How larger body sizes helped the colonizers of New Zealand

More weight helped voyagers survive cold ocean journey

Peer-Reviewed Publication

OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY

COLUMBUS, Ohio – For the first time, researchers have developed a model to estimate how much energy the original colonizers of New Zealand expended to maintain their body temperatures on the cold, harrowing ocean journey from Southeast Asia.

 

Results showed that people making the first voyages from Tahiti to New Zealand in sailing canoes would expend 3.3 to 4.8 times more energy on thermoregulation – the technical term for maintaining body temperature - than those making a trip of similar length to Hawaii.

 

The ocean route to New Zealand required much more energy for thermoregulation because it went through harsher and colder conditions than the one to Hawaii, said Alvaro Montenegro, lead author of the study and associate professor of geography at The Ohio State University.

 

The findings help provide additional evidence supporting the long-standing theory of why Polynesians of today have a distinctive body type – relatively larger, heavier, bulkier – that is more often found in populations that live in higher latitudes with colder climates.

 

“It has been long hypothesized that the first trips to New Zealand were much harder on the body of settlers than trips of similar lengths to places like Hawaii,” Montenegro said.

 

“We were able to put together a model to actually measure how much more energy for thermoregulation it would take for people to get there – and show why larger, heavier people would have been more likely to survive the trip.  That’s one reason why their descendants today may have the body types they do.”

 

The study was published today (July 12, 2023) in the journal PLOS ONE.

 

Although much of East Polynesia is tropical, the southern third, including New Zealand, ranges from a warm- to cool-temperate climate.  Researchers say that may be one of the reasons it was one of the last places on Earth to become inhabited. The first people arrived in New Zealand about the 14th century.

 

“The basic question is how difficult would it be on human physiology to sail out of the tropics on these long-distance colonizing voyages through much harsher environmental conditions than they were used to?” Montenegro said.

 

Researchers believe that these original settlers used double-hulled sailing canoes that probably each had at most a few dozen voyagers on board.

 

Montenegro and colleagues had previously developed a voyage simulation model that estimates how far these boats would travel each day based on winds and currents. In this study, the researchers used that model combined with likely environmental conditions that voyagers would encounter, including air temperatures and wind.

 

To evaluate how body size would affect energy use for thermoregulation on these voyages, the researchers used female and male bodies of three different types. One body type resembled Polynesians of today, a second one was of a higher weight, and the third type had higher body weight and additional subcutaneous fat layer thickness.

 

The researchers estimated how much energy it would take travelers to maintain their body temperature sailing from Tahiti to New Zealand and compared that to travelers going to Hawaii, which they estimated would take about 23 days, similar to the 25-day trip to New Zealand.

 

The model the researchers used did not account for energy used by physical activity, which of course would be an additional need for the voyagers.

 

Results showed that the trip to New Zealand would take significantly more energy than the trip to Hawaii, Montenegro said.

 

Based on a summer trip (which would require less energy than a winter trip), each traveler to New Zealand would require an average of an extra 965 calories a day compared to those going to Hawaii to maintain their body temperature.

 

If this deficit was completely made up by burning fat, those going to New Zealand would lose an average of an extra 5.9 pounds at the end of a 25-day trip.  If the difference was compensated just by use of muscle mass, the whole trip extra weight loss would be about 13.3 pounds.

 

Model calculations showed that travelers with a larger body size experienced lower heat loss, and so had an energy advantage compared to those of smaller body sizes.  The advantage was greater for females.

 

“The trip would be difficult under any circumstances, but our results showed that people of larger body size would have had an advantage under the harsh conditions they faced,” Montenegro said.

 

These findings line up with the larger bodies of Polynesian populations today, including the fact that females are about 31% heavier, and males 24% heavier, than populations to their west.

 

“Our analysis can’t definitively prove that the size differences we see in Polynesia today are the result of larger people being more likely to survive the original trips and colonizing the region, but it certainly is consistent with that fact,” he said.

 

Other authors on the study were Alexandra Niclou of the Pennington Biomedical Research Center and University of Notre Dame; Atholl Anderson of Australian National University and University of Canterbury; Scott Fitzpatrick of the University of Oregon; and Cara Ocobock of the University of Notre Dame.

