Lipid residues from prehistoric sherds reveal transition around 2500 BC
It has long been debated whether Neolithic farming economies were ever established at the limits of modern agriculture around the 60th parallel north. Thanks to the warming effects of the Gulf Stream, sustainable farming economies were established slightly to the south, in Britain, southern Norway and Sweden. In Finland, however, agriculture is problematic even today due to lower temperatures and a snow cover for several months of the year.
Corded Ware was a pan-European phenomenon during the third millennium BC. Corded Ware reached Finland, but despite the firm association of this culture with pastoral farming elsewhere in Europe, there is no evidence for it in Finland. A problem for archaeologists is the poor survival rate of archaeological remains in the acidic soils of the region.
Fortunately, these same conditions favour the preservation of certain classes of ancient biomolecules such as lipids in the walls of ancient ceramic cooking vessels. Carbon isotope analysis can then be used to determine the origins of such organic residues.
In a new study published in Proceedings of the Royal Seciety B, researchers took advantage if the availability of abundant sherds representing prehistoric cooking vessels to investigate the economy of prehistoric hunter–fisher–foragers using so-called Comb Ware, and possible early farmers associated with Corded Ware, Final Neolithic Kiukainen Ware, and Early Metal Age people.
Seventy prehistoric sherds were investigated, from sites in southern and southwestern Finland; 19 yielded residues amenable to analysis. Residues recovered from Comb Ware dating from 3900 to 3300 BC were found to be associated exclusively with marine products suggesting specialised subsistence strategies and/or the storage of marine commodities for exchange. By contrast, residues recovered from Corded Ware dating to around 2500 BC display isotopic signatures suggesting fats of ruminants. While these could indicate either domestic cattle or wild elk or reindeer, around half the residues are from milk, suggesting the former possibility. Notably, these milk residues were found in drinking beakers rather than storage amphorae. Only one Corded Ware vessel was found to contain residues of a marine origin despite the proximity of the sites investigated to the coast.
Unlike the other two, Final Neolithic Kiukainen Ware sherds revealed a mixed-economy of marine and ruminant products. Possibly marine elements were reintroduced to the economy as a hedge against deteriorating climate. The Early Metal Age residues were exclusively of dairy origin, suggesting the intensification of agriculture despite the continued deterioration of the climate.
The sharp contrast between the marine products associated with Comb Wares and domesticated products associated with Corded Wares supports the view that Corded Ware pottery represents the successful introduction of farming into Finland and also places the origins of farming and milk consumption at this northerly latitude at 4,500 years ago.
References:
1.Cramp, L. et al., Neolithic dairy farming at the extreme of agriculture in northern Europe. Proceedings of the Royal Seciety B 281 (2014).
Study
may throw light on origins of human language
The use of gestures by chimpanzees
was first demonstrated by field studies carried out in the 1960s and 1970s, and
work on captive animals has shown that these gestures are part of an
intentional, goal-orientated behaviour common to all the great apes. While this
behaviour overlaps with human language, it is absent from most animal
communication systems and evidence for it is also lacking for the vocalisations
of great apes.
There has been considerable
interest in a potential common origin of great ape gestures and components of
human language and, therefore, in the actual meaning of the gestures.
Surprisingly, little work has been carried out in this area. In a new report,
published in the journal Current Biology,
researchers Catherine Hobaiter and Richard Byrne from the School of Psychology
& Neuroscience, University of St Andrews, have presented the first systematic
study of meaning in wild chimpanzee gestural communication. They have found
that individual gestures have specific meanings, independently of who is making
them, as is the case with words in human language. They have also provided a
partial ‘lexicon’.
The field studies were conducted in
the Budongo Forest in Uganda, and more than 80 chimpanzees were observed. The researchers
recorded the interactions of the chimpanzees and analysed 4,531 instances of
gestural communications between the animals, noting the motions they used and
how other chimpanzees responded. Some 36 gestures were analysed, and some 15
different meanings were identified.
Some of the gestures are unambiguous:
for example ‘leaf-clipping’ is only used to signal sexual attraction.
However,
many are associated with up to three meanings: for example, ‘grab’ is used for ‘stop
that’, ‘’climb on me’, and ‘move away’. This ambiguity may be apparent rather
than real, and may arise in part from the difficulty for human observers in
discerning subtle variations in the nature of the gesture. It is evident to a
human recipient whether or not a gentle touch is intended to make them move or
stay where they are, but such distinctions are very difficult to perceive visually.
Gestures were also employed towards two or three very similar outcomes: for example, ‘push’ is used for both ‘move
away’ and ‘stop that’.
Researchers found considerable
variation in whether an intended meaning was signalled by a single gesture type
or several gestures of apparently equivalent meaning. This was particularly
common in social negotiations, where a degree of persuasion was required. By contrast,
meanings typically conveyed by a single gesture were often well defined: for
example ‘initiate grooming’ is signalled by a big loud scratch.
References:
x
1. Hobaiter, C. & Byrne, R.,
The Meanings of Chimpanzee Gestures. Current Biology24, 1-5
(2014).
Analysis
of 60,000 – 45,000 year old coprolites provides insight into Neanderthal diet
Neanderthal dietary reconstructions
have, to date, been based on archaeological evidence, stable isotope data and
studies of dental calculus. These suggest that they were predominantly meat
eaters, although plant foods made a contribution to their diet. Hitherto, there
has been no direct evidence for an omnivorous diet.
A new study, published in the open
access journal PLoS One has presented direct evidence of Neanderthal diet using
faecal biomarkers, which are a valuable analytical tool for identifying diet.
Researchers applied gas chromatography and mass spectroscopy techniques to coprolites
(fossil faeces) from the Neanderthal site of El Salt at Alicante, Spain. The coprolites
were recovered from sediments gathered from a number of levels at the site, which
was repeatedly occupied by Neanderthals between 60,000 and 45,000 years ago.
The team focussed on chemical
processes associated with the action of bacteria in the gut. They found a high
proportion of coprostanol, which the gut bacteria produce from cholesterol and
which is associated with the consumption of meat. However, they also recorded
significant quantities of 5β-stigmastanol, which is associated with plant
consumption.
Further tests were necessary to
confirm that the coprolites were of human origin. The conversion of cholesterol
into coprostanol is not unique to humans, but related molecules were also
identified in proportions that ruled out other omnivores.
References:
x
1. Ainara Sistiaga, A., Mallol,
C., Galván, B. & Everett Summons, R., The Neanderthal Meal: A New
Perspective Using Faecal Biomarkers. PLoS One9 (6), e101045
(2014).
A new study, published in the
journal Science, has provided support
for the ‘accretion’ model of Neanderthal evolution. ‘Classic’ Neanderthals,
i.e. humans possessing the full suite of Neanderthal characteristics, do not
appear in the fossil record until 130,000 years ago. However, French palaeoanthropologist
Jean-Jacques Hublin has proposed that Neanderthal characteristics appeared
gradually over time, in a piecemeal fashion.
Thus, for example if Feature X
appeared in one population and Feature Y in another, then interbreeding between
the two populations would have resulted in a population possessing both Features
X and Y. Over time, populations gradually acquired the full suite of
Neanderthal characteristics by a process of accretion, resulting in a gradual
transition from Homo heidelbergensis to
Neanderthal. The accretion model explains ‘proto-Neanderthal’ features seen on
certain fossils dating to the period prior to the appearance of the ‘classic’
Neanderthals. These include a 400,000-year-old fragmentary skull from Swanscombe
in England and the 225,000-year-old Steinheim skull from Stuttgart, Germany.
Much of the evidence we have
regarding Neanderthal origins comes from a single site in the Sierra de
Atapuerca of northern Spain, near the city of Burgos: a Middle Pleistocene
human burial pit known as Sima de los Huesos. The name translates – rather
appropriately – as ‘the Pit of Bones’. Sima de los Huesos is a small muddy
chamber lying at the bottom of a 13 m (43 ft.) chimney, lying deep within the Cueva
Mayor system of caves. Investigation of the site has proved to be long and
difficult. The most immediate problems are logistical. The cramped site is
located more than 500 m (⅓
mile) from the mouth of the Cueva Mayor and is hard to access, necessitating at
times crawling on the stomach. Another problem is the disturbance to the site
caused by the many generations of souvenir and fossil hunters. Systematic
excavation commenced in 1984 and has continued ever since. To date, over 2,000
fragmentary hominin fossils have been recovered, including three skulls. In
total, the remains are thought to represent at least 32 individuals of both
sexes. It is likely that the site was simply used for the hygienic disposal of
the dead, because there is no evidence to suppose that any of the individuals
were deliberately killed and the bones show no sign of injuries caused by
spears or clubs.
Study of this enormous collection
of bones is still in progress, and is likely to continue for some time yet as
the site yields further fossils. However, it has become clear that the fossils
show a mixture of Homo heidelbergensis and
Neanderthal characteristics, just as would be expected if the accretion model
is correct. The key question is how old is the site? Uranium series dates
obtained in 2007 suggested that they were at least 530,000 years old, making
the Sima people older than some Homo
heidelbergensis remains from southern Europe and the Balkan region that show
no incipient Neanderthal characteristic features.
