Biological Normalcy

Paul T. Baker (1927–2007) was a leader in transforming biological anthropology and human biology from descriptive endeavors to a comparative biology of humans on the basis of evolutionary principles. He was a Professor of Anthropology at The Pennsylvania State University from 1958 to 1996, where his major scientific interest was how human biological and physiological variation is structured by responses to environmental and sociocultural stressors. Exploring responses to climatic and social stressors at the population level, early in his career Baker integrated ecological and evolutionary theory and later defined the subdiscipline of human population biology as a transdisciplinary science with the goal of understanding how human variation is patterned in modern populations. On the basis of his multiple contributions to elucidating genetic, environmental, and sociocultural inputs to human variability in health, physical function, and longevity and his leadership in multiple transdisciplinary research projects, including the International Biological Programme, in 1980 Baker was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences.

Maxwell Museum of Anthropology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM 87131In May 2006, the authors of this introduction had anargument about how best to describe and interprethuman biological variation. The disagreement focused onwhether human races exist, and, even if they do,whether we should continue to use the term ‘‘race’’ inour research and teaching. We eventually realized thatwe were re-hashing an argument that has no doubttaken place for generations (e.g., Mason, 1960; Montagu,1964; Mead et al., 1968; also see Anthropology Newslet-ter 1997-1998 and Caspari, this issue) and that our dif-ferent training, research interests, and life experienceshad led us to approach the study of human biologicalvariation from very different perspectives. One of us is agenetic anthropologist interested in the global pattern ofneutral genetic variation. The other is a bioarchaeologistinterested in how patterns of phenotypic variation areshaped by culture in the United States. Our exchange,coupled with our reading of recent literature from vari-ous subfields of biological anthropology, led us to suspectthat our inability to communicate is widespread withinour discipline and that it hampers effective collaboration.Inadequate communication and collaboration likely leadto less than optimum progress in solving important an-thropological problems and send conflicting signals abouthuman variation to our students and the public.To address these issues, we decided to organize ameeting of scholars who had made original and impor-tant contributions to the study of human variation. Thepurpose of the meeting would be to outline our differen-ces, to determine if they could be reconciled, and toexplore ways to more effectively communicate our heter-ogeneous views within and outside our various disci-plines.In May 2007, the Maxwell Museum and Departmentof Anthropology of the University of New Mexico hosteda symposium entitled, ‘‘Race Reconciled?: How BiologicalAnthropologists View Human Variation.’’ The symposiumwas attended by scholars who specialize in human biol-ogy, genetics, forensics, bioarchaeology, and paleoanthro-pology and who hold a wide spectrum of views about thenature, causes, and social and scientific implications ofpatterns of human biological variation. We had two spe-cific goals. The first was to communicate to one anotherour diverse views of human biological variation and thedata and methods we use to arrive at those views. Par-ticipants were asked to give 40-min lectures thataddressed the following questions:What is race? What is the relationship between yourdefinition of race and your view of the structure ofhuman biological variation? What specific data andmethods did you employ to reach this view? What arethe implications of your view for understanding one ormore of the following?human originshuman population history the relationship between human biology, language,and culture the genetic and environmental components of complexdisease forensic identification whether or how to use the term ‘‘race’’ in research andteachingThe second goal of the symposium was to identify com-mon ground and significant points of disagreement, andto determine how disagreements should be discussedwithin our discipline and communicated to the largerscientific community, to our students, and to the public.To achieve this goal, the participants were asked to con-sider the following questions:Can we reconcile our disparate views of biological vari-ation? If so, how? If not, how do we effectively (1) stimu-late communication and collaboration within anthropol-ogy and the larger academic community, and (2) commu-nicate our different views to our students and to thepublic in ways that make the points of agreement anddisagreement and their broader implications clear?

Culture and human behavior are recognized today as major forces acting on human biological variation around the world. Studies of the relationships between biology and processes, such as modernization, urbanization, and social stratification, are prominent in our journals and meetings. An ongoing study of the interrelationships between toxicant exposure (organochlorines, lead, and mercury), health, and culture among youth of the Mohawk Nation at Akwesasne is located within this context and is used to analyze the strengths and challenges of a partnership approach to biocultural research. To assist in modeling the complex relationships between health, behavior, and culture, we have employed concepts from contemporary social theory, integrated qualitative and quantitative research, and implemented community-based research principles to develop a partnership approach to research in human biology. The community is directly involved in identifying research goals, developing research protocols appropriate for local cultural sensitivities and complexities, implementing the protocols in the field, and collaborating in the analysis and publication of results. We show the utility of this approach for understanding the relationships of toxicants to behavior and biological outcomes (adolescent growth, sexual maturation, and endocrine system alteration); as well as how it facilitates the agency of participants and communities involved in research, and brings greater social engagement to the development of the new human biology.

