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Post by Charlie Bass on May 25, 2010 12:44:50 GMT -5
After reading an anthropology book from W.W. Howells I must make some comments about C. Loring Brace and his methods. Howells noted that Brace's 24 measurements that he uses emphasize the nasal area of the skull and not much more, well as has been pointed out in another thread I started, nasal form alone is not a good way of evaluating population relationships since nasal form is correlated with climate, Brace tries to skirt this issue by admitting that nasal form indeed is correlated to climate but then says based on nonadaptive traits Somalis and Northeast African Nile Valley inhabitants are more related to Northwest Europeans than to "sub-Saharan" Africans. He never states nor points out what these nonadaptive traits are.
Secondly, Brace used posterior probabilities which do *NOT* cluster populations by membership and can be misleading because a group with higher probability of membership in a cluster is not necessarily closely related. If anyone remembers anymore of Brace's work you would remember that based on posterior probabilities modern Europeans and Neanderthals are related, but every other study done shows Neanderthals to be more than significantly distant from *ALL* modern populations, Europeans included.
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Post by Tukuler al~Takruri on May 25, 2010 23:37:18 GMT -5
What book by Howells?
What work by Brace?
When were these unnamed references written?
Has either researcher modified their view in subsequent releases?
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Post by Charlie Bass on May 25, 2010 23:53:30 GMT -5
What book by Howells? What work by Brace? When were these unnamed references written? Has either researcher modified their view in subsequent releases? The Howells book is Who's Who in Skulls: Ethnic Identification of Crania From Measurements W.W. Howells pg 95 On that page Howells notes that Braces set of 24 measurements emphasize the circumnasal skeleton and through posterior probabilities that the Monte Circeo Neanderthal skull is exlcuded from all modern series except Europeans. |
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Post by zarahan on May 29, 2010 13:17:27 GMT -5
After reading an anthropology book from W.W. Howells I must make some comments about C. Loring Brace and his methods. Howells noted that Brace's 24 measurements that he uses emphasize the nasal area of the skull and not much more, well as has been pointed out in another thread I started, nasal form alone is not a good way of evaluating population relationships since nasal form is correlated with climate, Brace tries to skirt this issue by admitting that nasal form indeed is correlated to climate but then says based on nonadaptive traits Somalis and Northeast African Nile Valley inhabitants are more related to Northwest Europeans than to "sub-Saharan" Africans. He never states nor points out what these nonadaptive traits are. Secondly, Brace used posterior probabilities which do *NOT* cluster populations by membership and can be misleading because a group with higher probability of membership in a cluster is not necessarily closely related. If anyone remembers anymore of Brace's work you would remember that based on posterior probabilities modern Europeans and Neanderthals are related, but every other study done shows Neanderthals to be more than significantly distant from *ALL* modern populations, Europeans included. Excellent work bass. Brace is a sound scholar but your example shows the kind of selective manipulations he used in 1993. So he focused on the nose eh, no doubt incorporating thereby the "true negro" stereotype that could be used for further data and category manipulation. And Howells called him on it? Never knew that. Good research round up.  Do you think he used the posterior probabilities to obscure some of the manipulation? |
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wysingm
Craftsperson
Myra Wysinger
Posts: 19
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Post by wysingm on May 29, 2010 13:57:00 GMT -5
Link: wysinger.homestead.com/brace.pdfClines and Clusters Versus “Race:” A Test in Ancient Egypt and the Case of a Death on the Nile, (1993) C. Loring Brace ... Museum of Anthropology, Department of Anthropology, University of Washington |
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Post by sundiata on May 29, 2010 20:08:27 GMT -5
Bass. Brace's Methodology has always been flawed. In fact, Brace is among the extreme minority who view Europeans as non-related to Cro-magnon and more related to neanderthals. This is based on his method of placing more emphasis on these illusive "non-adaptive traits". This is dangerous because most visible traits being in response to adaptive and evolutionary mechanisms, he relies exclusively on a limited set of data to come to his conclusions. He offers no multi-disciplinary explanation of his results, which Keita (2005) criticized. For instance, in clusters and clines, he admits that there seems to be a correlation between tropical skeletal adaptations and hyper skin pigmentation, yet doesn't investigate the possible reason why AE were tropically adapted in an arid environment. This clearly has genetic implications if combined with archaeological data, but Brace is an "old school" Anthropologist. The only reason that his 2006 study was slightly better is because he included more comparative samples, but he still used bad language when describing the data.
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Post by Tukuler al~Takruri on Jun 2, 2010 12:45:09 GMT -5
Thanks!! Link: wysinger.homestead.com/brace.pdfClines and Clusters Versus “Race:” A Test in Ancient Egypt and the Case of a Death on the Nile, (1993) C. Loring Brace ... Museum of Anthropology, Department of Anthropology, University of Washington |
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