The new study considered 17 crania,
including seven new specimens. The sample shows a consistent morphological
pattern with derived Neanderthal features present in the face and anterior of
the cranial vault, many of which are adaptations to aid chewing of food. This
suggests that facial modification was the first step in the evolution of the
Neanderthal lineage, consistent with the accretion model evolution, with
different anatomical features evolving at different rates.
The researchers also used a variety
of techniques including combined electron spin resonance/uranium series to
obtain a revised date of 430,000 years old, which gives a far better fit with
the accretion model.
References:
x
1. Arsuaga, J. et al.,
Neandertal roots: Cranial and chronological evidence from Sima de los Huesos. Science344 (6190), 1358-1363 (2014).
Whether or not modern humans interbred with Neanderthals is a question that has long been of interest to both scholars and lay people alike, but it was not until May 2010 that strong evidence emerged that the answer to the question was ‘yes, probably’.
A project to sequence the Neanderthal genome was commenced in 2006 at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (Green, et al., 2006; Green, et al., 2008), and in May 2010, researchers published a first draft of the Neanderthal genome (Green, et al., 2010). With the initial announcement came the dramatic news that made headlines around the world. It turned out that between one and four percent of the genome of modern non-Africans was derived from Neanderthals. In other words, the answer to the million dollar question was ‘yes, they did interbreed – but not in Africa’. The researchers compared the Neanderthal genome with those of five present-day individuals: two indigenous Africans (one San from South Africa and one Yoruba from West Africa) and three Eurasians (one from Papua New Guinea, one from China and one from France). The results showed that Neanderthals were more closely related to non-Africans than to Africans. This is not particularly surprising, as Neanderthals are not known to have lived in Africa. Any interbreeding has generally been supposed to have occurred within the known range of the Neanderthals, in Europe and western Asia. What was unexpected was that no difference was found between Papua New Guinean, Chinese and European individuals in terms of their degree of relatedness to Neanderthals.
The implication is that the interbreeding must have occurred before the ancestors of the present-day Asian, Australasian and European populations diverged from one another – presumably in Southwest Asia soon after modern humans first left Africa, and long before they reached Europe. If the population that left Africa was small, only limited interbreeding would be necessary to leave the Neanderthal contribution fixed in the modern non-African genome for all time, as numbers increased during the subsequent peopling of the world.
Interbreeding was not the only way to interpret these initial results, and the authors of the report said that they could not rule out the possibility that their results reflected substructure in the early modern human populations. In fact, a later independent study favoured this possibility, using a mathematical model to represent a connected string of regional populations spanning Africa and Eurasia. After the string split, the Eurasian and African parts of the range subsequently evolved into Neanderthals and modern humans respectively. For the latter, groups geographically closest to the split (i.e. in North Africa) remained more closely related to Neanderthals than those further south. It was assumed that the non-African world was subsequently populated by a dispersal of one of these northerly groups from Africa (Eriksson & Manica, 2012).
Subsequent work by independent researchers ruled out this substructure scenario (Sankararaman, et al., 2012; Yang, et al., 2012), and appeared to back the view that there had been a single episode of interbreeding very early on in the Out of Africa expansion that led to the peopling of the non-African world (Yotova, et al., 2011). The findings that some Africans do after all carry a Neanderthal genetic signature (Sánchez-Quinto, et al., 2012; Wall, et al., 2013) is not a major problem, as this can be accounted for in terms of a pre-Neolithic ‘Back to Africa’ migration of modern humans from Southwest Asia (Olivieri, et al., 2006; González, et al., 2007; Hodgson, et al., 2014).
A complication is that studies have found no trace of a Neanderthal component in mitochondrial DNA (Caramelli, et al., 2003; Serre, et al., 2004; Caramelli, et al., 2008). On the ‘brief encounter’ picture, this could mean crossbred women were sterile, and thus their mitochondrial DNA was never passed to subsequent generations. Another possibility is that interbreeding between Neanderthals and modern humans was very rare, with only one such event every couple of centuries. The reason could be limited biological compatibility, or it could be that the two mostly avoided interspecific mating. Such a low rate of interbreeding would account for the absence of Neanderthal mitochondrial DNA from the present-day gene pool, but it would still be sufficient to account for the observed levels of Neanderthal DNA in the nuclear genome. However, it would require interbreeding to occur across the whole of the Neanderthal range, not just in Southwest Asia (Currat & Excoffier, 2011; Neves & Serva, 2012).
Between 2012 and 2014, further studies showed that the original conclusion that all non-African populations were related equally to Neanderthals was incorrect, and that the proportion of Neanderthal ancestry in East Asians is 20 to 40 percent higher than it is in Europeans. This implies that interbreeding could not all have happened at a single time and place; some of it must have happened after the ancestral East Asian and European populations separated (Meyer, et al., 2012; Wall, et al., 2013; Vernot & Akey, 2014). Given that Neanderthals lived in Europe but are not known from East Asia, this is unexpected. However, their known range extents to the Altai region north of the Himalayas and a subsequent episode of interbreeding might have occurred there. Alternatively, it is possible that the Neanderthal range actually extended further south, as we know to have been the case for the Denisovans.
The latest work suggests that around 20 percent of the Neanderthal genome survives in the present-day population, albeit individuals each only possess a small fraction of this amount (Vernot & Akey, 2014).
Many useful Neanderthal genes have been incorporated into the modern genome; for example those involved with the production of keratin, a protein that is used in skin, hair and nails. Possibly the Neanderthal versions of these genes were more suited to the harsh conditions of Ice Age Europe (Sankararaman, et al., 2014). In East Asian populations, many genes involved with protection from UV are of Neanderthal origin (Ding, et al., 2014).
Some deleterious genes also have a Neanderthal connection, including those implicated in Type 2 diabetes and Crohn’s disease. Significantly, Neanderthal DNA was largely absent from the X chromosome and genes associated with modern testes. The implication is that Neanderthal DNA in these regions led to reduced male fertility, or sterility (Sankararaman, et al., 2014), consistent with the view that Neanderthals and modern humans were at the limits of biological compatibility.
These results show that natural selection had a significant role, with both positive and negative selection determining Neanderthal gene frequencies. It is entirely possible that selective factors could be at least partially responsible for the higher incidence of Neanderthal DNA in East Asian populations.
It is now clear that the interactions between Neanderthal and modern populations were complex; and that we are still at a very early stage of understanding them.
References:
1. Green,
R. et al., Analysis of one million base pairs of Neanderthal DNA. Nature 444,
330-336 (2006).
2. Green,
R. et al., A Complete Neandertal Mitochondrial Genome Sequence Determined by
High-Throughput Sequencing. Cell 134, 416–426 (2008).
3. Green,
R. et al., A Draft Sequence of the Neandertal Genome. Science 328, 710-722
(2010).
4. Eriksson,
A. & Manica, A., Effect of ancient population structure on the degree of
polymorphism shared between modern human populations and ancient hominins. PNAS
109 (35), 13956–13960 (2012).
5. Sankararaman,
S., Patterson, N., Li, H., Pääbo, S. & Reich, D., The Date of Interbreeding
between Neandertals and Modern Humans. PLoS Genetics 8 (10) (2012).
6. Yang,
M., Malaspinas, A., Durand, E. & Slatkin, M., Ancient Structure in Africa
Unlikely to Explain Neanderthal and Non-African Genetic Similarity. Molecular
Biology and Evolution 29 (10), 2987–2995 (2012).
7. Yotova,
V. et al., An X-Linked Haplotype of Neandertal Origin Is Present Among All
Non-African Populations. Molecular Biology and Evolution 28 (7), 1957-1962
(2011).
8. Sánchez-Quinto,
F. et al., North African Populations Carry the Signature of Admixture with
Neandertals. PLoS One 7 (10) (2012).
9. Wall,
J. et al., Higher levels of Neanderthal ancestry in East Asians than in
Europeans. Genetics 194, 199-209 (2013).
10. Olivieri,
A. et al., The mtDNA Legacy of the Levantine Early Upper Palaeolithic in
Africa. Science 314, 1757-1770 (2006).
11. González,
A. et al., Mitochondrial lineage M1 traces an early human backflow to Africa.
BMC Genomics 8 (223) (2007).
12. Hodgson,
J., Mulligan, C., Al-Meeri, A. & Raaum, R., Early Back-to-Africa Migration
into the Horn of Africa. PLoS Genetics 10 (6), e1004393 (2014).
13. Caramelli,
D. et al., Evidence for a genetic discontinuity between Neandertals and
24,000-year-old anatomically modern Europeans. PNAS 100 (11), 6593–6597 (2003).
14. Serre,
D. et al., No Evidence of Neandertal mtDNA Contribution to Early Modern Humans.
PLoS Biology 2 (3), 0313-0317 (2004).
15. Caramelli,
D. et al., A 28,000 Years Old Cro-Magnon mtDNA Sequence Differs from All
Potentially Contaminating Modern Sequences. PLoS One 3 (7) (2008).
16. Currat,
M. & Excoffier, L., Strong reproductive isolation between humans and
Neanderthals inferred from observed patterns of introgression. PNAS 108 (37),
15129-15134 (2011).
17. Neves,
A. & Serva, M., Extremely Rare Interbreeding Events Can Explain Neanderthal
DNA in Living Humans. PLoS One 7 (10) (2012).
18. Meyer,
M. et al., A High-Coverage Genome Sequence from an Archaic Denisovan
Individual. Science 338, 222-226 (2012).
