Book Reviews

Human Biologists in the Archives:Demography, Health, Nutrition andGenetics in Historical Populations.Edited by D. Anne Herring and Alan C.Swedlund. xvi and 341 pp. Cambridge:Cambridge University Press. 2003.$90.00 (cloth).

This volume is based on papers read at asymposium held at Columbus Ohio in 1999under the auspices of the Human BiologyAssociation and the American Associationfor Human Biology. Its aim is to contributeto what the Foreword suggests ‘‘might signala newly emerging area of biological anthro-pology, human biohistory: the historicalreconstruction of the human biology of pastpopulations’’ (p. xiii). The editors flag fourmain themes in their Introduction: popula-tion history, the biological consequences ofinstitutional living, the impact of demo-graphic and epidemiological crises, and whatthey term the ‘‘methodological and epistemo-logical’’ implications of archival research.

The first of these themes is represented bystudies of ecclesiastical vital registrationdata from a 19th century Costa Rican parishand a Franciscan Mission in southernCalifornia from 1772 to the 1890s, togetherwith an analysis of anthropometric datafrom Ireland in the 1890s and 1930s.Institutional data come from an almshouseand an asylum in 19th century New YorkState and an expensive private school inpost-war New England. Crises are repre-sented by scarlet fever in the 19th centuryConnecticut valley, the 1865 Gibraltariancholera outbreak, and the experience of theBaltic Aland islands during the Russo-Swedish War of 1808/09. The collection isrounded out by a study of female representa-tion in a medieval skeletal population fromYork, nutritional and mortality trends in a20th century indigenous community in cen-tral Canada (which would fit equally wellunder the ‘‘crisis’’ heading), and two surveyarticles—one on epidemiological modelingand the other an authoritative generalreview by Malcolm Smith of the role of archi-val work in Human Biology.

The collection is of high standard overalland each of the contributions contains some-thing of interest, but taken as a whole theybear out the point made in the Foreword that

‘‘archival demographic data are most valuablewhen they are applied to interesting pro-blems.’’ This seemingly obvious observationis nonetheless important because work of thiskind is often unavoidably ‘‘source driven.’’The investigator may locate promisingsources of data, but the information they con-tain and the analyses which they will bearreflect the interests and purposes of its com-pilers—sometimes long-dead—and the moreor less random survival of documentary orother materials. This means that the specificproblems open to investigation are frequentlyoutside the investigator’s control, and a num-ber of the contributions to this volume areof primarily methodological interest; theirresults demonstrate the validity of methodsor materials (such as anthropometric data)through their compatibility with existingresults or known historical circumstances.

In practice, as Malcolm Smith observes,the role of archival material is usually mostvaluable in deepening the time scale overwhich populations can be studied or allowinga detailed and dispassionate analysis of crisisconditions in a way that would rarely bepossible for an observer on the spot. Mielke,for instance, shows how the Aland islandsbecame a sort of natural laboratory inwhich the presence of large numbers oftroops was sufficient in itself to trigger anepidemic crisis in the absence of either eco-nomic disruption or violence against civi-lians. Similarly, in their fine-grained studyof cholera in Gibraltar, Sawchuk and Burkeshow how variations in access to wateraffected mortality but were themselves dueto economic and social mechanisms toosubtle to be detected in a simple analysis ofphysical facilities. Herring et al. consider alonger-term ‘‘crisis’’ in their grim but fasci-nating analysis of the ways in which thesecurity and quality of indigenous Can-adians’ diets was undermined by their incorp-oration into an international economicsystem as subsistence hunting gave way tofur-trapping within a cash economy. Infantand child mortality deteriorated substan-tially with declining nutritional status, eventhough the incidence of epidemic diseasealso fell.

JOHN LANDERS

All Souls CollegeUniversity of OxfordOxford, United KingdomDOI: 10.1002/ajhb.10205

� 2003 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

AMERICAN JOURNAL OF HUMAN BIOLOGY 15:835–840 (2003)

The Backbone of History: Health andNutrition in the Western Hemisphere.Edited by Richard H. Steckel andJerome C. Rose. xx þ 633 pp. NewYork: Cambridge University Press. 2002.$75.00 (cloth).

