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Crabtree SA, White DA, Bradshaw CJA, Saltré F, Williams AN, Beaman RJ, Bird MI, Ulm S. Landscape rules predict optimal superhighways for the first peopling of Sahul. Nat Hum Behav 2021; 5:1303-1313. [PMID: 33927367 DOI: 10.1038/s41562-021-01106-8] [Citation(s) in RCA: 16] [Impact Index Per Article: 5.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/16/2020] [Accepted: 03/24/2021] [Indexed: 02/02/2023]
Abstract
Archaeological data and demographic modelling suggest that the peopling of Sahul required substantial populations, occurred rapidly within a few thousand years and encompassed environments ranging from hyper-arid deserts to temperate uplands and tropical rainforests. How this migration occurred and how humans responded to the physical environments they encountered have, however, remained largely speculative. By constructing a high-resolution digital elevation model for Sahul and coupling it with fine-scale viewshed analysis of landscape prominence, least-cost pedestrian travel modelling and high-performance computing, we create over 125 billion potential migratory pathways, whereby the most parsimonious routes traversed emerge. Our analysis revealed several major pathways-superhighways-transecting the continent, that we evaluated using archaeological data. These results suggest that the earliest Australian ancestors adopted a set of fundamental rules shaped by physiological capacity, attraction to visually prominent landscape features and freshwater distribution to maximize survival, even without previous experience of the landscapes they encountered.
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Affiliation(s)
- Stefani A Crabtree
- Department of Environment and Society, Utah State University, Logan, UT, USA. .,The Santa Fe Institute, Santa Fe, NM, USA. .,ARC Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage, James Cook University, Cairns, Queensland, Australia. .,Université de Paris, INSERM U1284, Center for Research and Interdisciplinarity (CRI), Paris, France.
| | - Devin A White
- Autonomous Sensing and Perception, Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque, NM, USA.,Department of Anthropology, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Knoxville, TN, USA
| | - Corey J A Bradshaw
- ARC Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage, Flinders University, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia.,Global Ecology Partuyarta Ngadluku Wardli Kuu, College of Science and Engineering, Flinders University, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia
| | - Frédérik Saltré
- ARC Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage, Flinders University, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia.,Global Ecology Partuyarta Ngadluku Wardli Kuu, College of Science and Engineering, Flinders University, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia
| | - Alan N Williams
- Climate Change Research Centre, School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia.,ARC Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia.,EMM Consulting Pty Ltd, St Leonards, New South Wales, Australia
| | - Robin J Beaman
- College of Science and Engineering, James Cook University, Cairns, Queensland, Australia
| | - Michael I Bird
- ARC Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage, James Cook University, Cairns, Queensland, Australia.,College of Science and Engineering, James Cook University, Cairns, Queensland, Australia
| | - Sean Ulm
- ARC Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage, James Cook University, Cairns, Queensland, Australia.,College of Arts, Society and Education, James Cook University, Cairns, Queensland, Australia
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Sheard C, Bowern C, Dockum R, Jordan FM. Pama-Nyungan grandparent systems change with grandchildren, but not cross-cousin terms or social norms. EVOLUTIONARY HUMAN SCIENCES 2020; 2:e30. [PMID: 35663513 PMCID: PMC7612801 DOI: 10.1017/ehs.2020.31] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 01/06/2023] Open
Abstract
Kinship is a fundamental and universal aspect of the structure of human society. The kinship category of 'grandparents' is socially salient, due to grandparents' investment in the care of the grandchildren as well as to older generations' control of wealth and cultural knowledge, but the evolutionary dynamics of grandparent terms has yet to be studied in a phylogenetically explicit context. Here, we present the first phylogenetic comparative study of grandparent terms by investigating 134 languages in Pama-Nyungan, an Australian family of hunter-gatherer languages. We infer that proto-Pama-Nyungan had, with high certainty, four separate terms for grandparents. This state then shifted into either a two-term system that distinguishes the genders of the grandparents or a three-term system that merges the 'parallel' grandparents, which could then transition into a different three-term system that merges the 'cross' grandparents. We find no support for the co-evolution of these systems with either community marriage organisation or post-marital residence. We find some evidence for the correlation of grandparent and grandchild terms, but no support for the correlation of grandparent and cross-cousin terms, suggesting that grandparents and grandchildren potentially form a single lexical category but that the entire kinship system does not necessarily change synchronously.
