Moscow University
Anthropology
Bulletin
Anthropology
Bulletin
Lomonosov Moscow State University, Anuchin Research Institute and Museum of Anthropology, Mokhovaya st., 11, Moscow, 125009, Russia
Fedotova Tatiana K, Ph.D., D.Sc., ORCID ID: 0000-0001-7750-7924, e-mail: tatiana.fedotova@mail.ru; Gorbacheva Anna K., Ph.D., ORCID ID: 0000-0001-5201-7128, e-mail: angoria@yandex.ru
Since the very beginning of the evolutionary history of our species, the newborn body dimensions were caught in the midst of a tense irreconcilable biological conflict. The necessity of the perfect bipedia, giving definite energy advantage to the human ancestors, came into conflict with the necessity to deliver a large foetus with high-volume brain. In other words, the selection on the advanced intellect came into conflict with the selection on the survival of a female through the delivery. Once achieved, the balance between the widening of the female pelvic dimensions and the limitation on the intrauterine development rate is being maintained through the whole history of our species. And the main arbitrator and the watchdog committee on the biological balance maintaining is the stabilizing selection. The aim of the present review is to generalize facts on the known autonomy and space/temporal stability of two somatic trait systems – newborn body dimensions and female pelvic dimensions. And this is done in a joint space of somatic traits of our species as a whole. Our study is based on literature data and the results of own investigations, involving vast anthropological and medical database (69 samples of newborns with over 70 000 individuals and 60 female samples from Eurasia). The facts discussed do not give exhaustive picture, being based mainly on Russian studies and data. Still because they embrace the population of the sixth part of the world, this allows us to assume, with some reservations, that newborn body mass and female pelvic width, or, broadly speaking, newborn body dimensions and female pelvic dimensions, can be reviewed as specific over-ethnic parameters illustrating certain species optimum. Newborn body dimensions and female pelvic dimensions are characterized by centripetal tendencies, driving the values of the dimensions towards the universal species norm. Evidences of pelvimetric and anthropometric dimensions’ autonomy and the autonomy of growth dynamics of the pelvis through the process of development are discussed; though scanty, these evidences seem convincing and deserve attention. Evidence of temporal dynamics of newborn body dimensions and female pelvic dimensions and their synchronicity is discussed, as well as evidence on synchronicity of geographical variations of newborn dimensions and female pelvic width. This analysis needs more extensive data and more precise biometrical methods. The specificity of maintaining the balance between two systems of dimensions – newborn dimensions and female pelvic dimensions – attain, apparently, new specifics in present-day artificial high-stress anthropogenic environment. Adaptation to this environment demands not only the presence of physiological mechanisms, but also nonspecific mechanisms that raise the resistance of the organism and is determined by Hans Selye as heterostasis. Long term trends in the increase of leptosomy in young women and their newborns might reflect new mechanisms of adaptation on various system levels – biological and behavioral.
anthropology, morphology, stabilizing selection, newborns, female pelvic dimensions, spatial and temporal diversity of newborn body dimensions, spatial and temporal diversity of female pelvic width
Цит.: Fedotova T.K.,Gorbacheva A.K. DIVERSITY OF NEWBORN BODY DIMENSIONS AND FEMALE PELVIC PARAMETERS IN RELATION TO STABILIZING SELECTION // Moscow University Anthropology Bulletin (Vestnik Moskovskogo Universiteta. Seria XXIII. Antropologia), 2016; 4/2016; с. 37-58
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