19. Vernot,
B. & Akey, J., Resurrecting Surviving Neandertal Lineages from Modern Human
Genomes. Science 343, 1017-1021 (2014).
20. Sankararaman,
S. et al., The genomic landscape of Neanderthal ancestry in present-day humans.
Nature 507, 354–357 (2014).
21. Ding,
Q., Hu, Y., Xu, S., Wang, J. & Jin, L., Neanderthal Introgression at
Chromosome 3p21.31 Was Under Positive Natural Selection in East Asians.
Molecular Biology and Evolution 31 (3), 683-695 (2014).
Ancient and modern mitochondrial DNA study links PPNB to modern populations of Cyprus and Crete
In recent years, ancient DNA has been obtained from Neolithic human remains, and this has provided a more reliable picture of the genetic impact of the European Neolithic than was possible with genetic studies of living populations. However, researchers have been hampered by the lack of data from the original farmers of Southwest Asia.
In a new study, published in the open access journal PLoS One Genetics, researchers report the successful extraction of mitochondrial DNA from fifteen out of 63 skeletons recovered from the Pre Pottery Neolithic B (PPNB) sites of Tell Halula, Tell Ramad and Dja’de El Mughara, dating from between 8700 to 6600 BC.
The genetic profiles were compared with data obtained from human remains associated with the LBK and Cardial/Epicardial European Neolithic cultures. The researchers also looked for possible signatures of the original Neolithic expansion in the gene pools of present-day Southwest Asian and southern European populations, and tried to infer possible routes of the expansion by comparison with the ancient samples.
They were able to identify K and N-derived mitochondrial DNA haplogroups as potential markers of the Neolithic expansion, whose genetic signature would have reached both the Iberian coasts and the Central European plain.
They also observed genetic affinities between the PPNB samples and the modern populations of Cyprus and Crete. However, no such link was found to modern populations of western Anatolia, suggesting that the Neolithic was first introduced into Europe by maritime colonists.
References:
1. Fernández, E. et al., Ancient DNA Analysis of 8000 B.C. Near Eastern Farmers Supports an Early Neolithic Pioneer Maritime Colonization of Mainland Europe through Cyprus and the Aegean Islands. PLoS One Genetics10 (6), e1004401 (2014).
Post-Howieson’s
Poort Sibudan tradition was not ‘unstructured and unsophisticated’
Archaeologists have long believed
that the later part of the African Middle Stone Age (MSA) was characterised by conservative
technologies punctuated by the appearance of technologically-sophisticated but
short-lived technocomplexes such as the Stillbay and Howieson’s Poort
traditions of South Africa. These traditions are noted for finely-worked stone
points, microliths, tools made from bone, and innovative technologies including
pressure flaking and compound adhesives. Various theories involving population
collapses have been put forward to account for their disappearance and the
reversion to comparatively unsophisticated prepared-core industries.
However, it has been suggested that
this phenomenon may be more apparent than real, as the Stillbay and Howieson’s
Poort eras have been studied far more closely than the supposed hiatus periods
that followed. Recent work at the archaeological site Sibudu, KwaZulu-Natal
supports the view. Archaeologists have identified a new technocomplex, which
they have named the Sibudan, from the six uppermost lithic assemblages at the
site. The new technocomplex dates from around 58,000 years ago, placing its’
beginning just after the end of the Howieson’s Poort era.
While the Sibudan has technological
parallels with other contemporary MSA industries, it is typologically and technologically
distinct. The six stratified tool assemblages are linked by common features, which
identify them as a distinct tradition. Many of these features are considered to
be hallmarks of a sophisticated stone tool-making technology, including
characteristic tool assemblages with standardised forms and reduction cycles, and
the production of standardised blades with soft stone hammers. Overall, the
Sibudan refutes the notion that post-Howieson’s Poort stone-knapping technologies
were rudimentary or unsophisticated.
The report is published in the open
access journal PLoS One.
References:
x
1. Will, M. B. G. & Conard,
N., Characterizing the Late Pleistocene MSA Lithic Technology of Sibudu,
KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. PLoS One9 (5), e98359 (2014).
Metabolite
study demonstrates human muscle and brain tissue underwent disproportionate
evolutionary change
A new study, published in the open
access journal PLoS One Biology, has used metabolites to track evolutionary
changes in brain and skeletal muscle tissues. Metabolites are metabolic products
or intermediated of low molecular weight (1,500 amu or less), which are
associated with the physiological processes that maintain the functionality of
body tissues. Changes in the concentrations of these metabolites are thought to
be closely related to evolutionary changes in the associated tissues.
Researchers measured the concentrations
of more than 10,000 metabolites in the prefrontal cortex, primary visual
cortex, cerebellar cortex, skeletal muscles and kidneys of humans, chimpanzees,
macaque monkeys and mice using mass spectrometry-based techniques. They found
that in most cases the differences reflected genetic distances between the
species rather than environmental differences.
The striking exception was found in
the human lineage. The concentration profiles of metabolites associated with the
human prefrontal cortex, cerebellar cortex and skeletal tissues showed far
greater changes than could be accounted for by genetic difference: by a factor
of four for the brain tissue, and eight for the muscle tissue. In fact the
muscle tissue is implied to have undergone more evolutionary change in the 6 to
7 million years since the divergence from chimpanzees than it did during the
130 or so million years separating mice from the common ancestor of the apes
and Old World monkeys. No comparable differences were noted for the primary
visual cortex or kidneys. Nor were significant differences to any of these
results found after controlling for differences in diet and levels of physical
activity.
It is well known that humans are
physically quite weak in comparison to chimpanzees, despite weighing in at
around twice the size. Surprisingly, this is largely based on anecdotal
observations mostly predating the 1950s. Accordingly, the researchers set macaque,
chimpanzee and human subjects a ‘pulling task’, which tested both upper and
lower body strength. These tests confirmed the anecdotal observations.
The researchers concluded that the
metabolic changes in human muscle tissue were associated with a drastic
reduction in muscle strength; and that these changes might be linked to the
changes in brain metabolism and enhanced cognitive abilities.
The findings are an extension of
Aiello and Wheeler’s ‘expensive tissue’ hypothesis, which proposed that the
considerable energy requirements of the human brain (around 20 percent of the
total energy budget) could only be met by making savings elsewhere. Aiello and
Wheeler (1995) proposed these savings were made by downsizing other
energetically-expensive organs, principally the gut. Apparently, though, this
was insufficient and further savings were required in the form of a decrease in
the energy expenditure of skeletal muscle.
References:
x
1. Bozek, K. et al.,
Exceptional Evolutionary Divergence of Human Muscle and Brain Metabolomes
Parallels Human Cognitive and Physical Uniqueness. PLoS One Biology12
(5), e1001871 (2014).
2. Aiello, L. & Wheeler, P.,
The expensive tissue hypothesis: the brain and the digestive system in human
and primate evolution. Current Anthropology36, 199-221 (1995).
The Venus of Willendorf is a small 11.1 cm (4 3/8 in) high figurine carved from oolitic limestone and tinted with red ochre.
The 25,000-year-old figurine dates to the Gravettian period and is one of the most iconic artefacts of the European Upper Palaeolithic. It was discovered in 1908 by archaeologist Josef Szombathy near the village of Willendorf in Austria, and since then it has resided in the Naturhistorisches Museum, Vienna. It is currently on display in the Mineralogy galleries, having been relocated there while the Prehistory galleries undergo refurbishment. I took the photographs of the front, side and rear views when I visited the museum during a recent trip to Vienna. From a personal point of view, the enigmatic figurine did much to spark my interest in prehistory, so I was very keen to see it in person for the first time.
With its large breasts, full figure and exaggerated sexual characteristics, the contrast between the Venus of Willendorf and the classical portrayal of the Roman goddess could not be greater. Yet there is nothing crude or primitive about its execution; it is immediately obvious that the figurine is as finely-worked as anything from classical times.
The face is concealed behind rows of plaited hair, which comprise seven concentric bands surrounding the head, with two more semi-circular bands below at the back of the neck. Another interpretation is that the figurine is wearing a woven fibre hat.
Female figurines with similar attributes are known dating to throughout the European Upper Palaeolithic, though most are from the Gravettian period. Despite its obvious inaccuracy, the term ‘Venus figurines’ has been used to describe them since the first examples were found in the nineteenth century. They are often interpreted as fertility figures or mother goddesses, although their real function remains unknown.
Teenaged girl ‘Naia’ shared craniofacial features with earliest-known Americans, but genetic profile is common among today’s Native Americans
The first people to reach the New World arrived around 15,000 years ago, having migrated across the Beringia land bridge that then linked Siberia to Alaska. The Paleoindians, as they are known, possessed craniofacial features that differ markedly to those of present-day Native Americans. Their skulls were long and narrow, the face narrow and the forehead prominent. By contrast, present-day Native Americans are broad-faced, with rounder skulls. A facial reconstruction of Kennewick Man – an 8,400 year old skull found in the Columbia River, Kennewick, WA – is said to bear startling a resemblance to the actor Sir Patrick Steward.
It has therefore been suggested that there were two migrations to the New World, with the Paleoindians arriving first and later being replaced by the ancestors of the present-day Native Americans. However, others argue that the differences arose in situ, possibly as a result of changes in diet when the Paleoindians adopted agriculture during the period between 8,000 and 2,000 years ago. Another possibility is that the changes are simply the result of genetic drift.
