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- Convenor:
-
Helen Macbeth
(Oxford Brookes University)
Send message to Convenor
- Track:
- Being Human
- Location:
- University Place 2.217
- Sessions:
- Tuesday 6 August, -, -, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
Coevolution, adaptation and interaction of humans and their foods from prehistory to today in different environments, different technologies: cross-disciplinary perspectives: palaeoanthropology, biological and cultural anthropology, nutrition, archaeology, genetics, epidemiology, ethology, etc.
Long Abstract:
Throughout their evolution, humans and their ancestors have not only survived and adapted to changes in their natal environments but have migrated, often rapidly and over long distances, requiring them to adapt to and find food in a wide variety of new and different environments. That adaptation has not only been molecular, physiological and anthropometric, but also imaginative, technological and cultural.
ICAF promotes cross-disciplinary discussions concerning human food and nutrition. This panel will provide the opportunity for anthropologists (palaeo-, biological, nutritional, cultural, etc.), as well as archaeologists, nutritionists, evolutionary biologists, molecular geneticists, epidemiologists and others, to exchange information on the co-evolution of humans and their foods, from prehistory to the present, in all inhabited environments, in subsistence, agricultural and industrial economies. Important aspects of their survival in such different environments are human food technologies and the physiological ability to digest a wide variety of diets, especially when the foods are transformed with cooking.
The topics to be discussed include early exploitation of plant and animal species for food as well as more recent and contemporary control of the reproduction of domesticated or managed food resources. Because foods have been important in the adaptation and evolution of humans, discussion is anticipated concerning hypotheses about the early development of human anthropometrics, digestive tracts, enzymes in saliva, etc, distinct from closely related species, as well as the increasing information on contemporary human genetic diversity assumed to be derived from adaptation to different dietary components, including those apparently occurring since the adoption of agriculture.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Tuesday 6 August, 2013, -Paper short abstract:
Human migrations, prehistoric, historic, recent and contemporary, spread food technologies and human genes affecting the co-evolution of humans and their foods. As there are many perspectives on this, a cross-disciplinary approach to the topic is essential.
Paper long abstract:
Migrations over both long and short distances have been a persistent aspect of human existence. Those who migrate may be random or non-random samples of the population they leave, usually non-random. With these migrations cultures and food technologies have always spread, as well as human genes. The patterns of movement tend to be affected by military, social, commercial, political, marital, ecological, economic or simply chance factors in the lives of individuals or groups. Together with other environmental factors human migrations have affected and continue to affect the evolution and patterns of human population biology worldwide. The perspectives on the co-evolution of humans and their foods, therefore, are many, and it is important to bring together information from different disciplines. Those of us who work on topics related to humans and food have long been willing to work cooperatively in a cross-disciplinary way. For this topic it is essential.
This paper will provide a broad introduction to the interaction of the spread of food technologies and human population biology throughout the whole of human history, from the prehistoric spread of early agriculture, to agricultural improvements, to mechanisation, to the industrially processed foods and to the dominance of multinational firms in some food industries and outlets. As these affect human diets, they affect non-genetic factors in human biology, but these in turn interact with genetic factors, and ultimately with human adaptability and long-term genetic adaptation.
Paper short abstract:
This paper presents a general view of stable isotope and anthropological researches on human dietary practices during Prehistory, specifically in Northwestern Mediterranean at the beginning of agriculture and herding. Specific cases on Neolithic and Bronze Age in France and Italy are further discussed.
