Always Look on the Unified Side of Life; Discussions on the Origins and Migrations of Modern Humans
15 September 2006
Type/Items(s): II Origin and Migrations of Modern Humans, Discussions & short presentations,
Scientific Sessions
Submitted by: Kate Howell (ICVolunteers)
Contributors: Tatjana Schwabe (ICVolunteers) |
After the three presentations on Origins and Migrations of Modern Humans, a lively question and answer session followed, in which a unified theory of migration and a successful case study in interdisciplinarity were presented.
Michael McCormick of the Department of History, Harvard University, USA, presented his interdisciplinary initiative, which combines the forces of the natural and social sciences to analyse the fall of the Roman Empire. Dialogue has been initiated in the form of workshops bringing together scientists of different disciplines who bring their expertise to bear on a specific problem. As an example, the computer sciences are bringing artificial intelligence into play to help philologists with the analysis of 8,000 Latin texts, which cannot currently be used in research because their origins are unknown. Other workshops invited biologists to study species in medieval animal husbandry and geologists to analyse the climate history during the first millennium AD. Michael McCormick stressed three essential points for the success of such interdisciplinary projects: good questions, careful preparation and the right personalities - brilliant specialists with the generosity of mind to bridge different mentalities between research specialisations.
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Dame Julia Higgins looks on as Ofer Bar-Yosef, Svante Pääbo and Bernard Victorri listen attentively to questions during the dialogue on Origins and Migrations of Modern Humans. Image: V. Krebs, ICVolunteers |
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Edward Slingerland of the University of British Columbia, Canada, gave an intriguing and thought-provoking short presentation on the division of the natural sciences and humanities and the acceptance of reductionism and consilience. Consilience is a term arising in the modern world from the work of E.O. Wilson who argued that the sciences, humanities, and arts have a common goal: to provide answers to problems based on the idea that each discipline can contribute a unique perspective. To do this, it is necessary to reduce each problem to its elements, known as Reductionism. Although it is an essential approach to analyse complex problems in the natural sciences, this tendency is seen negatively by many humanists. Edward Slingerland argues that there is a sharp divide between the disciplines stemming from dualism which has by now become untenable. Several barriers are perceived by humanists, which will have to be resolved before consilience can be achieved. The humanities are uncomfortable with cognition theory, the general tenets of what experimental science is about and suggest that science is just another discourse. Most important however, is the fear to see people reduced to 'things', which both disciplines cannot tolerate...an example of our inherent dualism.
The floor was opened for discussions. Among many interesting comments, your reporter found comments from Alicia Sanchez-Mazas, from the Department of Anthropology and Ecology at the University of Geneva to be particulary worthy of note. Sanchez-Mazas described a case study demonstrating the fruitful combination of archaeology, linguistics and genetics to show how complementary findings can reveal a rich and complete history of human migration and evolution. Sanchez-Mazas described that the indigenous aboriginal populations of Taiwan speak a myriad of different languages, have different cultures and are genetically diverse. Linguistics indicates that the indigenous people have lived in this area for a long time before one group migrated across the Indian ocean and towards Australia and Polynesia. This is reflected in the fact that 9 of the 10 sub-families in the Austronesian language family are endemic to Taiwan. Archaeological remains in Taiwan date back to the Neolithic expansion, whereas other places outside Taiwan show culture remains from at most 4,000 years ago. Genetic data from the indigenous Taiwanese and from surrounding islands confirms this hypothesis. However, the genetic data adds that due to variable Y chromosome sequences amongst these otherwise stable mitochondrial DNA populations, these cultures were matriarchal in structure. This example shows that although all disciplines converge on their conclusions, genetic data gives a new perspective on the culture of the early Taiwanese.
Towards the end of the discussion, Francis Waldvogel invited the speakers on stage to give a unified view on human migration, as together, they have examined human migrations from as long ago as several million years to as recently as modern times. Ofer Bar-Yosef, Professor of Anthropology at Harvard University, answered with the example of the settlement of Cyprus by farmers about 10,000 years ago. This migration can be analysed from several different angles, with each new approach adding to the picture. Several findings indicate that these farmers must have brought their livestock with them from the mainland. Biologists can analyse these animal species and trace their origins, while archaeologists analyse the cultural remains. Population geneticists calculate that it takes about 250 people to form a biologically viable unit. Therefore, it is inferred, to reach Cyprus, the settlers must have had seacraft capable of carrying themselves and their animals. The early Cypriots disappeared 2,500-3,000 years later, and Olaf Bar-Yosef hypothesizes that this occured was because communications had broken down between islands in the vicinity.
The issue of communication and shared learning between tribes has been investigated as far back as pre-historic times, where speculative assumptions about how modern humans migrated into new territories can be made. A biologically viable unit of 250 people would most likely migrate in bands of 25 individuals, at a rate of 1 km per year on average. How could these loose tribes communicate with each other? How did they manage to move across Europe within approximately 3,000 years and keep their bearings in an unknown territory as well as relationships with the next tribes? Svante Pääbo, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, added a philosophical dimension to the debate, pointing out that migration is typical behaviour for anatomically modern humans. After they migrated out of Africa 2 million years ago, humans had settled every remote corner of the Earth within 100,000 years, in spite of the great number of casualties that must have been involved, for example in the ocean crossings. Big questions remain unanswered from both the philosphical and the behavioural genetics perspective- including why do we humans move? What drives us to explore? Perhaps one day these disciplines will help each other to get closer to the answers. |
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