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Interview about Giants with Sara Head and Ken Feder

3/17/2015

A couple of weeks ago I did an interview about giants with Sara Head and Ken Feder. That interview is now available as Episode 6 of ArchyFantasies, a series within the Archaeology Podcast Network. Sara writes (among other things) the Archaeology Fantasies blog. Ken is a well-known critic of pseudoarchaeology and author of the popular textbook Frauds, Myths, and Mysteries.

It was a lot of fun talking with Sara and Ken, and I hope I can do it again some day. Given the current resurgent interest in giants and all the different dimensions (historical, political, scientific, cultural, religions, etc.) of that interest, I don't think the topic is going away anytime soon. There will always be more to talk about: right now I've got more to write about than I've got time to write.

This was my first time being interviewed about this kind of subject in this kind of format. I'm sure I made some mistakes, and I'm sure I'll be told what they are. (And I'm sure I'm not the only one who finds it hard to listen to himself talk!) Sara introduces me as a "not giant expert" because, before the show began, I told them that it was hard to be comfortable being called an expert in something that doesn't actually exist. I just wrote a post this morning about some signs that my work on "giants" is having an impact. Shows like Sara and Ken's contribute to the goal of providing counter-points to many of the nonsense claims that are being manufactured and tossed around out there, and I'm glad they invited me on.

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My Relationship With Giants: A Progress Report

3/17/2015

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I started blogging about claims for the existence of "ancient giants" in November of 2014 after watching an episode of "Search for the Lost Giants." As explained here, I've been interested in the topic for a while. My first post (which remains one of my more popular if you use Facebook "likes" as a metric) explored the meaning of phrases like "double rows of teeth" and "double teeth all around" as used in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Since then I've written just shy of 40 posts on issues related to both accounts of giants from the past and the resurgence of interest in giants we are seeing today.

A waste of time? I don't think so. As I argued in this post, I think professional archaeologists should engage with fringe notions about the past. When I wrote that post, my views were largely based on principles. After several months in the trenches, I can tell you that I think that engagement is even more important now than I did originally. The more I have learned about the resurgent belief in giants, the more I have begun to understand that it is not some stand-alone, quaint notion that is based simply on fantasy or misinformation. In many cases, modern belief in giants is tied to religious fundamentalism, anti-intellectualism, New Age spirituality, the supernatural/occult, and other stuff that you might find surprising (here is one post about what I called the "Nephilim whirlpool"). If you scratch a giant enthusiast you may find any any number of things right under the surface: a white supremacist, a Holocaust denier, a conspiracy theorist . . . That's not to say, of course, that everyone who is interested in giants has some kind of sinister agenda. But the modern enthusiasm for giants (and the passionate defense of their existence) is at the intersection of many different belief systems, not all of which are "quaint." That's worth trying to understand.

I never thought that I'd have much of an impact on the "true believers," but I thought I might be able to provide some information to those who still hadn't made up their minds. Have my efforts made any difference? I think they have.

One way I know I'm having an impact is that people who are curious about giants are finding this website. I don't get a tremendous amount of traffic: on a typical day, I'll get around 100 unique visitors; when I publish a new blog post that gets shared or re-tweeted a few times, the numbers will be slightly higher. When the History Channel re-aired all six episodes of "Search for the Lost Giants" on March 6, the traffic to my website was easily double what it would normally be. I am now the number one search result for a Google search of the infamous phrase "double rows of teeth."

These aren't big numbers, but they show progress: people with questions about what all this means are able to find this website. The alternative is that they enter the echo chamber of the hundreds or thousands of sites that simply re-post the same stories over and over again, often altered, unattributed, devoid of context, and/or accompanied by unrelated images of hoax skeletons.

Finding the site is one thing, being affected by it is another. I don't know what reaction a person has to my work on "giants" unless he or she comments on a post or sends me a message. I've gotten some negative comments, but also a lot of positive ones. And I've also gotten messages like this one:

"In the absence of people like you, Andy, the giant stuff seems very persuasive to inquisitive minds like mine. It has been extremely hard for me to find scientists willing to take the time to thoroughly debunk this stuff. In fact, I didn't hear about you until I called the NY Smithsonian and the Hopewell Culture National Historic Park. Some anthropologists there referred me to your FB page. . . .

So far I'm really loving everything that you have written. You are literally the only person that people keep referring me back to, so it would suck for people like you to give up or quit because you are kind of a catchers mitt for people like me. I just wish that someone of your caliber would deal with some of the other stuff. for instance, I'm absolutely convinced that there is a large primate in North America. The evidence seems overwhelming. But I also have to acknowledge that I still haven't come across any good arguments against it. I'm sure you're either too tired, too busy, or simply disinterested in Sasquatch to take time, but it's precisely because people like you steer clear that people like me get sucked into this crypto stuff, lol. You know, the absence of good counterarguments."

There you go: the person wants counterarguments. He's interested, actively looking for information, and wants a counter-point to the interpretations and "evidence" he finds online. We need to provide that counter-point. And we need to do more than simply assert that an idea is unsupported or silly: that's a dismissal rather than a counterargument. We need to consider "evidence," take the time to develop an interpretation that has scientific merit, and make that interpretation available and accessible.

