Understanding the Past to Solve Today’s Problems: Adaptability to Climate Change among Diverse African Populations

There is an old adage that goes, “Those who do not understand the past are doomed to repeat its mistakes.”  This rings true not only within historical contexts but others, as well, particularly concerning contemporary issues, such as contemporary climate change.  A group of scholars recently published their study wherein they successfully argued for a holistic understanding of the history of subsistence strategies in order to best aid contemporary societies.  They used African populations as their evidence.  These chose these populations not specifically due to the data available to analyze and test their ideas, but because contemporary African populations are most sensitive and impacted by modern climate change, necessitating a viable solution to the contemporary problems they are currently facing.

 

In their study Phelps et al. examined isotopic, ecological, and archaeological data from African populations that existed over the past 11,000 years.  They noted that near the beginning of this temporal span (as in 11,000 years ago) the African continent was much wetter and tropical, and over time it became drier and more arid.  By examining the isotopic data, which showed peoples’ diets over time, as well as archaeological data to help infer subsistence strategies of said people, they were able to identify how African populations were best able to sustain themselves in the face of climatic shifts. 

 

They ultimately reached the conclusion that those populations that were most resilient were those that utilized a mix of subsistence strategies, not just one.  Africa populations that engaged in a combination of farming, foraging and hunting, fishing, and herding/pastoralism were better able to survive during long periods of environmental changes and uncertainty. 

 

The reason this information is important is because it can be used to assist not only contemporary African populations but other populations across the world as climate change continues.  "If we want climate solutions and global environmental change solutions to work, they need to be rooted in an understanding of the way that people have been using available resources throughout time," said Phelps.  This makes sense as it acknowledges people’s familiarity with their own environments and ways of surviving within them without drastically transforming their ways of life during stressful periods.  It also draws upon successful strategies that worked in the past and most likely will continue to do so in the present, thereby allowing for informed decision making that will increase the likelihood of successful implementation.

 

References

Fowler, R. (2025, June 26). African societies survived climate shifts for millennia by diversifying how they lived. Phys.org.

Phelps, L. N., Davis, D. S., Chen, J. C., Moore, S., Mangut, C., Lehmann, C. E., & Douglass, K. (2025, June 20). Africa-wide diversification of livelihood strategies: Isotopic insights into Holocene human adaptations to climate change. One Earth.

 

Myth Busting: Neanderthal Diet

A 1991 study set the precedent for Neanderthal diets: they were hypercarnivores that consumed extraordinarily high amounts of meat.  This conclusion was drawn from isotopic analyses of Neanderthal remains.  Their bones had extremely high levels of nitrogen locked within them, which reflected high protein consumption.  This conclusion was largely unchecked due to a couple of reasons.  First, it confirmed various negative perceptions of Neanderthals that existed at that time.  Also, there were limited botanical remains present at Neanderthal sites, fostering little reason to debate the conclusion that Neanderthals were hypercarnivores.

 

At least until recently.  Newer studies began to question and erode away at previous conclusions about Neanderthals, leading us to realize that there were not dumb brutes.  A Neanderthal site in Israel provided evidence of botanical food remains, suggesting that Neanderthals at least had access to those food options.  Additional research showed botanical remains were present in plague and tartar build up on Neanderthal teeth.  The crucial line of evidence, however, was the study of 50,000 year old Neanderthal coprolites (poop), which showed definitive evidence of plant consumption among Neanderthals.  It also, however, reinforced the high nitrogen levels, further supporting the notion that Neanderthals were hypercarnivores. 

 

This concept continued on for several more decades until archaeologist John Speth of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor published his work.  Drawing upon ethnohistorical evidence Speth stated that human populations in the past, from foragers to horticulturalists, regularly consumed rotten meat.  These populations not only did not shy away from rotten meat but in some cases preferred it.  There are reports of how some would purposefully manipulate the meat to encourage it to enter into a rotten state before consuming it.  In both cases (consuming meat that became rotten with or without manipulation) there was also the consumption of maggots that were present on the rotten meat remains. 

 

There are various contemporary foraging and northern European populations who continue to consume rotten or fermented meat, so it is not a trend that has completely disappeared despite legitimate health concerns over consuming rotten food.  Speth noted that because these populations were exposed to the consumption of rotten meat at an early age they very possibly developed gut microbes that enabled them to consume the rotten meat safely.    

