human populations, specially highly mixed populations, aren’t really representative of the isolated ancient populations the rest of the film was referring to. I think a much more nuanced way to approach this would have been to, based on genetic markers markers, trace and display the various ancestries of the individuals. But then the film wasn’t really going for nuanced.

Speaking of nuances, back when I watched Journey of Man I cringed at some of the dialogue and the interviews which were, for the lack of a better word, patronizing towards indigenous populations. Spencer Wells would march to an indigenous person (in particular the Navajo), and inform them that they migrated to their land from elsewhere (in the case of the Navajo, East Asia). The indigenous person would refute him with a “No, we’ve been here for all of history…” and Wells would appear startled… just shocked.

In The Human Family Tree, Wells interviewed the urban New Yorkers who, in contrast to interviewees in the previous film, were enthusiastic to recover a “lost” part of their background. But the subtext to this is that these populations have not faced the existential crisis that indigenous groups such as native populations in the Americas have faced. So it is rather understandable that a person who considers a land their ancestral home, a person to whom a land is an ancestral home, would be rather resistant to the line, “Native? We came from somewhere else, but you came from somewhere else too.” The issue here is not really sugar-coating science in favour of being politically correct, or hiding scientific truths to avert hurt feelings. It’s more about what is being said, who is doing the telling, to whom, and why. At the end of the day the scientific method is not in itself inherently political, but the questions we ask, the conclusions we draw, and how these conclusions are presented are always embedded in a socio-political context.

Despite my criticisms, I still think that the films are worth seeing given that so many others have enjoyed them (including my family), and they are indeed far better and more accurate than many other made-for-TV documentaries. I should add too that a scientist-in-training who tries to keep up on recent literature on the subject, I might not have been the target audience for these particular films. On the bright side, through reviews of this film I found out about The Incredible Human Journey (2009), a five-episode documentary series on the same subject by the BBC– if the BBC Pride & Prejudice miniseries was any indication, this will be quite comprehensive and awesome. I just need some extra time.

I have incredibly spotty wireless coverage in my room which means that I have to do amazing feats of gymnastics to be able to see more than two bars on my laptop. However, I wanted to take a few minutes to celebrate Alfred Russel Wallace’s 188th birthday. He, along with Charles Darwin (whose birthday is coming soon– cake pending– it’s going to be better than these– wait, where did they get Darwin action figures?– is that Père Noël dressed in black?), put forward the theory of evolution. As I wrote in an article a while back:

Alfred Russel Wallace is a truly fascinating character in his own right and one of the unsung heroes of science. He produced a massive body of scientific work in evolutionary biology, biogeography and ecology. He wrote extensively in areas outside science as well. Coming from a very modest background, Wallace considered himself a socialist and engaged extensively in social activism. He criticized free-trade and privatization, supported woman’s suffrage, and wrote against eugenics and social Darwinism which were ideas sported by some of his contemporaries. He also adhered to other beliefs, such as spiritualism, that caused some tension between him and scientific contemporaries.

In contrast to Darwin who took a conservative approach to science, having forestalled publication of his theory of natural selection for 20 years—the self-educated Wallace operated on strokes of genius. It has been said that developed the main points of evolutionary theory in a two-hour fit of malaria (how productive are your sick days? I thought so.) He clearly wasn’t afraid to be controversial, and almost to a flaw was willing to hedge all bets on an idea he believed to be right. And he was mostly right. At the same time, Wallace was incredibly humble scientist who sparked a modern revolution in science by providing Darwin with impetus and unconditional support.

Happy birthday!

I saw a story on an interesting new paper review published in the December edition of Current Anthropology. The paper is entitled New Light on Human Prehistory in the Arabo-Persian Gulf Oasis (doi:10.1086/657397) by University of Birmingham researcher Jeffrey Rose.

Epic of Gilgamesh – Image Source

The basis of this paper is ‘The Oasis Theory’ put forward by Raphael Pumpelly in 1908, and later popularized by Vere Gordon Childe in his 1928 book “The Most Ancient Near-East”. The theory holds that climate was at the heart of the Neolithic Revolution, and that first agricultural and domestication efforts by humans took place as a drying climate led them to form communities around oases in close association with animals. Paleoclimatic data and archeological evidence have provided data to leading credence this idea.