With their impressive new volume, TheBackbone of History: Health and Nutritionin the Western Hemisphere, historical econo-mist Richard Steckel and physical anthropolo-gist Jerome Rose seek to advance the newfield they call macrobioarchaeology, whichattempts to identify broad patterns of adap-tation in the past across time and/or space bylarge-scale cross-cultural comparison ofhealth and demographic data. The editorsoffer appropriate acknowledgment to Paleo-pathology at the Origins of Agriculture (Cohenand Armelagos, 1984) as the first majorpublication in macrobioarchaeology, but thismore recent effort expands upon it in severalways, especially in sample diversity andthe range of questions addressed. The mostimportant original contribution, however, isthe establishment of a numerical ‘‘healthindex’’ to allow direct comparison of healthstatus among groups, and it is around analysisand application of this index that the lengthyvolume is centered.

The book opens with a discussion of thedevelopment of the health index. Seven com-monly evaluated skeletal indicators of nutri-tion, disease, and activity are scored in astandardized fashion with the resultssummed producing a value between zero and100. The editors repeatedly remind us that atthis point the index is ‘‘a work in progress thatshould not be overinterpreted’’ (p. 584).Indeed, areas for potential refinement areeasy to recognize. For example, each healthmarker is similarly weighted, making arthri-tis and anemia equally important. Other mar-kers do not have much gradation in value;thus, a broken finger equals a fatal blow tothe head. The index becomes even more con-troversial when life expectancy is introducedinto the equation, given the dubious view thatmany researchers already have toward paleo-demography. Nevertheless, the health indexis a worthy first effort at the creation of such ameasure, and the few cases in which it is usedto test hypotheses, such as the ‘‘osteologicalparadox’’ (Wood et al., 1992), and the associa-tion between ecological variables and health,demonstrate its potential value.

In the heart of the volume, the healthindex is compared among 65 populationsorganized into four large New World groups:Euro- and African-Americans, PrehispanicMesoamerican, South American, and NativeAmericans in North America. The informa-tion, contained in 14 chapters, includes thearchaeological context as well as a discussionof the various health markers for each ske-letal series. With only minor exceptionsthese chapters are comprehensive, clearlywritten, thoughtful analyses. Although fewstrong trends are evident, some patterns doemerge both within individual populationsand across all groups in the volume whenthe resultant health indices are compared.The most general, and the one most empha-sized by the editors, is the substantialamount of health stress present in the NewWorld before European contact. Even more,they argue that health had been in a gradualdecline for several thousand years, a patterndriven by the fact that those living in moredensely populated centers and those depen-dent on agriculture had more lesions relatedto nutrition and disease. These findings havebeen borne out in many previous bioarchaeo-logical studies and thus will not be of sur-prise to anthropologists, but likely will beunexpected to many outside the discipline.Some unanticipated ratings were given,however, such as the fact that middle class18th century whites did not bubble to the topof the index and that historic Plains Indianequestrian groups were among the health-iest individuals.

If the index is accepted, it creates a valu-able new tool by which scholars in manyfields, including history, economics, and his-torical sociology, can appreciate health pat-terns in the past. They must remember thatthe index without further refinement is atbest good for seeing the large-scale picture,but not for any fine-tuned mathematicalmanipulations to detect subtle differencesin nutrition and disease status. In contrast,some bioanthropologists will have strongreservations about ratings produced by theindex. Even with refinement, the scoringstandards for various health markers willcontinue to be challenged, such as the inevi-table role of interobserver error in recording.Others will suggest that the index uses suchbroad parameters that the individual envir-onmental and historical settings which thedata are most reliably interpreted becomelargely lost. For example, as Johansson and

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Owsley point out, some poor health can bethe result of abuse of privilege rather thanmore limited access to resources, as would bemost often presumed (p. 530).

Even if the validity of the health index isquestioned, the volume still will be of greatvalue. First, the data contained within theindividual chapters will make it an instantclassic among bioarchaeological referencesources. Second, many chapters containcomprehensive and up-to-date discussions ofvarious issues in bioarchaeology, especiallypaleodemography. Finally, as research-ers debate how the index might be refinedand/or applied, The Backbone of Historywill undoubtedly be one of the most talkedabout books in the field in a long time.

LITERATURE CITED

Cohen MN, Armelagos GJ. 1984. Paleopathology at theorigins of agriculture. Orlando, FL: Academic Press.

Wood J, Milner G, Harpending H, Weiss K. 1992. Theosteological paradox: problems of inferring prehistorichealth from skeletal samples. Curr Anthropol 33:34–70.

MARIE DANFORTH

Department of Anthropology andSociology

University of SouthernMississippi

Hattiesburg, MississippiDOI: 10.1002/ajhb.10206

The Delphic Boat: What Genomes Tell Us.By Antoine Danchin. 368 pp. Cambridge,MA: Harvard University Press. 2002.$35.00 (cloth).

