Scribal Terror

They're not trolls, but . . .

As Brain Mysteries reports:

An Amazonian language with only 300 speakers has no word to express the concept of "one" or any other specific number, according to a new study from an MIT-led team.

The team, led by MIT professor of brain and cognitive sciences Edward Gibson, found that members of the Piraha tribe in remote northwestern Brazil use language to express relative quantities such as "some" and "more," but not precise numbers. . . .

The work builds on a study published in 2004, which found that the Piraha had words to express the quantities "one," "two," and "many."

Terry Pratchett fans Hypatia and Jake get 1  Scribal point apiece and Erin gets 2 for the following:

Hypatia: They count "one, two, many" too. They're also better at it at low temperatures.

Erin: "one, two, three, many, many-one, many-two, many-three, many many, many-many-one, many-many-two, many-many-three, many many many, many-many-many-one, many-many-many-two, many-many-many-three, LOTS."

Jake: Kinda like base 4 roman numerals.

So the "secret" is they're not as dumb as they look. "One, two, three, many" is just the beginning of a base 4 counting system.

On the Ainu, then and now

This photo of an Ainu chief, probably taken in the 1920s, comes from the Old Photos of Japan blog.  The Ainu  inhabited an island called Ainu Mosir before the Japanese colonized it, changed its name to Hokkaido, and "decimated" the population. The origins of the Ainu were a subject of speculation until genetic studies determined that they were “the descendants of Japan’s ancient Jomon inhabitants, mixed with Korean genes of Yayoi colonists and of the modern Japanese.”¹

The New York Times reports (via Japundit )that just this year, Japan has finally recognized the rights of the indigenous Ainu. This recognition was apparently timed to coincide with Japan's hosting of an international conference of indigenous peoples on the island of Hokkaido (formerly the home of the Ainu) but it comes a little late for this rapidly disappearing culture:

In a study by the Hokkaido prefectural government in 2006, just under 24,000 people identified themselves as Ainu. Most were of mixed blood and lacked the telltale fair skin or hirsute features that distinguished older Ainu from the Japanese. But it is not known how many live outside Hokkaido since Japan has never conducted a nationwide census of Ainu.

The Ainu language, according to Wikipedia:

is often considered a language isolate, that is, a language that has not been shown to have a particularly close relation to any other language or group of languages.

It is sometimes grouped with the Paleosiberian languages, but this is merely a blanket term for several different language families that were present in Siberia prior to the advances of Turkic and Tungusic languages there. The "Paleosiberian" languages do not form a true language family, that is, a group of languages descended from a common ancestral language.

The language is classified as moribund and near to extinction. There is an oral tradition of epic poetry called yukar:

Traditional tales describe floating worlds with "Ainu Mosir", or the land of the humans (as opposed to "Kamui Mosir", the land of the gods), resting on the back of a fish whose movements cause earthquakes.

¹ Diamond, Jared (June, 1998). Japanese Roots. Discover Magazine Vol. 19: 86-94.

Body art and rock art

Based on nineteenth-century photo documentation of indigenous body art, Liam Brady of Monash University (Australia) has demonstrated that such body art matches the ancient rock art of the region, as Discovery reports:

For the study, published in the latest issue of the journal Antiquity, Brady documented rock art drawings; images found on early turtle shell, stone and wood objects, such as bamboo tobacco pipes and drums; and images that were etched onto the human body through a process called scarification. . . .

Brady determined that within the body art, rock art and objects, four primary motifs often repeated: a fish headdress, a snake, a four-pointed star, and triangle variants. The fish headdress, usually made of a turtle shell decorated with feathers and rattles, was worn during ceremonies and has, in at least one instance, been linked to a "cult of the dead."

The triangular designs, on the other hand, were often scarred onto women's skin and likely indicated these individuals were in mourning.

Career path of the warrior priest

This page from an early 1540s Mexican manuscript lays out the career path of a successful warrior priest. For full details, see BibliOdyssey. At this point I'm not signing any contracts,  but "Keeper of the Bowl of Fatigue" sounds like a great gig to me especially if all you need to do is bonk a few short people over the head with a shillelagh.

"Kept in the basement"?

