[{"id":36,"title":"Phylogenetic tools and myths: reconstructing human prehistory.","sha":"35716e31f2a25585ead99b321040b984","user_id":116,"state":"published","body":"Similar myths with a sufficiently complex set of traits that could not be the product of many independent inventions can be found around the world. Moreover, certain myths evolve very slowly and their emergence probably date back to the Palaeolithic age. These myths may also spread together with the first human migrations. They carry an unequivocal phylogenetic message and computational methods derived from evolutionary biology have been used to reconstruct phylogenetic trees and protoforms for some of them (e.g. d'Huy 2012a-d, 2013a-j).  \r\nWe can construct a binary data matrix where the rows correspond to the various cultural areas being analyzed and the columns correspond to different types of complex oral tales that are present in each area. There are numerous  extensive motif and tale-type indices to help us in this task, at the local or global level. An effort should be made to exclude recent borrowings. We can then apply phylogenetic methods to extract a signal that could be converted into trees (e.g. Neighbor joining, maximum parsimony, maximum likelihood or Bayesian analysis),  networks (e.g. Neighbor-net) or clusters. Among other things, this could serve to assess to what extent mythological and genetic histories are congruent, to test hypothesis about human prehistory (e.g. to reconstruct the early human migrations) or to understand what drives mythological diversification and disparity.\r\n\r\n--- https://unive-paris1.academia.edu/JuliendHuy/Phylogenetics-of-Myths-and-Folktales\r\n--- https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Julien_DHuy/contributions","created_at":"2015-02-14T10:19:36.199Z","updated_at":"2023-07-04T22:34:49.872Z","zenodo_id":22226,"doi":"http://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15118","subject":null,"tags":["phylogenetics","mythology","prehistory","oral_tradition","early_human_migrations","memetics"],"vote_count":24,"view_count":1,"score":24.1,"deleted":false,"muted":false,"tweeted":false,"attachment_file_name":null,"attachment_content_type":null,"attachment_file_size":null,"attachment_updated_at":null},{"id":234,"title":"How to Build a Global Tree of All Known Languages? - A Brief Demonstration.","sha":"138279e18ac6c0cb44da84e51e1b37df","user_id":null,"state":"published","body":"[I] (https://unive-paris1.academia.edu/JuliendHuy) used the [Dedius’s binary coding (with MrBayes)] (http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/royprsb/suppl/2010/08/27/rspb.2010.1595.DC1/rspb20101595supp1.pdf) of the [WALS dataset] (http://wals.info/), the softwares [Structure 2.3.4]  (http://pritchardlab.stanford.edu/structure.html) (fig.1, see supplementary material), and [StructureHarvester] (http://taylor0.biology.ucla.edu/structureHarvester/) (fig.2) to estimate the most likelihood number (“K”) of founding populations (here, K = 20) needed to explain the structure of the corpus. For each cultural area, the Fst score oscillates between 42–88%, [which is much higher than the genetic variation among human populations] (http://www.pnas.org/content/106/42/17671.short), and suggests that the language families, once established, seem to have been very conservative.  Then I excluded from the corpus each language with more than 30% data which refer to acculturation signal (i.e. less than 70% of single-origin). Indeed, these languages having a complex history, it is expected that they are intermediate between many others and “blur” the phylogenetic signal. Using the altered corpus, I created many trees and networks (fig.3-5), which correctly group, for the first time, all languages into known language families and show evidence for some higher level clusters. The Austronesian language family may not form a monophyletic group.   \r\nThis idea, which has yet to be tested in larger datasets, may be a major step toward a complete understanding of the historical relationship between the world's languages and many other important questions, such as the reconstruction of the human proto-language's structure and its evolution. ","created_at":"2015-09-21T22:04:44.258Z","updated_at":"2016-05-14T05:22:13.934Z","zenodo_id":62024,"doi":"http://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.31290","subject":null,"tags":["phylogenetics","language","structure","global tree of all known languages","prehistory","proto-language","comparative method","cultural fst","cultural evolution","linguistic evolution","networks","linguistics","evolutionary anthropology","origin of language","mother tongue","first language","journal of brief ideas"],"vote_count":2,"view_count":1,"score":2.1,"deleted":false,"muted":false,"tweeted":true,"attachment_file_name":"Electronic_supplementary_material.pdf","attachment_content_type":"application/pdf","attachment_file_size":292814,"attachment_updated_at":"2015-09-21T22:04:41.148Z"},{"id":297,"title":"Could a primeval version of the Basque 'Jentilak' tale be 25.000-year-old?","sha":"e5de088102b2752e8ff7b0f97af43f9d","user_id":null,"state":"published","body":"In the deepest part at the end of Llonín Cave (Asturias, Northern Spain), a fortuitous configuration of minor protuberances and cracks in the wall suggests the lateral outline of an 80 cm high anthropomorphic head, whereas a minor depression indicates the eye. Around 25.000 BP, our Late Palaeolithic ancestors covered the eye with a carefully painted set of red radiating lines and also painted a 40 cm high anthropomorphic female figure on the neck.\r\n\r\nWe can only speculate about the meaning of this pictorial narrative. However, if the tales of the Basque 'Jentilak', the Celtic 'Balor' and 'Yspaddaden Penkawr', the Ukranian 'Vij\", the Hopi 'Hásohkata' and similar giant creatures with heavy or long brows and eyelids might have Palaeolithic roots (Lajoye 2014: 41), the combination of a head (a giant emerging from the 'other side' of the wall in a deep cave), an eye covered with long lines (representing the hairs of the brow?) and a 'heroine' (who closed this eye or had the power to open it?) may have illustrated a Palaeolithic proto-version of these myths.\r\n\r\nSincere thanks are due to Julien d'Huy for his very useful suggestion to compare Llonín's ideograph with the tales analyzed by Patrice Lajoye.\r\n\r\nLajoye, P. 2014. Balor et Yspaddaden Penkawr de par le monde. À propos du motif F571.1. Nouvelle Mythologie Comparée 2: 1-51.","created_at":"2016-04-07T09:56:46.299Z","updated_at":"2016-04-16T13:08:36.144Z","zenodo_id":106385,"doi":"http://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.49309","subject":null,"tags":["llonín cave","prehistory","palaeolithic","pictorial narrative","ideograph","mythology"],"vote_count":1,"view_count":1,"score":1.1,"deleted":false,"muted":false,"tweeted":false,"attachment_file_name":"Some_thoughts_on_Llonín_Cave's_giant.pdf","attachment_content_type":"application/pdf","attachment_file_size":716992,"attachment_updated_at":"2016-04-07T15:00:04.425Z"},{"id":79,"title":"Endurance Hunting aa a Driver for Sexual Dimorphism and Role Differentiation","sha":"120b1f47e6890550933c0958d25e7f1c","user_id":325,"state":"published","body":"Early humans were endurance hunters. They were successful in long distance pursuit of prey. This behavioral strategy is believed to be at least 2MM years old, predating h. sapiens, and persists in Kalahari bushmen and the Tarahumara, amongst others. However, long distance running reduces body fat to \u003c10%, which in females is inadequate for fertility. Thus endurance hunting may have been an early driver of role differentiation (male hunters vs. female gatherers) with female gathering allowing a maintained \u003e20% body fat composition, and maintained fertility.\r\nInsofar as any female runners  would be at a fertility disadvantage it is possible that gatherer females, with dimorphically distinct evolutionary modern body habitus would have been regarded positively in comparison. \r\n","created_at":"2015-02-20T23:36:39.889Z","updated_at":"2023-06-28T17:39:34.552Z","zenodo_id":23230,"doi":"http://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15563","subject":null,"tags":["endurance","dimorphism","running","evolution","gender","prehistory"],"vote_count":3,"view_count":1,"score":3.1,"deleted":false,"muted":false,"tweeted":false,"attachment_file_name":null,"attachment_content_type":null,"attachment_file_size":null,"attachment_updated_at":null}]