Complex government spurred growth of ancient nations

Red tape, bureaucracy, and the nanny state have all been blamed for stifling progress and holding us back, yet it turns out a bureaucratic administration is just the thing if a nation is looking to expand.

The heart of a modern bureaucracy - inside, it's piled high with red tape. Image: Jedyooo/Wikimedia

The research, carried out by an American researcher, compared the archaeological remains in the Oaxaca Valley of Mesoamerica with the remains of five other ancient nations in Peru, Egypt, Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley, and China.

These are known as primary states – ones that formed without encountering other nations – and they are ideal places to study the original creation of nation states without worrying about outside influences.

The six primary states all show a distinctive pattern of growth, where expansion of each nation’s territory happened at the same time as the development of the bureaucratic government offices required to govern the growing nation. The researcher thinks this is no coincidence: only a bureaucratic administration and could support expansion, and only expansion could provide the resources needed for a fledgling state to support a bureaucracy.

Taking this one step further, the research suggests that even modern bureaucratic governments may be based on this need to expand, and we need to watch international politics very carefully if we are too keep this ‘predatory’ urge in check.

Bureaucracy is rarely seen as a good thing, adding layers of complexity and time to even the simplest of tasks, yet it seems to be an essential part of the growth of any nation. Academics have always recognised the necessity of bureaucracy in forming nations, but previous work suggested the bureaucratic processes were created before nations expanded. The new study seems to contradict that idea.

Of course, this raises a question for this blogger of whether the creation and growth of bureaucratic government can go too far, and what happens when it does? Answers to be submitted in triplicate on form XS42b by the third Tuesday of next month!

Paper Reference: Spencer, C (2010). Inaugural Article: Territorial expansion and primary state formation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 107(16), pages 7119-7126. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1002470107

Stepping back in time

Our extinct ancestors walked just like us, according to American scientists. By studying ancient fossilised tracks the researchers found that our way of walking, on two feet and taking long strides with each step, evolved long before we did.

Spot the ancestral gait... Image: Raichlen et al/PLOSone

Ancient hominims – the group of primates including ourselves – could have walked in one of two ways; either they walked just like us, with long, striding steps, or with bent legs like a chimpanzee. Different gaits leave different shaped footprints, so the researchers could compare fossilised trackways at Laetoli, Tanzania, to the footprints left by modern volunteers to see how some of our ancestors moved.

The fossil footprints found at Laetoli in Tanzania have courted controversy ever since they were discovered thirty years ago. At 3.6 million years old, the tracks are the oldest direct fossil evidence of bipedalism in any of our ancestors, and this presents a problem. They could only have been left by one of our distant ancestors called Australopithecus afarensis, but their skeletons suggest they used a bent-legged gait like chimps, well adapted to life in the trees.

To solve the puzzle, the researchers asked volunteers to walk through sand normally, or imitating a chimpanzee, with bent knees and back. A laser scanner mapped the footprints they left behind, and the results showed clear differences between the two gaits – bent-knee gaits leave much deeper toe-prints, for example. With this data the researchers could then look at the Laetoli tracks.

Their results were quite conclusive: Laetoli toe-prints were shallower than their heel-prints, and in the same range as our modern gait, strongly supporting the idea that they walked much like we do today. Our way of walking is the most energy efficient way to get around on two legs, so the results also suggest walking on the ground, rather than in the trees, was an important part of the Australopithecine lifestyle – an important step towards the plains-striding apes that went on to conquer the world.

Paper Reference: Raichlen DA,  Gordon AD,  Harcourt-Smith WEH,  Foster AD,  Haas WR Jr,. (2010) Laetoli Footprints Preserve Earliest Direct Evidence of Human-Like Bipedal Biomechanics. PLoS ONE 5(3). e9769. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0009769

Supervolcano caused global cooling

The supervolcano which erupted 74,000 years ago at Toba in northern Sumatra was the most devastating natural event ever witnessed by humans. Now new evidence has emerged that the blast had long term implications for global ecosystems as it led to many years of drought, caused by a dramatic and prolonged drop in global temperatures.

Beautiful but deadly, and nowhere near the size of the Toba eruption, 74,000 years ago. Image Credit: Flickr/Roberto Zingales

An international team of researchers have shown that the forests which covered India before the volcanic eruption were replaced by open scrubland, and moisture-loving plants like ferns disappeared. The results suggest the global climate became much colder and, consequently much drier, which destroyed forests that depended on warm moist conditions.

To make their discovery, the researchers analysed long vertical sections of soil and marine sediment, called cores. The Toba eruption blew so much ash and rock into the atmosphere that it forms an easily-distinguished layer in soil and sediment cores from much of southern Asia. This meant the researchers could easily identify pre- and post-eruption deposits of soil and sediment and analyse their composition.

