An arid thorn-scrub model for invention of clothing

A news item in Archaeology Headlines for January 10 (www.archaeology.org/news/) showing that humans began wearing clothing between 83,000 and 170,000 years ago repeats a common assumption that I think is wrong. The lead scientist on the team, David Reed, was quoted as saying, “I find it surprising that modern humans were tinkering with clothing probably long before they really needed it for survival,” i.e., before they left Africa for the colder climate of Europe. Archaeologist Ian Gilligan at the Australian National University in Canberra, who did not take part in this research, was quoted in the article, saying "It means modern humans probably started wearing clothes on a regular basis to keep warm when they were first exposed to ice age conditions" that began about 130,000 to 180,000 years ago.

Why does no one think about why clothes might have been needed in a hot arid environment where modern humans evolved? These research findings were reported in our local newspaper on the same day as an article about the “Lost Boys of Sudan.” This article quoted a southern Sudanese man of the Dinka tribe, now at Simon Fraser University, describing his long trek at age six with other orphaned boys to a refugee camp after their village had been destroyed by raiders from the north and their parents murdered. They had fled without shoes, but when their feet became bloody, they made sandals from dried antelope skins. If these six-year-olds could invent sandals to enable travel across stony, thorny ground, why would not archaic Homo sapiens do so? Moreover, anyone who has walked through the arid thorn-scrub that characterises much of eastern and southern Africa knows how difficult it is to avoid thorns. After inventing sandals, how long would it be until people began throwing animal skins over their shoulders to ward off thorns?

Spotted Owl and Mountain Caribou Endangered in British Columbia

The Hon. Pat Bell, Minister of Forests, Mines and Lands, makes a poor apologist for forest certification (“Rigid environmental standards used in forest certification”, The Vancouver Sun, Letters, December 24, 2010). Under his watch the Spotted Owl population--I can see some of their former habitat from my kitchen window here in Coquitlam--went from 33 breeding pairs in 2003 to none in 2007.



Meanwhile, the Central Selkirk Mountain Caribou population in the mountains behind my cabin went from an estimated 265 in 1996 to 85 in 2006, while across Arrow Lake in the Monashees, 10 were counted in 1994 and seven in 2006. Mr. Bell and his colleagues have decided that the Monashee population, along with two others of the eight in the province, are not worth including in the recovery plan.

Spotted Owls and mountain caribou need old growth forests, but the recovery plans for both of these species begin with the premise that timber supply may not be affected. The national report on the state of the forests that Mr. Bell mentions speaks of “sustainability,” which means something that you can do forever, but two features of BC forest management are not sustainable: old growth forest is being cut and not replaced, and the annual cut is higher than the “long run sustained yield” level.

This level is calculated as the tree growth rate minus the natural decay and the losses due to insects and fire. In a 1994 federal report (Chapter 19 Threats to diversity of forest ecosystems in British Columbia. IN L.E. Harding and E. McCullum, editors, Biodiversity in British Columbia: our changing environment), I wrote that the forests were already being harvested above the sustained yield level, and that the losses due to forest fires and insects were likely to increase because of climate change. Since then, the annual cut has been reduced, but not to below the long run sustained yield level. Meanwhile, the insect losses have increased by an order of magnitude, and we have had several record years of forest fire losses. I also noted in 1994 that climate change could affect the tree growth rates, some stands declining because of drought, and some increasing because of higher temperatures or moisture. That this has since occurred is known, but not in enough detail to accurately revise the long run sustained yield calculations, which were rendered obsolete by the increasing insect and fire losses. Meanwhile, during Mr. Bell’s tenure, the Ministry of Forests inventory and research branches have been decimated. Sustainable? Not yet.