This is a photo of an "uncontacted" indigenous tribe on the border between Brazil and Peru. I found these comments by Clodfobble at Cellar to be well worth considering:

I don't know about you, but that blows my mind, that there are people still so completely (and deliberately) isolated from the rest of humanity. Makes me wonder what's truly humane. If a child were locked in a basement his whole life, but given basic life necessities, it would still likely be called abuse. The director of Survival International, Stephen Corry, had this to say:

"The world needs to wake up to this, and ensure that their territory is protected in accordance with international law. Otherwise, they will soon be made extinct." So this culture of people is considered a separate species now? Are we benevolently protecting their way of life (without their input as to whether they would want that,) or arrogantly treating them like animals?

Is keeping people isolated in their own best interests -- or do we just think they're cuter that way? Is being afraid of airplanes (or wanting to kill and eat one) the course they would choose for themselves if they knew the alternatives? Should we ask them if they want things like antibiotics and shoes and eyeglasses, and if we do, have we already "ruined" them? By what criteria do we decide whom to keep in the cellar and whom to invite into the parlor for tea?

And don't ask the guys with the bows and arrows -- ask the moms with the kids with the tooth abscesses and the infected spider bites . . .

Mitochondrial split suggests near-divergence in human species

BBC reports:

Ancient humans started down the path of evolving into two separate species before merging back into a single population, a genetic study suggests.

The genetic split in Africa resulted in distinct populations that lived in isolation for as much as 100,000 years, the scientists say. . . .

The latest conclusions are based on analysis of mitochondrial DNA in present-day African populations. This type of DNA is the genetic material stored in mitochondria - the "powerhouses" of cells.

It is passed down from a mother to her offspring, providing a unique record of maternal inheritance.

"We don't know how long it takes for hominids to fission off into separate species, but clearly they were separated for a very long time," said Dr Spencer Wells, director of the Genographic Project.

"They came back together again during the Late Stone Age - driven by population expansion." . . .

A major split occurred near the root of the tree as early as 150,000 years ago.

On one side of this divide are the mitochondrial lineages now found predominantly in East and West Africa, and all maternal lineages found outside Africa.

On the other side of the divide are lineages predominantly found in the Khoi and San (Khoisan) hunter-gatherer people of southern Africa.

Meet the Lemba-Cohens

In the 1980s [Professor Tudor] Parfitt lived with a Southern African clan called the Lemba, who claimed to be a lost tribe of Israel. Colleagues laughed at him for backing the claim; in 1999, a genetic marker specific to descendents of Judaism's Temple priests (cohens) was found to appear as frequently among the Lemba's priestly cast as in Jews named Cohen. The Lemba — and Parfitt — made global news. --Time

Parfitt now thinks he might have tracked down the Ark of the Covenant -- more info on that at the link. Via Mirabilis

Blue eyes traced back to source

The Register reports:

A University of Copenhagen team has identified the gene which around 6-10,000 years ago underwent a genetic mutation in one individual who eventually gave rise to all blue-eyed people.

Professor Eiberg from the Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine began his research in 1996, when he "first implicated the OCA2 gene as being responsible for eye colour", as ScienceDaily puts it.

Over the next decade, he and his colleagues "examined mitochondrial DNA and compared the eye colour of blue-eyed individuals" in countries including Denmark, Jordan and Turkey.

Eiberg explained: “Originally, we all had brown eyes. But a genetic mutation affecting the OCA2 gene in our chromosomes resulted in the creation of a 'switch', which literally 'turned off' the ability to produce brown eyes."

The Darwin Awards are here -- huzzah!

The runners up are:

An East German man who electrocuted himself when he tried to get rid of moles by pounding metal rods into the ground and connecting them to a high-voltage power line.

A West Virginia man who was crushed while dismantling a rundown barn. He fired up his chainsaw and ripped through a crucial support post, bringing down the whole structure on himself.

An Illinois man who won a game of chicken to see who could stay on a railway line the longest in the path of an oncoming train.

And a 29-year-old computer tutor who was killed in California while driving and working on his laptop at the same time. He was killed by oncoming traffic.

Check out Ananova for the winner. Alcohol is involved . . .

Red-headed Neanderthals

BBC reports:

Writing in Science journal, a team of researchers extracted DNA from remains of two Neanderthals and retrieved part of an important gene called MC1R.

In modern people, a change - or mutation - in this gene causes red hair, but, until now, no one knew what hair colour our extinct relatives had.

By analysing a version of the gene in Neanderthals, scientists found that they also have sported fiery locks.

Speaking as an English teacher, I'm surprised at the scientists' multitasking abilities. (See first sentence.)