The researchers used the ratio of different carbon isotopes found in soil layers deposited before and after the eruption to examine the effect it had on vegetation that grew in India. Different types of vegetation leave different signature ratios of carbon isotopes in the soil because they use different chemical pathways to produce food through photosynthesis. The change in carbon isotope ratio showed that the vegetation changed from lush tropical forest to open scrubland just after the eruption occurred.

They also found much less pollen from ferns, which prefer warm, wet conditions, in marine sediment from after the eruption, suggesting there were far fewer of these plants alive at the time.

The Toba eruption was the most powerful volcanic eruption on Earth in the past two million years, causing temperatures to fall and resulting in massive droughts, which lasted for almost two thousand years!  It’s easy to why scientists have suggested deliberately pumping tonnes of sulphate particles, just like those produced by volcanic eruptions such as Toba, into the upper atmosphere to reduce global temperatures in the face of anthropogenic climate change.

Paper Reference: Williams, M., et al (2009) ‘Environmental impact of the 73 ka Toba super-eruption in South Asia’. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology. doi:10.1016/j.palaeo.2009.10.009

‘In a hole in the ground there lived…’

‘…a hobbit.’*

Fossil ‘hobbits’ found on an Indonesian island and reported in Nature in 2004 are a new species after all, according to a new study by American researchers. Statistical analysis of the fossil skulls and limb bones show it did not belong to a diseased modern human, or a pygmy, but a unique species. But haven’t we heard such claims about the ‘hobbits’ before?

H. floresiensis: small, yet distinctive. Image: Wikimedia/Ryan Somma

Yes, we certainly have. The diminutive fossil hominid, found on the island of Flores in 2003 and nicknamed ‘hobbits’ by their discoverers, were at the centre of an international argument. Initially hailed as a new species known as Homo floresiensis, several researchers dismissed the fossils as the remains of diseased humans. Since then, claims and counter-claims have appeared in the scientific literature and the press. This latest study agrees with the well-supported ‘unique species’ hypothesis.

The researchers carried out a statistical analysis of important physical features of the best-preserved H. floresiensis fossil. They found that its skull retained some very primitive features, such as thick bones and primitive teeth. These features do not fit the pattern seen amongst modern humans, pygmies, or people with a rare condition known as microcephaly.

The researchers also examined the shape of other hominid skulls and established the pattern of changes seen as the skulls get smaller. By carrying this pattern downwards to very small skulls, the researchers ended up with something very similar to H. floresiensis, suggesting H. floresiensis was a perfectly healthy member of the great hominid family to which we ourselves belong.

In case that wasn’t enough, the researchers also demonstrated that the body proportions of H. floresiensis were completely dissimilar to modern pygmies. Short (they stood around one metre tall) and stocky, the hobbits resembled no-one alive today.

*From ‘The Hobbit’ by JRR Tolkien, but you knew that, didn’t you?

Paper Reference: Jungers, W., and Baab, K. (2009). The geometry of hobbits: Homo floresiensis and human evolution. Significance, 6(3), 159- 164. DOI: 10.1111/j.1740-9713.2009.00389.x

Liang Bua cave, Flores. A long way from Bag End! Image: Wikimedia/Rosino

Monkey see, monkey do – why mimicry matters

Some things are easier to mimic than others...

Here’s a simple trick to expose the power of mimicry: next time you’re sat with a small group of people, start stroking your chin. After a while, you’ll notice others start doing the same. This sort of unconscious mimicry is something we all do in social situations, but is this a uniquely human trick, or did we learn it from others?

A new study by an American and Italian team of researchers has shown capuchin monkeys also rely on mimicry to form social bonds. Their work, published in the journal Science, is the first study to suggest mimicry is an important social tool for primates other than people.

To test how the capuchins responded to mimicry, the researchers introduced two people, each of whom was holding a small ball identical to one possessed by the monkey. One of the people copied everything the monkey did with their ball: the other played around with the ball without reference to the capuchin. The researchers found that the capuchins spent more time sitting near the imitator than they did near the other person: they also interacted more with the imitator when given the chance to exchange tokens for marshmallow treats.

Their close proximity and more frequent interactions suggest the capuchins were more comfortable with the imitators, leading to a stronger social bond. Mimicry would benefit wild capuchins by cementing the social bonds between members of the large groups in which they live. As capuchins face many natural predators, living in large groups has its advantages as each individual monkey is at much lower risk of being caught. It also means more pairs of eyes on the lookout for danger. Any behaviour, such as mimicry, that reduced the number of conflicts between individuals and increasing cooperation would keep the group together.

Mimicry may also have led to the formation of human society as it helped us to cooperate with our neighbours, turning strangers into allies and friends.

Image: Wikimedia commons/Michelle Reback