 

He went even further to suggest that rotten meat may have been a part of hominids’ diets.  There had been substantial evidence that various early hominids were meat scavengers before they were hunters.  These hominids would remove the limbs of animals that were taken down by larger beasts, consuming the meat left on the bones and breaking open the bones to consume raw marrow.  There is no guarantee that these opportunistic scavenging options occurred among fresh kills (chances are they were more often not fresh).  This meant that the consumption of rotten meat and maggots present on the meat was something that existed throughout human history.

 

Speth, however, had not tested his ideas upon publication of his work.  Melanie Beasley, who was a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, decided to do just that.  She utilized the human remains present at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville’s Body Farm to collect maggots, and she tested the maggots chemical composition to determine what she would find.  She ultimately realized that the maggots were high in nitrogen, meaning that hominid populations that showed high nitrogen levels in their bones may not have been hypercarnivores.  These individuals may have been consuming maggots, which created the high nitrogen levels in their bones.  Beasley argued that there are three lines of evidence to support the conclusion that Neanderthals were consuming maggots: First, it was inevitable that maggots would show up during the meat processing procedures that Neanderthals used to butcher their prey.  Second, Neanderthals may have utilized meat storage procedures for very large prey (e.g., mammoths or whales) and maggots would have turned up during meat storage, particularly as Neanderthals did not have access to refrigeration (as is common today).  Thirdly, she cited Speth’s ethnohistoric research concerning modern foraging groups consumption of maggots as part of their diets and their lack of qualms in doing so.

 

Ultimately, her fellow scholars liked her ideas and conclusions as it accounts for the extraordinarily high nitrogen levels in Neanderthal bones.  This also accounts for the current contradictory evidence concerning Neanderthal diets, which show that they were indeed consuming balanced diets full of vegetables, shellfish, cooked grains.  Lastly, as Speth also pointed out, Neanderthals would have gone extinct much sooner had they relied on an almost exclusively meat diet.  The consumption of too much lean meats (with little to no supplementation of fats and other dietary needs provided through plant consumption) would have led to the nutritional deficiency known as “rabbit starvation.”  This is the result of consuming meat products that have little to no fat (be it from meat or other products such as fruits, vegetables, and dairy) will in the long term cause irreparable harm to the body, eventually leading to death.  Ultimately, no one can survive on a diet almost exclusively made up of lean meats, striking yet another blow to the ever popular and super unhealth “Paleodiet”.

 

References

Bower, B. (2023, March 20). A surprising food may have been a staple of the real Paleo diet: rotten meat. ScienceNews.

Duerstock, H. (2015, February 15). Proof is in the Poop. Retrieved from ASU: Ask a Biologist: https://askabiologist.asu.edu/plosable/proof-poop-what-neanderthals-ate

Gibbons, A. (2025, March 19). Neanderthals may have eaten maggots as part of their diet. Science.

 

Applied Anthropologist Profile: Dr. Herman Pontzer

Dr. Herman Pontzer

Dr. Herman Pontzer is a bit of a maverick in the anthropological community.  He employs traditional research methods and tools to answer questions concerning human evolution, but the conclusions he reaches stretch and often contradict the expectations of his peers.  He is a widely published scholar who has articles published in prestigious journals and books, but he also not afraid and does not shy away from ensuring the public hears about his work.  He takes to social media and talk shows to share his conclusions.  All in all he is an interesting character who is helping not only scholars better understand the biological aspects of how we became the human species we are today, but also how that information can be used to enhance the athletic potential of endurance athletes and the health outcomes of the average individual living within industrialized societies. 

 

Dr. Herman Pontzer is currently employed at Duke University’s Global Health Institute, where he leads his own laboratory.  He and his team study human and nonhuman primate physiology, specifically examining the effects of ecology, lifestyle, diet, and evolution on metabolism (the ability to burn calories into energy) and health.  He applies these understandings to better understand how and why certain diseases (e.g., diabetes and heart disease) are more common in industrialized groups versus non-industrialized ones (e.g., foragers). 