I'm a member of several Facebook groups that are concerned with the ancient world. I recommend joining these groups if you're a professional and you're interested in seeing how ideas about the past are being used to further political, racial, social, and religious agendas. The maturation of social media has made it easier than ever before to amplify nonsense ideas. And, as I have learned with my exploration of the modern mythology of giants, those ideas often intersect with agendas and belief systems that extend far beyond a simple interest in prehistory. It's worth paying attention to.

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Fetal Head Molding and Obstetrics in Late Pleistocene Humans

3/15/2015

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Preface: This post presents some work I did as a graduate student at the University of Michigan in 2007. It was a poster for a class called "Evolution of the Genus Homo," taught by Milford Wolpoff. I chose the topic because of my interest in the culture, biology, and social organization of Middle/Late Paleolithic humans (see discussion of my 2014 SAA paper here and here, and my 2015 AJPA paper here). I had hoped to develop this into a paper either alone or with a collaborator, but I have never found the time to follow through. As the information I collected ages and I begin to focus on moving to a new job that will require a lot of attention up front to the archaeology of the southeastern United States, it seems less and less likely that I'll ever get around to turning this into a paper. So I'm going to put my analysis from the poster out there "as is" and hope it useful to someone. If you read this and think it's an interesting idea or one that you'd like to pursue, let me know!

I apologize for the state of the bibliography: there are some formatting errors that I will correct when I have the time.

Fetal Head Molding and Obstetrics in Late Pleistocene Humans

Figure 1. Illustration of changes in head shape that occur during birth (from A.D.A.M).

Introduction

This study compares available data from fetal and neonatal crania from the Late Pleistocene to the mechanics of fetal head molding during birth in recent humans.   The small number of fetal and neonatal remains dating to the Late Pleistocene offer an opportunity to simultaneously explore issues of obstetrics, selection, and early brain growth. Most treatments of birth and obstetrics in Pleistocene humans have focused on pelvic anatomy (e.g., Rak and Arensburg 1987; Rosenberg 1998; Rosenberg and Trevathan 2002; Trinkhaus 1984). Studies of childhood growth and development after birth are limited mainly by the dearth of sub-adult skeletons, particularly those that pre-date Neandertals (see Anton 2002; Dean et al. 1986; Minugh-Purvis 1988, 2002; Nelson and Thompson 2002; Stringer et al. 1990; Tellier 1998; Trinkhaus and Tompkins 1990).   Fetal and neonatal remains, from Neandertals and other Late Pleistocene humans, have been described but have not been the subject of detailed, hypothesis-based research.

Deformation (molding) of the fetal cranium is an important part of successful birth in recent humans. This study examines the hypothesis that thickness of fetal cranial bone would have been an impediment to successful birth in Neandertals and other Late Pleistocene humans. Investigating the possible role of fetal head molding in Pleistocene obstetrics may help shed light on both anatomical trends in human cranium (i.e., the emergence of "modern" cranial morphology) and demographic variables and population genetics that may underlay the spread of anatomical "modernity."   Mortality and trauma during childbirth, acting on the mother and/or the fetus, would be an important selective force.

Two aspects of fetal head molding are emphasized: cranial vault thickness and head dimensions.    Vault thickness affects the response of the cranium to pressure during birth. Head size and shape affect both the degree of molding that is required for the fetal head to pass through the birth canal and the distribution of forces on the fetal cranium.

Hypothesis: Thick fetal cranial bone in Late Pleistocene archaic humans would have caused difficulties during childbirth (relative to recent humans) by inhibiting head molding during delivery.

Assuming uniformity in the size of the birth canal between archaic and recent humans, this hypothesis has two test implications:

1) the increased thickness of Late Pleistocene fetal cranial vaults would have a significant effect on elasticity of the cranium

2) the dimensions of the fetal cranium are such that significant molding is required for delivery

In other words, fetal head molding must be shown to be both necessary (by the dimensions of the cranium) and significantly impeded (by the in-elasticity of the vault) in order to fail to reject the hypothesis. If either one of these test implications is rejected, then the hypothesis can be rejected.

Pleistocene Obstetrics: Previous Research

Much research focused on questions of obstetrics in Pleistocene humans have emphasized the selective constraints between locomation and birth mechanics in the pelvis (Rak and Arensburg 1987; Rosenberg 1998; Rosenberg and Trevathan 2002; Ruff 1995; Trinkhaus 1984). Based on pelvis remains, most researchers conclude that birth in Pleistocene humans was much like birth in recent humans (Rosenberg 1998; Rosenberg and Trevathan 2002). Subsequent to the description of the Kebara 2 pelvis (Rak and Arensburg 1987), most ideas about an unusually long gestation periods (Trinkhaus 1984) and rapid in utero brain growth (Dean et al. 1986) in Neandertals have been rejected (see Stringer et al. 1990:148).

While pelvic inlet size during the Pleistocene appears to be, overall, similar to modern humans, cranial capacity increased. during the Middle and Late Pleistocene. Stasis in pelvic inlet size and increase in head size produces an "obstetric dilemma" where the fetal head is larger than the birth canal. Rosenberg and Trevathan (2002:1205) state that

"Two changes could have allowed an increase in adult brain size to occur: human infants could have been born with a smaller percentage of adult brain size (resulting in greater infant helplessness) and/or there could have been an alteration of the shape of the pelvis concomitant with a change in the mechanism of birth."

