Juha,
in view of your reasons for asking this question, you (and other zooarch
list members) might be interested in an article which will appear in
tomorrow's (March 11th) edition of the Journal 'Science' entitled:
"Worldwide Phylogeography of Wild Boar Reveals Multiple Centers of Pig
Domestication" by Greger Larson, Keith Dobney, Umberto Albarella,
Meiying Fang, Elizabeth Matisoo-Smith, Judith Robins, Stewart Lowden,
Heather Finlayson, Tina Brand, Eske Willerslev, Peter Rowley-Conwy, Leif
Andersson & Alan Cooper.
Regards,
Keith
Juha Savolainen wrote:
> Dear Zooarch,
>
>
>
> I want to express my most sincere thanks and gratitude for all the
> Zooarch list members, who have given so helpful and generous assistance
> by replying to my query. As I have already pointed out, Zooarch is
> pretty unique in the sense that an atmosphere of friendly cooperation
> between specialists prevails without any hints of intrigue and petty
> malice. It was all the more remarkable that busy specialists found the
> time to give helpful answers to a mere layman´s question. Many thanks!
> Kiitos!
>
>
>
> I have learned so much from the replies. Not in the sense that I would
> now think that I could talk about the subject with any confidence. No,
> that would and will demand the effort and time one must invest into
> reading and understand the references I have been kindly provided by the
> Zooarch members. But the replies have given me orientation that I simply
> could not have learned from anywhere else.
>
>
>
> As the number of replies was beyond my expectations, I shall send my
> personal thanks for all the list members who provided help to me
> separately and confine myself here only to one aspect of a (friendly)
> question Dale asked me immediately: why should an layman would want to
> follow rather technical exchanges on archaeozoology? Well, I shall give
> a fuller answer to Dale, but this part of the answer might be of some
> interest to all the list members.
>
>
>
> I am sure that many of Zooarch members have read Jared Diamon´s “Guns,
> Germs and Steel – the Fates of Human Societies”. It is a very ambitious
> attempt to unravel the broad pattern of human history during the last
> 13.000 years, to explain why history took so different evolutionary
> courses on different continents. Diamond´s answer has a lot to do with
> genes, but not with human genes. Rather, he is interested in the changes
> brought about by the domestication of animals and plants, which for
> Diamond are the formative influences on later developments. And he has
> continued (with Peter Bellwood) to explore these issues in trying to
> explain the spread of different language families etc. Whether Diamond
> is right is another matter, but the account is fascinating and surely
> merits detailed further discussion. Now, who would be more well-placed
> to discuss such questions than people who are specialists in this field,
> archaeozoologists and archaeobotanists?
>
>
>
> Best regards,
>
> Juha Savolainen
>
> Helsinki
--
Dr Keith Dobney
Department of Archaeology
University of Durham
South Road
Durham DH1 3LE
Tel: +44 (0)191 334 1119
Fax: +44 (0)191 334 1101
Email: [log in to unmask]
Details: www.dur.ac.uk/Archaeology/about_staff/about_staff_dobneyk.php
|