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JOURNAL

PLoS ONE

DOI

10.1371/journal.pone.0287290 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Computational simulation/modeling

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Estimated energetic demands of thermoregulation during ancient canoe passages from Tahiti to Hawaii and New Zealand, a simulation analysis

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

12-Jul-2023

Simulation study of how body shapes and sizes affected energetic efficiency helps explain relative success of early Polynesian voyaging

Peer-Reviewed Publication

PLOS

 

IMAGE: FIORDLAND IN SOUTHERN NEW ZEALAND. view more 

CREDIT: ATHOLL ANDERSON, CC-BY 4.0 (HTTPS://CREATIVECOMMONS.ORG/LICENSES/BY/4.0/)

Simulation study of how body shapes and sizes affected energetic efficiency helps explain relative success of early Polynesian voyaging

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Article URL:  https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0287290

Article Title: Estimated energetic demands of thermoregulation during ancient canoe passages from Tahiti to Hawaii and New Zealand, a simulation analysis

Author Countries: USA, Australia, New Zealand

Funding: AM received financial support from the Maritime Encounters (M21-0018) project funded by Sweden's Riksbankens Jubileumsfond.

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JOURNAL

PLoS ONE

DOI

10.1371/journal.pone.0287290 

ARTICLE TITLE

Estimated energetic demands of thermoregulation during ancient canoe passages from Tahiti to Hawaii and New Zealand, a simulation analysis

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

12-Jul-2023

COI STATEMENT

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Secrets of Egyptian painters revealed by chemistry

Peer-Reviewed Publication

CNRS

 

IMAGE: PORTRAIT OF RAMSES II FROM TOMB OF NAKHTAMON (C. 1,200 BCE). THE HEADDRESS, NECKLACE, AND ROYAL SCEPTRE WERE TOUCHED UP DURING THE PAINTING’S EXECUTION. view more 

CREDIT: © LAMS-MAFTO, CNRS

Within the scope of a vast research program undertaken in coordination with the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities and the University of Liège, an international team—including scientists from the CNRS, Sorbonne University, and Université Grenoble Alpes—has revealed the artistic license exercised in two ancient Egyptian funerary paintings (dating to ~1,400 and ~1,200 BCE, respectively), as evident in newly discovered details invisible to the naked eye. Their findings are published in PLOS ONE (12 July).

The language of ancient Egypt has no known word for ‘art’. Its civilization is often perceived as having been extremely formal in its creative expression, the works completed by the painters of its funerary chapels being no exception.

Yet an international, multidisciplinary team1 led by CNRS researchers Philippe Martinez and Philippe Walter has brought to light pictorial techniques and practices whose faint traces had long allowed them to elude detection. While studying the likeness of Ramses II in the tomb of Nakhtamon2 and the paintings of Menna’s3 tomb—among hundreds of other nobles’ tombs in Luxor—they found signs of touch-ups made to the paintings in the course of their production.

For example, the headdress, necklace, and sceptre in the image of Ramses II were substantially reworked, though this is invisible to the naked eye. And in a scene of adoration depicted in Menna’s tomb, the position and colour of an arm were modified. The pigments used to represent skin colour differ from those first applied, resulting in subtle changes whose purpose still remains uncertain. Thus, these painters, or ‘draughtsmen-scribes’—at the request of the individuals who commissioned their works, or at the initiative of the artists themselves as their own vision of the works changed—could add their personal touches to conventional motifs.

The scientists relied on novel, portable tools enabling nondestructive in situ chemical analysis and imaging to make their discovery. Altered by time and physicochemical changes, the colours in these paintings have lost their original appearance. But the chemical analysis performed by the scientists, together with their 3D digital reconstructions of the works using photogrammetry and macrophotography, should make it possible to restore the original hues—and change our perception of these masterpieces, too often viewed as static artefacts.

The team’s research demonstrates that pharaonic art and the conditions of its production were certainly more dynamic and complex than once thought. The next mission of the scientists will be to analyse other paintings in the search for new signs of the craftsmanship and intellectual identities of ancient Egyptian draughtsmen-scribes.

Notes

1. The team in France is based at the Laboratory of Molecular and Structural Archaeology (CNRS/Sorbonne University) and the Institut Néel (CNRS). Its work is part of an ambitious program coordinated with the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities and the University of Liège.
2. Nakhtamon was a priest responsible for the daily provisioning of altars in the Ramesseum, or ‘House of Millions of Years’, of Ramses II.
3. Menna held the title of Overseer of the Fields of the Lord of the Two Lands (i.e., Upper and Lower Egypt) and was responsible for their agricultural production.