There is a third possibility: fetal head molding. The possible importance of fetal head molding in Neandertals is raised by similarities in both pelvic inlet size and adult cranial capacity to recent humans. Minugh-Purvis (1988:260) speculated that the thicker vault bone observed in Neandertal fetal remains would have posed a problem if delivery required a "considerable degree of head molding." The possibility was also discussed by Friedlander and Jorndan (1994).

Figure 2.

Fetal Head Molding in Recent Human Birth

In recent humans, the fetal cranium is a flexible structure that deforms during birth because of pressures between the fetal head and the cervical walls (Lapeer and Prager 2001; McPherson and Kriewall 1980a, 1980b) (Figure 2). Pressures and deformation are greatest at the sub-occipito bregmatic plane (Lapeer and Prager 2001; Rosenberg and Trevthan 2002).

During a normal labor, the parietal bones undergo the most significant changes in shape, being compressed towards each other and elongating in the axial plane (Lapeer and Prager 2001; McPherson and Kriewall 1980b). The occipital bone is relatively rigid and undergoes little change during molding (McPherson and Kriewall 1980b:18; Rosenberg and Trevathan 2002:1201). The frontal, occipital, and parietal bones interlock at the sutures after a certain limit of deformation occurs, preventing excessive molding and protecting the brain within a more rigid structure (McPherson and Kriewall 1980a:15).

The risk of excessive molding is greater in pre-term deliveries, where cranial bone is not sufficiently thick to prevent excessive molding (McPherson and Kriewall 1980a). Clinical studies have shown that excessive molding during birth (i.e., where too much deformation occurs) may be linked to psycho-neurological disorders, mental retardation, cerebral palsy, and death (see McPherson and Kriewall 1980b).

Fetal cranial bone must be thin enough to allow sufficient deformation of the cranium, but thick enough to form a rigid structure to protect the brain. Optimal thickness values would vary for different portions of the fetal cranium depending on the pressures that are exerted and the required responses to those pressures.

Parietal Thickness, Span, and Deformation Under Load

Parietal bones grow outward from a center of ossification that later becomes the parietal eminence (Ohtsuki 1980). The bones are thickest at the eminence, thinning towards their margins (McPherson and Kriewall 1980b). Ohtsuki (1977) reported a mean thickness of 0.54 +/- 0.13 mm for term (9-10 month) fetal parietal bones at the center of ossification and a thickness of 0.40 +/- 0.10 for term fetal frontal bones at the center of ossification (n = 10). McPherson and Kriewall (1980a:10) reported term fetal parietal bones that varied in mean thickness from 0.71-0.86 mm.

In their analysis of the mechanical properties of fetal parietal bone, McPherson and Kriewall (1980a:11) found that differences in thickness and the orientation of the bone fibers affected the elastic modulus (the resistance to deformation when a load is applied). Thicker cranial bone requires more force to deform. Figure 3 shows the relationship between thickness and elastic modulus in the data supplied by McPherson and Kriewall (1980a:10,13), using only the parietal bones with fibers orientated parallel.

Using the formulae provided by McPherson and Kriewall (1980:11), we can use the estimates of elastic modulus to estimate the loads that would be required to bend segments of bone of varying length and thicknesses (Figures 4 and 5). Other things being equal, longer "beams" of bone require less force to bend, while thicker "beams" require more. To have the same resistance to bending force, a longer "beam" must be thicker.

Figure 3. Thickness of fetal cranial bone plotted against elastic modulus (data from McPherson and Kriewall 1980a). The regression (R2 = 0.78) is: 4.13 + 2.86(log of thickness in mm)

Figure 4. Plot of force required to cause a deflection of 1 mm in "beams" of bone of varying thickness (assuming a beam length of 75 mm - approximately that of a modern human term fetus). While the absolute values of these calculations may not be accurate (parietal bones vary in thickness in cross-section and do not behave simply as "beams") the calculations show that the resistance to force changes dramatically when thickness increases from 1 mm to 2 mm.

Figure 5. Plot of force required to cause a deflection of 1 mm in "beams" of bone of varying length (assuming a beam thickness of 1 mm).

Fetal Vault Thickness, Dimensions, and Molding in Late Pleistocene Homo

The Late Pleistocene fossil record contains numerous remains from sub-adult specimens. Of interest here are those remains that preserve portions of the cranial vault, particularly the frontal and parietal bones. Fetal and neonatal remains of Neandertals have been recovered from La Ferrassie (Heim 1982) and Hortus (Lumley-Woodyear 1973). Rremains of two Neandertals less than about a year old have been reported from Shanidar (Trinkhaus 1983) and Krapina (Minugh-Purvis 1988). Neonatal remains attributed to anatomically modern Homo sapiens have been reported from Cro-Magnon (Minugh-Purvis 1988), Qafzeh (Tillier 1999), and Abri Patuad (Minugh-Purvis 1988). Krapina is the earliest site, dating to the late Riss/early Wurm (Wolpoff 1999). La Ferrassie, Shanidar, Qafzeh, and Hortus date to Wurm I/Wurm II. Abri Pataud and Cro-Magnon date to Wurm III/IV (Wolpoff 1999).