 

It was through the employment of methods created and refined by physiologists that he established a great deal of information and conclusions that have stretched the scholarship on human evolution and human physiology.  For example, he identified that exercise in and of itself does not lead to greater caloric expenditure.  Human bodies, which require a great deal of calories to maintain appropriate functioning of the expansive and complex brain, will compensate for energy expenditures as needed in order to keep enough energy for the brain.  This conclusion refutes a longstanding and popular idea that one can exclusively exercise themselves to a better body.  Instead, his work supports the conclusion that it is a balanced diet and exercise that allows one to get the body they want.

 

These conclusions were reached through the financial support of various grants, such as the prestigious Wenner-Gren grants, as well as work on both animal and human subjects.  His initial research started with dogs, but then graduated to goat and later nonhuman primate, specifically ape, species.  After continually discovering that larger animals expend fewer calories than smaller ones, except for humans, he moved on to studying modern populations, including foraging groups in Africa, horticulturalists in South America, and industrialized populations in the United States.  It was through comparative studies of contemporary human groups that he realized that exercise is not the only factor in burning calories.  The applications of his research can and do help those working in nutrition, athletics/exercise physiology, and human health.

 

His conclusions have not been accepted without criticism.  There were those who were hesitant to accept his conclusions because they ran counter to expected results, but with greater research these concerns have decreased.  Currently the concerns are in the delivery of the information to the public, specifically in encouraging those interested in weight loss to take on unhealthy diets.  Pontzer is unafraid of the critiques.  In his interview with Science magazine, he remarked: “When you have a bad experience and life plucks you off your track, it’s scary. You have to move forward, though, and that teaches you not to be scared of new things.”  This philosophy has undoubtedly helped him move past the negative critiques and foster better scientific research that  is helping not just the scientific community but the general public as well.

 

Bibliography

Gibbons, A. (2022, February 17). The Calorie Counter: Evolutionary anthropologist Herman Pontzer busts myths about how humans burn calories—and why. Science.

Pontzer, H. (n.d.). Herman Pontzer, Professor of Evolutionary Anthropology and Global Health. Retrieved from Duke Global Health Institute: https://globalhealth.duke.edu/people/pontzer-herman

Death & Resurrection among Ancient Egyptians: New Interpretations of King Tut’s Burial Goods

King Tut's burial mask (Source: Getty Images)

 

King Tutankhamun (Tut) is probably one of the most well-known Egyptian pharaohs.  His tomb was discovered in 1922 by Howard Carter.  The opulent tomb had never been disturbed prior to Carter, and a series of unfortunate but explainable tragic events that befell Carter’s team led to a revival of mummy curse lore.  This has overshadowed much of what was learned about Tut and Egyptian life during his rule.  Scholars have revisited this topic over the past century, and new interpretations of the grave goods suggests the creation of a new ritual and a desire to restore religious order after a tumultuous period in Egyptian history.

 

King Tut ascended to the throne after his father, Akhenaton, died.  Akhenaton, popularly referred to as the “Heretic King”, abandoned traditional Egyptian religious order and replaced it with a revolutionary ideological approach: the monotheism wherein Aten was the supreme and only deity to worship.  This disrupted Egyptian ways of life, as well as ripped power away from Egyptian clergyman, who we suspect were desperate to get it back upon Akhenaton’s death.  King Tut was immediately confirmed as Pharaoh, and the powerful elites took to restoring the previous religious order.  When he died shortly thereafter his death was used as further propaganda to reestablish normalcy through the newly reinstated state religion.

 

Scholar Nicholas Brown claims this all took place by having the deceased Tut undergo a ritual known as the Awakening of Osiris.  This ritual was meant to resurrect Tut (through his mummified form) in the afterlife through the transformation from a mere (and very dead) mortal to the immortal god Osiris, the God of the Underworld.  In various illustrations Osiris is depicted as a deceased Pharaoh, whose green and black skin represents fertility (of the Nile River Delta) and new life (as the mythos around Osiris is one of death and resurrection).  

 

This transformation was known as the Awakening of Osiris ritual, which was recorded in the “Books of the Underworld and Sky”, which were written decades after Tut’s passing.  This prevented scholars from making the connection between the ritual and King Tut, but Brown claims that the evidence within King Tut’s tomb is suggestive of a precursor to the recording of the ritual within the aforementioned text. 