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JOURNAL

PLoS ONE

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Secrets of Egyptian painters revealed by chemistry

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

12-Jul-2023

Salinity changes threatening marine ecosystems, new UNF study shows

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF NORTH FLORIDA

 

IMAGE: UNF PROFESSOR DR. CLIFF ROSS IS STANDING IN THE OCEAN CONTEMPLATING THE SALINITY STUDY. view more 

CREDIT: UNIVERSITY OF NORTH FLORIDA

A groundbreaking study published today reveals the critical yet severely understudied factor of salinity changes in ocean and coastlines caused by climate change. The study was co-authored by an international team of researchers, including Dr. Cliff Ross, University of North Florida biology chair/professor, and Dr. Stacey Trevathan-Tackett, UNF biology graduate program alum and research faculty member at Deakin University in Australia.

Changes in salinity, or salt content, due to climate change and land use can have potentially devastating impacts on vital coastal and estuarine ecosystems, yet this has rarely been studied until now. This new research provides valuable insights into the threats posed by anthropogenic salinity changes to marine and coastal ecosystems and outlines consequences for the health and economy of local communities in oftentimes densely populated regions.

The research team looked at how climate change-related variations in rainfall as well as local man-made impacts can lead to extreme flood and drought events, affecting freshwater availability and impacting salinity in sensitive ecosystems. As sea-levels rise, saltwater inflows in coastal and low-lying areas can also cause devastating impacts. Certain groups such as microorganisms, plankton, coral, mangroves, tidal marshes, macroalgae and seagrass are most at risk and can quickly face ecosystem collapse.

The researchers warn that salinity changes are predicted to intensify alongside ocean warming, and they stress the urgency of immediately addressing these salinity challenges to safeguard marine and coastal ecosystems and biodiversity.

Read "Human-induced salinity changes impact marine organisms and ecosystems” in Global Change Biology.

 

About University of North Florida

The University of North Florida is a nationally ranked university located on a beautiful 1,381-acre campus in Jacksonville surrounded by nature. Serving nearly 17,000 students, UNF features six colleges of distinction with innovative programs in high-demand fields. UNF students receive individualized attention from faculty and gain valuable real-world experience engaging with community partners. A top public university, UNF prepares students to make a difference in Florida and around the globe. Learn more at www.unf.edu.

 

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JOURNAL

Global Change Biology

DOI

10.1111/gcb.16859 

ARTICLE TITLE

Human-induced salinity changes impact marine organisms and ecosystems

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

12-Jul-2023

Daughters breastfed longer, and women accumulated greater wealth in ancient California matriarchal society

Women managed important food resources, which may have incentivized parents to invest more in female offspring and to female-biased wealth disparities.

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF UTAH

 

IMAGE: WOMAN MEASURING A STRAND OF SHELL BEADS IN A PHOTO TAKEN IN 1918. view more 

CREDIT: JOHN P. HARRINGTON

In a new study, researchers and members of the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe of the San Francisco Bay Area are the first to publish evidence of wealth-driven patterns in maternal investment among ancient populations.

Ancestors of the Muwekma Ohlone living 2,000 years ago at Kalawwasa Rummeytak in present-day Silicon Valley in California’s San Francisco Bay Area, placed high value on women’s economic contributions to their communities, according to the study. Women stayed in the villages in which they were born, and their male partners moved from their birth communities to join their wives’ families. Women’s intimate knowledge of the local ecology and female ownership of important food resources appears to have incentivized parents to invest more in their female offspring by breastfeeding them longer. It may have also led to female-biased wealth disparities, as older women at the site were buried with much greater wealth than men.

“Ohlone ancestors living at Kalawwasa Rummeytak relied heavily on women’s contributions to the economy, so they structured their marriage and family systems around women to keep them in their natal communities,” said Dr. Alexandra Greenwald, anthropologist at the University of Utah and curator of ethnography at the Natural History Museum of Utah. “We can also see that placing a high value on women’s contributions led to greater investment in their well-being as children and created greater opportunities for them to accumulate wealth and prestige over their lifetimes.”