Vault Thickness

Data on vault thickness at the parietal and frontal eminences are available for six fetal/neonate skeletons and three young (<1 year) infants from the Late Pleistocene.

Figure 6. Top: Drawing of Neandertal neonatal parietal from Hortus 1b (adapted from Lumley-Woodyear 1973). Bottom: Neandertal fetal and newborn frontal bone fragments from La Ferrassie compared to frontals from recent humans (adapted from Heim 1982).

Figure 7.

The thickness of the frontal and parietal bones in this sample contrasts with the data from the modern sample provided by Ohtsuki (1977) (Figure 7), outside the 2 sigma range of his means for term fetuses. If the Late Pleistocene fetal and neonate remains are aged accurately, fetal parietal bone was generally 1.5 to 2 times thicker than that of modern humans.

Considerably more force would be required to deform these bones, assuming the geometry of the bones was otherwise equivalent (see below).

Test prediction 1 is supported: differences in fetal cranial vault thickness are sufficient to affect molding of the cranium.

Fetal Head Dimensions

The limited data available on very young Late Pleistocene individuals suggests that some aspects of fetal head geometry may have differed from that of more recent humans (Minugh-Purvis 2002; Stringer et al. 1990). Bregma-lambda distance appears to have been shorter in Neandertals than in recent humans throughout life (see Minugh-Purvis 2002:488-489; Gunz and Havarti 2007; Harvarti 2003; Trinkhaus 1983:371). In mature Neandertals, the shorter distance is associated with a lower position of bregma (see Harvarti 2003)

Figure 8.

A shorter bregma-lambda distance would reduce the cross-section of the fetal cranium in a dimension that is key to the necessity for fetal head molding. It appears that this distance may have been about 10 mm less in Neandertals at the time of birth relative to recent humans: perhaps 80 mm rather than 90 mm (see Minugh-Purvis 2002). A difference of ca. 10-12% in the bregma-lambda chord would be sufficient to account for a 3-7% reduction in the sub-occipito-bregmatic diameter (SOBD). Assuming equivalence in other dimensions of the head and pelvic inlet, this difference alone would significantly lessen the degree of fetal head molding that would be required for successful delivery.

Test prediction 2 is not supported: the dimensions of the fetal cranium are such that significant molding was probably not required for delivery.

Conclusions

Significant fetal head molding was probably not critical to successful Neanderthal birth. While thicker cranial bone would have reduced elasticity, a smaller SOBD would have negated or lessened the need for molding during birth.

Reduction in fetal cranial thickness may not have been a reproductive advantage for "modern" humans. Rather, cranial thinness associated with an increase in the SOBD may have increased the risks to the fetus during birth (i.e., though excessive molding) while reducing or maintaining the risk to both mother and fetus (i.e., through arrested labor). In the absence of selection for thinner bone associated with a flexibility requirement, thick fetal cranial bone would have offered protection to the fetal brain during delivery. Apparent stasis in pelvic anatomy suggests that smaller, thicker fetal crania may be the ancestral condition. An increase in SOBD, perhaps reflecting some difference in fetal brain growth, would have preceded selection for thinner cranial bone in this scenario.

The fetal cranium is a complex mechanical structure. Constructing a simulation model (similar to that of Lapeer and Prager 2001) of delivery in Neanderthals is possible with the available data. This model could be used to test hypotheses about obstetrics in a more sophisticated way than is possible by calculating simple ratios of head and pelvic size.

References Cited

Anton, Susan C. 2002. Cranial growth in Homo erectus. In Human evolution through developmental change, edited by Nancy Minugh-Purvis and Kenneth J. McNamara, pp. 349-380. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Dean, M.C., C. B. Stringer, and T. Bromage. 1986.    Age at death of the Neanderthal child from Devil’s Tower, Gibraltar and the implications for studies of general growth and development in Neanderthals. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 70:301-309.

Friedlander, N. J., and D. K. Jordan. 1994. Obstetric implications of Neanderthal robusticity and bone density. Human Evolution 9:331-342.

Gunz, Philipp, and Katerina Havarti. 2007.   The Neanderthal “chignon”: Variation, integration, and homology. Journal of Human Evolution 52:262-274.

Havarti, Katerina. 2003. The Neanderthal taxonomic position: Models of intra- and inter-specific craniofacial variation. Journal of Human Evolution 44:107-132.

Heim, Jean-Louis. 1982. Les enfants nJandertaliens de La Ferrassie. Paris, Masson.

Lapeer, R.J., and R.W. Prager. 2001. Fetal head moulding: Finite element analysis of a fetal skull subjected to uterine pressures during the first stage of labour. Journal of Biomechanics 34:1125-1133.

Lumley-Woodyear, Marie-Antionette de. 1973.    AntenJanderthaliens et NJandertaliens du bassin Mediterraneen occidental europen. Etudes Quaternaires. MJmoire 2, Marseille, UniversitJ de Provence.

McPherson, Gregg K., and Timothy J. Kriewall. 1980a. The elastic modulus of fetal cranial bone: A first step towards an understanding of the biomechanics of fetal head molding. Journal of Biomechanics 13:9-16.