The voyage of the Beagle

What a pleasure it is to re-read Charles Darwin’s Researches* with resources before me that I had not had when I read it many years ago! –a good map of South America so that I can follow his travels, and a book of the birds of southern South America. Darwin usually mentioned animals by their Latin names, and if he gave a common name it was usually in Spanish or Portuguese. Yet, even when the taxonomy has changed, as is often the case after well more than a century and a half, I can always find the bird’s identity, and an illustration. So, too, for the mammals. Yet one of the best resources now available that was not when I first read it is the on-line resources, including the full text and illustrations of all of Darwin’s works. This includes the supplements to his original work, and, most importantly the Zoology with its colour plates of the animals.

Darwin’s first edition of the Voyage of the Beagle was published in 1836. The second, 1845 edition is the one to read because (1) he had time to reflect upon evolution and the mechanism of it (natural selection), and he therefore added a number of comments that presaged his 1859 Origin of the Species and show how his ideas were germinating well before he reached the Galapagos, especially in Argentina and Chile; and (2) the Zoology of the Voyage of the Beagle was published in five parts by eminent scientific authorities for each group: 1 Fossil Mammalia by R. Owen (with a geological introduction by Darwin), 2 Mammalia by G. R. Waterhouse (with a geographical indroduction and notes on the habits and ranges of each species by Darwin), 3 Birds by J. Gould and G. R. Gray, 4. Fish by L. Jenyns, and 5 Reptiles [which included Amphibia] by T. Bell.

Since the five Zoology parts were published between from 1838 to 1843, in producing the 1845 edition of his Researches, Darwin could name each species and give details about its relationship to other species, living and extinct. This of course enabled a much fuller understanding of how species vary in time and space.

The Zoology contains beautiful colour plates that are artitistically, historically and taxonomically important. Since all of Darwin’s works are on-line (http://darwin-online.org.uk/contents.html), while reading his Researches, if you have a computer beside you, you can look up the pictures of animals he mentions.

The first version of Darwin’s Researches that I read was a modern Penguin Classics edition, a gift from a naïve colleague, that had been severely abridged by an editor trained in liberal arts, who had no appreciation for the science. I am using both meanings of “appreciation” here: she had neither understanding nor interest in Darwin’s description of the natural world. To make a “story” that to her was interesting and moderately succinct, she cut out large portions of the text, and these were invariably those describing flora, fauna, and geology. I regret that I gave my copy away in a book exchange, instead of burning it.

*Journal of researches into the natural history and geology of the countries visited during the voyage of H.M.S. Beagle round the world. London: John Murray. 2d edition, 1845. Often abbreviated simply as The voyage of the Beagle.

Buddhist Temples are Great for Birdwatching

Having to look up something related to Korea, I noticed how many photos I have of Buddhist temples there. I haven't been to Korea since 2005, but in the preceeding decade I went many times for conferences and to develop and teach training courses in marine environmental science. Each time I went, I took some time for myself to visit Buddhist temples. They are great for birdwatching, and the monks grow and serve the best tea I've found anywhere.

The South Seas Institute where I taught is on Goege Island, just off the south coast. Near it is the town of Tongyeong on the mainland, which lies in the lee of Miruksan, or Mt. Miruk, a great climb on good trails surrounded by natural beauty. The trail passes several temples, of which I will mention two.



The first photo shows Gwaneum-sa (sa means temple), part way up the mountain. You can see from the background that it is surrounded by bamboo and that is partly what attracts birds: some species live in the bamboo itself, and others just like the diversity. The monks planted the bamboo, in most cases centuries ago, so that they can use the stems for making furniture, pipes, and other utilities. Each temple also has a plot of tea plants and a garden plot. Most are beside a stream. It is the diversity of habitats around the temples that attracts so many birds--that and the karma, I suppose. This is where I saw my first Korean subspecies of Eurasian Jay, a much brighter and more colourful version.




The next photo shows Dosoram, not a temple so much as a hermitage for a couple of monks who live there. It lies just on the upper flank of Mt. Miruk where the trail begins its steep climb to the peak. The photo is of a shrine to a monk around 1100 years ago, it is said, who was hiding from enemies and was starving and wounded and took refuge in a cave, the entrance of which can be seen to the right of the shrine. He would have died, but a tiger took pity on him and nursed hime to health.



