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June 20, 2006
An Intersection of Evolutionary Biology and Archaeology
I have an interest in archaeology and a usually unrelated interest in evolutionary biology. Actually, my interest in evolutionary biology is mostly focused on Paleoanthropology but I'm willing to be a little broader when something really abnormal comes along.
A paper available online and ready to be published in Molecular Biology and Evolution certainly meets my requirement. Written by Miika Tapio and eight other researchers, the abstract of "Sheep Mitochondrial DNA Variation in European, Caucasian and Central Asian Areas" is available freely online. A subscription or a single article fee is required to read the whole thing. Here are two sections from the abstract:
Three distinct mitochondrial (mt) maternal lineages (haplotype groups A, B and C) have been found in the domestic sheep. Group B has been observed primarily in European domestic sheep. The European mouflon carries this haplotype group. This could suggest that European mouflon was independently domesticated in Europe, although archaeological evidence supports sheep domestication in the central part of the Fertile Crescent. . . . The distribution of Group A variation as well as other results are compatible with the Near East being the domestication site. Group C and D may have been introgressed later into a domestic stock, but larger samples are needed to infer their geographical origin. The results suggest that some mitochondrial lineages arrived in northern Europe from the Near East across Russia.
Did you ever think you would see "archaeological evidence" and "haplotype group" in the same paper? Truthfully, this is not the only case but they are still fairly infrequent. It will not be the last case either.
I haven't read the paper and would not be qualified to comment on it if I had. The point I do want to make is that papers like this should make it increasingly difficult for those who want to deny evolution but selectively accept the results of archeology to maintain their position. In this paper, we have a case of archaeological evidence being partially supported by research that is firmly based on modern evolutionary theory. Interestingly, it also makes a prediction about the migration of domesticated sheep into Europe that archaeology might be able to confirm in the field.
We are increasingly seeing the fruitfulness of modern evolutionary theory at work in many areas where, without that theory, it would be nearly impossible to extend our knowledge. Great scientific theories are powerful things.
Via Dienekes' Anthropological Blog.
Posted by Duane Smith at June 20, 2006 3:21 PM | Read more on Evolution |
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