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Affiliation(s)
- Catherine Sheard
- School of Earth Sciences, University of Bristol, BristolBS8 1TQ, UK
- Department of Anthropology and Archaeology, University of Bristol, BristolBS8 1UU, UK
| | - Claire Bowern
- Department of Linguistics, Yale University, New Haven. CT06520, USA
| | - Rikker Dockum
- Department of Linguistics, Yale University, New Haven. CT06520, USA
| | - Fiona M. Jordan
- Department of Anthropology and Archaeology, University of Bristol, BristolBS8 1UU, UK
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Abstract
It remains a mystery how Pama-Nyungan, the world's largest hunter-gatherer language family, came to dominate the Australian continent. Some argue that social or technological advantages allowed rapid language replacement from the Gulf Plains region during the mid-Holocene. Others have proposed expansions from refugia linked to climatic changes after the last ice age or, more controversially, during the initial colonization of Australia. Here, we combine basic vocabulary data from 306 Pama-Nyungan languages with Bayesian phylogeographic methods to explicitly model the expansion of the family across Australia and test between these origin scenarios. We find strong and robust support for a Pama-Nyungan origin in the Gulf Plains region during the mid-Holocene, implying rapid replacement of non-Pama-Nyungan languages. Concomitant changes in the archaeological record, together with a lack of strong genetic evidence for Holocene population expansion, suggests that Pama-Nyungan languages were carried as part of an expanding package of cultural innovations that probably facilitated the absorption and assimilation of existing hunter-gatherer groups.
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Abstract
Homo sapiens phylogeography begins with the species' origin nearly 200 kya in Africa. First signs of the species outside Africa (in Arabia) are from 125 kya. Earliest dates elsewhere are now 100 kya in China, 45 kya in Australia and southern Europe (maybe even 60 kya in Australia), 32 kya in northeast Siberia, and maybe 20 kya in the Americas. Humans reached arctic regions and oceanic islands last-arctic North America about 5 kya, mid- and eastern Pacific islands about 2-1 kya, and New Zealand about 700 y ago. Initial routes along coasts seem the most likely given abundant and easily harvested shellfish there as indicated by huge ancient oyster shell middens on all continents. Nevertheless, the effect of geographic barriers-mountains and oceans-is clear. The phylogeographic pattern of diasporas from several single origins-northeast Africa to Eurasia, southeast Eurasia to Australia, and northeast Siberia to the Americas-allows the equivalent of a repeat experiment on the relation between geography and phylogenetic and cultural diversity. On all continents, cultural diversity is high in productive low latitudes, presumably because such regions can support populations of sustainable size in a small area, therefore allowing a high density of cultures. Of course, other factors operate. South America has an unusually low density of cultures in its tropical latitudes. A likely factor is the phylogeographic movement of peoples from the Old World bringing novel and hence, lethal diseases to the New World, a foretaste, perhaps, of present day global transport of tropical diseases.
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Bowern C. Historical linguistics in Australia: trees, networks and their implications. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci 2011; 365:3845-54. [PMID: 21041209 DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2010.0013] [Citation(s) in RCA: 14] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.1] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/12/2022] Open
Abstract
This paper presents an overview of the current state of historical linguistics in Australian languages. Australian languages have been important in theoretical debates about the nature of language change and the possibilities for reconstruction and classification in areas of intensive diffusion. Here are summarized the most important outstanding questions for Australian linguistic prehistory; I also present a case study of the Karnic subgroup of Pama-Nyungan, which illustrates the problems for classification in Australian languages and potential approaches using phylogenetic methods.
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Affiliation(s)
- Claire Bowern
- Department of Linguistics, 370 Temple Street, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06511, USA.
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Gilligan I, Bulbeck D. Environment and morphology in Australian Aborigines: a re-analysis of the Birdsell database. AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY 2007; 134:75-91. [PMID: 17568440 DOI: 10.1002/ajpa.20640] [Citation(s) in RCA: 39] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/08/2022]
Abstract
Pursuant to his major research interest in the cultural ecology of hunter-gatherers, Birdsell collected an unparalleled body of phenotypic data on Aboriginal Australians during the mid twentieth century. Birdsell did not explicitly relate the geographic patterning in his data to Australia's climatic variation, instead arguing that the observable differences between groups reflect multiple origins of Australian Aborigines. In this article, bivariate correlation and multivariate analyses demonstrate statistically significant associations between climatic variables and the body build of Australians that are consistent with the theoretical expectations of Bergmann's and Allen's rules. While Australian Aborigines in comparison to Eurasian and New World populations can be generally described as long-headed, linear in build, and characterized by elongated distal limbs, the variation in this morphological pattern across the continent evidently reflects biological adaptation to local Holocene climates. These results add to a growing body of evidence for the role of environmental selection in the development of modern human variation.
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Affiliation(s)
- Ian Gilligan
- School of Archaeology and Anthropology, Australian National University, Canberra ACT 0200, Australia.
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