The Biological Variation Data Critical Appraisal Checklist (BIVAC) has been designed to evaluate biological variation (BV) studies and the reliability of the associated BV estimates. To illustrate its utility, two studies delivering within-subject BV (CVI) data for S100-β protein and neuron-specific enolase (NSE), markers typically used for melanoma and neuroendocrine tumors, respectively, were appraised using BIVAC. Data from the European Biological Variation Study (EuBIVAS) and the recently published Johnson et al. study (ref n 11) were scored using the 14 BIVAC quality items (QI), with alternatives A, B, C and/or D to verify whether the elements required to obtain reliable BV data, were present and appropriately documented. Grade A indicates compliance with all the QIs and D indicates non compliance. The sizes of the confidence interval (CI) around the CVI estimates were also compared. Johnson’s study received a BIVAC grade C, EuBIVAS a grade A. EuBIVAS is a large scale study, with 1609 and 1728 results for NSE and S100-β, respectively. In Johnson’s study, only 40 results were available. The EuBIVAS CVI estimates [NSE, 10.9% (10.3-11.5); S100-β , 10.2% (9.6-10.7)] were clearly lower than Johnson’s CVIs [NSE, 22.1% (9.9-34.3); S100-β, 18.9% (8.5-29.4)]. The overlapping CI between the two estimates are caused by Johnson’s CI being about 20 times larger than the corresponding EuBIVAS CI. It is likely that studies that do not comply with all BIVAC QI deliver less reliable, and possibly too high, CVI estimates. Adherence to the BIVAC ensures safe clinical application of BV estimates.

Shiao, Bode, Beyer, and Selvig argue that the theory of race as a social construct should be revisited in light of recent genetic research, which they interpret as demonstrating that human biological variation is patterned in “clinal classes” that are homologous to races. In this reply, I examine both their claims and the genetics literature they cite, concluding that not only does constructivist theory already accommodate the contemporary study of human biology, but few geneticists portray their work as bearing on race. Equally important, methods for statistically identifying DNA-based clusters within the human species are shaped by several design features that offer opportunities for the incorporation of cultural assumptions about difference. As a result, Shiao et al.’s theoretical distinction between social race and biological “clinal class” is empirically jeopardized by the fact that even our best attempts at objectively recording “natural” human groupings are socially conditioned.

ABSTRACTGoad & Ingram (1987) use the mere existence of inter-child variability to argue in favour of a ‘cognitive’, and against a ‘biological’ model of phonological development (Locke 1983). In this response it is suggested that such an argument fails to recognize the uniqueness of each individual's neural and vocal structures, ignores documented variability in the phonetic patterns of prelexical (and arguably prephonological) infants, and assumes–inexplicably–that inter-child variability implies the operation of ‘cognitive’ factors.

Biocultural approaches recognize the pervasiveness and dynamism of interactions between biological and cultural phenomena, and they explicitly strive to integrate biological, sociocultural, environmental, and other kinds of data. They have been part of human biology at least since 1958, when Frank Livingstone so elegantly explained the linkages among population growth, subsistence strategy, and the distribution of the sickle cell gene in West Africa. These approaches developed further with the advent of human adaptability studies in the 1960s as part of the Human Biological Program and have become increasingly focused on understanding the impacts of everyday life on human biological variation. Biocultural approaches generate explanations that are intuitively appealing to many because they offer a kind of holistic view. They can, however, be very challenging approaches to implement, perhaps in part because we are more experienced in measuring the biological than the cultural. Some of the challenges include (1) defining precisely what we mean by constructs like socioeconomic status, poverty, rural, and urban; (2) operationalizing key variables so that they can be measured in ways that are ethnographically valid as well as replicable; (3) defining and measuring multiple causal pathways. In this paper, I briefly review the history of biocultural approaches and then illustrate some of the challenges that these approaches present with examples from my own research on nutrition and energetics as well as that of other practitioners.

Rouse, Irving, Migrations in Prehistory: Inferring Population Movement from Cultural Remains. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1986. xiv + 202 including references and index; 30 figs. $20.00 cloth. Terrell, John, Prehistory in the Pacific Islands: A Study of Variation in Language, Customs, and Human Biology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986. xvi + 299 pp. including references and index; 88 figs. $42.50 cloth.