 

The first line of evidence is the meticulous care the embalmers took in preserving Tut’s penis in the erect state.  This is interpreted as representing Osiris’s virility as a life bringer among the dead.  Additional evidence comes from the grave goods discovered in the tomb, specifically located in the tomb’s northwest and southwest corners: pedj-aha emblems, or decorated wooden staffs, and clay troughs (or trays).  The pedj-aha emblems are cited in the ritual, while the clay troughs are made of Nile (River) clay.  Each are believed to be representative of either Osiris himself or power of regeneration. 

 

Taken together Brown believes these are evidence of King Tut being the first pharaoh to have the Awakening of Osiris ritual performed on him, or at least the foundations of the one recorded decades after his death.  The purpose of the ritual would have been to reaffirm the power of the gods and the religious order that his leadership (in life) was used to restore. His premature death halted those plans, leading the elites to monopolize his death to promote their agenda further.  Ultimately it worked as no further disruptions to that order occurred until new dynasties and outsiders wrested control of the throne.

 

Bibliography

Brown, N. (2025). These Thy Libations, Osiris! A Reconsideration of the Four Clay Troughs from the Tomb of Tutankhamun (KV62). The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, 1-10.

Gilmour, C. I. (2025, April 8). Tutankhamun: Plain-looking mud trays in pharaoh's tomb may have been key part of complex afterlife rituals. Phys.org.

Taub, B. (2025, March 24). Tutankhamun May Have Invented The “Awakening Of Osiris” Ritual. IFL Science.

Applied Anthropologist Profile: Oscar Nilsson, Archaeologist, Sculptor, and Forensic Artist

Oscar Nilsson working on reconstructing a face (Source: Nilsson, 2025)

 

Recreating the faces and bodies of the dead is no easy task, but it is one that forensic artists must do when a positive identification of a victim cannot be otherwise made.  These forensic reconstructions, which often focus on individual’s faces, are based on over a century’s worth of data and information about facial attributes.  The location and placement of the facial muscles, skin depths based on an individual’s weight, and more must be understood in order to construct an accurate recreation.  Using this knowledge, along with pegs and clay, a forensic artist can masterfully bring the deceased individual back to life, or at least reconstruct what they may have looked like in life. 

 

These very methods have been employed outside of forensic contexts and criminal investigations to create life like restorations of what historical figures and people of the past may have looked like.  This work has been undertaken by the Kennis Brothers, but they are not the only individuals working within this area.  Today’s blog post will discuss another archaeologist, sculptor, and forensic artist, Oscar Nilsson.

 

Oscar Nilsson has been reconstructing ancient and historical figures’ faces for almost 30 years.  He opened his studio, O.D. Nilsson, in Stockholm, Sweden, in 1996.  Since then he has been responsible for over 80 creations of men, women, and children from throughout human history that are on display in museums across Europe and the United States.  His most notable creations include those of Peruvian and European royalty, a woman accused of being a vampire in Poland, ancient Vikings, Ice Mummies of South America, and more.

 

While much of Nilsson’s work is based on forensic sculpting techniques he acknowledges that there is a bit of creative license required of his work.  While there are precise methods for understanding how to recreate the form of a human face there is no specific rules on knowing what someone’s skin, hair, or eye color was, the texture of their hair, what facial hair would have been present, etc.  This is where his bioarchaeological knowledge comes into play.  He used to rely on ancient demographic data to make educated guesses on these specific features, as well as cultural ones concerning hair styles.  Today, when and where available, he instead turns to paleogenetic data to better inform him on what these features were to create a more accurate visage.

 

He also relies on various other newer technologies to more accurately create his works.  If and when the skull is too fragile to handle or is fragmentary and/or missing portions he relies on CT scans to help recreate the skull.  Again, he relies on paleodemographic data to estimate what the missing cranial features may have looked like.  Nilsson has also ventured into using Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) to scan and review skulls to identify any features that the naked eye may have missed. 

 

Ultimately, he is concerned with accuracy in his work and wants to bring to life the ancient individuals he is tasks with working on as realistically as possible.  This attention to detail has made him a highly sought after artist, as well as given him a reputation of excellence.

 

References

Archaeology Magazine. (2024, November 1). 400-Year-Old Face of “Zosia” Reconstructed. Archaeology Magazine.