Paper long abstract:
This paper presents a general overview of stable isotope and anthropological researches on human dietary practices during Prehistory, specifically in Northwestern Mediterranean at the beginning of agriculture and herding. For few decades until now physical anthropology has investigated human food studying directly human remains. Biogeochemical analysis of bone collagen and/or minerals preserved in ancient skeletal remains represent a direct scientific method to investigate the diet of past populations. This approach allows to obtain individual information about environmental exploitation (e.g. C3 versus C4 plants), energy and protein intake (e.g. vegetal versus meat). Osteological records (as oral pathologies), environmental (animal and botanical remains) and archaeological context (funeral practices) combined with these data brought to light food patterns that are different according to the region and economic activities during Neolithic. Specific case studies carried out on Neolithic and Bronze Age populations in France and Italy are further discussed. They show (1) the relative absence of fish consumption along the Mediterranean coast at the beginning of sedentarization and animal and plant domestication, (2) different protein and meat intakes according to the location of human group and funeral practices, (3) the wider female dietary variability during Neolithic, (4) the absence of millet consumption at the beginning of Bronze Age and subsequently geographic and chronological introduction of this C4 plant in human diet. In particular, Italian Bronze Age sites have revealed different food habits, with the presence of specialized crops at very early phases. Intrasite differences are also indicative of social complexity and closer cultural influences.
Paper short abstract:
How genetic findings and techniques will change nutrition and cuisine; what are the challenges of 21st century cuisines, preserving the environment and culinary traditions, and the simultaneously nutrigenomic and social challenge of feeding our genes and our taste buds. We present recipes from: paleo cuisine, medieval cuisine, the Mediterranean diet, the Okinawa diet, sustainable cuisines, the APO E Gene diet and molecular gastronomy.
Paper long abstract:
Nutrition, metabolism, and cuisine are interlinked areas of study in a wide array of disciplines, from the life sciences to the social sciences. Whether the specific issue is the genetics of crops and lifestock and their biodiversity, the genetic and social causes of obesity and diabetes, or the realm of molecular gastronomy and the slow food movement, cuisine, nutrition and genetics are emerging as central scientific and social problems of our time. As such, this area constitutes a compelling scholarly field of endeavor, from those focused on the gene to those focused on the food on the table. Often, however, the research questions, methods and results at the micro-scale of molecule and cell are not recognizable to research communities
interested in the macro scale of human food choice and culinary traditions. This paper presents the pressing questions of how genetic findings and techniques will change nutrition and cuisine, the challenges of 21st
century cuisine, preserving the environment and culinary traditions, and the simultaneously nutrigenomic and social challenge of feeding our genes and our taste buds.
Paper short abstract:
Traditional maize processing is used to test a new theoretical “ethnovore” construct involving the accumulation, transmission, and evolution of behaviors concerned with the transformation of raw food products into edible, nutrient rich foods with feedback effects on biological evolution.
Paper long abstract:
In the context of attempting to categorize the co-evolution of the human diet, it is increasingly apparent that the contemporary label of being an omnivore "who eats nearly everything" may not always lead us in directions that reveal much about the co-evolutionary process that has led to contemporary humanity. Being an omnivore is more of an abstraction about a potential than it is about the food that any specific people or society prescribes, proscribes and actually eats. Instead, if we look at human food consumption more holistically over time, it appears that we are more likely to be genetically evolved to become deeply rooted in a particular food tradition that is the product of an evolutionary process over time periods spanning generations to many millennia. This aspect of the human food system needs a new terminology to connect and integrate it into the meaningful continuum of abstractions that we are discovering about the biocultural origins of ethnic food traditions and their implications for the genetic and metabolic constraints of human diets. While omnivore is the broadest term we can apply to the potential of humanity's diet, we are really "ethnovores" in our individual, family, community and cultural values and behaviors. This paper develops this new concept and uses our work over the last several decades on the evolution of maize diets as an exemplar to test the significance of the ethnovore concept as a model for understanding this key evolutionary process.
Paper short abstract:
In this paper we present a formal dynamic model of co-evolution between a human and a plant population, focusing on the potentialities or difficulties for the emergence of domesticates and agriculturalist behaviour.
Paper long abstract:
One of the hypotheses for the origin of agriculture is as a co-evolutionary set of interaction between people and plants. One of the most important tenets of this hypothesis is that this mutually advantageous process would have driven to adaptive changes in both subjects. Behavioural ecology has provided an interesting alternative hypothesis, stressing the increasing management of plants by foragers until the marginal return tipped in favour of cultivation. We believe that an approach that takes into consideration both perspectives could be beneficial for the understanding of a complex process such as the emergence of agriculture.