The ‘two migrations’ theory has received a significant setback with the recovery of a near-complete human skeleton of a female aged 15 to 16 years from Hoyo Negro, a submerged collapsed chamber in the Sac Actun cave system in the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico. The skeleton has been nicknamed ‘Naia’ (Greek for ‘water nymph’), and it has been dated to between 12,000 and 13,000 years old.
Naia’s craniofacial features are typical of the Paleoindian morphology, but mitochondrial DNA extracted from a molar teeth has been identified as belonging to the haplogroup D1, which occurs only among present-day Native Americans. This is consistent with the view that there was continuity between Paleoindians and present-day Native Americans.
Researchers now intend to sequence Naia’s nuclear DNA, which they hope will shed further light on the origins of the first Americans.
References:
1. Chatters, J. et al., Late Pleistocene Human Skeleton and mtDNA Link Paleoamericans and Modern Native Americans. Science344, 750-754 (2014).
Greater interdependency found in rice-growing regions
People living in the rice-growing regions of southern China are more interdependent, loyal, and nepotistic, and less likely to divorce than their counterparts in the wheat-growing regions north of the Yangtze, according to a study published in the journal Science.
Han Chinese students from various regions in the country underwent a series of tests, including the ‘triad task’, which shows subjects lists of three items, such as train, bus, and tracks. They then decide which two items should be paired together. Two of the items (trains and buses) can be paired because they belong to the same category (trains and buses are forms of transport), and two (trains and tracks) because they share a functional relationship (trains run on tracks). Participants from rice-growing regions were more likely to pair the train and the track, whereas those from wheat-growing regions tended to pair the train and the bus.
The so-called ‘rice theory’ is an extension of subsistence style theory, which argues that some forms of subsistence (such as farming) require more functional interdependence than other forms (such as herding). Over time, societies that have to cooperate intensely become more interdependent, whereas societies that do not have to depend on each other as much become more individualistic. Previous studies have tended to focus on farming versus herding rather than differences between types of farming.
The two major differences between farming rice and wheat are irrigation and labour. Rice paddies require the construction and maintenance of elaborate irrigation systems, in turn requiring cooperation between farmers – often at village level. Farmers also need to coordinate their use of water so as not to adversely affect the supplies of their neighbours. Overall, growing paddy rice is at least twice as labour intensive as wheat farming.
The rice theory predicts that a Unus pro omnibus, omnes pro uno mentality will apply to anybody living in a region where rice has been farmed for thousands of years, not just those directly involved with its production. This prediction was borne out by the study, as few if any of the participants had actually farmed rice or wheat for a living.
My feelings are that while this is an interesting study, one should always be cautious about cultural determinism.
References:
1.Talhelm, T. et al., Large-Scale Psychological Differences Within China Explained by Rice Versus Wheat Agriculture. Science 344, 603-608 (2014).
Eastward dispersal from Southwest Asia was slower than that unto Europe
A new study, published in the open-access journal PLoS One, has considered the eastwards spread of agriculture from Southwest Asia. This has been less well studied than the westwards expansion into Anatolia and Europe.
Researchers conducted a statistical analysis of radiocarbon dates for 160 Neolithic sites in western and southern Asia. The locations of these sites suggest that the dispersal of farmers eastwards from the Zagros followed two routes: a northern route via northern Iran, southern Central Asia and Afghanistan, and a southern route via Fars through the interior of southern Iran.
Analysis of the radiocarbon dates indicated an eastwards expansion at an average speed of 0.65 km per year, rather slower than the 1 km per year documented for Europe. The authors of report considered this to be unsurprising. Firstly, the arid climate and complicated topography of the region are less favourable for agriculture. Because of this, the early Neolithic settlements in Iran were relatively small and widely separated. Secondly, the European expansion was aided by the Danube, the Rhine and the Mediterranean coastline, but there are no major rivers in Afghanistan or Iran that could play a similar role.
The authors were encouraged that the fairly simple ‘wave of advance’ model used captured the salient features of the data studied, but stressed the need for a more detailed analysis that would consider local environments and climatic conditions.
References:
1.Gangal, K., Sarson, G. & Shukurov, A., The Near-Eastern Roots of the Neolithic in South Asia. PLoS One19 (5), e95714 (2014).
Of all early humans, none have captured the public imagination to anywhere near the extent of the Neanderthals. Indeed, with the possible exception of the dinosaurs, no extinct species is so deeply rooted in our popular culture. The idea that tens of thousands of years ago, people very much like ourselves shared the planet with another human species is one that intrigues many, although the term ‘Neanderthal’ is all too often used in a pejorative sense, and there is a widespread perception of the Neanderthals as dimwits.
In this engaging and accessible book, which is nevertheless as rigorous as any textbook, anthropologist Thomas Wynn and psychologist Frederick Coolidge paint a very different picture of the Neanderthals and their way of life. Drawing on archaeological and fossil evidence, they go beyond reconstructing the Neanderthal world and attempt to deduce their underlying thought processes.
In the first chapter, we are given an introduction to the world of the Neanderthals. From the start, Wynn and Coolidge refer to the Neanderthals as ‘people’, which is entirely correct as they were every bit as human as we are. The name comes from Neander Tal (‘Neander Valley’) near Dusseldorf, where Neanderthal remains were first identified in the 1850s (it was originally spelled ‘Neander Thal’, hence the more commonly-used spelling, but it has always been pronounced ‘tal’ and not ‘thal’). We learn that the Neanderthals were short, stocky, powerfully-built folk, with chinless, protruding faces, pronounced browridges over their eyes, and long, broad noses. The braincase was long and low, rather than the globular shape of modern people. Many features of their distinctive anatomy were adaptations to the harsh conditions of Ice Age Europe, but in comparison to very early humans it turns out that modern people are actually far more distinctive than Neanderthals.
An important difference is the shape of the braincase, which reflects the actual shape of the brain itself. Neanderthal brains were differently shaped to ours, and about ten percent larger. Does this mean that they were ten percent smarter than us? Wynn and Coolidge believe that they were neither more nor less intelligent than us – just different. This conclusion provides a focus for the rest of the book.
Neanderthals lived hard and died hard. Shanidar 1 lived in Iraq about 50,000 years ago, and was in his late 30s when he was killed by a rock fall. But long before his death he had suffered a number of major injuries, any one of which could have killed him. He owed his survival to caring companions, who nursed him back to health – and a dogged ability to cope with pain and life-changing injuries. Nor was Shanidar 1 particularly unusual: the pattern of healed injuries suffered by Neanderthals is very similar to those suffered by rodeo riders, suggesting that were regularly pitted against large, dangerous animals.
Each subsequent chapter focusses on a different aspect of Neanderthal life, and uses the evidence to build on this initial picture of them as tough but compassionate folk. Topics include hunting, spear making, family life, burial traditions and language. Wynn and Coolidge even examine Neanderthal humour before characterising them as pragmatic, stoical, risk-taking, empathic (in that they cared for their sick and injured), hard-hearted (in that they were prepared to leave the sick and injured behind if they needed to move camp), conservative (from the point of their extremely static technology, not their voting intentions), and xenophobic (in that they rarely met strangers and distrusted them when they did).
The final chapter plays a game of ‘Trading Places’ and speculates how a Neanderthal might fare in our modern world, and how a modern human in theirs. Wynn and Coolidge suggest that Neanderthals would do well in our world, and would excel as doctors, mechanics or soldiers. On the other hand, they suggest that a modern human would struggle to make a go of Neanderthal living.
The demise of the Neanderthals is covered fairly briefly. The arrival of modern humans in Ice Age Europe is viewed from the Neanderthal perspective. It is surmised that the end came when the climate began to deteriorate 30,000 years ago. This had happened before, and the Neanderthals had able to cope – but now they had competition. The modern humans were more adaptable and inventive when it came to finding new sources of food and developing new hunting methods. The Neanderthals retreated south to the Iberian Peninsula, where they held out for a while, but in the end they died out.
Wynn and Coolidge suggest that the Neanderthals may survive as dim cultural memories. Possibly some European folk traditions have their origins in ancient encounters with Neanderthals. More plausibly, they also suggest that our enduring fascination with the Neanderthals is that they were humans who led very different lives to ourselves, yet were still somehow like us. The Neanderthals live on as “inexact mirrors of ourselves”, Wynn and Coolidge conclude.
Seventy-three thousand years ago, an elderly man sat in the mouth of a limestone cave, intently working on a small rectangular piece of reddish-brown ochre. From time to time, he paused in his work and stared out towards the sea that lay a kilometre away. First he scraped and ground the piece flat on two sides and then, with the aid of a sharp stone tool, he engraved a cross-hatched geometrical design upon one of the newly-ground facets. It was the second such piece he had made, but there would be no others because a few weeks later he fell ill with a respiratory disease. A younger man would probably have recovered, but at 48 he was old and worn out. Within a few days, he was dead.
When his companions eventually decided it was time to move on from the cave that had been their home for the last six months, they took most of their few possessions with them. But the old man’s ochres were forgotten and left behind. Within a few months, the ochres and all other traces of the brief occupation were buried beneath wind-blown sand, and they would not see the light of day again for very long time indeed….