Cottier, C. (2025, February 7). Art and Science Combine to Reconstruct the Faces of Our Ancestors. Discover.

Fox, A. (2020, June 3). See the Face of a Man Whose Skull Was Mounted on a Stake 8,000 Years Ago. Smithsonian Magazine.

Katz, B. (2018, February 2). Experts Reconstruct the Face of a Mesolithic-Era Teenager. Smithsonian Magazine.

Nilsson, O. (2025). OD Nilsson - Contact & Requests. Retrieved from Art & Science by O.D. Nilsson: https://www.odnilsson.com/about-me/

 

Bonobo’s Demonstrate Higher Intellectual Abilities Through Communication

        Video of bonobo cognition study conducted by Townrow and Krupenye

 

For many decades scholars believed that nonhuman primates did not have the same level of intelligence of humans.  Nonhuman primates were passed off as wild and simple creatures that were inferior to modern humans.  Long gone are those days and inaccurate ideas, though.  This blog has addressed various aspects of nonhuman primates’ cognitive (or intellectual) abilities, including various ape species’ ability to learn and communicate with sign language and ape species’ ability to combine calls to communicate more than one message.  Today’s blog post adds one more line of evidence that demonstrates nonhuman primates, particularly apes, are smarter than we originally realized.  Apes demonstrate a cognitive ability known as theory of the mind.

 

Theory of the mind is understanding that someone lacks information and moving forward appropriately (e.g., providing them the information or keeping the information secret, depending on the circumstances).  Ultimately, the purpose of theory of the mind is that it acts as a means of cooperation among individuals.  People will share information with each other, particularly those ignorant of a situation, in order to incorporate them into the group and strengthen group bonds. 

 

This ability had been hinted at as being present among various wild ape species from observations by primatologists, but it was unclear if what the primatologists were seeing was indeed cognition or mimicry.  For example, primatologists observed cooperative hunting among chimpanzees wherein one member would alert the group to either a dangerous predator or tasty prey, but it was unclear if others would mimic the actions of the one or if they understood what was being communicated (e.g., running because everyone was running or running because they understood the purpose).  This led two researchers out of John Hopkins University, Luke Townrow and Christopher Krupenye, to test whether or not nonhuman primates did indeed have cognitive abilities linked to the theory of the mind.

 

Townrow and Krupenye conducted their experiment at the Ape Initiative in Iowa.  They selected three male bonobos, Nyota, age 25; Kanzi, age 43; Teco, 13, to engage in their experiment.  They set up their experiment to involve three overturned cups placed on a table, and an experimenter would place a treat under one of the cups.  They then split the experiment into two trials.  In the first trials both a human and a bonobo would watch the experimenter place the treat under the cup.  The human would have to retrieve the treat to give to the bonobo.  This was done easily since the human watched where the treat was placed and could quickly retrieve it.  In the second trials deception was introduced.  This time only the bonobo saw where the treat was placed (as a barrier was placed in front of the human).  The bonobo would point to the cup and the human would wait 10 seconds, perusing the three cups to figure out which one had the treat.  As this trial was repeated the bonobo would point more quickly to the cup with the hidden treat, recognizing the human’s ignorance to where the treat was placed.  A video of the experiment is provided above.

 

The researchers concluded that the results provide definitive evidence of ape species’ ability to understand different perspectives from their own (i.e., another individual does not know something or understands the situation differently).  This further supports the previous observations among wild ape species, which means that cooperation among wild apes is not based on imitation but cooperation.  This study demonstrates that the cognitive ability of theory of the mind must have been present within the common human-ape ancestor, and it also shows that language is not required for the existence of this cognitive ability.  Ultimately, this revolutionizing our ideas and understandings of apes and humans, particularly related to intelligence.

 

Works Cited

Bassi, Margherita. "When Bonobos Know What You Don’t, They’ll Tell You. It’s a Sign of a Cognitive Ability Called ‘Theory of Mind’." Smithsonian Magazine 5 February 2025. Electronic.

Nield, David. "Bonobos Know Something You Don't Know, And Are Willing to Tell For a Price." Science Alert 7 February 2025. Electronic.

Townrow, Luke A. and Krupenye, Christopher. "Bonobos point more for ignorant than knowledgeable social partners." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2025): 6. Electronic.