Cause of Death Affects Racial Classification on Death Certificates

The title of this post is the name of a fascinating paper in PLoS One. I haven’t had time to read the entire article but here is the first couple of paragraphs:

King Tutankhamun’s Family and Genetics

Back in February of 2010 I blogged about a research paper on Tutankhamun. In that post I focused on the paleopathological findings of the Hawass et al article and didn’t really mention the genetic research and resulting identification of Tutankhamun’s family. Recently this second aspect of the Hawass et al study have bubbled to the [...]

Body Mass and Genetics

This is really interesting. It concerns a study in Science Translational Medicine that looked at DNA methylation and body mass. From Science Daily:

The Carthaginians And Human Sacrifice: Carthage Got A Bum Rap

The victors always write the history and the case of Carthage was no exception. Consider this from Wikipedia: Later commentators have compared the accounts of child sacrifice in the Old Testament with similar ones from Greek and Latin sources speaking of the offering of children by fire as sacrifices in the Punic city of Carthage, [...]

Paleopathology of King Tutankhamun And His Relatives

As mentioned in a previous post Jama has published the results of some interesting research on Tutankhamun and his family.

Begging For An Article

Can some one send me a copy of the following article: Ancestry and Pathology in King Tutankhamun’s Family Zahi Hawass, PhD; Yehia Z. Gad, MD; Somaia Ismail, PhD; Rabab Khairat, MSc; Dina Fathalla, MSc; Naglaa Hasan, MSc; Amal Ahmed, BPharm; Hisham Elleithy, MA; Markus Ball, MSc; Fawzi Gaballah, PhD; Sally Wasef, MSc; Mohamed Fateen, MD; [...]

Global History of Health Project

I know I have mentioned this before (unfortunately, I can’t find where) but Richard Steckel and Jerome Rose (among others) are working on a fascinating project called the Global History of Health Project. One of the reasons that I brought this up is because the Jewish World review has a fascinating overview of the project:

Interesting Anthropology and Paleontology News

There is some interesting news relating to anthropology and evolution – over and above Darwinius masillae (which I will have a couple of posts about next week).

Evolution of Human Sex Roles

In discussing human sex roles one usually starts thus: …because a single egg is more costly to produce than a single sperm, the number of offspring produced by female animals is limited by the number of eggs that she can produce, while the number of offspring produced by male animals is limited by the number [...]

Facial Reconstructions

Facial reconstructions are frequently used in forensic anthropology. Occasionally, they crop up in bioarchaeology as well (I’m thinking of a British TV show – the name of which escapes me – that also did facial reconstructions in every episode). They are also used in paleoanthropology – mainly museum displays – to give people a sense [...]

Yale, Skull and Bones, and the Federal Government Sued By Geronimo’s Family

I t has long be rumored that the skull and some of the bones of Geronimo were in the possession of Skull and Bones. A letter uncovered by a Yale historian (more of that shortly) seems to confirm the rumor. Descendants of Geronimo are suing according to MSNBC: Geronimo’s descendants have sued Skull and Bones [...]

The Nasca Trophy Skulls: What Population Did They Derive From?

The Journal of Anthropological Archaeology has an interesting paper that addresses the issue of what population provided the trophy skulls. The question has, in the past, been part and parcel of the debate as to what the trophy skulls were used for. There are two broad groups of, not necessarily mutually exclusive, explanations for the [...]

Small Bodied Humans From Palau Revisited

One of the more controversial stories in physical anthropology concerns the small bodied humans found on Palau. The finds were published back in March in PLoS. In that paper Berger et al argued that the material they found represents a population of Palauans that possibly were subject to island dwarfing (although they also imply that [...]

Introducing A Forensic Osteology Metabase

Kambiz has been busy. He is part of a team developing a new metabase devoted to forensic osteology. As Kambiz describes it:

Interesting Anthropology News

There are a number of interesting anthropology stories in the news today. My picks below the fold.