In actuality, we have no idea who engraved the two pieces of ochre found at Blombos Cave in 2002, and although it is likely that they were both the work of the same individual we cannot be certain. The cave is located on the southern coast of South Africa in a limestone cliff 35 m (115 ft.) above sea level, 100 m (330 ft.) from the coast, though when occupied the coastline was further away. Discovered by archaeologist Christopher Henshilwood, it is one of the most extensively researched sites from the African Middle Stone Age.
Henshilwood has been familiar with the site since his childhood, since it is located on land owned by his grandfather. As a boy, he found a number of artefacts, dating from comparatively recent prehistoric times. In 1991, he returned there as a PhD student, hoping to discover similar artefacts. Instead, he found a number of bone tools and stone points that dated from a far earlier period, over 70,000 years ago.
After completing his PhD at the University of Cambridge, Henshilwood obtained funding to commence excavations at Blombos Cave, and he continues to lead work at the site to this day. Three Middle Stone Age phases of occupation have been identified. These are known as M1 (73,000 years ago), M2 (subdivided between an upper phase 77,000 years ago and a lower phase 80,000 years ago) and M3 (125,000 years ago). Each phase contains a number of occupation layers, but they are quite shallow indicating that the cave was only occupied sporadically and for relatively short periods of time.
However, while the cave was in use its occupants enjoyed a varied diet of large fish, shellfish, seals, dolphins and land mammals. Mole rats were often roasted over a fire and eaten; these large burrowing rodents are considered a delicacy by local farm workers to this day. The later occupations of the cave are associated with the Stillbay tool industry, which has first identified in the 1920s and named for the village of Still Bay, which lies a short distance from Blombos Cave.
The Stillbay was one of the cutting-edge industries of the African Middle Stone Age, and was noted for its finely-worked leaf-shaped stone points, which were made from high-quality materials including chert, quartzite and silcrete. The Stillbay people also made and used bone awls and projectile points, similar to those seen in ethnographic collections. Such implements are far more difficult to manufacture than stone tools. Other examples of Stillbay high tech included compound adhesives for hafting stone points to spears, and the use of heat treatment and pressure flaking for finishing stone artefacts. The Stillbay industry was widespread, and not confined to the region around Blombos Cave and Still Bay. Curiously, however, it was short-lived and persisted for less than a thousand years, before being replaced by seemingly less advanced industries of the type more typical of the African Middle Stone Age.
Perhaps the most important discovery at Blombos Cave has been the engraved ochres. Ochres are a range of minerals containing iron oxide that exist in a range of colours including red, yellow, brown and purple. They have long been used as pigments and their first known use was at least 266,000 years ago at Twin Rivers, a complex of caves in southern Zambia – before the appearance of modern humans. It is possible that the Twin Rivers ochre was used for utilitarian purposes, such as for making adhesives, for medicinal purposes, hide processing, or even as Stone Age sunblock. However, the consistent selection of brightly-coloured and often hard to grind materials suggests an ornamental explanation such as for body painting. In South Africa, red ochre appears in the archaeological record from at least 160,000 years ago, and invariably material with the reddest hues seems to have been preferred – again suggesting a non-utilitarian purpose.
Several thousand pieces of ochre have been found at Blombos Cave, and in 2002, Henshilwood reported the two pieces of engraved ochre from the 73,000 year old M1 phase, which were catalogued as AA 8937 and AA 8938. Both had been engraved with cross-hatched patterns, using a sharp stone tool to make wide grooves upon surfaces previously prepared by grinding. On AA 8938, in addition to cross-hatching, the pattern is bounded top and bottom by parallel lines, with a third parallel line running through the middle. The fact that the two pieces are so similar suggests a deliberate intent, rather somebody absent-mindedly scratching away at the pieces with a sharp object. Somebody who knew just what they were doing must have sat down and engraved the two pieces. Other engraved ochres were later identified, although they were less spectacular than AA 8937 and AA 8938. They came from all three phases of the site, and some were over 100,000 years old.
The Blombos Cave ochres are central to the debate about the emergence of modern human behaviour, which anthropologists define as the ability of humans to use symbols to organise their thoughts and actions. Symbols are anything that refers to an object or an idea, and can take the form of sounds, images or objects. They may refer directly to an object or idea, for example a representational image; or they may be totally abstract, such as spoken or written words. Thus for example a drawing of a cat, the sound ‘cat’ or the written letters ‘c-a-t’ may all be used to refer to a cat. We use symbols all the time – whenever we read a newspaper, check the time, consult a map or admire a painting or sculpture. All of these activities involve symbolic behaviour: human society could not function without it. Modern syntactical language is a system of communication that uses symbols in the form of spoken and (in the last six thousand years) written words to enable an effectively infinite range of meanings to be conveyed.
The earliest human species such as Homo habilis and Homo erectus are thought to have had only a very limited ability to use symbols, but it is hotly debated when the fully symbolic behaviour of present-day people emerged. Was it shared with some archaic humans – in particular the Neanderthals – or was it limited to Homo sapiens, emerging at the same time as anatomical modernity around 200,000 years ago? Some go further and argue that even Homo sapiens lacked behavioural modernity until about 40,000 to 50,000 years ago. Proponents of this view believe that a behavioural ‘Great Leap Forward’ occurred at this time as a result of a favourable genetic mutation that rewired the brain and enabled syntactical language and other trappings of behavioural modernity to develop.
They base this view around the observation that artefacts that are unequivocally the products of modern thought processes – cave paintings, figurines and carvings – do not appear in the archaeological record until that time. But Henshilwood argues that the engraved geometrical patterns on the ochres imply the existence of modern syntactical language, and that modern human behaviour must therefore have emerged much earlier.
Henshilwood dismisses other possible explanations for the marks on the ochres. For example, he claims that they could not the by-product of testing for the quality of powder that could be obtained from the ochres, as only a few lines would be required for this purpose. He also believes that the marks are unlikely to have been the result of absent-minded doodling because great care was taken in completing the patterns and ensuring the incisions matched up. Furthermore, engraving lines on hard pieces of ochre requires full concentration in order to apply the right pressure and keep the depth of incision constant. He believes that not only were the marks on the ochres made with deliberate intent, but recurring motifs on ochres found in all three of the Middle Stone Age phases are evidence of a tradition of engraved geometric patterns that began more than 100,000 years ago and persisted for tens of millennia.
The most obvious question is what was the significance of the geometric patterns? Henshilwood notes that the Christian cross would appear equally abstract to somebody unfamiliar with religious iconography. It is possible that the patterns meant something quite specific to the people who made them, though just what we simply don’t know and probably never will know.
Another question is if humans were able to produce abstract art over 100,000 years ago, why was figurative art not seen until so much later? One possibility is that humans were still not behaviourally fully modern and were not at this stage able to make figurative images, though Henshilwood rejects this possibility. He notes that there are many cultures that do not make figurative art, and many others that do so using perishable materials that would not survive for tens of thousands of years.
Henshilwood believes the fact that the ochre engravings were intentionally created and depict distinctive geometrical patterns is enough to demonstrate that they are the product of a society of behaviourally-modern humans. Given the evidence for technological sophistication during the Stillbay period, we should not find this unduly surprising.
A paper by Paola Villa and Wil Roebroeks ( 1) in the open access journal PLOS ONE has reviewed archaeological evidence for the view that the ‘inferiority’ of Neanderthals to modern humans was responsible for their demise. See this post for a quick summary.
Villa and Roebroeks are critical of view that comparisons between the archaeological records of the African Middle Stone Age and European Middle Palaeolithic can be used to demonstrate that Neanderthals were ‘inferior’ to modern humans in terms of a wide range of cognitive and technological abilities, and have made a very good case.
However, they seem to be dismissive of the impact of what they describe as ‘subtle biological differences’ between Neanderthals and modern humans, which they state ‘tend to be overinterpreted’. They cite Pearce, Stringer and Dunbar (2013) as an example.
Pearce, Stringer and Dunbar used eye socket size as a proxy for the size of the eye itself and showed that Neanderthals had larger eyes than modern humans. This is not an unexpected result; living at high latitudes, Neanderthals experienced lower light levels than people living in the tropics, and larger eyes might have been an evolutionary response. The consequence is that in comparison to a modern human brain, a greater proportion of the Neanderthal brain might have needed to be dedicated to the visual cortex, with the trade-off that less was available for other cognitive functions. Pearce, Stringer and Dunbar suggested that Neanderthals were less able than modern humans to maintain the complex social networks required to manage long-distance trade networks effectively, and learn about the existence of distant foraging areas unaffected by local shortages. Furthermore, their ability to develop and pass on innovations might have been limited in comparison to modern humans ( 2).
On a less subtle level, it is only to be expected that the neural organisation of the Neanderthal brain would have differed from that of modern humans. The globular brain case of Homo sapiens differs from the long, low braincase that characterised archaic human species, including Neanderthals, and the change reflects a change in the actual proportions of the brain. In comparison to archaic humans, the parietal lobes of modern humans are expanded, and these are associated with the processing of speech-related sounds ( 3, 4). It is possible that their development played a role in the development of syntactic language in Homo sapiens and that Neanderthals used different and partially non-verbal forms of communication ( 5).
While Villa and Roebroeks have demonstrated the risks of over-reliance on archaeological evidence, the biological differences between Neanderthals and modern humans are real. These differences must be included within a holistic approach to understanding the cognitive abilities of the Neanderthals, who as we now know are far from extinct in that they live on in the genome of modern populations.