Inverse to the amount of annual precipitation falling across the interior, reduced sea levels periodically exposed large portions of the Arabo-Persian Gulf, equal at times to the size of Great Britain. Therefore, when the hinterlands were desiccated, populations could have contracted into the Gulf Oasis to exploit its freshwater springs and rivers. [source]

Rose’s review is significant in that it forms a theoretical framework based on archeological, genetic and paleoclimatic data to assert that human populations have existed in the Gulf for the past 100,000 years– and that the area was populated in the first wave of human expansion out of Africa.

In order to investigate the likelihood of an indigenous community within the Gulf Oasis, paleoenvironmental and archaeological evidence are synthesized, working to build a picture of prehistoric occupation over the course of the Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene… This evidence is used to construct a model of human occupation around the basin over the course of the last 100,000 years. The final section discusses the implications of the Gulf Oasis on current scenarios of modern human expansion out of Africa as well as the Neolithic demographic transition in southwest Asia. [source]

This theory accounts for both earlier migrations out of the gulf and for the sudden expansion of well-developed settlements that occurred around 8,000 years ago around the Gulf region.

The Gulf Oasis would have been a shallow inland basin exposed from about 75,000 years ago until 8,000 years ago… “Perhaps it is no coincidence that the founding of such remarkably well developed communities along the shoreline corresponds with the flooding of the Persian Gulf basin around 8,000 years ago,” Rose said. “These new colonists may have come from the heart of the Gulf, displaced by rising water levels that plunged the once fertile landscape beneath the waters of the Indian Ocean. [source]

The expansion to Australia is thought to have been one of the earlier human migrations and that is placed around 50 thousand years ago. So the possibility that modern humans were in the Persian Gulf 100 thousand years ago is quite significant, specially when compounded with another study earlier showing that non-Africans populations possess 1-4% Neanderthal genetic material, and that the “hybridization” probably took place in the Middle East.

Another aspect, which is amusing to think about, is what this all means with relation to the Garden of Eden and the Great Deluge mythos that has prevailed in the region since the first written records. Every year somebody comes out with a new location which they swear is the Garden of Eden– and it still doesn’t get old.

Albeit epiphenomenal, it is interesting to note that the oldest known version of the ubiquitous Near Eastern flood myth, the “Eridu genesis”… was written by the inhabitants of this region.

While the paper has been lauded by all of the commentators and appears to be strong, some commentators have criticized the article for essentially jumping the gun without strong archaeological evidence from the Gulf itself.

I am skeptical about the relevance of mythology and equally so about reliance on genetic proxy data, given the huge margins of error in coalescence dates and the many other assumptions involved… Genetic inference has a role to play but, as Rose demonstrates here, the archaeological data are key to forming and testing new hypotheses. Moreover, many other shallow shelf regions would have had similar potentials at lowered sea level, so this is an issue of worldwide interest and not unique to the Persian Gulf. [source]

On a final note, I was relieved to see this particular comment from an archaeologist, Juris Zarins, who has some done fantastic work in the Arabian Peninsula (and whom I’d heard about before in the context of ‘Garden of Eden’ theories).

“The terms “Arabo-Persian Gulf” or “Gulf” cannot be scientifically applied to the studied region, which has been called “Persian Gulf” for the last two millennia. This name is also the only accepted term in United Nations documents. Although due to some political reasons some of the neighboring countries to this region have been trying to apply some other terminologies to the mentioned geographical zone, it is vital that in archaeological texts the researchers stand neutral in political debates and use the geographical names based on the UN official documents.”

Rose, J. (2010). New Light on Human Prehistory in the Arabo-Persian Gulf Oasis Current Anthropology, 51 (6), 849-883 DOI: 10.1086/657397

 

Side note: I really love the dialogue that goes in the commentary of many anthropological papers I’ve read as a part of my minor. It’s quite different from science papers I’m used to where people don’t openly question the methods and assertions of peer-reviewed papers (unless the paper is really bad) and don’t start a dialogue, instead opting to publish their own scientific papers disapproving or verifying the findings. I recognize that it’s important to confirm or reject data with other data, but at the same time, more scientific “dialogue” and placing researchers on the hot plate at the time of publication may (1) lead to the right questions being asked and answered (2) improve the quality of research in the future.