McPherson, Gregg K., and Timothy J. Kriewall. 1980b. Fetal head molding: An investigation utilizing a finite element model of the fetal parietal bone. Journal of Biomechanics 13(1):17-26.

Minugh-Purvis, Nancy. 1988. Patterns of craniofacial growth and development in Upper Pleistocene hominids. PhD dissertation, University of Pennsylvania.

Minugh-Purvis, Nancy. 2002.    Heterochronic change in the neurocranium and the emergence of modern humans. In Human evolution through developmental change, edited by Nancy Minugh-Purvis and Kenneth J. McNamara, pp. 479-498. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Nelson, Andrew J., and Jennifer L. Thompson. 2002.   Adolescent postcranial growth in Homo neanderthalensis. In Human evolution through developmental change, edited by Nancy Minugh-Purvis and Kenneth J. McNamara, pp. 442-463. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Ohtsuki, Fumio. 1977.    Developmental changes of the cranial bone thickness in the human fetal period. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 46:141-154.

Rak, Y., and B. Arensburg. 1987.    Kebara 2 Neandertal pelvis: First look at a complete inlet. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 73:227-231.

Roche, A. F. 1953.    Increase in cranial thickness during growth. Human Biology 25(2):81-92.

Rosenberg, Karen R. 1992.   The evolution of modern human childbirth. Yearbook of Physical Anthropology 35:89-124

Rosenberg, Karen R. 1998. Morphological variation in west Asian postcrania. In Neandertals and modern humans in western Asia, edited by Takeru Akazawa, Kenichi Aoki, and Ofer Bar-Yosef, pp. 367-379. Plenum, New York.

Rosenberg, Karen, and Wenda Trevathan. 2002.    Birth, obstetrics and human evolution. BJOG: an International Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology 109:1199-1206.

Ruff, Christopher B. 1995.   Biomechanics of the hip and birth in early Homo. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 98:527-574.

Stringer, Christopher B., M. Chistopher Dean, and Robert D. Martin. 1990.    A comparative study of cranial and dental development within a recent British samples and among Neandertals. In Primate life history and evolution, edited by C. Jean DeRousseau, pp. 115-152. New York: Wiley-Liss.

Tillier, Anne-Marie. 1998. Onotogenetic variation in Late Pleistocene Homo sapiens from the Near East. In Neandertals and modern humans in western Asia, edited by Takeru Akazawa, Kenichi Aoki, and Ofer Bar-Yosef, pp. 381-389. Plenum, New York.

Tillier, Anne-Marie. 1999. Les enfants mousteriens de Qafzeh: Interpretation phylogenetique et paleoauxologique. Cahiers de Paleoanthropologie. Paris, CNRS Editions.

Trinkhaus, E. 1983. The Shanidar Neanderthals. New York: Academic Press.

Trinkhaus, E. 1984    Neandertal pubic morpohology and gestation length. Current Anthropology 25:509-514.

Trinkhaus, Erik, and Robert L. Tompkins. 1990. The Neandertal life cycle: The possibility, probability, and perceptibility of contrasts with recent humans. In Primate Life History and Evolution, edited by C. Jean DeRousseau, pp. 153-180. New York: Wiley-Liss.

Young, Richard W. 1957. Postnatal growth of the frontal and parietal bones in white males. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 15:367-386.

Wolpoff, Milford H. 1999.    Paleoanthropology. 2nd edition. Boston: McGraw-Hill.

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My Great-Great-Grandparents Dug Up An Antediluvian Giant, But All I Got Was This Lousy Mastodon Tooth

3/13/2015

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I think I might have a winner here. Place your orders now.

Inspired by the music of Rasputina. And procrastination.

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Giants: You Never Know What You'll Stumble Across Next

3/12/2015

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Yet another reason why I love this topic: I stumbled across this song by the band Rasputina while doing some poking around for information on yet another giants-related program activities tangent.

It's awesome and you should listen to it.

I have no idea what this band is or what the backstory to this song is, but it is called "Holocaust of Giants," and it's set in Ohio and features double rows of teeth.

Here is a live version from Cleveland. Here is another from a performance in Detroit. Detroit is better.

So there you go: my shortest blog post. You're welcome.

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Normal-Sized People Can Move Big Rocks: The Example of Sumba

3/10/2015

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Relatively small megalithic structure in Sumba, Indonesia (photo from here: http://www.hpgrumpe.de/reisebilder/index.html)

Adding to the accounts and video of the Naga moving and placing multi-ton menhirs with ropes, sleds, rollers, and a lot of people, I present the case of the megalithic tombs of Sumba, Indonesia. Much of the information in this post comes from the scholarly work of Ron L. Adams, currently with Simon Fraser University and AINW.

Adams has written several papers based on his ethnoarchaeological fieldwork among the peoples of West Sumba in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Some of those papers discuss the ongoing practice and contexts of the construction of megalithic tombs. This is great information for understanding why people might build megalithic structures. As in the Naga examples, large stones are are quarried, moved, and placed in an environment of competition and prestige-building. Bigger is better: the grander the structure, the larger the stones, the more it "costs" in terms of human capital and the resources to support that capital. Building a megalithic tomb is a way to display wealth and influence.