Next is Popki-sa (or Bopgye-sa), in Chiri-san (Chiri or Jiri Mountain) National Park, which is on the mainland. It is a long, unremittingly steep climb. At 1915 meters, Cheonhwang-bong (bong means peak) is the tallest in the South Korean mainland, making Popki-sa one of the highest temples, or the highest. I've been there twice: October 2004 when the mountain was a riot of fall colours, and May 2005 when the mountain and canyons were covered with pink, red, mauve and purple rhododendrons. The hike is worth it: this is were I saw and recorded the melodious song of my first Siberian Blue Robin, and dozens of other woodland and mountain songbird species.



I first noticed the bird life around temples in Suchow, China, "the Venice of the Orient" as Marco Polo called it, in 1993. It is an ancient city a couple of hours drive from Shanghai where one gets around by sampan through innumerable canals, passing under the same stone bridges that Marco Polo himself marvelled at. For hundreds of years, the beauty of this little city on the Grand Canal made it a place for rich people to retire, and many of their elaborate, formal gardens have been preserved. The old city of Suchow is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Its diversity waterbirds is amazing: I saw a Cinnamon Bittern, three kinds of egret, herons, ducks too numerous to mention, and many others.







A few years later, Hannah and went to Qingdao on the Shandong Peninsula. The temples and monasteries, even in this bustling city of 4 million, where oases of peace and forested tranquility, though rather thinly blessed with birds, it must be admitted.







We took a ride up the coast to a Buddhist temple complex at Laoshan. Lao means old and shan means mountain, and these mountains look it: the sharp relief and wrinkled terrain pocked with granite outcrops look like the very bones of the Earth. As always, the monks at Taiqing-gong, a Taoist palace-temple complex, have a tea plantation and there were birds aplenty. Then we hiked up a mile or so to a little temple (above) carved into the rocks by a spring, with some buildings perched on stone terraces built out from the mountain. Again, a myriad of bird species greeted us.



In 2003, Hannah and I went to Japan were we visited many temples, often climbing high mountains, such as the one pictured, a temple near Gifu Castle, overlooking the city of Gifu. This is where I saw my first Blue-and-White Flycatcher.



This next two photos are of a large garden in Hanoi dedicated to Confusius and to learning. Filled with birds: laughing thrushes, babblers, and so on.





Not "best for last" but this last one is one great temple for birding: Angkor Wat. I had a birding guide who brought tea and a banana-leaf wrapped breakfast and showed me so many birds: Coppersmith Barbet, Lineated Barbet, Hill Mynah, 2 species of parakeet, Forest Wagtail, Black Baza, Cotton Pygmy-goose, Indian Roller, Common Iora, Ashy Minivet, Rufous-tailed Rock-thrush, drongos, flycatchers, Brahminy Kite, and on and on.

Invasive Species Really Don't Belong Here

In September my brother and I drove through 12 ecozones from the Forest/Savannah Transition in Wisconsin through Tall Grasslands to the Western Short Grasslands in Colorado, my first time to see the American Prairie. For decades, I had read about conservationists’ efforts to restore its ecological integrity. At Blue Mounds State Park in Minnesota, we walked along a ridge at sunrise, saw bison in Northern Short Grasslands, and then stopped at the park office to chat with two conservation officers.

They described a 20-year long campaign against weeds in their bison range, but mentioned misgivings. They gave me a copy of an article about researcher Mark Davis of Macalester College, St. Paul. His research shows that exotic species often fit well into native ecosystems and contribute to ecosystem function and biodiversity.