References:
1.Villa, P. & Roebroeks, W., Neandertal Demise: An Archaeological Analysis of the Modern Human Superiority Complex. PLoS One9 (4), e96424 (2014).
2.Pearce, E., Stringer, C. & Dunbar, R., New insights into differences in brain organization between Neanderthals and anatomically modern humans. Proceedings of the Royal Society B280 (1758) (2013).
3.Wynn, T. & Coolidge, F., in Rethinking the human revolution, edited by Mellars, P., Boyle, K., Bar-Yosef, O. & Stringer, C. (McDonald Institute, Cambridge, 2007), pp. 79-90.
4.Coolidge, F. & Wynn, T., The Rise of Homo sapiens (Wiley-Blackwell, Hoboken, NJ, 2009).
5.Mithen, S., The Singing Neanderthal (Weidenfeld & Nicholson, London, 2005).
Humans:
from the beginning is a single-volume guide to the whole of the human past,
from the first apes to the first cities (for more information, go to www.humansfromthebeginning.com).
It took me nearly five years to research and write, and my intention was to
release it initially as an eBook on the Amazon Kindle platform (I may
eventually also release it as a print-on-demand paperback but currently have no
plans to do so). To produce an eBook from my source files was certainly not
going to be a trivial task – the work as a whole ran to around 250,000 words in
32 chapters, together with an introduction and a number of maps, infographics
and plates and illustrations. In addition, each chapter was comprehensively
referenced. Although not a textbook as such, Humans: from the beginning draws extensively on journal articles
and other academic literature, and each source used was properly cited using
Harvard-Anglia referencing.
In this post, I will document the steps I took to turn my
source files into an eBook meeting the same standards of production values and
professionalism as an academic book produced by one of the major publishing
houses. Please note that the work is a case study rather than a comprehensive
guide. Obviously no two books are alike, and not all the material here will
necessarily be relevant to your needs. Conversely, you may find that some of
your needs and questions are not directly addressed. If so, however, there
should be enough material here to point you in the right direction. Please also
note that a basic knowledge of HTML and CSS is assumed.
Becoming a micropublisher
The basic questions I needed to address were:
1. How to ensure that my self-published eBook was as
professional in its production values as any produced by a major publishing
house;
2. Mastering the basics of producing an eBook for the Kindle
platform;
3. How best to use the eBook format to provide ease of access to
the roughly 1,500 academic sources my book cited;
4. How else I could take advantage of the eBook format by
offering features not available in a traditional book;
The importance the first of the above cannot be overstated. We
live in a world in which self-publishing has finally come of age, liberating
authors from the often frustrating task of trying to persuade publishers and/or
literary agents to take them on. However, they now face a fresh set of problems
in that they now have sole responsibility for tasks that could once be left to
their publishers. The author is now in effect a micropublisher, and if they do
not achieve the same standards of professionalism as a larger-scale publisher
their work – however good – will be unlikely to be taken seriously.
The first and most obvious requirement for a book is a good book
cover. This should not be daunting; my book featured a stone hand-axe
superimposed on a horizon over which dawn is breaking. The breaking dawn
represents the long, slow rise of our modern world; the hand-axe is a stone
tool of a type that remained in use more or less unchanged for one and a half
million years. In many cases, things need not even be that complicated. For
this work I selected a simple textured background, available from the Amazon
Cover Creator.
The next step was to obtain an ISBN Number for my book. Although
this is not obligatory for an Amazon Kindle book, I felt it would be advisable.
Large-scale publishing houses do not release books without ISBN numbers, as a
micro-publisher I wanted to do the same. In the UK, ISBN numbers are the
responsibility of the Nielsen ISBN Agency (please note that their site is a bit
temperamental with some browsers). The minimum purchase is a block of ten
numbers for a price of £132.00 inclusive of VAT. This might sound like
overkill, but bear in mind that if do intend to release your book as a
paperback as well as an eBook, you will require an ISBN number for each format.
Academic non-fiction is frequently re-issued as new editions, each of which
will also require a fresh ISBN number.
You also need to give a name to your publishing house. Note that
this is a purely a label and not a limited company: you do not have to register
anything with Companies House. However, you do need to choose a name that does
not conflict with that of any other publishing house. It is also advisable to
steer clear of names suggesting an association with well-known organisations or
individuals. “Beckham Books” might sound catchy, but unless you happen to share
your surname with the former England footballer it is probably best avoided. A
Google search should confirm whether your chosen name is likely to be
acceptable, but Nielsen has the final say.
I also registered web domain names for my book title and for the
name of my publishing house. I set up a promotional website for the book: this
is a fairly straightforward non-self-hosted WordPress blog; the web domains www.humansfromthebeginning.com and www.humansfromthebeginning.co.uk
both redirect to it. The site itself features a brief biography of the author
(i.e. myself), a preview extract and links to where the book may be purchased
on www.amazon.co.uk
and www.amazon.com
(it’s worth noting that although I’m a UK-based publisher, the bulk of my sales
have been in the United States).
Intellectual Property
Fail to respect the intellectual property of others and
solicitor’s letters could start landing on your doorstep.
As noted above, my work was fully referenced in accordance with
standard academic practice. I was also sparing in my use of exact quotes,
preferring where possible to paraphrase. Exceptions were made when the quote
was obviously intended by its author to be humorous; there I was careful to
fully-attribute the quote in writing in addition to providing a citation.
Although I did not do so in my book, be aware that quoting lines from songs or
printed matter that are not out of copyright will require permission from the
copyright holder.
My book included a number of photographic images and here I was
careful to either i) obtain the permission of the copyright holder, or ii) ensure
that it was available for use under Creative Commons. In the first instance, I
actually used only one image which was licensed for use at a very reasonable
fee. In all cases, I provided full attribution, identifying sources and
copyright holders, with details of the relevant Creative Commons licences where
applicable. A caveat is that you can come across items that should not have
been listed under Creative Commons, for example photographs that have been
taken in museums and other places where photography is not permitted or is for
personal use only (the same applies, of course, to any photographs you might
take yourself).
eBook Basics
Pretty well any of the remarks above could be applied to
traditional books as well as eBooks, but before going any further into the
details of how I converted the finished manuscript of Humans: from the beginning into an eBook, here is a very brief
introduction to eBooks and how they differ from printed books. An eBook is a
book-length electronic document comprising text and images that is readable on
a computer, mobile device or dedicated e-reader (such as the Amazon Kindle). Many
eBooks are electronic versions of printed books, but many (including mine) do
not have a printed counterpart. Though many would argue that eBooks lack the
charm of printed books, they do have a number of advantages. The most obvious
is that large numbers of eBooks can be stored on a device no larger than a
single printed book.
Other important advantages are:
1. An eBook does not require an index, as all text is
searchable. To somebody like myself, who constantly needs to look up items in
reference books, printed indices are a constant source of frustration as time
and time again what I am looking for is either not in the index at all, or a
listed page (often the only one) contains absolutely no reference to the
required subject matter (the printed book equivalent of the dreaded 404 Not
Found message). Furthermore, you can only look up subjects. If you want to look
up a phrase you happen to remember as part of the text you want to find, there
is no way to do so.
2. Navigation within an eBook is quick and easy. Instead of
referring to the Contents for the page number of the desired chapter and then
turning to that page, you can be taken there at a single click. While this
might not seem like a big deal in itself, in a non-fiction eBook the same
approach can be used to provide easy access to references, glossary items and
visual matter.
3. The reader of an eBook is not stuck with the publisher’s
choice of font and can select from a number of fonts. Text size, page colour,
margin size and line spacing are also reader-selectable. It is actually
possible for the publisher to mandate the choice of font in an eBook, but Amazon
discourages the practice and I did not do so.
4. An important difference between a printed book and an eBook
is that in the latter, the concept of the page number is completely
meaningless. The amount of text displayed at any one time on an e-reader will
depend on a) the physical size of the device and b) the choice of font size
selected by the user.
There are two major eBook formats, the open EPUB standard and
Amazon’s in-house MOBI/KF8. The Kindle e-reader, as one might expect, uses the
latter format. Despite this, we need not concern ourselves greatly with
MOBI/KF8, because Amazon provides a tool known as KindleGen that will convert
an EPUB file to a MOBI/KF8 file. The output file, which has a file extension of
.mobi, is Kindle-compatible. KindleGen can also accept files in HTML or XHTML,
and Amazon recommends its use for publishers wishing to create Kindle books
in-house.
Two quick and dirty practical exercises
As a preliminary exercise, I needed to familiarise myself with
the basics of producing an eBook and getting it on to a Kindle. As a starting
point, I downloaded the Amazon Kindle Publishing Guidelines, which are
available as a .pdf file. Google ‘Amazon Kindle Publishing Guidelines’ to
obtain the latest version of this document. I then downloaded and installed the
KindleGen tool provided by Amazon (the procedure is explained in the publishing
guidelines) and I also downloaded and installed Notepad++, a freeware
file-editing tool with some very powerful features including the ability to run
Regular Expression (RegExp) scripts. Throughout the conversion exercise I was using
MS Word on a PC running under Windows 7.