The West Sumba data also provide another example of how people move big rocks. Spoiler alert: It doesn't involve giants, supernatural levitation, or alien technology. It involves, rather, lots of people armed with ropes, wooden skids, and rollers (pretty similar to the example from India). In his paper "Transforming Stone: Ethnoarchaeological Perspectives on Megalith Form in Eastern Indonesia," Adams describes how it's done:

"The traditional method for transporting megalithic stones in Sumba is to haul them atop wooden sledges (tena watu) (Fig. 9.3). A sledge with its attached stone is pulled using vine ropes, requiring between 100 and 1000 people for the large capstones or standing kado watu stones, while lesser numbers are needed to move the stones for the tomb walls (50-100 people). It can take from one day to nearly one month to transport the largest stones in this manner from a quarry to the tomb owner's village, depending on the size of the stone and the distance to be travelled. Each day the stone is moved, several pigs, and at times water buffaloes, are slaughtered to feed the stone haulers and the spectators who are invited to view the proceedings. The labour for this endeavour typically comes from the tomb owner's clan as well as from other allied clans" (page 85).

It took a while, but I finally found some videos online (the key was figuring out that a name for the stone-pulling ceremony was tarik batu). This video shows a really large group of people preparing and pulling a pretty big stone. Rather than a long, sustained pull, they get the stone moving rapidly in short bursts. This one also shows the removal of the stone from the quarry.

I also found a few other things of interest. This video shows a crew working to remove a stone from a quarry. This video shows a funeral, and (about 3:00 in) some stills of a stone on a sled. This video shows a funeral which (at about 22:00 in) includes using long poles as levers to lift the capstone of a megalithic tomb so the body can be interred.

Megalithic tomb at Gallubakul, with vacationers shown for scale. It is the horizontal stone that is reported to weigh 70 tonnes.

As in the Naga case, these are not small rocks being moved. In this 2010 paper, Adams (page 280) states that the combined weight of the stones making up the largest tombs (which are table-like with legs or sides that support a capstone) can be over 30 tonnes. Based on what little I could find online, the largest stone on the island seems to be one from a tomb in Anakalang (in the village of Gallubakul). The stone (the horizonal slab of the tomb pictured to the right) is estimated to weigh 70 tonnes and measure 5m x 4m x 1m. The story that is repeated online is that it took thousands of men three months to move it. I'm not sure how official that is -- I just found the same story repeated in several places (e.g., The Lonely Planet Indonesia, this website).

Whatever the particulars, it is clear that some very big stones were quarried and moved by hand during construction of Sumba's megalithic tombs. Some of the Sumba stones are larger than the largest stones moved to build Stonehenge (about 50 tonnes), larger than the Olmec heads, and larger than many of the Easter Island Moai. The Sumba stones come nowhere close in weight to the largest stones moved by Neolithic societies (The Broken Menhir of El Grah reportedly weighed about 280 tonnes when it wasn't broken). What the Sumba case demonstrates, like the Naga case, is that with access to enough human capital (i.e., the means to support that capital while it is being utilized), only very simple technologies are required to move some pretty big stones.

Again, it should go without saying but it won't, so I'll say it: no giants were involved in building the megalithic structures of Sumba.

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Video of Naga Stone-Pulling Ceremonies

3/7/2015

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Yesterday I wrote a short post about stone-pulling among the Naga, an agricultural people of northeastern India. Early 20th century ethnography documented the Angami Naga moving multi-ton stones as part of prestige-building ceremonies. Stones were quarried, moved long distances, and erected by large groups of people in a ritual under-written by a feast.

I assumed that the stone-pulling ceremonies of the Naga were a thing of the past: I was wrong! There are several short, recent (2009-2014) videos on YouTube that show stones being pulled by the Naga:

Viswema, Nagaland (3:34)
Maram Naga, part 1 (0:52)
Maram Naga, part 2 (0:49)
Maram Naga - pulling a stone uphill (0:41)
Kigwema Village (1:50)

The videos from Viswema and Kigwema show large groups of people (at least several hundred) in ceremonial dress pulling large stones on a paved road. The Kigwema video is nice because of the angle - from above you can get a good sense of the size of the stone.

The Maram videos show smaller stones on wooden sleds being pulled on unpaved woodland trails. It is more difficult to get a sense of how many people are pulling. The video of the stone getting pulled up the hillside is pretty impressive.

While the social and economic contexts of the stone-pulling ceremonies have certainly changed over time, seeing how groups of people move really big rocks is pretty neat. I'm hoping there is some detailed quantitative information out there on these ceremonies: number of people involved, distances the stones were moved, and the sizes of the stones. I also know that there are other ethnographic cases that can provide some context for evaluating ideas about prehistoric megalithic construction.

Screen capture of video of stone-pulling ceremony in Kigwema Village (link to left).

Screen capture from part 1 of Maram Naga video (link to left).

Screen capture of video of Maram Naga pulling a stone up an earthen hillside (link to left).

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Antediluvian Air Pressure: An 1831 Letter Explaining Mastodons and Giants

3/6/2015

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When I was doing some background reading for my post on mastodons and Mormons, I came across a letter by Felix Pascalis published in The Evening Post (August 19, 1831). Pascalis (1762-1833), a physician born and trained in France, moved to the United States in the 1790s. He is most well-known for his work on yellow fever.