Of course, some exotics are fine (e.g., exotic game birds and honeybees), but many are seriously ruinous to terrestrial or aquatic ecosystems or agriculture. Here in British Columbia, ranchers spend millions of dollars trying to limit the spread and reduce the density of knapweeds, for example, and farmers work hard to keep alien weeds out of their crops, as they do in Minnesota. Our aquatic biologists have likewise spent a small fortune trying to limit the growth of damaging aliens, such as the milfoil that fouls beaches in the Okanagan. But, although I have enjoyed hunting chukars and ring-necked pheasants in North America, it was much more of a thrill to see chukars in their native habitats in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan and ring-necked pheasants in the Peoples’ Republic of China. Clearly, aesthetics and values are valid components of the debate, if there is one. Some species just don’t belong here.

I agree with Davis that scientists have become more sanguine about the issue and it is usually non-specialists who have such an anti-invasive fervour. I don’t mind their zeal. In 1994, when I published the first comprehensive analysis of invasive species in this province , there was virtually no government or public attention to the damage caused by invasives. Now there are new laws to restrict importation and government staff, stakeholder committees, and citizens’ groups in every region that sponsor research, conduct campaigns to limit the spread of invasives, and mobilize volunteers to eradicate infestations in certain situations. This is all good for the environment.

Leaving Minnesota, we drove through South Dakota, Nebraska, and Colorado, stopping at state parks and National Grasslands all along the way. We saw pronghorn antelope, more bison, desert cottontails, prairie dogs, and other prairie wildlife in four more short-grass ecozones. Without conservation efforts like those at Blue Mounds State Park, these would have been degraded habitats empty of wildlife.

References
Harding, L.E, P.R. Newroth, R. Smith, M. Waldichuk, P. Lambert and B. Smiley, 1994. Exotic species in British Columbia. In: L.E. Harding and E. McCullum (eds.), 1994. Biodiversity in British Columbia: our changing environment. Environment Canada, Delta, B.C. p. 159-223.
DAVIS, M. 2003. Biotic globalization: does competition from introduced species threaten biodiversity? Bioscience 53:481-489.
World Wildlife Fund 2000, Terrestrial Ecoregions

Grooming and the Evolution of Language

Robin Dunbar’s interesting book, Grooming, gossip and the evolution of language (Dunbar 1996) proposes that language evolved in our primate progenitors as a social bond to promote group cohesion, essentially replacing social grooming. I’m not so sure.

His idea was that social grooming (which in primates goes well beyond that needed for health, for example, to remote ticks and fleas) evolved as societal “glue,” but became inadequate when group sizes became too large. Primate societies are based on relationships, which are usually hierarchical: whom you groom, who grooms you, both determine and demonstrate your place in society, which in turn determines your personal and consequently reproductive success. Hence, it is an evolutionary adaptation. But you can only groom and be groomed by so many partners. Beyond a certain group size, grooming becomes inadequate. Dunbar showed, based on a variety of paleontological, anthropological and physiological data and modern and extinct primates, including humans (for example, predicted group size based on ratio of group size to neocortex in primates) that group sizes grew from about 60 in australopithecines, to 80 in H. habilis, 100-120 in H. erectus, 110-130 in archaic humans, and 120-160 in modern humans. Modern human group size, whether as hunter-gatherers, military legions, or corporate operating units, is amazingly consistent and seems related to the number of people that anyone can know personally.

Anthropologist do generally agree that our brain size grew to primarily accommodate the memory and analytical processing power needed to keep track of all the relationships in increasingly larger groups: from 450 cm3 in A. africanus to 750 cm3 in H. habilis, 1050 cm3 in H. erectus, and 1350 cm3 in H. sapiens (Pilbeam and Gould 1974). However, absolute size is not the whole story: in modern humans, body size was reduced somewhat, while the brain stayed the same or grew a little, meaning that relative brain size continued to increase and the biggest jump in relative brain size was only 100,000 years ago (Kappelman 1996). By Dunbar’s reasoning, therefore group size should have reached its peak then, not in archaic humans. This is, not surprisingly, around the time that most anatomists (if not linguists, who favour a later date) that language with complex evolved.

