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Albinism

4/24/2016

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       Melanin is something most everyone has, which is “a dark brown to black pigment occurring in the hair, skin, and iris of the eye in people and animals. It is responsible for tanning of skin exposed to sunlight.” Whether the person is dark skinned or light skinned, most of us have a good percentage of it in us. Now, I did say “most of us,” meaning there is a small percentage of the human race which is either lacking it in their eyes, or entirely devoid of it. That small number (1 in 20.000 people worldwide) of people have a rare condition called “albinism,” which is what this blog will be addressing. I will speak of types of albinism, the origins of it, and of other species that also express albinism.
​       Unlike other birth based disease (HIV, autism, etc.) which are evident from the time of birth give or take a few months and have one type, albinism has 2 types, but one of the types has 4. The one that contains 4 different types is called oculocutaneous albinism. The type 1 for this is what you would think of when you hear “albino.” Those with type 1 have milky white skin, white hair, and unlike the myth that they have red eyes, most with type 1 have blue eyes. With type 2 (most common in sub-Saharan Africans, African-Americans, and Native Americans), they still have milky white skin, but the hair “may be yellow, auburn, ginger or red, the eyes can be blue-gray or tan.” And unlike type 1 in which too much sun exposure will lead to skin cancer, type 2, when exposed to the sun, overtime may develop freckles, moles, or lentigines (sun spots). Type 3 (most common in black South Africans), do not have milky white skin. In fact, unless you knew they had albinism, you would not know. Their skin is usually reddish-brown, with ginger or reddish hair, and hazel or brown eyes. The 4th type is similar to that of type 2, but it mostly found in those of East Asian descent. The second type of albinism is known as ocular albinism, which affects the eyes, and is mostly found in males. This is caused by a mutation of a gene on the X-chromosome. Those with this type have problems with their vision, but aside from that, their skin, hair, and eye colour are generally in the colour range of those in their family. Even though albinism is very rare, there are rare disorders in it; an example is that of Hermansky-Pudlak syndrome. This rare albinism disorder is caused by a mutation in one of at least eight different genes. People with this disorder are more common in Puerto Rico. Those with this disorder have similar symptoms with those with oculocutaneous albinism, “but they may also develop lung and bowel diseases, or a bleeding disorder.” But how is one born with albinism? The answer to this question can be summarized in one word, “mutation.” All it takes is a different gene, like in autism for example, to change everything. The image below illustrates how improbable it is to be born with this disease; and unlike HIV, albinism is in no way contagious (you can refer to a previous blog in which I speak of punnett squares like the one below here: 
http://anthropologicalconcepts.weebly.com/blog/you-have-your-mothers-eyes)

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For this disease there is no “patient zero.” But, that said “Albinism is said to be the oldest anomaly ever recorded.” Records for people with albinism can be traced to 1660 in which the term “albino” was first coined to the historian and missionary Balthazar Tellez. In his travels he first saw evidence of albinism on the West African Coast. Although that is a specific year, many years before that the Greeks had encounters with and words for those with albinism, one was leukoethrope (white), and leukoethiopians (white Ethiopians). More “recently” in United States history when slavery was still instilled, in 1869 Joseph Hones MD. published “Observations and Researches on Albinism in the Negro Race.” In this publication he claimed that those with albinism showed superiour intelligence because of their “superior” colour. He lumped those with vitiligo (image below) and albinism together, saying they “turned white in the womb.”  

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      This disease is not limited to humans. In our subfamily Homininae, there is another ape that has showed humans are no the only ape known to get albinism. On October 1, 1966, a lowland gorilla was captured in a region of Equatorial Guinea; a gorilla the world came to know as Snowflake (image below). He was originally named “white gorilla,” because his hair was white. Since his time of capture to the time of his death he was a celebrity at the Barcelona Zoo in Spain. Now, unlike humans, the reason for his albinism was because of inbreeding. After his death, his blood was tested and “they were able to determine that his mother and father shared 12 per cent of their DNA and concluded that this likely made them uncle and niece.” He passed away on November 24th, 2003 because of skin cancer. All that said, albinism is not limited to hominids. We all know of the white mice/rats and polar bears, but they are not albino, in the case of the polar bear it helps them blend in with the snow (this is an evolutionary advantage). But for other animals, much like with humans, their colour makes them stand out. There is a moose (image below) in Ontario, Canada who seems to blend in with the snow of their environment like the polar bear, but, as the opposite of their brethren who have very dark coats to help them camouflage with the woodlands, this moose is much more visible to wolves...and humans. 
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       This disease seems to have plagued all manner of species; mammal, invertebrates, reptiles, birds all seem to be susceptible to albinism (images below). Let us hope that in those animals we find to have albinism are aware enough to keep out of sunlight, but, that said, I am sure they do because “The lack of pigment in the eye alters the amount of light entering the iris, leading to excessive exposure to brightness. As a result, albinos of any species, including humans, may experience great sensitivity to light.”
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Please feel free to comment on what you thought of the blog, or other physical anthropological subjects you would like me to cover.
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Looting (Reader Requested Topic)

