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Achondroplasia among ancient populations of mesoamerica and South America: Iconographic and Archaeological Evidence.

ABSTRACT: INTRODUCTION: Achondroplasia is the most frequent form of short-limb dwarfism. Affected individuals exhibit short stature caused by rhizomelic shortening of the limbs, characteristic facies with frontal bossing and mid-face hypoplasia, genu varum, and trident hand. Although the etiology of this disease was reported in 1994, evidence of this disease in ancient populations has been found in populations of ancient Egypt (2500 BC) and it has been documented in ancient American populations. OBJECTIVE: To analyze the presence of individuals with achondroplasia in the Mayan state society of Mexico and Guatemala, during the Classical (100- 950 AC ) and Post-Classical (950 - 1519 AC ) periods; likewise, in the hierarchical-chieftain society of Tumaco-la Tolita (300 BC - 600 AC ) from the Colombia-Ecuador Pacific coast, and the Moche state society (100 - 600 AC ) from the northern coast of Peru. METHODS: Iconographic and clinical-morphological studies of some of the most important artistic representations of individuals of short stature in these three cultures. CONCLUSION: We present the hypothesis that the individuals with short stature were somehow associated with the political and religious power elite.

SUBMITTER: Rodriguez CA

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4001954 | biostudies-literature | 2012 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Achondroplasia among ancient populations of mesoamerica and South America: Iconographic and Archaeological Evidence.

Rodríguez Carlos A CA Isaza Carolina C Pachajoa Harry H

Colombia medica (Cali, Colombia) 20120701 3

<h4>Introduction</h4>Achondroplasia is the most frequent form of short-limb dwarfism. Affected individuals exhibit short stature caused by rhizomelic shortening of the limbs, characteristic facies with frontal bossing and mid-face hypoplasia, genu varum, and trident hand. Although the etiology of this disease was reported in 1994, evidence of this disease in ancient populations has been found in populations of ancient Egypt (2500 BC) and it has been documented in ancient American populations.<h4 ...[more]

PMID: 24893194

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Project description:How wealth is distributed among households provides insight into the fundamental characters of societies and the opportunities they afford for social mobility. However, economic inequality has been hard to study in ancient societies for which we do not have written records, which adds to the challenge of placing current wealth disparities into a long-term perspective. Although various archaeological proxies for wealth, such as burial goods or exotic or expensive-to-manufacture goods in household assemblages, have been proposed, the first is not clearly connected with households, and the second is confounded by abandonment mode and other factors. As a result, numerous questions remain concerning the growth of wealth disparities, including their connection to the development of domesticated plants and animals and to increases in sociopolitical scale. Here we show that wealth disparities generally increased with the domestication of plants and animals and with increased sociopolitical scale, using Gini coefficients computed over the single consistent proxy of house-size distributions. However, unexpected differences in the responses of societies to these factors in North America and Mesoamerica, and in Eurasia, became evident after the end of the Neolithic period. We argue that the generally higher wealth disparities identified in post-Neolithic Eurasia were initially due to the greater availability of large mammals that could be domesticated, because they allowed more profitable agricultural extensification, and also eventually led to the development of a mounted warrior elite able to expand polities (political units that cohere via identity, ability to mobilize resources, or governance) to sizes that were not possible in North America and Mesoamerica before the arrival of Europeans. We anticipate that this analysis will stimulate other work to enlarge this sample to include societies in South America, Africa, South Asia and Oceania that were under-sampled or not included in this study.

Dataset Information

Achondroplasia among ancient populations of mesoamerica and South America: Iconographic and Archaeological Evidence.

Publications

Achondroplasia among ancient populations of mesoamerica and South America: Iconographic and Archaeological Evidence.

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