Estimated energetic demands of thermoregulation during ancient canoe passages from Tahiti to Hawaii and New Zealand, a simulation analysis.

Prehistoric colonization of East Polynesia represents the last and most extensive of human migrations into regions previously uninhabited. Although much of East Polynesia is tropical, the southern third, dominated by New Zealand-by far the largest Polynesian landmass-ranges from a warm- to cool-temperate climate with some islands extending into the Subantarctic. The substantial latitudinal variation implies questions about biocultural adaptations of tropical people to conditions in which most of their familiar resources were absent and their agriculture marginal.

Colonial Legacies Influence Biodiversity Lessons: How Past Trade Routes and Power Dynamics Shape Present-Day Scientific Research and Professional Opportunities for Caribbean Scientists.

AbstractScientists recognize the Caribbean archipelago as a biodiversity hotspot and employ it for their research as a natural laboratory. Yet they do not always appreciate that these ecosystems are in fact palimpsests shaped by multiple human cultures over millennia. Although post-European anthropogenic impacts are well documented, human influx into the region began about 5,000 years prior.

A probable case of leprosy from colonial period St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Southeastern Caribbean.

Objective: To document and differentially diagnose facial pathology found in an isolated skull from St. Vincent and the Grenadines, southeastern Caribbean. To directly date this individual using radiocarbon dating.

Tropical islands of the Anthropocene: Deep histories of anthropogenic terrestrial-marine entanglement in the Pacific and Caribbean.

Islands are useful model systems for examining human-environmental interactions. While many anthropogenic effects visible in the archaeological and paleoecological records are terrestrial in nature (e.g.

No evidence for widespread island extinctions after Pleistocene hominin arrival.

The arrival of modern humans into previously unoccupied island ecosystems is closely linked to widespread extinction, and a key reason cited for Pleistocene megafauna extinction is anthropogenic overhunting. A common assumption based on late Holocene records is that humans always negatively impact insular biotas, which requires an extrapolation of recent human behavior and technology into the archaeological past. Hominins have been on islands since at least the early Pleistocene and for at least 50 thousand y (ka).

Reevaluating human colonization of the Caribbean using chronometric hygiene and Bayesian modeling.

Human settlement of the Caribbean represents the only example in the Americas of peoples colonizing islands that were not visible from surrounding mainland areas or other islands. Unfortunately, many interpretive models have relied on radiocarbon determinations that do not meet standard criteria for reporting because they lack critical information or sufficient provenience, often leading to specious interpretations. We have collated 2484 radiocarbon determinations, assigned them to classes based on chronometric hygiene criteria, and constructed Bayesian colonization models of the acceptable determinations to examine patterns of initial settlement.

Temporomandibular joint osteoarthritis at Chelechol ra Orrak, Palau.

Objective: To explore the frequency and severity of temporomandibular joint osteoarthritis (TMJ-OA) and its causative factors in a skeletal assemblage from the prehistoric site of Chelechol ra Orrak, Palau, western Micronesia.

Materials: 50 temporomandibular joint surfaces (mandibular condyles and articular eminences), representing a minimum of 22 adult individuals, 17 of which retain teeth.

Methods: Joint surfaces were macroscopically evaluated for characteristics associated with TMJ-OA and joint morphology.

Archaeological assessment reveals Earth's early transformation through land use.

Environmentally transformative human use of land accelerated with the emergence of agriculture, but the extent, trajectory, and implications of these early changes are not well understood. An empirical global assessment of land use from 10,000 years before the present (yr B.P.

Using seafaring simulations and shortest-hop trajectories to model the prehistoric colonization of Remote Oceania.

The prehistoric colonization of islands in Remote Oceania that began ∼3400 B.P. represents what was arguably the most expansive and ambitious maritime dispersal of humans across any of the world's seas or oceans.

Small scattered fragments do not a dwarf make: biological and archaeological data indicate that prehistoric inhabitants of Palau were normal sized.

Unlabelled: Current archaeological evidence from Palau in western Micronesia indicates that the archipelago was settled around 3000-3300 BP by normal sized populations; contrary to recent claims, they did not succumb to insular dwarfism.

Background: Previous and ongoing archaeological research of both human burial and occupation sites throughout the Palauan archipelago during the last 50 years has produced a robust data set to test hypotheses regarding initial colonization and subsequent adaptations over the past three millennia.

Principal Findings: Close examination of human burials at the early (ca.