4/10/2016

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       In a previous blog (http://anthropologicalconcepts.weebly.com/blog/nagpra), I gave a list of an ethical outline that archaeologists and, really, all anthropologists must follow, but there are those who seem not to have ethics when ancient artifacts come into question. Some who are just looking for more information (Thomas Jefferson for example), but some are looking for a way to make a monetary profit. In the following blog I will address how the idea of looting has changed and how it is not only stealing physical objects, but robbing us of so much more.
       During the early 1800's the world went mad for Egyptian artifacts; whether to see them, own them, or find them. In this time many people were hired by museums to get the the most rare artifacts they could. One man, Giovanni Belzoni, was the most prolific when finding Egyptian antiquities. Then he was seen as a great explorer, a treasure hunter, and the finder of the treasure which he was hunting for. Many are thankful for his findings (bust of Ramesses II, Abu Simbel which is still known as “Belzoni's Tomb”), but by today's standing, he is seen by some as a looter. In a sense he, all who were digging and finding artifacts in this time, were similar to those who looted the tombs of the pharaohs. When those in the 1800's would open a tomb, expecting to find riches beyond their wildest dreams, but ended up seeing it had been pillaged; those who looted irreplaceable artifacts robbed something more than riches.
​       The culture, the valuable information that can only be taken away from items left in tombs, is the true harm looters bring to us. For example, the chair in King Tuts tomb that depicts his wife touching him (image below) shows us that he indeed loved her, that he was a caring person, much like his father, who is shown playing with his children (image below). If that tomb had been looted, everything we know about King Tut, like his age (because there were artifacts that seemed they were a child's) would have been lost to the ages. In other instances where there is no structure like a pyramid or the like, the artifact is underground.  
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       These looting instances are amoung the most horrendous. If you remember in an earlier blog about dating (http://anthropologicalconcepts.weebly.com/blog/dating-methods-have-you-found-the-right-one) I spoke of stratigraphy and when someone comes along digs and takes what they find without keeping a log of it, they compromise the archaeological record (this means they compromise the surrounding environment and the stratigraphy, which in turn compromises the dating). Not all looting is taking items from tombs. Looting can be finding an artifact and taking it. For example, the possession and transporting to a foreign land of infamous Rosetta Stone, if it had been found nowadays, it would still be in Egypt, and not at the British Museum. But, like thoughts on Belzoni, many are thankful that Napoleons soldiers discovered this stone (without it, we would not know much about how to read hieroglyphs, as discovered by Jean-Francois Champollion, and in loss of that knowledge, not knowing much about ancient Egyptians, period).
       Although it really is amazing how much we have evolved to treasure these artifacts. It is a great contrast between the finding of Egyptian artifacts in the early 1800's and in the early 1900's; King Tut's tomb to be more specific. This famous tomb has to be one of Egypt's national treasures, because unlike the Rosetta Stone, or all the other Egyptian artifacts in museums around the world, he is still in the desert, he is still in Egypt. Shortly after the opening of the tomb, it seemed as though things were missing and the prime suspect was Carter (he claimed the tomb was opened before, but this was highly doubtable, he even illegally entered without waiting for Egyptian officials). “"All objects from the tomb should be in Egypt, and if they're not in Egypt, they didn't get out legally,” said Dr. Loeben, a German Egyptologist.
       Most recently, there has been a massive loss of culture; Syrian culture to be more specific. In recent news reports, it has been the terror group who call themselves ISIS that have not only been looting but destroying. It began as the bombing of archaeological sites in Syria which held ancient architecture, but then “what isn't destroyed is being quietly sold on a black market that reaches Europe and even the U.S.” Not only are they destroying a vibrant ancient culture (most likely their own), but they always have been giving licenses to looters so they are able to dig in their territory, and "If you find an artifact, you take 80 percent and ISIS takes 20 percent," said an informant for CBS news. This level of cultural destruction has rivaled what happened during WWII, when the Nazi's took artifacts for their own. What really makes this heartbreaking is that unlike the artifacts the Nazi's looted that were eventually recovered, what ISIS has done, has taken it to a level at which we can never hope to get back those artifacts, those environments, what made that culture that culture.
       With all the information we have learned by past and/or dead cultures, the artifacts play an essential part. From arrow heads, to the most brilliant stone, it all holds answers to who these people were in life. But looters are not only in days of old, people who steal or rob other are looters because everything we have are artifacts; your shoes, your spoons, even the device on which you are reading this on is an artifact. An artifact is anything man made, and those man has made in the past are just as precious as those we have now.
       Please feel free to comment (or email me at: anthro302@gmail.com) on what you thought of the blog, or other physical anthropological subjects you would like me to cover. 
(video below is a CBS report about the looting of ISIS)
View More: The fight against ISIS News|World News|Live News|More News Videos
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Mating