The letter, entitled “The Antideluvian Bones at the American Museum,” is an example of a scientifically-trained individual trying to accommodate the accumulating fossil evidence from North America within a biblical framework. After describing some of the fossil creatures (which he assures the reader are real and related to modern animals), he considers how such large creatures might have existed:

    “We confess that the existence of those gigantic and antideluvian bones encounter in our minds no objection nor difficulty, but that of explaining by what law of nature a land animal could have existed and grown to the size of sixty feet in length and twenty five feet in heighth.
    Those animals which are under our observation, and man himself, are subject to a law that generally, and with few exceptions, detain within certain limits their size and growth; and that is unquestionably the atmospheric pressure externally, and that which underbalances it in the organs of respiration.
    This is the power which regulates circulation, and without it the transport of the matter necessary to compose and extend the body and limbs to a certain proportion. Hence we know that cetaceous animals of an extraordinary size can exist in abundance under the double pressure of the ocean and the atmosphere.
     If the size, therefore, of the human race, and of that brute creation, originates from the pressure of about 2220 lbs. weight upon each square foot surface, the size of the Mastodon, or of any other mammoth animal, must have required an atmosphere three times heavier than it is at present. By what cause this change has taken place in the elementary orbit which surrounds our planet, it is beyond our power and philosophy to explain, unless we say that at the antideluvian period, and when the human race were giants, the waters above had not yet been separated and completely thrown down on the surface of the earth. But this theory would not comport with the prosperous condition of the human race before the deluge, when they were promised the long life of 120 years, and to be blessed with all the fruits of the earth, when for their corruptions at last they deserved to be exterminated by the flood.—(Gen. 4, 5, 6.
    We would rather admit, between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, the presence of a planet which has since been split by a comet into four parts, viz: Pallas, Juno, Vesta and Ceres, which have been scattered about, and so much diminished the weight of the atmosphere, that no longer giants or mastedons or mammoths are to be seen. FELIX PASCALIS.”

I would be very surprised if Pascalis was the first to propose that the pre-Flood earth had a higher atmospheric pressure. The idea is certainly still alive today: differences in the atmosphere of the pre-Flood earth (higher oxygen content, higher barometric pressure, etc.) are commonly hypothesized by Young Earth Creationists to explain the larger size of pre-Flood plants, animals, and humans, as well as the longer lifespans of pre-Flood humans discussed in Genesis.

Pascalis’ letter is interesting because it was an attempt to construct a systemic, natural explanation for both why both pre-Flood animals (of which fossil evidence was accumulating) and humans could have been be bigger (i.e., giants). I don’t understand how the asteroids (interpreted as fragments of a planet) would have diminished earth’s atmosphere or how that fits in with the Flood – I’m sure there’s more to that story. The four asteroids Pascalis mentions were first discovered in the early 1800s. The presence of the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter was not identified until later.

Pascalis' letter is a change from just a few decades earlier. Prior to the 1800s, the kind of direct evidence that Pascalis considered (fossil bones) was routinely interpreted as the remains of giant humans (see this post about Cotton Mather). In the absence of a concept of extinction, such an interpretation was logical: what else could the bones be but those of giants, since no other unknown creatures are mentioned in the Bible? Ironically, once mastodon bones were recognized for what they were, the actual physical remains that seemed to be proof of the existence of giant humans were no longer directly relevant. But wait, yes they were -- as shown by Pascalis’ letter, the impressive size of the mastodon bones could be used to build an argument for why pre-Flood humans (for which there then was no direct evidence) could, like the mastodon, also be large.

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Normal-Sized People Can Move Big Rocks: The Example of the Angami Naga

3/5/2015

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A common component of the claim that giant humans once inhabited the planet is that normal-sized humans could not have moved the big stones used to build various megalithic structures around the world (a similar logic is often used to argue for the necessity of ancient aliens). I’ll spare you a litany of references for now, but I can assure you that the notion is out there: giantologists say the use of big rocks in construction signals the presence of big people in prehistory. To them, the simplest explanation for megalithic monuments is not that normal-sized people had the capabilities and motivations to move big rocks, but that there must have been a supernatural race of giants (for which all direct evidence has somehow been suppressed by the Smithsonian) that was really interested, for some reason, in sticking stones in the ground.

That's baloney. We have ethnographic examples of normal-sized people moving big rocks with minimal technology. It happened in the ethnographic present, and it almost certainly happened in the prehistoric past.

While I was a graduate student at the University of Michigan, I had the opportunity to take classes from a lot of really smart people. I find myself drawing on that experience all the time. As I was thinking about giants the other day, I remembered a moment in a seminar taught by Kent Flannery and Joyce Marcus where they were talking about a ritual that involved the movement of some pretty big stones. I couldn’t remember the ethnographic reference, but after an email I learned that they discuss the case in their (2012) book The Creation of Inequality.

