Does obstetric protection apply to small-bodied females?: A comparison between small-bodied Jomon foragers and large-bodied Yayoi agriculturalists in the prehistoric Japanese archipelago.

Objectives: This study examined the relationship between maternal pelvic and body size in the transition from the Middle-Final Jomon period (c. 5000-3000 BC) to the Middle Yayoi period (c. 400~200 BC to around AD 1) in Japan.

A paleopathological approach to early human adaptation for wet-rice agriculture: The first case of Neolithic spinal tuberculosis at the Yangtze River Delta of China.

The earliest evidence of human tuberculosis can be traced to at least the early dynastic periods, when full-scaled wet-rice agriculture began or entered its early developmental stages, in circum-China countries (Japan, Korea, and Thailand). Early studies indicated that the initial spread of tuberculosis coincided with the development of wet-rice agriculture. It has been proposed that the adaptation to agriculture changed human social/living environments, coincidentally favoring survival and spread of pathogenic Mycobacterial strains that cause tuberculosis.

An assessment of postcranial indices, ratios, and body mass versus eco-geographical variables of prehistoric Jomon, Yayoi agriculturalists, and Kumejima Islanders of Japan.

Objectives: We explore variations in body and limb proportions of the Jomon hunter-gatherers (14,000-2500 BP), the Yayoi agriculturalists (2500-1700 BP) of Japan, and the Kumejima Islanders of the Ryukyus (1600-1800 AD) with 11 geographically diverse skeletal postcranial samples from Africa, Europe, Asia, Australia, and North America using brachial-crural indices, femur head-breadth-to-femur length ratio, femur head-breadth-to-lower-limb-length ratio, and body mass as indicators of phenotypic climatic adaptation. Specifically, we test the hypothesis that variation in limb proportions seen in Jomon, Yayoi, and Kumejima is a complex interaction of genetic adaptation; development and allometric constraints; selection, gene flow and genetic drift with changing cultural factors (i.e.