In this paper we present a formal dynamic model of co-evolution between a human and a plant population, focusing on the potentialities or difficulties for the emergence of domesticates and agriculturalist behaviour. Fundamentally, this approach is the outcome of combining two models: (1) a Population Ecology model, relating humans and their food sources, specifically focusing on one plant species; and (2) a simplified co-evolution model, which represents the cross selection of dichotomic phenotypic traits in two populations.
In addition, a synthesis of the results of comparing model behaviour under different conditions -representing different plant species, biogeographies and prior social constraints— is presented. Finally, we concentrate on the model's usefulness for understanding, and eventually quantifying, the effects of each element on the likelihood and timing of domestication trajectories.
Paper short abstract:
This study documents the traditional ethnobotanical knowledge among the Czech diaspora living in Romanian Banat which is recently affected by depopulation. In total, we identified 60 cultivated and 61 wild plant species; however, increasing loss of traditional plant use knowledge is evident.
Paper long abstract:
The Banat region is noted for its diverse ethnic structure. The Czech minority, living in the area since 1820´s, is recently affected by the depopulation of the villages. Therefore, this ethnobotanical study documents and preserves the traditional ethnobotanical knowledge among the Czech diaspora living in Romanian Banat. The research on domesticated and wild plant species was carried out in the period of July - October 2011 with 23 respondents (13 female and 10 male; whose age ranged from 29 to 80 years), by using (semi-)structured interviews and participant observation. The vernacular names, preparation, plant parts utilized and their method of use were recorded. In total, 60 cultivated plant species were identified, of which 85% were used as food, followed by medicine (18%) and feed (15%), dye, material and for religious and environmental purposes (each comprised 3%), and ethnoveterinary and ritual uses (each 1.5%.). Given the wild plants, we documented 61 taxas which are mainly used as medicine (80%), with the highest number of species being used for gastro-intestinal disorders, and food (25%). Interestingly, 10 % were used for ethnoveterinary purposes and some species seems to have promising phytotherapeutical applications for livestock health. It is concluded that the traditional knowledge about the use of food and medicinal plants is still alive within the studied minority; however, it is practiced mainly by elder people and increasing loss of traditional plant use knowledge is evident.
Paper short abstract:
Domestication of plants is an ongoing process inducing many kinds of uses, knowledge and evolutionary trends. Studies of society-plant relationships reveal that the same species can be appreciated and produced in different ways by neighbouring populations. Is the historical evolution of gastronomy a key to understanding evolutionary pressures on domesticates ?
Paper long abstract:
The Lake Chad Basin has a long history of plant-society interactions and is thought to be the cradle of domestication of some major cereals, pulses and tubers, but it is also an area of constant exchanges between a great diversity of ethnolinguistic groups sharing and trading some crops, and knowledge about them, while simultaneously cultivating some gastronomic specialities as a mark of their cultural identity.
The study of plant-Man co-evolution in this biome has not yet led to the discovery of evolutionary trends in humans comparable to the changes induced by the domestication of cattle and its effect on lactose digestion. However, secular trends of the evolution of agricultural systems and historical evolution of taste and food preferences have an impact on domesticated plants populations. Organoleptic features of species and landraces are selected and it affects the evolutionary trajectory as surely as selection for yield. These cultural choices vary according to ethnolinguistic diversity. In this paper, we will discuss the cases of the changing status of the Bambara groundnut - selected for the various colors of its flour ; Sorghum landraces - color or suitability for beer brewing ; millet landraces -seasonality ; and various species of leafy greens - for their taste and glutinous features. Most of the species and landraces are known to most of ethnolinguistic groups, but not necessarily prized for the same features. Some can be intensively cultivated in some places, while remaining adventitious in others and still be in use or actively traded between groups.
Paper short abstract:
Food had a central role in the development of law and city expansion in Constantinople during the Byzantine Empire. Laws were developed to regulate food distribution which impacted daily life in the city. Also, food contributed to the expansion of the city in ways that influenced people’s lives.