The Angami Naga are/were an agricultural society in northeastern India, organized into autonomous villages whose residents were divided into clans. Flannery and Marcus (2012:107-109) describe a ritual of the Naga that involved moving multi-ton stones. A stone was moved from a distant quarry into the village as a way for the man who sponsored the “stone pulling” to build prestige:

“For this spectacle the host turned to all the young men of his clan, all the alumni of his men’s house, and perhaps even his entire village. It was not unusual for 50 clansmen to turn out for this task, and when an entire village was involved, the crew could grow to several hundred men. . . .
To be of value the monument had to come from a distant quarry. The Lhota Naga placed the stone on a heavy litter of wooden poles that could be carried by six rows of men, 12 per row. The Angami, who hauled even larger stones, levered the monument onto a sledge of heavy logs. Wooden rollers were placed in the path of the sledge and hundreds of men, using strong ropes made of tropical vines, pulled it along jungle trails for hours while singing along. All knew that at the end of their journey they would be welcomed with gallons of rice beer.”

As anyone who has moved knows, the promise of beer at the end of a sweaty adventure is one of the best ways to recruit labor (even Pabst works -- it isn't really about quality).

Photograph of some of the stones moved by the Angami Naga (from Hutton 1921:112).

Photograph of a large stone moved to the village of Maram (Hutton 1911:135).

Photograph of stone moved by the Angami Naga (Hutton 1921:232).

The original ethnographic account of the stone pulling (The Angami Nagas) was by John H. Hutton, published in 1921. I have reproduced two of the photos from that report here and one from a 1911 report (The Naga Tribes of Manipur) by T. C. Hodson (the same stone shown by Flannery and Marcus 2012:108). I don't yet have any specific data on the size of the stones or estimates of their weight, but it's obvious from the photos that they're quite large. The Wikipedia entry for the Maram Naga shows an assemblage of menhirs, presumably erected in stone-pulling rituals.

As Flannery and Marcus (2012:109) point out, the stone-pulling rituals of the Naga were performed in the context of societies where “leadership was based solely on achievement.” In other words, not only were these people moving some big rocks, but they were doing it without any centralized, hierarchical organizational structure. It should go without saying (but it probably doesn’t, so I’ll say it), but Hutton did not report that any of the Naga people were giants or in possession of alien technology. Of course, these stones are smaller than many used in megalithic construction. But they compare well in size to some moved by much more "complex" societies, such as the Olmec and the Maya (Flannery and Marcus 2012:109). And they were moved by normal-sized people armed only with ropes and wooden rollers and motivated by community, tradition, and the promise of beer. I think a lot of us can probably relate to that.

The giantologists should keep the Angami Naga in mind when they marvel at megaliths. It is probably unwise to assume that a bunch of enthusiastic humans can't figure out how to get a big rock from Point A to Point B.

Update (3/7/2105): Post on videos of Naga stone-pulling ceremonies.

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Who Founded Four-Field Anthropology?

3/3/2015

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I'm currently writing an essay for Reviews in Anthropology with a working title of “Chaos, Evolution, and Complexity Science: Catalyzing a Revitalization of Four-Field Anthropology?” I think that complex systems theory offers a powerful set of tools for integrating the various components of American four-field anthropology: physical anthropology, archaeology, cultural anthropology, and linguistics. That's the argument I'm going to make in the essay.

Doing some research on the original goals of four-field anthropology, I came across an interesting article by Dan Hicks entitled "Four-Field Anthropology: Charter Myths and Time Warps from St. Louis to Oxford (Current Anthropology 54(6): 753-763). Hicks looks at the origins of four-field anthropology, tracing some of its aspects back to the 1870s (i.e., pre-Boas) using documentary evidence. I don't know about all of you, but I was taught as an undergrad that Franz Boas was more-or-less the founder of four-field American anthropology. "Papa Franz" is a cultural hero to American anthropologists, standing for relativism and against racism, training many of the influential anthropologists of the early 20th century, and posing for the famous hoop photo shown above. His Wikipedia entry clearly states his founding role:

"By uniting the disciplines of archaeology, the study of material culture and history, and physical anthropology, the study of variation in human anatomy, with ethnology, the study of cultural variation of customs, and descriptive linguistics, the study of unwritten indigenous languages, Boas created the four field subdivision of anthropology which became prominent in American anthropology in the 20th century."

Figure 1 from Hicks' (2013) paper, showing Pitt-Rivers' (1882) drawing of his vision of the structure of the discipline of anthropology.

It turns out that the notion of Boas as a "creator" may be more mythology than reality. Using documentary evidence, including a drawing by Augustus Pitt-Rivers (an English archaeologist and ethnologist) and the work of Paul Broca (a French physician and anthropologist perhaps most famous for his work on brain function), Hicks traces the development of the concept of a subdivided anthropology back to the 1870s. This is well before Boas' celebrated papers of the 1890s and early 1900s which many scholars identify as the "founding" documents of four-field anthropology.

I really appreciated Hicks' approach to primary source material. He questions the historical accuracy of the mythology that has developed about Boas and his role in founding our discipline, and he does so by identifying a developmental sequence that is preserved in material remains (in this case, documents). It is a very archaeological way to look at history, and very similar to the approach I am using to try to understand the various incarnations of the ancient giants phenomenon.

I am convinced by Hicks' paper that the idea of four-field anthropology has a history that extends well prior to Boas. While Boas' importance to the development of the four-field approach in America is not in dispute, I love that Hicks' paper demonstrates the usefulness of material remains for questioning mythology and trying to understand where ideas come from. That's good stuff.

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