Human Variation and Biocultural Adaptation in Papua New GuineaHuman Biology in Papua New Guinea: The Small Cosmos.Robert D. Attenborough , Michael P. Alpers
| Autor: | Stanley J. Ulijaszek |
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| Rok vydání: | 1993 |
| Předmět: | |
| Zdroj: | Current Anthropology. 34:517-518 |
| ISSN: | 1537-5382 0011-3204 |
| Popis: | The biology of human populations in Papua New Guinea (PNG) has long fascinated biological anthropologists. The enormous environmental and human genetic variation to be found there makes PNG an excellent natural laboratory for the study of human variation and biocultural adaptation, and indeed, anthropological research there has been extensive. Human Biology in Papua New Guinea is the tenth of the Oxford Research Monographs on Human Population Biology and is a welcome addition to the literature on PNG specifically and human population biology in general. It contains many excellent reviews of human biological research carried out in this country since the Human Adaptability Programme (HAP) of the International Biological Programme (IBP) was initiated in I967. The aim of the HAP was to document the variety of human physiological and genetic adaptations worldwide. Preference was given to populations that were little modernized, and PNG was one focus of activity. HAP researchers in PNG were concerned to show that adaptations in New Guinea populations were part of the global pattern of human variation; in the same way, the editors of this volume aim to show that a knowledge of PNG can have significance that goes beyond its value to regional specialists. The strength of such a proposition lies, of course, in the sheer human diversity of this small country. Within the borders of one nation people live in a variety of environmental conditions and face stressors, such as heat and humidity, heavy physical workloads, undernutrition, and a severe burden of infectious disease morbidity and mortality, which are to be found in most parts of the tropical world. Although climatic conditions which allow extremes of cold, aridity, and high altitude are absent, this does not detract from this proposition. The volume reflects the range of human biology research carried out in PNG, and the introductory chapter by the editors places the various contributions in context. Following this is an excellent summary of the human geography of the country from Bryant Allen and a description of its demography by Ian Riley and Deborah Lehmann. Although those familiar with PNG are unlikely to learn anything from Allen's contribution, it will be important for the wider audience less familiar with the country. Riley and Lehmann's work shows that a dramatic mortality decline has taken place since I946 and that this is largely related to the provision of health services. Thus the PNG populations studied in the second part of the 20th century are in the process of health transition and changing rapidly. The next chapter, by James Wood, considers one very important aspect of demography, that of fertility and its relationship to reproductive biology. Examining fertility in one group, the Gainj, Wood concludes that fertility in the highlands of PNG is lower than might be expected and that lactational anovulation is of overwhelming importance as a birth-spacing mechanism. He suggests that this may generalise to much of rural PNG, although it is not clear how things might change as the health transition takes place even in the remotest of populations. Social and behavioural factors play important roles in human biology, and the chapter by Donald Gardner and James Weiner describes aspects of social anthropology which are likely to be of interest to human biologists, including exchange relationships, status, and gender relationships. They consider the extent to which various practices generalise across PNG and suggest patterns of behaviour which relate to demographic and subsistence processes and practices. The next four chapters consider human origins, migrations, and diversity in PNG, using different approaches. The first of these approaches is linguistic. Language is a human characteristic which can give clues about between-population variation and past migratory patterns in a way analogous to genetics. The chapter by William Foley is a brief summary of the linguistic diversity of PNG and its possible meaning in relation to population diversity. The next presents the archaeological evidence for the human colonisation of PNG, and here Ian Lilley concludes that it is not yet possible to write an integrated prehistory of the country or any major region within its borders. What is clear, however, is that considerable advances have been made in the understanding of the prehistory of PNG in the past two decades. Genetic evidence for human prehistory and human variation has been the stuff of much of biological anthropology and has become particularly fashionable in recent years. Two chapters, one by Robert Kirk and the other by Susan Serjeantson, Philip Board, and Kuldeep Bhatia, consider population origins largely by relating linguistic and genetic evidence for population variation. They support the view that presentday Austronesian-speaking populations are descended from an earlier population genetically distinct from nonAustronesian ancestral populations and that the population genetic structure of PNG has been shaped by the combined forces of migration and founder effects, by genetic drift, and by natural selection. Three related aspects of human plasticity in contemporary populations are growth, nutrition, and physiological adaptability, and these are considered separately in the following chapters. The first, by Peter Heywood and Nicholas Norgan, illustrates the diversity of growth pattems in different parts of the country and gives evidence |
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