The following is a quick and dirty practical exercise to put a
mini-eBook onto a Kindle e-reader. Note that from now on I will use the term ‘Kindle
e-reader’ to mean any device capable of reading a Kindle eBook. These include
not just dedicated devices such as the Kindle Paperwhite and the Kindle Fire
(the latter basically a customised Android tablet) but also iPhones, iPads,
Android devices or laptops running the appropriate Kindle app or software.
For this exercise, you will require such an e-reader, together
with an Amazon account. Your Kindle e-reader will have an email address in the
format {my Kindle email address}@kindle.com. This will be the address you set
up when you registered the device and you can remind yourself by going to the
Amazon website and selecting Your Account -> Manage Your Kindle -> Manage
Your Devices.
To convert a document and load it onto your kindle, you will
need to use a slightly different email address: {my Kindle email
address}@free.kindle.com. Simply email any small document (MS Word, .rtf or
.html) to this address, putting ‘Convert’ in the subject. Conversion usually
takes no more than a few minutes. You then will receive an email advising you
that the conversion has been completed.
Go to Your Account -> Manage Your Kindle. In ‘Your Kindle
Library’ you will see your newly-converted document at the top of a list of
your Kindle documents. Assuming your Kindle e-reader is connected to the
internet, your document should appear as downloadable to it (exactly how it is
displayed depends on your device as the implementation varies from platform to
platform). I found this exercise to be a useful introduction, but as I shall
explain shortly, it is not suitable for producing a full-sized eBook. There is
really only one way to accomplish this, and it is to use the KindleGen tool
provided by Amazon. Here is a second quick and dirty practical exercise, this
time using KindleGen for converting an HTML file.
Set up a directory on your PC and create a command line .bat
file with the following command:
Running the command line file will generate the files
{myfile}.mobi and errors.txt. The latter will contain one or two warning
messages, because we are not at this stage converting a genuine eBook. However,
the {myfile}.mobi can be read on a Kindle or Kindle-enabled device. Send the
file to the {my Kindle email address}@free.kindle.com email address, and
download it to your device as before. This might seem very simple, but now try exporting your lengthy
manuscript from your word processor to HTML, converting it with KindleGen and
trying to read the resulting .mobi file on your device. If your Word document
contained a Table of Contents, this will appear as a series of hypertext links
to the chapters of your book. The links will work – but they will be very slow.
If you have kept each chapter of your book as a separate document (as I did)
and haven’t at any stage combined them into a single massive manuscript (as I
did periodically for test purposes and to circulate to interested parties) then
there is no need to try this: just take my work for it).
Here’s why – eBook files are basically HTML files contained in a
wrapper. Your eBook may be thought of as a website, and hypertext links work
exactly the same way as they do on a website. Now imagine a website that held
all its content on a single, massive page. Any hypertext linking within it
would run pretty slowly. Of course, websites consist of many pages, with
hypertext links typically taking you from one page to another. That is exactly
how your eBook needs to be structured if your readers are to enjoy what Amazon
term a ‘good reading experience’.
Preparing your manuscript for conversion to an eBook
As noted above, I kept each chapter of Humans: from the beginning as a separate MS Word document. The ‘manuscript’
to be converted into an eBook comprised MS Word documents for the 32 chapters,
an introduction and a glossary, together with a title page, copyright notice, acknowledgements
and attributions. The chapters and introduction (though not the glossary) were
referenced using the MS Word citations tool. In addition there were maps,
infographics and plates and illustrations. These I decided to keep separate
from the main text on the grounds that a reader would find it easier to access
them from a central index than would be the case if they were embedded in
individual chapters. My task was to transform this into an EPUB document that
could in turn be converted to the Kindle-compatible KF8 format with Amazon’s
KindleGen tool.
The first step was to convert each Word document into an HTML
file. MS Word provides a ‘filtered HTML’ export option from .doc and .docx
files, but unfortunately this still produces a considerable amount of junk. Indeed,
many books recommend simply copying the contents of each Word document into a
flat text file. I feel that this is throwing out the baby with the bathwater,
as you will lose all of your formatting in the process.
I created a series of styles to cover all aspects of formatting
in each chapter – one each for chapter heading, section headings within each
chapter, and body styles. I used the styles to handle indentation and before
and/or after line spacing. I entirely eliminated the use of tabs, spaces and
carriage returns to accomplish this. The result is that when exported to HTML,
the body text of each document will comprise a series of series of paragraphs
that lend themselves to formatting with cascading style sheets. In an eBook, as
in a website, formatting is carried out using classes contained in a .css file.
The next issue I faced was references, of which my book
contained large quantities. In an eBook, the reader should be able to look up a
reference by simply clicking a hypertext link. They can then return by either
1) clicking a link on the reference that takes them back, or 2) using the ‘back’
function on their e-reader. The first method requires additional HTML coding
and has the problem that it will always return the reader to the same point regardless
of how many times the particular reference is cited in the text. As I was
constantly citing multiple instances of references, I decided that the first method,
though easier to implement, was actually the most suitable in my case.
While I was working on my book, I used Harvard-Anglia
referencing (author(s), year; e.g. Smith, 2012) to save having to constantly
look up what was being cited. However, the presence of large numbers of
references cited in this style can interfere with the reading experience, so
for the purposes of publication I switched to Nature referencing (as used in the science journal Nature), where the reference is assigned
a number that refers to its entry in the bibliography. The references in my
book are broken down by chapter, meaning that each chapter has its own
bibliography. The methods I will describe apply to the referencing system I
have just described, but they could be adapted for other systems if desired.
I first applied a style to the references. This served two purposes:
firstly, the formatting could be again controlled through the cascading style
sheets, and secondly it facilitated the attachment of hypertext links. To
accomplish this, I created the following Word macro:
Sub ApplyCitationStyle()
Dim stylename As String
Dim exists As Boolean
Dim s As Style
Dim fld As Field
stylename = “In-Text Citation”
‘Check if the style already exists.
exists = False
For Each s In ActiveDocument.Styles
If s.NameLocal = stylename Then
exists = True
Exit For
End If
Next
‘If the style did not exist yet, create it.
If exists = False Then
Set s = ActiveDocument.Styles.Add(stylename,
wdStyleTypeCharacter)
The macro formats the references with a style called “In-Text
Citation”, which results in them being displayed as superscripts. It isn’t
actually necessary for it to do so, as you will have to implement
superscripting with your cascading style sheets. The important point is that
the references are now spanned by the style.
For each chapter document, I saved a copy and switched from
Harvard-Anglia to Nature referencing
before running the ApplyCitationStyle macro; I then inserted the bibliography
at the bottom of the document using the Word ‘Insert Bibliography’ feature. For
Nature referencing, this appears as a
table, but I converted it to straight text and formatted it using a Word style.
At the end of these steps, I had a series of ‘well behaved’ MS Word documents,
one per chapter plus one for the introduction. These were ready for export into
a series of HTML files, two per document, one to hold the text and the other
the bibliography of that document.
From Word to HTML
Before beginning the conversion process, I set up a directory
structure to hold my files. This would eventually form the backbone of my
eBook:
1. Within a directory called ‘Build’, I created two
subdirectories; ‘META-INF’ and ‘OEBPS’ (the subdirectory names are required by
the EPUB standard; the name ‘Build’ was my choice);
2. Within ‘OEBPS’, I created three subdirectories; ‘content’, ‘css’
and ‘images’;
‘css’ held the .css file (as one might expect);
3. ‘images’ was used to hold the image JPEG or GIF files
associated with my work; I created subdirectories within it for each category
of image: these were ‘maps’, ‘infographics’ and ‘pictures’, together with a
subdirectory named ‘cover’ to hold the book cover JPEG file;
4. Within ‘content’, I created the subdirectories ‘text’, ‘references’
and ‘toc’, together with one directory for each category of images (i.e. ‘maps’,
‘infographics’ and ‘pictures’);
5. The ‘text’ subdirectory held the files making up the main
body of the text, i.e. chapters, introduction, glossary, title page, copyright
notice, acknowledgements and attributions;
6. The ‘references’ subdirectory held my bibliography files;
7. The ‘toc’ subdirectory held table of contents files, as will
be discussed later;
8. The three image subdirectories held the container files which
display the image files (maps, infographics, and plates and illustrations) and
accompanying explanatory texts;
I was now ready to begin the export process and produce two HTML
files for each document: one for the document text and one for the
bibliography. For chapters, I used the naming convention ChxxN.htm and
ChxxR.htm, where xx is the chapter number with leading zero and the suffixes ‘N’
and ‘R’ identify the chapter text and bibliography files respectively (‘N’
simply referred to the Nature referencing
convention). Other main body text files I simply called by name, i.e.
Introduction.htm, Glossary.htm, etc. The only bibliography file not following
the ChxxR.htm convention was that pertaining to the Introduction; I called it
IntR.htm. These conventions were purely of my own choosing, but the code
described below is based on them. Using other naming conventions would require
the code to be modified accordingly.
I exported each of Word files to HTML by saving as ‘Web page,
filtered’ and opening the resulting file in Notepad++. Each still contained a
significant amount of junk, and I also needed to wrap double-quotes (“) around
the CSS class names, which was readily accomplished by Search and Replace. Note
that the .CSS classes don’t necessarily have to have the same names as the
corresponding Word styles and it was possible to rename them at the same time
as I added the double-quotes. For example, I renamed In-Text Citation to Citation.
