GOUGH'S CAVE 1 : ASSESSMENT OF BODY SIZE AND SHAPE 



43 



the modern world, high brachial and crural indices tend to be 

 associated with longer limbs. Not only have Trinkaus (1981) and 

 Meadows & Jantz (1995) documented this, but Roberts' (1978) 

 relative forearm index (the anthropometric equivalent of the brachial 

 index) is also positively associated with temperature, and thus tends 

 to be found in absolutely longer-limbed groups. However, while the 

 association between these indices and limb length is a very real one, 

 there remains much variability in these features (Holliday, 1999). 

 For example, among the global sample of recent humans used for 

 this analysis, correlations between the brachial index and total arm 

 length (humeral length + radius length), and between the crural 

 index and total lower limb length (femoral + tibial length) are 

 significant, but are not particularly high (for the former relationship, 

 r = 0.12, p = 0.0036, n = 63 1 ; for the latter, r = 0. 15, p = 0.0001 , n = 

 680). Thus, while there is a clear tendency among recent humans for 

 brachial and crural indices to increase with overall limb length, there 

 is also considerable variability in limb length, and how that length is 

 distributed between the proximal and distal segments (and see 

 Holliday & Ruff, 2001). As a result, there is much overlap in distal 

 limb segment length proportions among individuals from broad 

 geographic regions (Holliday, 1999). 



Nevertheless, when the brachial indices of recent Europeans are 

 compared to Mesolithic and Late Upper Paleolithic samples, two- 

 tailed t tests detect significant differences between the recent and 

 fossil Europeans (Mesolithic vs. Recent, p = 0.004; LUP vs. Recent, 

 p = 0.0002). The crural index yields similarly significant differences 

 (Mesolithic vs. Recent, p = 0.01; LUP vs. Recent, p < 0.0001). It is 

 difficult to imagine that these differences are due to mere sampling 

 error in the fossil record. 



Thus, we are faced with a dichotomy. In multivariate analyses of 

 shape, Mesolithic and LUP samples (unlike their EUP forebears) 

 cluster among recent Europeans, yet their brachial and crural indices 

 are significantly higher. Importantly, however, this does not mean 

 that their limbs are long. In fact, while brachial and crural indices 

 remained elevated from the EUP through the Mesolithic, total limb 

 length reduce d (Frayer, 1980, 1981, 1984, 1992; Jacobs, 1983, 1985; 

 Holliday, 1995, 1999). 



What, therefore, do the high brachial and crural indices of the Late 

 Upper Paleolithic and Mesolithic humans, including Gough's Cave 

 1, mean? As argued in Holliday (1999), this is a clear example of 

 mosaic evolution. It seems likely that climatic selection due to the 

 glacial cold of Europe modified what had been a more tropically- 

 adapted physique into a more cold-adapted one. Yet selection acted 

 more or less equally on both the proximal and distal limb segments, 

 leaving the later humans with shorter limbs (and thus better adapted 

 to the cold), but permitting them to retain their relatively long distal 

 limb segments 2 . 



Whether some other type of selection was maintaining these high 

 ratios in spite of overall reduction in limb length, or whether they 

 were selectively neutral is uncertain. The most likely conclusion is 

 that the brachial and crural indices are genetic markers linking the 

 Late Upper Paleolithic and Mesolithic populations to their 'Cro- 

 Magnon' forebears. The logical extension of this argument is that 

 contra Frayer (1992) and Frayer et al. (1993), these indices are, as 

 Trinkaus ( 1981) first posited, indicative of African genes in the early 

 modern Europeans. 



In sum, while the total morphological pattern of the Cheddar 

 Man's body proportions is European-like, it is those features for 

 which he differs from the modern European condition that are of the 



2 Al least over the time period observed - at some point, apparently subsequent to the 

 Mesolithic, European brachial and crural indices decreased to approximate the con- 

 dition seen today. 



most interest. Specifically, it seems likely that his high brachial, 

 crural indices, and TL/STH indices, reflective of relatively longer 

 distal limb segments, are a retention from an earlier, largely African 

 gene pool - a retention no longer seen in Europe today. 



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