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- Convenor:
-
Keiichi Omoto
- Location:
- 103
- Start time:
- 18 May, 2014 at
Time zone: Asia/Tokyo
- Session slots:
- 2
Short Abstract:
The purpose is to draw attention to our integrated approach to understand the modern humans regarded as the result of evolution. Participants are from both biological (Omoto, Aoki, Kanazawa, Saitou) and cultural anthropology (Kawada, Nomura), trying to combine phenomena of genes, body, and culture.
Long Abstract:
IUAES with its congress (ICAES) founded in 1934 has a long history and is rather unique among world organizations of researchers on human being, in that it clearly intends a multidisciplinary approach. In the time that specialization of disciplines is increasingly dominant, we consider it important to keep the principle of IUAES that anthropological and ethnological, probably also archeological and linguistic studies are designed to join. The purpose of this panel is to attract attention to our integrated approaches to understand modern humans. Participants are from variety of disciplines in biological and cultural anthropologies. To start with, one of the conveners Keiichi OMOTO (biological, particularly genetic anthropologist) gives an opening and introductory remark, followed by the presentation "Human body makes cultures" of another convener Junzo KAWADA (cultural anthropologist). Next, Masaichi NOMURA (cultural anthropologist) introduces his study on "Anthropology of 'Personhood' ". Then, presentations by three biological anthropologists follow, namely, Kenichi AOKI, who specializes in the theoretical, mathematical studies of the evolution of culture, reports "Modeling the evolution of prehistoric culture"; Eisaku KANAZAWA, a dental anthropologist, presents "Biological and cultural aspects of the early modern Japanese" ; Naruya SAITOU (genetic and genomic anthropologist) shows his idea on "Major genetic sources of Japanese and its implication with their mythical history".
Accepted papers:
Session 1Paper short abstract:
This panel aims at drawing attention to an integrated approach for answering the question: what is the modern human. Human cultures and societies may have roots in the evolution of genes and bodies. It is time to find the way to combine biological and cultural disciplines for a new anthropology.
Paper long abstract:
IUAES is unique in its principle of a multidisciplinary approach involving both biological and cultural anthropology. In the time that specialization of disciplines is dominant, we dare to propose to keep the original idea of IUAES. In the Closing Remark at the Inter-Congress 2002 held in Tokyo, I introduced Shogoro Tsuboi, the founder of anthropology in Japan, who was known by the broad interests not only in physical anthropology, but also prehistory, folklore, ethnography and so on. Attracted by the wide scope in human studies, people from different fields gathered to hear his lecture and join the meetings. He died young in 1913, and after that the centripetal force to his school weakened. Thus, the anthropological journal became occupied by tables and figures of anthropometric data etc. In 1936, a group of young scholars created a meeting called "APE", symbolizing anthropology, prehistory and ethnology. However, this pioneering attempt to restore the original multidisciplinary nature of anthropology did not last long. In the 1960's, diversification into narrow disciplines in the anthropological science became increasingly apparent. People did not want to spend time anymore on studies that looked unimportant for their disciplines. Recently, with Junzo Kawada, I tried to find the way to attain the integration in anthropology. The basic idea is firstly to focus on the modern human, Homo sapiens, and secondly to recognize phenomena of different levels, namely, gene/body and culture/society, are mutually closely related, and thirdly to consider the human uniqueness as the result of evolution.
Paper short abstract:
The human body, locally variable on the earth, is the base to create cultures. By bipedal locomotion, able to carry burdens to certain distance, this Homo portans could spread over the globe and create variable cultures.
Paper long abstract:
The human body, locally variable on the earth, is the base to create cultures making use of available materials. As the first primate, by upright bipedal locomotion, able to carry burdens of certain weight to certain distance, this Homo portans (Human the carrier) could spread all over the globe and create locally variable cultures. This paper, using the "triangulation of cultures", a comparison of three quite different cultures, which I propose long since for its heuristic value, as well as to lessen the observer's subjective distortion, deals traditional carrying techniques of the body in Japan, Europe and West Africa, always based on our own field research. I discuss the subject in a larger perspective of "technological cultures", including the world view of which the technique is materialization, as well as the socio-political systems to carry out the technique.
