The arrival of Europeans in the New World had profound and long-lasting results for the native peoples. The record for the impact of this fundamental change in culture, society, and biology of Native Americans is well documented historically. This paper reviews the biological impact of the arrival of Europeans on native populations via the study of pre- and postcontact skeletal remains in Spanish Florida, the region today represented by coastal Georgia and northern Florida. The postcontact skeletal series, mostly drawn from Roman Catholic mission sites, are among the most comprehensive in the Americas, providing a compelling picture of adaptation and stress in this setting. Study of paleopathology, dental and skeletal indicators of physiological stress, stable isotope (carbon and nitrogen) analysis, tooth microwear, and skeletal morphology (cross-sectional geometry) reveals major alterations in quality of life and lifestyle. The bioarchaeological record indicates a general deterioration in health, declining dietary diversity and nutritional quality, and increasing workload in the contact period. The impact of contact in Spanish Florida appears to have been more dramatic in comparison with other regions, which likely reflects the different nature of contact relations in this setting versus other areas (e.g., New England, New France). The bioarchaeological record represents an important information source for understanding the dynamics of biocultural change resulting from colonization and conquest.

/pdf/frontiers-of-contact-bioarchaeology-of-spanish-florida-32vxf3ewde.pdf

Frontiers of contact: Bioarchaeology of Spanish Florida

Current status of research on secular trends in growth and maturation is considered from several perspectives. The need to define secular trends as positive, negative or absent is initially discussed. Positive secular trends, i.e., increases in size and earlier maturation, characterize the majority of the auxological literature. However, some populations have experienced negative secular trends or no trends. Positive secular trends and cessation of secular trends in stature and age at menarche are described for developed countries, followed by a brief discussion of secular changes in body proportions and composition. Data from developing countries illustrate all three types of secular trends. Some segments of the population show positive changes in size and age at menarche, while others show no evidence of secular change or negative secular trends. Finally, comparisons of estimated statures in earlier European populations suggest a negative secular trend, i.e., a decline in estimated stature from about the 11th to the 19th centuries, which is followed by a positive secular trend starting about the mid-19th century.

Research on secular trends in auxology.

Human growth in height may be used as a cumulative record of the nutritional and health history of a person or a population, and often reflects the economic, social and political environment in which those people live. This paper explores the relationship between growth in height and the economic, social and political environment in Latin American populations. Adult height is analysed over an 8250 year period. It is shown that economic, social and political change prior to the European conquest of the Americas resulted in positive and negative trends in mean stature. Following the European conquest, there was a decline in mean adult stature in Middle and South America that continued until about 1939. From 1940 to 1989 there was a trend for increasing mean stature. A negative trend in stature for children is found in a second analysis. Economic decline and political unrest in Guatemala since 1978 is associated with a significant decline in the mean stature of 10- and 11-year-old children from families from very high, moderate, and very low socioeconomic status.

Eight thousand years of economic and political history in Latin America revealed by anthropometry.

The following cultural variables were tested for their association with sexual dimorphism: sexual division of labor, type of subsistence (hunting and agriculture), and polygyny. The transmission of these traits among populations was investigated. All the traits were found to be associated with phylogeny, indicating that they are inherited from mother to daughter populations. A cross-cultural comparative method was used which controls for the statistical effects of similarity due to common ancestry (Galton's problem). Cross-cultural variation in sexual dimorphism in stature is negatively associated with women's contribution to subsistence. Women are taller, relative to men, in societies where women contribute more to food production. This may be because female nutritional status is better in these societies. No relationship was found between sexual dimorphism and other aspects of subsistence or polygyny. These results are discussed in relation to other studies of sexual dimorphism in modern and archaeological populations, and in relation to cross-cultural variation in sex-biased parental investment.

Sexual dimorphism in stature and women's work: a phylogenetic cross-cultural analysis.

Objective: To evaluate secular changes in height, sitting height and estimated leg length between 1968 and 2000 in residents in a rural Zapotec-speaking community in Oaxaca, southern Mexico.Materia...

Secular change in height, sitting height and leg length in rural Oaxaca, southern Mexico: 1968-2000.

Statures for 64 adult male Yucatec Maya (18+ years old, sons of campesinos) were measured in 1968 and compared with mean statures presented in results for previous studies. There were no significant changes in mean stature since 1895. If the sample is divided into 5-year age groups, no secular trend is evident. Using osteological information from as early as the Late Preclassic, stature of adult Maya males has decreased 119 mm in a little more than 20 centuries (−0.06 cm/decade). Comparing the results with measurements from other Mesoamerican groups, only one – the Otomi – show evidence of significant secular change. It is possible that modern economic development schemes in Mesoamerica are too recent or ineffective to have had an effect on stature.

Secular trend for stature in adult male Yucatec Maya to 1968

The cultural nature of the "hot-cold" syndrome has been emphasized in previous studies. I suggest that the syndrome is also an important aspect of biocultural adaptation among the Maya of Yucatan, especially in prevention of heatstroke and heat cramps, because it includes physiologically realistic rules for behavior during work in a hot climate.

Human Ecology, Heat Adaptation, and Belief Systems: The Hot-Cold Syndrome of Yucatan

Approximately 1450 persons, 800 of them unrelated, of both sexes from age eigth upward from the town of Ticul, Yucatan, Mexico, formed an American Indian (Maya) sample with apparently little Caucasian admixture for four genetic tests: ability to taste PTC and smell HCN, presence of mid-phalangeal hair, and color blindness. A modified PTC sorting test indicated a nontaster allele (t) frequency of 0.29 in Ticul, a relatively high result for American Indians but compatible with previously reported Mayan data. A color vision deficiency frequency of 3.6% was found in the total male sample, and a subsample of unrelated males had a rate of 2.8%. No color blind females were detected. The Ticulenos exhibited a high rate of midphalangeal hairlessness, characteristic of American Indians, with a notable sex differential: 75.9% for males, 87.1% for females. Previous studies of the inability to smell HCN, most of which suggest an X-linked recessive inheritance with an allele frequency of about 0.2, are reviewed. The Yucatan material, with a nonsmeller prevalence around 50% and no significant difference between the sexes, contradicts the X-linked recessive hypothesis on the basis of both population and family analyses. No simple Mendelian scheme appears to fit the Ticul HCN sensitivity test results.

Hydrogen cyanide and phenylthiocarbamide sensitivity, mid-phalangeal hair and color blindness in Yucatán, Mexico.

THE types of human ear wax (cerumen) seem to be inherited as simple Mendelian traits: the wet, sticky variety is controlled by a dominant allele W and the homozygous recessive state (ww) produces a dry, flaky or granular cerumen1,2. Population data are scarce, even though the phenotypes are easily distinguished, regularly inherited and conveniently studied. We now describe information collected in two areas (Mexico by J. M. McC, and New Guinea by E. G.). There is a correlation between environment and allele frequency which may have selective importance in maintaining the cerumen polymorphism.

John M. McCullough

Papers

Secular trend for stature in adult male Yucatec Maya to 1968

Human Ecology, Heat Adaptation, and Belief Systems: The Hot-Cold Syndrome of Yucatan

Hydrogen cyanide and phenylthiocarbamide sensitivity, mid-phalangeal hair and color blindness in Yucatán, Mexico.

Human Cerumen Types in Mexico and New Guinea: a Humidity-related Polymorphism in “Mongoloid” Peoples

Phenylketonuria: A balanced polymorphism in Europe?