Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Biological Anthropological Aspects Of The African Diaspora; Geographic Origins, Secular Trends, And Plastic Versus Genetic Influences Utilizing Craniometric Data, Martha Katherine Spradley

Doctoral Dissertations

The African Diaspora refers to the forced emigration of Africans to European and British colonies for the purpose of providing slave labor. Enslaved Africans that arrived in the New World were subjected to a new environment and plantation labor. When dramatic shifts in living standards or exposure to a new environment occur, physical changes may take place within the given population. These types of changes over the short-term are known as secular changes and are thought to be the result of an improvement or decline in environmental conditions, particularly nutrition (Cameron et al., 1990).

Significant craniofacial secular changes have been …

The Decoupling Hypothesis: A New Idea For The Origin Of Hominid Bipedalism, Adam David Sylvester

Doctoral Dissertations

Theoretical adaptive landscapes and mathematical representations of key constraints of evolutionary and primate biology are used to propose a new hypothesis for the origin of hominid bipedalism. These constraints suggest that the selective pressure that produced this novel form of locomotion was the need for effective suspensory and terrestrial movement. This testable hypothesis, termed the Decoupling Hypothesis, posits that bipedalism is an adaptation that enables the shoulder to maintain a high degree of mobility, a feature important to suspensory behaviors, in the face of significant demands for a high degree of stability, a feature important for highly effective terrestrial quadrupedism. …