At first glance, one would think that anyauthor who would attempt to synthesizeapparently diverse elements of biology, genet-ics, computer software and firmware, medi-cine, and philosophy under one cover wouldbe facing an impossible task. Not to mentionthat such an author would perhaps perman-ently confound practitioners of the DeweyDecimal System. In fact, Antoine Danchin’sThe Delphic Boat does begin to read like anamalgamation of disjointed essays bound upas chapters. Then, midway through, Danchinreveals his theme: This book is about infor-mation. More precisely, this book is aboutcognitive models of information. It is alsoabout how information is transmitted; about

misinformation (or dysinformation, i.e.,mutations); and about the coincidence ofinformation in various systems.

The metaphor contained in the title revealsa portion (but only a portion) of Danchin’sscaffolding. The Oracle at Delphi posed aquestion concerning a boat: If a wooden boat,over time, eventually consists only of newplanks that have replaced the rotted andbroken original planks, is the boat now thesame boat? The answer, according to Danchin,is yes, if one defines ‘‘boat’’ as the relation-ship of the planks to the whole. Similarly,argues Danchin, genetic and biologicalsystems, computer systems, and medicalsystems are more than the sum of their com-ponents, they are also—and more import-antly—the relationships between thosecomponents.

On this cusp of the ‘‘age of ‘–omics’,’’ whenmany of the components of these varioussystems have been effectively described, itis now the task of researchers to attempt anunderstanding of the relationships betweenthe components. The genes have now been(or are being) mapped by geneticists; theirstructural and functional relationships arethe next task of the Human Genome Project(HGP), hence, genomics. Relationships andinteractions among proteins are the goalsof those who practice proteomics. And so onfor transcriptomics, toxicogenomics, pharma-cogenomics, etc.

This translated English version of La bar-que de Delphes (Editions Odile Jacob, 1998)has been reorganized into five chapters, plusa prologue and an epilogue. Readers shouldbe prepared for significant descriptiveand speculative fugues, in the sense thatDanchin often attempts to carry forwardseveral motifs simultaneously in the hopethat the reader will discover their coin-cidence by a recursive process, the singlethematic configuration algorithmically dis-tilled from apparent chaos. The read itselfis an exemplar of the distillation processthat Danchin illuminates.

This is a challenging book: At several junc-tures this reviewer felt as if he were walkingon the flotsam of Danchin’s wrecked boatand being asked to pick up the pieces. Yes,the read requires significant effort, butis worth the view from the bridge of thefinal chapter, which bears no less a titlethan ‘‘What Is Life?’’ To which Danchinposes his hypothesis that living systems—organelles, cells, organs, organisms—act as

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Turing machines; that is, a compartmentinto which a series of symbols enters, isrecursively processed or algorithmicallytransformed (requiring energy), and thenexits in a different state of either a higher(information) or lower energy (entropy).What the human mind arguably has in com-mon with living systems is its intuitive abil-ity to reflect this process, to make realityvirtual, and to then implement that cogni-tive model as a concrete machine, a tool.Thus it can be argued that representationsof biological systems can be stored in silicoon a computer (one possible state of a Turingmachine), and the potential functional rela-tionships between states or objects (e.g.,genes) can be manipulated to ever moreclosely simulate real biological systems(Medigue et al. 1991). According to Danchin,not only is the biological system algorithmicand recursive, but so is the mind’s virtualmodel, and likewise the computer chip.Hence, the organization of Danchin’s wordsbound between its two cloth membranes, asa paused system, waiting to be processed bya reader.

Readers of the American Journal ofHuman Biology will find much detail inthis work that is specific to bacterial gen-omes (the author is a bacterial genomist),but removing the nonhuman introns is nomore difficult than the mental editing ofany full genetics textbook.

As an attempt to mirror the configurationsor relationships of parts to wholes in largersystems, perhaps the term gestalt (not foundin the book) is either too passe, or too boundto the literature of psychology to be usedeffectively in this new context. Likewise, sys-tems theory itself may be too limiting a labelto define Danchin’s vision. These conceptsnevertheless recur, even if not explicitlyrecognized by the author. In a work thatparses nearly all the relevant terms and con-cepts, one wonders—if only for historicalreasons—why these, too, were not reviewed.

Readers should also be prepared toencounter a few minor but distracting errorsintroduced by either translation or typeset-ting in the English edition: The codon AUGis represented by the DNA triplet TAC (notATG, p. 86 in the reviewer’s copy); and theribonucleotides are rA, rC, rG, and rU (notrT, p. 333), for example. Overall, however,the rate of mutation is low and the transla-tor, Alison Quayle, deserves high marksfor reorganizing the original French text,

and for representing complex themes inapproachable English.