Dunbar reasoned that since gossip and other social commentary forms the bulk of human conversation—more, for example, that practical matters such as where to hunt kudu or when to propose a corporate merger—that it must have evolved as a replacement for grooming. He dismissed the previous notion, still held by many anthropologists, that language began as a way to communicate practical matters essential to survival, such as how to stalk a dangerous prey or warning of a predator.

But humans have a very different vocalization apparatus, including the shape and position of the hyoid bone, that lets us make a much wider range of sounds than any other primate, and this must have evolved much longer ago than the last 100,000 years. And even monkeys make a sufficiently wide range of vocalizations combined with commonly understood meanings, to give and distinguish among different warning calls for different predators. For example, vervet monkeys (pictured above) and many other colobine monkeys have give warning calls that distinguish among snakes, eagles, and leopards; in mixed species groups, all species of monkeys recognize and respond appropriately to each of the warning calls that the other species give. Surely, the roots of human language are much older than the beginning of larger group sizes.

Here’s how I think language started, and why I think it. Early in my career as a wildlife biologist, I worked with several Inuit and Dene (First Nations aboriginal people of Canada) hunters and trappers and at times camped with their families, few of whom could speak English. But our work required communication, and it was not long before, in each situation, my native counterparts and I knew each other’s words for the common animals we encountered, a few other nouns such as “track”, and a few verbs such as “hunt” and “follow”. Because I could write and kept notes, I perhaps learned these words more quickly than a hunter-gatherer who could not write. But that we learned, and quickly, shows how important in was for us, and how important it must have been for our hunter-gatherer ancestors. But there is more. My colleagues had a lot of gestures that they used to indicate different animals and verbs such as “hunt,” “track.” and “follow.” And the gestures were different from tribe to tribe. For example, Cree men from the Beaver Indian tribe of northwestern Alberta often pointed with their lips. To indicate where a caribou had gone, they would turn their face in that direction and pucker their lips, as if trying to kiss the direction. Clearly, hunters need non-verbal “words” so that they can coordinate a hunt without alerting the prey.

Archaeological evidence suggests that, since both H. neandertalensis and H. sapiens could speak, then their common ancestor, H. heidelbergensis, could, too. Rudimentary speech as described above: nouns describing everyday objects, no doubt dates from that time. Experts are divided as to when grammatical language with syntax developed, but estimates range from 300,000 to 50,000 years ago (see review in Ambrose 2001). This happened long before the development of modern humans.

Recent genetic evidence shows that we lost our hair at least 1.2 MYA(Rogers et al. 2004) , while archaeological evidence shows that we began using scraped hides as clothing about 300,000 years ago, and adopted sewn, well-fitting clothing around 20,000 years ago (see review in Rantala 2007). Language therefore coincides roughly with adoption of clothing, but not with nakedness. Since grooming would have been basically unnecessary for hygiene between 1.2 and 0.3 MYA, and it’s not possible to “groom” naked skin, it seems that Dunbar’s thesis is untenable. No, language started, if not with hunting per se, then with the general need to communicate about the exigencies of life among our ape ancestors who cooperated and coordinated their activities.

References
Ambrose, S. 2001. Paleolithic technology and human evolution. Science 291:1748.
Dunbar, R. 1996. Grooming, gossip and the evolution of language. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusets.
Kappelman, J. 1996. The evolution of body mass and relative brain size in fossil hominids. Journal of Human Evolution 30:243-276.
Pilbeam, D., and S. J. Gould. 1974. Size and scaling in human evolution. Science 186:892-901.
Rantala, M. J. 2007. Evolution of nakedness in Homo sapiens. Journal of Zoology 273:1-7.
Rogers, A. R., D. Iltis, and S. Wooding. 2004. Genetic variation at the MC1R locus and the time since loss of human body hair. Current Anthropology 45:106-108.

