Debating Lapita: Distribution, Chronology, Society and Subsistence

Science and society. Debating a testosterone "sex gap".

S exual dimorphism of testosterone (T) in elite athletes was at the center of a recent case at the “Supreme Court of Sport,” the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Switzerland, after teenage Indian sprinter Dutee Chand challenged a sports policy regulating competition eligibility of women with naturally high T. The idea of a “sex gap” in T is a cornerstone of this policy ( 1). Policymakers infer...

Lapita and Proto-Oceanic

Linguistics and archaeology have been, and continue to be, entwined in the discourse on the early human history of the Pacific. It is commonly assumed, explicitly or otherwise, that the bearers of the Lapita culture were speakers of Proto-Oceanic, the ancestor of the Austronesian languages of most of the Pacific. In this discursive piece, the chronological data for the location and timing of th...

Specialisation, standardisation and Lapita ceramics

Debating DAP12

Mice that lack the adaptor protein DAP12 defy deadly bacterial infections, according to Turnbull and colleagues on page 363. DAP12-deficient mice developed a muted inflammatory response, allowing the immune system to clear the bacteria without triggering septic shock. DAP12 is a transmembrane adaptor protein that is associated with an array of DAP12-deficient mice (dotted line) are resistant to...

Friction zones in Lapita colonisation