The author is due high praise for thisattempt at a synthesis of vastly disparatebatches of information. This reviewer rec-ommends the work to anyone with aninterest in post-HGP genomics. Were this apolytene chromosome, one might have wishedfor fewer philosophical ‘‘puffs’’ and morestraightforward explanation of the similes;but, on the other hand, what’s a meta for?

Antoine Danchin is Professor and Head ofthe Unit of Genetics of Bacterial Genomes atthe Pasteur Institute in Paris and Directorof the HKU-Pasteur Center in Hong Kong.

LITERATURE CITED

Medigue C, Gascuel O, Soldano H, Henaut A, Danchin A.1991. From data banks to data bases. ResMicrobiol142:913–916.

LARRY MAI

Departments of Anthropologyand Biological Sciences

California State UniversityLong Beach, CaliforniaDOI: 10.1002/ajhb.10207

Ecology of Aging. Human Ecology, SpecialIssue No. 8. By Anna Siniarska andNapoleon Wolanski. 215 pp. Delhi: Kamla-Raj Enterprises. 2000. $55.00 (cloth).

In this volume aging is presented from anenvironmental perspective. The editors andco-authors represent over 40 years ofresearch in Poland, the USA, the formerYugoslavia, and Mexico, and much of therest of the world is represented by an inter-national group of authors. The book isdivided into three sections. The Intro-ductory Section A is entitled Theory of Agingand begins with Chapter 1, an overview bythe editors of the ontogenetic-development-ecological perspective. Chapter 2, by J.F.Shroots, presents age changes using ger-odynamics, which posits that the ‘‘dynamicsof living systems is represented in nonlinearseries of transformations into higher and/orlower order structures or processes’’ (p. 25).J. Pariskova compares the healthiest oldpeople to people who have shorter lives interms of diet and exercise over the entirelife span in Chapter 3.

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Section B, Ecological Factors of Aging,begins with a discussion by A.T. Steegmannand S. Hewner in Chapter 4 of climatic stres-sors such as heat and cold and their interac-tion with poor living conditions and howthese factors may accelerate the aging pro-cess. W. Stini reviews how age-relatedchanges in body composition affect nutri-tional requirements in Chapter 5. R.Shephard examines the significance foraging of the ecological context of habitualphysical activity and work capacity relativeto the workplace in Chapters 6 and 7, respec-tively. U. Wittwer-Backofen looks at theinfluences on social stratification in humanaging and the biological ramifications inChapter 8, and S. Hewner details ethnic dif-ferences in the aging process in Chapter 9and notes that poor definitions of age, race,or ethnicity make it difficult to assess thebiosocial dynamics.

Section C, Environmental Factors inAging of Structures and Functions, includesChapter 10 only, by D. Karasik, E.Kobyliansky, and G. Livshitz, in which isreviewed the extensive literature (160 pub-lications) on the ethnic and familial factorsaffecting bone development and aging. Thefinal Section D, Patterns of Studies onEcology of Aging, concludes with Chapter11 on the demographic factors relative tocultural and environmental context for theever-increasing proportion of elderly world-wide, by A.G. Drusini, and Chapter 12 by theeditors with an overview of the volume’sthemes and a description of Wolanski andcolleagues’ ongoing studies from 1958–1995of participants age 30–80 years in the WholeFamily Study.

There is much to ponder after reading thisvolume, and the editors invite internationalcooperation.

JOAN C. STEVENSON

Book Review EditorDOI: 10.1002/ajhb.10208

The Primate Fossil Record. Edited byWalter Carl Hartwig. xiv þ 530 pp. NewYork: Cambridge University Press. 2002.$175.00 (cloth).

Almost a quarter of a century ago, FredSzalay and Eric Delson (1979) undertook asurvey of what was then known about the

fossil record of primates. Since that time, thequality and quantity of the fossil record ofprimates has grown exponentially. Therehave been other books that have summar-ized this record more synthetically and inmuch less detail—Fleagle (1999), Martin(1990), and Conroy (1990), to name three—but until now nothing has rivaled Szalay andDelson in its comprehensiveness or detail.Indeed, we have reached the point whereone individual or a couple of collaboratorscan no longer do justice to the richness ofthe record. Walter Hartwig has stepped for-ward with the next best thing—a carefullyedited multiple-authored reference work ofthe highest caliber: The Primate FossilRecord. Here will be found species-levelaccounts of all the fossil primates known upto about 2 years ago. A fairly strict organiza-tional plan is maintained. Chapters beginwith a historical account of the recovery ofthe fossils and debates about their phylogen-etic position or paleobiology. I particularlyenjoyed the discussions by Godfrey andJungers about subfossil lemurs in Chapter7 and Beard about early anthropoids inChapter 9.