Agribusiness not a Panacea for Africa

Many people involved in aid and development programs for Africa think that science and agribusiness can reduce hunger and poverty. Governments, including Canada, promote this. They are wrong. Well, maybe in some hypothetical situation they can, but not in the real world. An example is Margaret Wente’s column about a year ago in The Globe and mail (Enviro-romanticism is hurting Africa, July 18, 2009). She said that in Africa, poverty and malnutrition are rising “largely because of primitive farming practices.” Nothing could be further from the truth. Poverty and malnutrition are rising because, among other factors, bad governance is ruining farmland, bad governments are leasing and selling farmland to foreign firms and governments, and bad international trade is preventing small farmers’ access to markets.

She said, “We could increase the global food supply by 80 per cent just by bringing the rest of the world up to the standards of modern agriculture.” This is pure nonsense. Many analyses of the global food situation, such as that of Lester Brown, “Plan B 3.0 Mobilizing to Save Civilization” (Earth Policy Institute, 2008), make it abundantly clear that global food production is on the decline. The improvements and innovations that gave rise to the “Green Revolution” during 1950–1990—mainly in large-scale irrigation, mass-production and distribution of fertilizers combined with plant breeding—have already been made and no amount of technological development can forestall the decline. Desertification (exacerbated by climate change), salinization of soils because of irrigation, and urban encroachment have reduced the global supply of farmland and rangeland. Water scarcity because of over-pumping of aquifers, over-use and degradation of surface water, and logging and other causes of more rapid runoff and erosion in watersheds are further reducing the amount and productivity of arable land. The world’s ocean catch of wild fish peaked at about 96 million tons in 2000. Aquaculture has allowed continued, modest increases in total fish production, but only at the expense of destruction of destruction of coastal ecosystems, especially mangroves, that support local shore-based fisheries and coastal farming.

Meanwhile, the increasing human population has meant that global per-person food supplies have declined. The wild seafood supply per person peaked at 17 kg in 1988 and now stands at 14 kg. The amount of grainland per person in 1950 was 0.23 ha, but in 2007 was 0.10 ha.

The global food crisis of 2007–2008 that saw food riots in several African countries, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Haiti because of dramatically increasing grain prices portends worsening food security. Today, in September 2010, people are rioting in Mozambique for the same reason.

Driving across Saskatchewan or Kansas, one sees Wente’s “modern agriculture”: vast distances of highly productive monoculture farmland with hardly any people. In our recent drive through four sub-Saharan African countries (Namibia, Botswana, South Africa and Swaziland), we saw a land densely dotted with small villages and single-family huts where people guarded their small herds and flocks, hoed their meagre maize and vegetable plots, and trudged by with heavy loads of firewood and water. Agribusiness may fit into the overall economic mix and productivity of these countries, but will not help the 60% of the population of sub-Saharan Africa who, as Wente notes, are “smallholder farmers, mostly women, who typically earn a dollar a day or less.”

Agribusiness is making their plight worse day by day. The report, “Land grab or development opportunity? Agricultural investments and international land deals in Africa” by the United Nations and the International Institute for Environment and Development, shows that big businesses in rich countries have been buying and leasing farmland in Africa at an alarming rate. Since 2004, governments of five African countries of re-allocated (sold outright or leased in long-term contracts) 2,492,684 ha of land (excluding allocations below 1000 ha) away from smallholders to big business, many of them foreign. They include governments or businessed in Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Kuwait, Qatar, India, Britain, South Korea, and China. The rate of farmland reallocation to foreigners has increased dramatically after the 2007–2008 food crisis as countries seek to increase their own food security. In May, the government of Madagascar fell because of a popular uprising against the government’s 99 year leases of almost 1.8 million ha of farmland to South Korean and Indian companies.

The biotechnology that Wendt and many others advocate as a panacea for African hunger is not bad by itself and may be an important part of the mix, but will not help the smallholders and often hurts them. What they need is for rich countries like Canada to tie its international trade and aid in poor countries to only those business deals and programs that help poor families.