Next, I copied and pasted the formatted paragraphs and the bibliography
from each HTML extract file to publishable HTML files set up using the
following general template, taking care to ensure that encoding was set to
UTF-8 for all files. Note that KindleGen will fail if this is not done.
[Bibliography copied from the export
file goes here]
Where:
1. {my CSS file name} is the name of the
.css file (HFTB.css in my case)
{my chapter name} is the title of the chapter;
2. CH{ chapter number} is a
four-character text string corresponding to the chapter number with leading
zero, e.g. ‘CH05REF’ (the reference section for the introduction is ‘INTREF’);
3. RefTOC.htm is a table of contents for
the bibliography, to be discussed below; the code provides a return hyperlink;
At this stage, I had two HTML files, ChxxN.htm (chapter text)
and ChxxR.htm (bibliography) for each chapter (xx = chapter number with leading
zero). Unfortunately, as noted above, the files still contained random junk,
which I had to identify and remove by manual editing.
Commonly-occurring junk includes:
1. Unwanted spaces and other blank characters preceding and
within HTML tags, and following after HTML close tags;
2. Unwanted tags, leading to non-well-formed HTML;
3. Unwanted Style attributes.
I now needed to establish hyperlinks from the citations in chapter
text files to the corresponding references in the bibliography files. To this
end, I used Regular Expression (RegExp) search and replace terms in Notepad++.
For each set of chapter text and bibliography files, I proceeded
as follows:
1.Open the bibliography file in Notepad++;
2.Go to Search/Replace and select Regular
Expression mode;
where xx =
chapter number, with leading zero (e.g. CH05);
10.Click
Replace All;
11.Enter
the search string Citation”>(\d+),;
12.Enter
the replace string Citation”>$1,
where xx = chapter number, with leading zero (e.g. CH05);
13.Click
Replace All;
14.Enter
the search string (\d+)
,(\d+)\;
15.Enter
the replace string $1
,$2
where xx = chapter number, with leading zero (e.g. CH05);
16.Click
Replace All repeatedly until you receive the message “Replace: All 0 occurrence
was replaced” [sic];
17.Save
the file;
With the above set of processes completed for each of my MS Word
chapter files, I had completed the process of exporting main manuscript to
HTML.
Logical and Physical TOCs
A Kindle eBook has two tables of contents (TOC): a logical TOC
and a physical (or HTML) TOC. The logical TOC allows readers to navigate
between chapters when using a Kindle e-reader. The exact implementation depends
on the device used, but in general the reader will be presented with a list of
the book’s contents and will be able to navigate to the chapter of their
choice. The physical TOC, on the other hand, will be encountered when the
reader pages through the book from the beginning. Just where it occurs is up to
the publisher, but I located it after ‘Acknowledgements’ and before ‘Introduction’
near the start of the book. It serves the same purpose as the logical TOC,
allowing the reader to navigate to the chapter of their choice. Unlike the
logical TOC, it cannot be summoned on demand, other than via the logical TOC
itself.
In the EPUB 3.0 standard, the logical and physical TOCS can be
accommodated in the same HTML file. Previous implementations required the
logical TOC to be placed in a separate .nav file, in which the order of
appearance for each item has to be coded explicitly. This means a simple
re-ordering of the content requires recoding every single entry, which is
tedious to say the least. For this reason, I adopted the EPUB 3.0 standard
although EPUB 2.0 was suitable in every other respect.
In my implementation, both TOCs were accommodated in a file
named TOC.htm, which resides in the content/toc subdirectory. In principle,
both TOCs should also be able to share the same code but in practice this was
found to cause problems with some implementations.
In theory there is no reason why the
ordered list could not serve as the physical as well as logical TOC. It should
be possible to suppress the (unwanted) automatic numbering that appears on an
ordered list; however on some Kindle e-reader implementations this does not
work, and the automatic numbering still appears.
Other TOCs
The logical and physical TOCs described above are mandated (or
at least highly recommended by Amazon) and for my eBook, provide navigational
access to all the items in the content/text directory. The EPUB standard
provides for the nesting of TOCs so that, for example, an entry marked
‘References’ could be expanded into the bibliography list by chapter. Unfortunately,
the Kindle platform does not support nesting for the logical TOC, but there is
no restriction on using physical TOCs.
Accordingly, I provided four additional TOCs: one for accessing
the bibliography (RefTOC.htm), one for accessing the maps (MapTOC.htm), one for
accessing the infographics (FigTOC.htm), and one for accessing the plates and
illustrations (PicTOC.htm). All were in turn accessible from the main TOC.
1. {my CSS class} is a CSS class to
format the line;
2. {chapter no.} is the chapter number
with leading zero (for the introduction the target bibliography file is
IntR.htm);
3. {chapter title} is the text appearing
within the
tags of the target bibliography file, e.g. “27: An enigmatic civilisation”;
The MapTOC.htm, FigTOC.htm and PicTOC.htm files follow the same
general format as RefTOC.htm and hyperlink to the container files which display
the book’s visual matter. As with the bibliography files, the container files
contain return hyperlinks to their respective TOCs.
The Glossary
I provided a glossary in which commonly-encountered terms were
defined and explained. Entries could be accessed alphabetically from within the
glossary via a hyperlinked alphabet, or via hyperlinks in the main body of the
book’s text. Unfortunately, there was no quick and easy way of doing this and
it was necessary to insert the relevant links on an individual basis. Again, as
most glossary items were multiply accessed, no return link was provided and the
reader returns by use of the ‘back’ function on their Kindle e-reader.
The content.opf file
The content.opf file sits in the OEBPS directory and is central
file of an EPUB package. It defines the structure of the eBook and holds its
metadata. Very briefly, it contains four sections: the
section, section, section and
section. The section provides metadata, which is essentially
data about data rather than content. In this implementation, metadata is
supplied for the ISBN number, book title, author name, publisher name, date of
publication, book description, and subject. The section
provides a list of paths, identifiers and properties for each file in the
package; and the section lists in order of appearance the identifiers
for each file in the package, thus defining the order in which they would
appear were the reader to page through the entire book.
The content.opf file has
the following format:
urn:isbn:{my ISBN no.}
15
en-gb
{my book title}
{author name}
aut
{my publisher}
{yyyy-mm-dd}
{yyyy-mm-dd}T{hh:mm:ss}Z
{a brief description of the book}
{my subject 1}
{my subject 2}
{my subject 3}
[One entry for each of the content files from the content/text/
subdirectory]
[MapTOC]
[One entry for each of the container files from the
content/maps/ subdirectory]
[One entry for each of the map image files (in all cases, {type}
= JPEG)]
[FigTOC]
[One entry for each of the container files from the
content/infographics/ subdirectory]
[One entry for each of the infographic image files (in all
cases, {type} = GIF)]
[PicTOC]
[One entry for each of the container files from the
content/pictures/ subdirectory]
[One entry for each of the picture image files (in all cases,
{type} = JPEG)]
[RefTOC]
[One entry for each of the bibliography files from the
content/references/ subdirectory]
[One entry for each of the HTML and image files in the package;
{id ref} will be either the div id for the HTML files or the unique id based on
image name for the image files]
Building the package
At this point, the package was almost complete. It remained only
to add the container.xml file to the META-INF directory and the mimetype file
to the Build directory.
The container.xml file simply tells an eReading device where to
find the content.opf file, and it has the following format:
The mimetype file defines the file as an EPUB and ZIP file. It is
a text file with no file extension containing a single line of text:
application/epub+zip
The next step was to zip the whole package up into an EPUB file
and then convert this to a Kindle-compatible MOBI/KF8. In the Build directory,
I set up two .bat files; compress.bat and mobimake.bat. I also installed the
Zip.exe utility in the Build directory.
Having set up these files, I ran compress.bat to produce an EPUB
file, which in my case was called hftb.epub. Before converting this to the
MOBI/KF8 format, it was necessary to check it for errors. There are many free
websites that will upload and validate an EPUB file; I used this one:
http://validator.idpf.org/ (note that it does not have a www. prefix). Once I
had ironed out the inevitable errors, it was time to take the final step and
run mobimake.bat. This created the MOBI/KF8 file, which in my case was called
hftb.mobi. It also outputs the file errors.txt, which lists errors, warnings
and approximate deliverable file size. This latter figure forms the basis of
the ‘delivery fee’ that is charged by Amazon to the author against the royalty
payment for each sale.
Testing and release
With the book now built, the final stage was testing. This
entailed individually testing every single hyperlink in the book and also
checking for formatting errors. This was a laborious procedure for a long book,
but I viewed it as essential. A small number of issues were identified, which were
easy to fix but would have made the book seem less polished as a product had
they been allowed to remain. Testing was carried out on four platforms: a
dedicated Kindle device, an iPhone, a Nexus 7 Android tablet and a PC. Full
testing was carried out only on the latter.
On 4 March 2014, I uploaded Humans:
from the beginning to the Amazon Kindle bookshelf, and it has been in sale
ever since. In the weeks that followed, a few errata came emerged, highlighting
another advantage of the eBook over its printed counterpart. It was simply
necessary to make corrections and upload the corrected version. Previous
purchasers receive this free of charge, similar to the way that apps on a
smartphone are periodically updated. I added a ‘release note’ with the updated
version as a new page located after the bibliography.