Over the past four decades, the Muwekma Ohlone tribal leadership has had oversight over many of the tribe’s ancestral heritage sites within their ethnohistoric home of the San Francisco Bay Area. The Muwekma Ohlone Language Committee has renamed many of the tribe’s cemetery, village sites and sacred places to counter the colonial legacies and politics of erasure perpetrated by the Spanish Empire, and the ensuing American conquest of California. In 2001, the tribe’s language committee renamed a cemetery site located in the City of Santa Clara where the tribe and San Jose State University staff and students recovered 24 ancestral remains. The site’s name, Kalawwasa Rummeytak, means Place of the Calabazas Creek Site.

“Given the fact that there was no funding for analysis or reburial, our team produced a preliminary report on the excavation and skeletal analysis,” said Muwekma Ohlone Tribal Vice-Chairwoman Monica V. Arellano and co-author of the study. “The Muwekma Ohlone Tribal Council voted to support the proposed research that has become the current published study.”

The study published on July 12, 2023, in The American Journal of Biological Anthropology.

The authors, led by Greenwald, used Strontium isotopes to assess Ohlone ancestors’ movement across the landscape throughout their lives. Strontium is incorporated into a person’s tissues from the water they drink, which bears the local geological signature. By sampling from tissues like bone and teeth that grow at specific points in an individual’s life, archaeologists can track the person’s movement. The analysis revealed that the group practiced a matrilocal kinship system where men marry and move into their wife’s village.

In other societies that follow a matrilocal kinship system, mothers invest more resources into their daughters who remain in their community and contribute to the local economy. To test whether Kalawwasa Rummeytak mothers prioritized their female offspring, the authors were interested in examining how they breastfed their children. Because lactation is costly to mothers from a caloric and time perspective, scientists considered weaning age an important measure of parental investment among mammals.

To reconstruct the infant and childhood diets of Kalawwasa Rummeytak residents, the authors measured carbon and nitrogen isotope ratios contained in permanent first molars. First molars begin forming at birth and grow in layers, akin to tree rings. These layers incorporate isotopic signatures from the food that the infant is consuming, and can be tied directly to the age of the individual when the layer was formed. 

“Infants who are breastfeeding exhibit greater nitrogen enrichment because they’re consuming breastmilk, which is synthesized from their mother’s bodily tissues,” Greenwald explained. “Using this method, we could track down to the month how long each individual at Kalawwasa Rummeytak was breastfed.”

On average, the women interred at the site were breastfed five months longer than the males, suggesting that parents prioritized their female offspring’s nutrition. On average, girls were weaned at 36 months, and boys at 31 months. When comparing the average weaning age of individuals who were born at the site, and those who moved there in early adulthood, the authors found a significant difference. Locals were breastfed an average of 42 months versus 32.5 months for non-locals.

Not only were women at Kalawwasa Rummeytak breastfed longer as girls, but they also held a disproportionate amount of wealth. Prior to contact with the Spanish and Euromericans, Indigenous Californians developed a form of money using shell beads. Individuals buried with large quantities of beads are assumed by archaeologists to have achieved greater wealth and status in their lifetime. At Kalawwasa Rummeytak, only older women are interred with shell beads. 

“This case stands out as the most definitive example in ancient California of burial wealth concentrated among women,” said coauthor Gregory Burns of the University of Utah, an expert in the shell bead economy.

The findings highlight the flexibility human societies to shift their kinship strategies in response to local ecological conditions.

“Our tribal leadership is honored to have worked and co-authored with these scholars and hopefully such analyses will leave our tribal membership, Native Americans and the scientific community a meaningful legacy that contributes to the understanding of our ancestral lifeways and adaptive strategies left by our ancestors,” said Vice Chairwoman Arellano.

Other authors of the study include Jelmer Eerkens of the University of California, Davis, Eric Bartelink of California State University, Chico, Muwekma Ohlone Archaeologist Alan Leventhal of San Jose State University, and Monica Arellano, vice chairwoman of the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe of the San Francisco Bay Area and vice president of Muwekma Ohlone Tribe, Inc.

The study was funded by the National Science Foundation grant number BCS-1318532.

The location of the Kalawwasa Rummeytak site near Santa Clara, California.

