Population Stress, Growth Deficit and Degenerative Joint Disease in Foragers from South Africa's Later Stone Age
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Harsh conditions during development may alter the human adult phenotype in ways that affect vulnerability to disease and death. This study’s objectives are A) to explore the utility of neural canal size and appendicular osteoarthritis as prospective indicators of developmental stress; B) to test for developmental stress effects in a foraging population with no significant socioeconomic stratification; and C) to explore temporal variation in neuroskeletal size and joint degeneration. The study sample consists of 143 Later Stone Age foragers (M=75, F=64, I=4) from the Cape Floristic Region of southern Africa. 135 cases have radiocarbon dates between 9100 and 560 uncalibrated years BP. Osteoarthritis was quantified with an ordinal scoring procedure. Relationships among radiocarbon date, measures of body and neural canal size, OA, and age at death were explored using logistic and ordinary least squares regression, independence tests, and means contrasts. Age, sex, and body size were controlled where appropriate. A positive relationship is observed between age at death and both body size and ML NC diameter, but reaches statistical significance only in the latter case (OR=1.74, 95% CI=1.08–2.82). The effect is detected in both sexes but odds ratios are greater and p values smaller in females (Male OR=1.50, 95% CI=0.82–2.73; Female OR=2.14, 95% CI=1.02–4.50). Age at death is the only significant predictor for both presence and severity of osteoarthritis. No significant relationship is observed between age and anteroposterior diameter. Average mediolateral diameter of the neural canal declines between 3000–2000BP and increases slightly afterwards (β 1 = −0.83, β 2 = 0.68, adjusted R 2 = 0.06, SEE=0.99). This quadratic curve is consistent with published accounts of temporal change in average body size. No temporal pattern is identified in osteoarthritis.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".