4/3/2016

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       We are all acquainted with what mating involves in humans. Whether it be a physical, emotional, sexual, or all of them, we have a good idea of what it consists of. But what of non-human primates? In the following blog I will address the selection of a mate, the subject of infants, and of “families” in non-human primates.
      As humans, we are not attracted to other species, such as chimpanzee's or the like; sure, we think they are cute, but not “mate” material. But for the females of the different species of ape, some have a choice with whom to mate with. For most of them there is a polygynous system, in which there is one male mating with several females. In a previous blog (http://anthropologicalconcepts.weebly.com/blog/sexual-dimorphism), I discussed sexual
dimorphism; in those in which there was a great deal of sexual dimorphism, there is a competition. It is usually the one with the most evident sexual dimorphism that is able to mate. Although, in those who do not have great sexual dimorphism, they usually live in pairs while the child is being weened. Some of those are monogamous, some also mate with other females, but for those they will stay with the female they impregnated. “Primates are amoung the most K-selected of mammal species.” K-selected means that they produce a low number of offspring so as to invest more time with the one child (the opposite is r-selected in which a large number of offspring are produced). With female primates, they spend most of their adult life “being pregnant, lactating, and/or caring for offspring.” For Old World apes their genitals swell and change colour, so in some they do no have a choice.
       In some males, since they do not have invest in rearing the offspring, the want to produce as many offspring as they can; which is sometimes dangerous...to the offspring. What I mean by this is if another male becomes the leader of the pack, they will commit infanticide with the offspring that is not theirs. Even though this is highly counter-productive for the species, the males “need” to do this. Reason being is while the mother is lactating and caring for her offspring, she does not come into estrus (heat), and therefore is not sexually available. So the new male in charge kills the offspring, so that he only has to wait two to three months, and not two to three years to mate with the females. In chacma baboons, for example, they “deliberately single out females with young infants and hunt them down (image below).” All that said, it does not prove the male's reproductive fitness. What primatologists look for are two crucial facts:
  1. Infanticidal males don't kill their own offspring,
  2. Once a male has killed an infant, he subsequently father another infant with the victim's mother.
But chacma baboons are not the only species in which the males practice infanticide; others include Hanuman langurs, redtail monkeys, red colobus, blue monkeys, howlers, orangutans, gorillas, chimpanzees, and, sadly, humans. 
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       But it is not all bad news for the infants for one reason, their mothers. Not counting those communities with polyandry (female with many males mates where the males is in charge of rearing the offspring), the bond between primate mothers and their infants begins at birth. We are not sure what the bonding process is, but if the mother had a normal experience with hers, it is evident early. In other cases were the female was raised in captivity without knowing their mother, she will most likely be afraid of her offspring, or kill it. Although, when the female has had a normal relationship with her mother, she knows what to do. As for the infant, it is as if it is automatic, as they grasp onto their mothers fur, and are in this constant contact for several months (which gives you an idea why some males would commit infanticide). While in this contact, they are exposed to social behaviour. In many primate communities they allow alloparenting, which is when those who are not the parents of said infant carry, hold, and just interact with them. But the mother has to be careful because there have been instances of the death or injury of the infant due to the inexperience or aggressiveness. This alloparenting is very useful just in case the mother dies or is unable to take care of her infant. Amoung the siamangs, marmosets, and tamarins, the males are actively involved. And in the case of marmosets and tamarins, the infants are frequently twins, so the father carries them on his back and are only away from him when nursing with their mother.. Even in those species where they do not actively involved, the exhibit paternal care. For example, “they showed that during disputes, the fathers intervened on behalf of their offspring significantly more often that for unrelated juveniles.”
       This interaction with not only their mothers, but with their “aunts” is very important for not only the infant but those females who have yet to give birth. Being with those infants is a way for them to learn what to do. But, in the case of infants who have undergone social isolation, it is obvious they need it. They have been recorded displaying self-direct behaviour, such as hugging themselves or rocking back and forth. For the social group in these primates it is suggested that the mother-offspring core gives it stability.

​       Please feel free to comment on what you thought of the blog, or other physical anthropological subjects you would like me to cover.
Images above from left to right: Patas monkey, Mongoose Lemur, Orangutan, Chimpanzee, Sykes monkey
Click to image to make bigger.
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    A recently made anthropologist who has been set loose to study the humans of the then, today, what's to come, and beyond. 

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