Paper long abstract:
During the Byzantine era, food served a multifunctional purpose. Not only was food the cultural centre for daily life but it was perceived as a socio-economic pillar upon which Byzantine civilization heavily relied. Constantinople was located near the water which enabled the Byzantine Empire's economy to flourish. Laws were installed to administer the food economy and regulate the distribution of food in the markets. Indeed, prior research indicated that food played a social and economic role in the city of Constantinople (e.g., Dalby, 2003). In the present paper, I discuss how food influenced the socio-economic development of Constantinople. In the context of daily life in Constantinople, I demonstrate how the development of local laws used to regulate the distribution, trade, and sale of food contributed to social and economic growth. As well, I discuss the influence of social class on people's consumption and storage of food within the household. Second, I demonstrate how the food influenced the physical expansion of the city (e.g., the creation of storage facilities), and how this expansion enhanced the economic prosperity of the inhabitants of Constantinople. Third, the reciprocal influence between food laws on the one hand and city expansion on the other hand will also be discussed in terms of their mutual impact on daily life in Constantinople and the broader Byzantine Empire.
Paper short abstract:
The diversity of breastfeeding and weaning practices at the historical periods is mainly documented from historical, demographic or archaeological data. Nevertheless, the analysis of the isotopic ratios of nitrogen contained in the bone collagens of the children can inform us about the food modifications during the moments which preceded their death. It is thus possible to highlight the changes in mother's milk consumption.
Paper long abstract:
The diversity of breastfeeding and weaning practices at the historical periods is mainly documented from historical, demographic or archaeological data. Nevertheless, the analysis of the isotopic ratios of nitrogen contained in the bone collagens of the children can inform us about the food modifications during the moments which preceded their death. It is thus possible to highlight the changes in mother's milk consumption.
Using skeletal material, this communication aims to determine the evolution of weaning practices in medieval and early modern Europe. After a description of the methodology implemented to detect the food changes during the first years of the life, we will present results obtained from 92 infants, aged between 0,5-5 years and coming from French and Czech archaeological sites.
The isotopic results attest of a mosaic of food behaviors. Whereas for the Late Middle Ages, only one practical is distinguished with a late weaning around 2,5 years, for the Early Middle Ages and the Modern Period, two practices were highlighted, one with children weaned before the age of 2 and the other with children still nursed beyond 3 years. If this double practice could be explained by the more frequent use of the nurses at the modern time, other factors must be evoked for Early Middle Ages, for example the influence of the religion. To propose biological and/or economic factors which may have been responsible for applied weaning practices, isotopic results will be placed against the archaeological, anthropological and palaeopathological data.
Paper short abstract:
Milk’s evolutionary function is to support infant growth. Bovine infants grow rapidly to large sizes, so consumption of bovine milk by human children may enhance growth and possibly accelerate maturation. I report on life history effects of bovine milk intake in children from the U.S. and India.
Paper long abstract:
The use of domesticated mammalian milk had a profound effect on human populations, as evidenced by the high frequency of the allele for lactase persistence among populations that adopted this practice. However, despite evidence for strong positive selection for this trait, the fitness benefits associated with dairy consumption beyond the weaning period are not clear. Hypotheses have included an overall increase in high quality food, or calcium in the diet, or lactose's ability to substitute for Vitamin D have been put forward, but evidence supporting any of these is scant. Alternatively, given milk's unique evolutionary function as a food to support the growth and development of nursing infants, and the fact that bovine infants grow rapidly to large body sizes, it is possible that consumption of bovine milk by post-weaning age human children could enhance growth and possibly accelerate sexual maturation. This could result in earlier or more successful reproduction, and ultimately enhanced fitness among milk drinkers. This paper reports on data indicating life history effects of bovine milk consumption among children from a large cross-sectional survey in the United States and an ongoing cohort study in Maharastra, India. The research in India provides a useful counterpoint to U.S. or European studies as milk has a deep history there and frequencies of lactase persistence show a strong cline across the subcontinent, but milk consumption occurs against a very different dietary and ecological backdrop.