Paper short abstract:
Assuming that culture can be represented by a vector of 1’s and 0’s, as is often done in empirical studies of cultural evolution among pre-contact peoples, we obtain theoretical predictions for the cultural evolutionary rate and cultural diversity under various modes of social learning.
Paper long abstract:
Cultural evolution occurs when innovations produced by individual learning (e.g. by trial-and-error) are propagated in a population by social learning (e.g. by imitation). Empirical studies of cultural evolution among pre-contact peoples often represent the cultural traits of a society by a vector of 1's (presence) and 0's (absence). To study the cultural evolution of such 0, 1-vectors, we assign a possibly different 0, 1-vector to each individual in a finite population and calculate the changes in their frequencies. Then, assuming the infinite sites model of innovation, we obtain predictions, by mathematical analysis and by agent-based simulation, for the cultural evolutionary rate and within-population cultural diversity under various modes of social learning. We argue that the emphasis placed on demography (e.g. population size) by many theoretically-minded archaeologists should be regarded with caution. Instead, we point out that innovativeness (i.e. individual learning ability) is an equally, if not more, important determinant of the cultural evolutionary rate and within-population cultural diversity, and discuss the conditions that favor the biological evolution of innovativeness. An additional question of interest is to identify the conditions under which a serial founder effect may operate on cultural traits, resulting in a decrease of within-population cultural diversity with distance from the geographical origin of range expansion or of cultural diffusion.
Paper short abstract:
Dental materials excavated from the archaeological site in early modern period in downtown Tokyo demonstrated not only biological features of the people being different from those in other periods, but also cultural aspects prevailed in Edo such as the use of primitive dental care tools.
Paper long abstract:
Skeletal materials including teeth were excavated from Keianji temple, Ikenohata, Ueno in Tokyo, the former Japanese capital Edo from 1603 to 1866. The archaeological site was the graveyard, in which two types of coffins such as wooden coffins and ceramic coffins were identified. The wooden coffin was utilized mainly by the townsman. On the other hand, the lower-middle class of samurai, as hatamoto or hanshi was buried in the ceramic coffin depending on their higher income and social status. Some of the craniofacial and dental measurements of the materials were different between these two groups of the people probably because of the environmental factors such as dietary habit or working posture. Observation of the teeth also revealed that dental care, oral habits and pathological cases were also different in these people. Tooth polishing sand and tooth brush called "fusayouji" began to be used in Edo era. Because these tools were relatively expensive, they were not extensively prevailed in the townsman class. Polished surfaces by using the tooth brush was significantly more in the higher samurai class than in the townsman class. The traces of "ohaguro" which was a curious custom of dyeing teeth black for married women. This custom was also differently found between these two groups. Thus the dental anthropological study confirmed that there was a dual structure of the society or the population in Edo from the biological and cultural point of view.
Paper short abstract:
There were two types of migrants to the Japanese archipelago: ancient hunter-gatherers and recent agriculturists. Japanese myths suggested the existence of two different agriculturist populations in western Japan. We are now searching genetic remnants of these two types of people among modern Japanese.
Paper long abstract:
It is now established that there were two major types of migrants to Japanese Archipelago: ancient hunter-gatherers and recent agriculturists, who are symbolically called Jomon and Yayoi, respectively. Determination of human genome sequences provided us remarkable resolution on genetic relationships among individuals. We recently showed genetic similarity between Ainu people of Hokkaido and Ryukyu people in Okinawa through comparison of genome-wide SNP (single nucleotide polymorhism) data. This similarity probably goes back to their higher proportion of Jomon DNAs compared to mainland Japanese (Japanese Archipelago Human Population Genetics Consortium 2012, Journal of Human Genetics, vol. 57, pp. 787-795). Japanese mythical history such as Kojiki, however, suggested existence of two different agriculturist populations in western part of Japonesia during late Yayoi period; indigenous people distributed from Izumo to Yamato area and new migrants in Northern Kyushu. We are now searching genetic remnants of these two types of people among modern Japonesians by comparing SNP data of various geographical populations in Japonesia, alternative name for Japanese Archipelago proposed by novelist Shimao Toshio.