Following the historical account, eachchapter has a systematics section, presentedas a Linnaean hierarchy, with an account ofgenera and species. An appealing aspect ofthese sections is that dry descriptions of ana-tomical detail are mostly eschewed in favorof illustrations. Some irregularities emergehere—some lists of genera are arrangedalphabetically, others are organized by thedate of description, and still others appearto be idiosyncratic. Authors have the optionof including a section for ‘‘problematictaxa’’—genera that have defied ready classi-fication often because they are too poorlypreserved; Amphipithecus, Afrotarsius, andPondaungia find their way into such ‘‘grab-bags.’’ Indeed, they find their way into sev-eral of them in different chapters.

The organization of the systematics sec-tions is not precisely cladistic. Hartwigstates that he did this because he wished toavoid promotion of one interpretive phyl-ogeny, or the means for deriving one, overanother. Indeed, authors are all over themap on whether they accept a purely cladis-tic classificatory framework with its tenetthat the systematic arrangements followprecisely a phylogenetic scheme. ‘‘Waste-baskets’’ abound for primitive taxa. As ithappens, however, most (all?) of the authors

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are committed to thinking in phylogeneticterms. They want to know the precise pos-ition of their taxa on a phylogenetic tree (thefirst one appears more than 150 pages intothe text), even if they cannot make suchjudgments on the available evidence (andeven if they have no inclination to use phylo-genetic classification). Each chapter has asystematic table with family-level groups(some monophyletic and some paraphyletic).I would have preferred that this be accom-panied, or even replaced, by a phylogeneticscenario showing the author’s opinion abouthow the taxa are related to one another,where the major grade shifts occurred, andwhere the species fit in time and space.

Which brings me to the area I think is theleast helpful part of this book: there is nogeneral treatment of time or space. Landmammal ages, epochal designations, andabsolute dates frequently are mentionedbut they are buried within systematicaccounts. One summary chapter about geo-logic time and land mammal ages andanother about paleogeography, climate change,and primate species distributions throughtime would have been enormously helpful.The data are mostly embedded in the bookbut not exploited in this manner. This wouldhave enabled students of primate evolution toget some handle on general trends in primateevolution.

Systematics sections are followed by com-ments about the evolution of each group.These sections are idiosyncratic, reflectinga blend of paleobiology, functional morph-ology, and phylogeny. This is as it shouldbe. The authors of all sections are leadingauthorities and we want to know what theythink is important about their groups andwhere the big questions are to be found.

In addition to the systematics-orientedchapters, there are several interesting top-ical chapters; for example, one on crown pri-mate origins and many dealing with major

adaptive radiations. I particularly enjoyedthose by Marian Dagosto and Tab Rasmussen,Chapters 8 and 14, respectively.

In addition to the absence of proper treat-ment of time and space, I find two otherfeatures disappointing. First, considerationof the value of genetics for establishing phyl-ogeny, while discussed in a general way byPilbeam, is entirely left up to the chapterwriters—and is ignored by some. Second, Iwas surprised that the book does not includetreatment of the Paleocene Plesiadapiformes.Perhaps the important descriptions of newcarpolestid and paromomyid material broketoo late for inclusion, but signs now pointstrongly to the possibility that some orall Plesiadapiformes may be more closelyrelated to primates than to any other livingorder of mammals. That makes them stemprimates, even though they lacked theshared-derived features that are hallmarksof crown primates—‘‘euprimates.’’

These minor criticisms aside, WalterHartwig’s book sits on my shelf next to thevery best books about primate evolution. Itsmerits are many. Its deficits are few andentirely forgivable. Que Bueno!

LITERATURE CITED

Conroy GC. 1990. Primate evolution. New York: W.W.Norton.

Fleagle JG. 1999. Primate adaptation and evolution.San Diego: Academic Press.

Martin RD. 1990. Primate origins and evolution: a phylo-genetic reconstruction. London: Chapman & Hall.

Szalay FS, Delson E. 1979. Evolutionary history of theprimates. New York: Academic Press.

RICHARD F. KAY

Department of Biological Anthropologyand Anatomy

Duke University Medical CenterDurham, North CarolinaDOI: 10.1002/ajhb.10209

840 BOOK REVIEWS