Prehistory in the Pacific Islands: A Study of Variation in Language, Customs, and Human Biology.

The object of this paper is to summarise the results of an anthropological biological survey made in Ig5o-6 on the breeding populations of an area including Rwanda, Burundi, and part of the Kivu province of the ex-Belgian Congo (Hiernaux i956; ig60; i963; i964; i965a). The author was based at the Astrida (now Butare) centre of the Institut pour la Recherche Scientifique en Afrique centrale (IRSAC), where he derived benefit from the presence of several ethnologists, a linguist, a demographer, and an economist. The paper will start with a few general remarks on the prospects of survey work in physical anthropology and on its strategy. On one point, taxonomy, it will extend beyond the geographical frame considered, and include some preliminary and partial results of research now in progress. The object of study of physical anthropology is the biological diversity of Man. This can be approached in various ways. Mathematicians working on models, atid biologists experimenting on mice have made contributions of prime importance for the theoretical understanding of human diversity. When all the published quantified information on the biological characters of ethnic groups living in Africa south of the Sahara is considered, discarding only those samples which are too small or are not representative, about half of the area is a terra incognita from this point of view. Data exist on 460 groups, but there is no one variable common to them all (Hiernaux ms.). We evidently need more data on more populations if we are to solve those anthropological problems which cover a wide African area, such as the taxonomy of Man in Africa, or the associations between environmental and biological variables. The Human Adaptability Committee of the International Biological Programme has been wise in recommending more extensive surveys on biological characters everywhere in the world, like the one in central Africa dealt with here. While the lack of data is still so great that any survey will collect something of interest, some areas are, however, more interesting than others. These are areas in which there are wide variations of both environment and gene pools. There is a fair probability that the investigator starting a survey in such a part of the world will find situations approximating a latin square in design, or at least comprising several cells of it. The simplest latin square, one with four cells, would consist of two genetically different populations living in two different biotopes. Such a situation would allow one to analyse the overall diversity into that part due to genetical causes and that part due to the influence of the environment on the phenotype. The Rwanda area is favourable in this respect: its inhabitants display an extreme intergroup diversity, and ecologically it is a contact area where the equatorial forest and the eastern savannah meet. It also receives influences from the north along the Nile and from the south along the Great Lakes rift.

In response to the results of the 1996 survey of the membership of the American Association of Physical Anthropology (AAPA), the Executive Committee of the Association sponsored a follow-up survey designed to assess gender and specialty differences in training, employment, academic status, mentoring, and research support. A total of 993 questionnaires was analyzed, representing approximately 62% of the 1998 membership of the Association. There has been a marked shift in the number of males and females in the discipline from the 1960s to the 1990s. While 51.2% of all respondents are female and 48.8% are male, 70% of the students are female. Chi-square tests indicate significant differences between males and females by highest degree, age, status, obtaining a tenure-track position, receiving tenure, and taking nontenure-track employment before receiving a tenure-track position. In recent years, there has been an increasing number of females in the ranks of assistant and associate professors; however, this is not true for the rank of professor. There are also significant differences between males and females by specialty within the discipline: researchers in primatology, human biological variation, skeletal biology, and paleopathology are primarily female, while researchers in human and primate evolution are increasingly female.

Editorial| March 01 2023 Why We Must Teach Our Students about Race Joseph L. Graves, Jr. Joseph L. Graves, Jr. Joseph L. Graves Jr. Professor of Biological Sciences North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University gravesjl@ncat.edu Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar gravesjl@ncat.edu The American Biology Teacher (2023) 85 (3): 133. https://doi.org/10.1525/abt.2023.85.3.133 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Joseph L. Graves; Why We Must Teach Our Students about Race. The American Biology Teacher 1 March 2023; 85 (3): 133. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/abt.2023.85.3.133 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentThe American Biology Teacher Search Twenty years ago, I wrote a piece for the newsletter of the Biological Sciences Curriculum Study explaining how important it was to teach high school students about human biological variation and conceptions of race. The issue of variation within species has been of interest to naturalists beginning in the eighteenth century. Unfortunately, when Linnaeus published the tenth edition of Systema Naturae in 1758, he included a description of human varieties ranked hierarchically, with Europeans at the top and Africans at the bottom, as influenced by the colonialism and racism of the time. Thus began the sad history of Europeans deploying pseudoscientific schemes to classify and rank human beings. Fortunately, using concepts from the neo-Darwinian synthesis of the twentieth century based on genetic variation and phylogenetic methods, we know that modern humans do not display biological races, but earlier views are frustratingly long-lasting. Despite our modern understanding of biological variation, race... You do not currently have access to this content.

