Prevalence of cranial trauma in Eurasian Upper Paleolithic humans

Abstract

Objectives: This study characterizes patterns of cranial trauma prevalence in a large sample of Upper Paleolithic (UP) fossil specimens (40,000-10,000 BP). Materials and Methods: Our sample comprised 234 individual crania (specimens), representing 1,285 cranial bones (skeletal elements), from 101 Eurasian UP sites. We used generalized linear mixed models (GLMMs) to assess trauma prevalence in relation to age-at-death, sex, anatomical distribution, and between pre-and post-Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) samples, while accounting for skeletal preservation. Results: Models predicted a mean cranial trauma prevalence of 0.07 (95% CI 0.003-0.19) at the level of skeletal elements, and of 0.26 (95% CI 0.08-0.48) at the level of specimens, each when 76-100% complete. Trauma prevalence increased with skeletal preservation. Across specimen and skeletal element datasets, trauma prevalence tended to be higher for males, and was consistently higher in the old age group. We found no time-specific trauma prevalence patterns for the two sexes or age cohorts when comparing samples from before and after the LGM. Samples showed higher trauma prevalence in the vault than in the face, with vault remains being affected predominantly in males. Discussion: Cranial trauma prevalence in UP humans falls within the variation described for Mesolithic and Neolithic samples. According to our current dataset, UP males and females were exposed to slightly different injury risks and trauma distributions, potentially due to different activities or behaviors, yet both sexes exhibit more trauma among the old. Environmental stressors associated with climatic changes of the LGM are not reflected in cranial trauma prevalence. To analyze trauma in incomplete skeletal remains we propose GLMMs as an informative alternative to crude frequency calculations.

Is History the Same as Evolution? No. Is it Independent of Evolution? Certainly Not

“…Where Pinker goes beyond the evidence is in extrapolating backward beyond the transition to agriculture—or at least beyond the densely settled hunter-gatherer life that preceded agriculture by two millennia—to a long phase of evolution in our environments of evolutionary adaptedness (EEAs), which he sees as the most violent of all. Although there is ample evidence of violence in the preagricultural human fossil record ( Bae et al, 2015 ; Beier et al, 2020 ; Bruner et al, 2017 ; Kranioti et al, 2019 ), with at least one gruesome group massacre at Nataruk, Kenya ( Lahr et al, 2016 ), and although one estimate based on a large sample suggested that cranial trauma was as common in Upper Paleolithic peoples as in Mesolithic or Neolithic ones ( Beier et al, 2020 ), most of the violence is interpreted as intragroup rather than intergroup fighting.…”

Sex differences in the distribution of entheseal changes: Meta‐analysis of published evidence and its use in Bayesian paleopathological modeling

“…Thus, we first conduct a systematic review of the relevant literature to extract the prior information needed to exploit this similarity in a Bayesian framework. Then, taking advantage of recent proposals to include multiple sources of uncertainty in the statistical analysis of skeletal markers (Alonso‐Llamazares et al, 2021; Beier et al, 2021), we define a multivariate mixed‐effect model which integrates eight different features of EC and their variation across individuals, sexes, ages, and skeletal locations. In addition, our analysis illustrates a reproducible statistical analysis pipeline that could be adapted to other study designs in physical anthropology, contributing to enhancing the methodological diversity within our field (Martin, 2019).…”