November 24th, 2009 marked the 150th anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species. The book, along with Marx’s The Communist Manifesto is the most important work of the 19th century. Like the other, Origin challenged both the scientific establishment and the social establishment, and as a result, generated a lot of controversy, which it continues to do so to this day.

Origin of Species must also be considered one of the most influential books of all time. I can’t think of any work that has so rapidly and in a such a way shifted the prevailing paradigm and changed humankind’s perception of the world and itself– so it’s no surprise that the book is said to have brought about a revolution in science, much like Copernicus’ On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres. Unlike Copernicus, however, Darwin himself foresaw this and wrote in the last pages of Origin:

When the views advanced by me in this volume, and by Mr. Wallace, or when analogous views on the origin of species are generally admitted, we can dimly forsee that there will be a considerable revolution in natural history. -Chapter XV, On the Origin of Species

In the words that follow, I explore the origins of Origin and pose that the revolution in fact started a year and some months earlier with the publication of the Linnean papers. I also examine the brilliant naturalist and elusive figure, “Mr. Wallace”, and his role in putting forward evolutionary theory.

The Linnean Papers
Darwin, Wallace & A Nascent Revolution

By Marzieh Ghiasi (Nov 2009)

n July 1st, 1858, in a special meeting of the Linnean Society, held in London, two brief papers describing natural selection as a mechanism of evolution were read. The Linnean papers, published later in August 20th as part of the society’s proceedings, were the start of a movement in science that became known as the Darwinian revolution. One essay was by Charles Darwin, an English naturalist whose name has become the cornerstone of evolutionary theory. The other essay was by Alfred Russel Wallace, an English naturalist whose name has become largely restricted to the annals of history. The traditional approach has been to set Darwin and Wallace as rivals in a fight for priority of publication, one which the majority of literature has argued Darwin won. The Linnean papers, however, can be examined as an outcome of a cooperative trajectory in which a common theory of evolution was developed by two vastly different individuals. This paper focuses on the association between Darwin and Wallace with respect to the Linnean papers, arguing that the interactions of the two naturalists offered them mutual benefits that would have been unlikely otherwise. As well, the interactions between the two men created a cohesion and unity critical in a field at its nascent stages.

Two Men Worlds Apart

Victorian Britain was highly class-conscious and its science was viewed as a domain of the upper class. Charles Darwin, born in 1809 into a prestigious and wealthy English family and educated in the University of Edinburgh and University of Cambridge, was an ideal representative of these values. Alfred Russel Wallace, conversely, was born in 1823 to a low income family and class relations played a tremendous role throughout his life.^[1] Although his father was a lawyer, he never practiced and the family had to learn to rely on self-sufficiency. Wallace never received formal schooling beyond the age of thirteen, when he was withdrawn and sent to an apprenticeship because his family no longer could pay for his education. By the time he was fourteen, he joined his brother as an apprentice land surveyor. However, Wallace was precocious and determined, and began to teach himself many subjects including taxonomy for which he had grown a great affinity.^[2] Unlike Darwin, who was well positioned for a life in pursuit of science, Wallace’s challenge was to break through rigid social barriers and prove himself as a scientist.

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http://www.mcgilldaily.com/article/18021

Darwin, DNA and, “many more details”
By Marzieh Ghiasi
Monday, Feb 16th, 2009

While evolution has formed the core foundation of biology, 150 years since Darwin’s theory of evolution, was published, it remains as controversial as ever. According to a 2007 poll released by Angus Reid Global Monitor, only 59 per cent of Canadians believe the theory of evolution, while 22 per cent believe species were created in their present form.

On February 12, millions across the world celebrated Charles Darwin’s 200th birthday. Darwin’s journey on the HMS Beagle and his explorations have formed what Dr. Andrew Hendry, professor of biology at McGill University, calls “the foundations of all modern biology.”

In his 1859 landmark work, On The Origin of Species, Darwin described evolutionary development and the transformation of species through the process of natural selection. Darwin’s unorthodox ideas proved controversial at the time of their publication.
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