The expression of aggressiveness, which constitutes many facets of behavior, is influenced by a complex interaction of biologic, psychologic, and social variables. Even though individual differences in impulsivity and the behavioral consequences, such as aggression, addiction, and suicidality, are substantially heritable, they ultimately result from an interplay between genetic variations and environmental factors. While formation and integration of multiple neural networks is dependent on the actions of neurotransmitters, such as serotonin (5HT), converging lines of evidence indicate that genetically determined variability in serotonergic gene expression influences complex traits including that of inappropriately aggressive behavior. This contribution reviews studies of major gene effects in inbred and knockout strains of mice with increased aggression-related behavior and discusses the relevance of several serotonergic gene variations in humans which include high aggressiveness as part of the phenotype. Although special emphasis is given to the molecular psychobiology of 5HT in aggression-related behavior in rodents, nonhuman primates, and humans, relevant conceptual and methodological issues in the search for candidate genes for impulsivity and aggressiveness and for the development of mouse models of aggressive and antisocial behavior in humans are also considered. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The aim of the sampling design for stereology is to obtain the maximal amount of quantitative structural information at a given total cost or effort. Principles of such optimal designs are discussed and methods for generating them are illustrated by a biological example. In general, the variation between different individuals--the biological variation--is the major determinant of overall efficiency, whereas the variation between single microscopic features is unimportant. It follows that the expenditure of time and/or money in order to increase the precision of the individual measurements is irrational in almost all studies where the emphasis is on the biological results.

At the Human Biology Association (HBA) Meetings in March, we will celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the Association. To recognize and highlight this anniversary, the American Journal of Human Biology will feature two important sets of invited contributions this year. Invited Reviews from the AJHB's Past Editors. The previous Editors of the journal, Lynnette Sievert, Bob Malina, and Peter Ellison (with co-author Rick Bribiescas), have graciously agreed to contribute review papers on their areas of expertise. I am tremendously grateful to them for sharing their insights into these important contributions. Invited Commentaries on Influential Papers from the AJHB. I am also inviting prominent authors to write commentaries on some of the most influential papers in the journal's history. These contributions will span the broad scope of research encompassed by the field of human population biology, including theoretical advancements (Hawkes 2003; Walker et al. 2006), evolutionary/adaptive dimensions of human biology (Bogin and Smith 1996; Aiello and Key 2002; Steegmann, Cerny, and Holliday 2002; Wells 2010; Bigham et al. 2013), insights into human health disparities (Kuzawa and Sweet 2009; Knutson 2012; Martorell 2017; Brewis et al. 2020; Gravlee 2020), and methodological innovations (Windhager, Schaefer, and Fink 2011; Miller et al. 2013; Reitsema 2013; McDade 2014). All of these invited commentaries will be linked to their original papers and will be “Free to Read” when published. This year also marks a shift in how papers are published in the journal. As with most of Wiley's journals, the AJHB has transitioned to a “Continuous Model.” With this new model, papers are now published directly into issues when they are ready. Consequently, as Editor I no longer compile each monthly issue; rather, this is handled directly by our production team. Additionally, as of January 2025 (Volume 37, Issue 1), the journal will shift to a standard cover image, rather than one that changes monthly. I am very grateful to Nicky Hawley for providing the lovely photo for our new cover. This transition eliminates the need for papers to wait in “Early View” before final publication. The new model reflects how our scholarly work is now being accessed and consumed—as individual papers rather than as entire issues. The new model will also change how we handle Special Issues. Individual papers for Special Issues will now be published in regular monthly issues as they are ready. The full collection of all papers for a Special Issue will then appear as a “Virtual Special Issue,” posted separately on the AJHB's website. As with any change, there are elements that we will miss. As Editor, I have enjoyed the opportunity to construct each issue of the journal and select a cover image from one of our authors. I am truly grateful to the many authors who have contributed cover photos/images over the years, showcasing the important work being done in our field. I thank our Wiley team of Christina Tuballes, Gillian Greenough, Tyrone Prescod, Nivetha Venkataramanan, Deepa Rajamanickam, Monsour Al Hazeem, and Tom Cannon for all their support and guidance over the last year during this transition. I look forward to seeing everyone in Baltimore from March 12 to 14, 2025 for our 50th HBA Meetings!