CREDIT

Adapted from Greenwald, et. al., (2023) Am J Bio Anthro

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JOURNAL

American Journal of Biological Anthropology

DOI

10.1002/ajpa.24806 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Human tissue samples

ARTICLE TITLE

Sex-biased parental investment and female wealth accumulation in ancient California

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

12-Jul-2023

THIRD WORLD U$A

Food insecurity rate hits 17% for the second time in 18 months

Reports and Proceedings

PURDUE UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: PREDICTED CHANGES TO FOOD SPENDING AS A RESULT OF A 25% INCOME LOSS FROM RECESSION, JUNE 2023. view more 

CREDIT: CREDIT: PURDUE UNIVERSITY CENTER FOR FOOD DEMAND ANALYSIS AND SUSTAINABILITY

Food insecurity rate hits 17% for the second time in 18 months

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – Reported food insecurity has reached 17%, matching the rate last reached in March 2022, according to the June Consumer Food Insights Report. The new report also includes consumer changes in food spending as a result of a hypothetical recession and sentiments on artificial intelligence.

The survey-based report out of Purdue University’s Center for Food Demand Analysis and Sustainabilityassesses food spending, consumer satisfaction and values, support of agricultural and food policies, and trust in information sources. Purdue experts conduct and evaluate the survey, which includes 1,200 consumers across the U.S.

“Overall, there continues to be a similar narrative of extended upward pressure on food prices as we try to discern whether this stress has led to a tipping point where consumers are struggling to buy the foods that they want,” said Jayson Lusk, the head and Distinguished Professor of Agricultural Economics at Purdue, who leads the center. 

“The 17% food insecurity rate is up from 14% just two months ago, which is not necessarily far outside of the normal variation we have measured. However, this increase could be concerning given the sum of external pressures being exerted on more vulnerable consumers,” Lusk said.

He noted that pandemic-related boosts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) ended in March. The insecurity rise could be a lag from households adjusting to this policy change.

In the event of a recession, consumers report that they would cut back most on steak, pork and dining out. These results align with what Lusk would expect to occur if incomes fell.

“Discretionary spending on eating out will go first if consumers have to face a recession. Then people will cut back on more expensive items that they can easily substitute in their diets. Steak and bacon, for example,” Lusk said. “It is interesting to see that the items with a large share of ‘does not apply’ are also largely items that will be cut back the most as many people are already choosing to forgo them.”

Additional key results include: 

• Reported food spending has risen by 2.1% from last June, which is much less than the 6.7% government estimate of food inflation.
• Households making less than $50,000 annually are buying groceries online at a higher rate than other households. 
• The report noted that the pandemic opened the online option to SNAP recipients, which evidently remains a key tool for a range of shoppers.
• Households making more than $100,000 annually are slightly greater risk-takers, which is reflected by a higher willingness to eat unwashed fruits and undercooked meat.
• Consumers largely have positive or neutral feelings about applying artificial intelligence (AI) in the food and agriculture sectors.

“The artificial intelligence questions are much more speculative since there are not yet widely known examples of AI being used across the food system,” said Sam Polzin, a food and agriculture survey scientist for the center and co-author of the report. “People really do not have enough information about AI to have thoughtful positions, as seen in the large share of indifference.”

Surprisingly to Polzin, 50% of consumers said they would be OK with AI helping them make food choices, which is generally considered a personal decision. “This proportion might be indicative of how eager people are to make the ‘best’ choices,” Polzin said.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, annual inflation for food-at-home fell below inflation for food-away-from-home (FAFH) this spring, he noted. This poses the question: Will consumers continue to spend at faster rates on dining out?

“The highest earners are driving a larger share of the increase in FAFH spending and have no clear reason to slow down. We will keep track of whether two different patterns emerge in which higher-income households continue to thrive while lower-income households might be forced to pull back,” Polzin said.

The report’s results about food behaviors align with other research showing that high-wage consumers take higher risks than those earning less. “The fact that higher earners report eating unwashed fruits, undercooked meat and raw dough slightly more often could reflect this risk-taking,” Polzin said.

Other reported food behaviors are fairly expected. High-income households, for example, will choose premium local and organic products more often than lower-income households. They also often have more resources to track and understand food labeling or follow recycling and composting practices.

Lusk further discusses the report in his blog.

The Center for Food Demand Analysis and Sustainability is part of Purdue’s Next Moves in agriculture and food systems and uses innovative data analysis shared through user-friendly platforms to improve the food system. In addition to the Consumer Food Insights Report, the center offers a portfolio of online dashboards.

Writer: Steve Koppes

Consumer support for the application of AI in food and agriculture, June 2023.

CREDIT

Purdue University Center for Food Demand Analysis and Sustainability

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METHOD OF RESEARCH

Survey

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

June Consumer Food Insights Report

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

12-Jul-2023