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Scientific American May 2000 37News Briefs

In the 1940s Harvard Univer-sity anthropologist Hallam L.Movius, Jr., observed that ar-chaic humans living in westernEurasia and Africa between 1.6 million and 200,000 yearsago crafted sophisticatedstone tools such as hand axesand cleavers but that peoplein East Asia seemed stuck in atechnological rut. Their muchsimpler tool remains impliedthat they were culturally, andperhaps biologically, isolated.

Now a windfall of carefullychipped cobbles from south-ern China’s Bose Basin re-veals that 800,000 years ago,East Asian hominids werefashioning tools as complexas those of their Eurasian andAfrican counterparts. Thestratigraphically restricted na-ture of the discovery suggeststhat their access to previouslyunavailable raw materials—cobblestones newly exposedby widespread forest fires—sparked the manufacture ofthe advanced implements.The findings appear in theMarch 3 Science. —Kate Wong

After 40 years of playing around, Barbie, an American iconfor millions of girls, has found a new job: she is lending a helpingleg to finger amputees. Jane L. Bahor, an anaplastologist (some-one who specializes in making realistic replacement body parts)at Duke University Medical Center, has discovered that a Barbiedoll’s flexible knee joint can be implanted into prosthetic fingers,making them much more functional and lifelike.

The ratchet leg joint acts like a bone, creating a scaffold aroundwhich foam is attached and sculpted into a natural-looking fin-

ger, Bahor explains. The jointmakes a perfect substitute fin-ger because it bends and holdsa position—something previousprostheses, made with wire,could not do.

Bahor and former engineeringstudent Jennifer Jordan, whoneeded a finger prosthesis her-

self, came up with the idea during a brainstorming session fouryears ago. At first, Bahor literally performed mini plastic surgeries—an incision down the length of Barbie’s leg—to remove the tanplastic joint inside. Once Barbie’s maker, Mattel, learned of theanaplastologist’s experiments, it sent her hundreds of the light-weight body part.

Patients fitted with her prosthesis can quickly bend their fin-gers by pressing them against a hard surface or by using theirother hand. Although the fingers lack feeling, the increased mo-bility provided by the Barbie joint allows wearers to hold a cup, topick up a piece of paper and even, in some cases, to write again,Bahor says (although kung-fu grip may be out of the question).

The only drawback is “the noise they make; it sounds likecracking knuckles,” Bahor points out. She now attempts to re-duce the click noise by working the joints in a bit before usingthem in the prosthesis, allowing those sporting a Barbie knuckleto do so a little more quietly. —D.M.

A N T H R O P O L O G Y

P R O S T H E T I C S

D AT A P O I N T S

Yeah, You’ve Got Mail

SOURCES: Stanford Institute for the Quantitative Study of Society; U.S. Census Bureau.

Axes to Grind

Lending a Helping Leg

LESS THAN 2 2 TO 5

Less time talking with family or friends on telephone

Less time with family and friends

Less time attending outside events

Time Spent On-line (hours per week)Pe

rcen

t

30

25

20

15

10

5

05 TO 10 10 PLUS

Social Isolation: Internet Users Reporting...

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100Percent

STOCK TRADINGCHAT ROOMS

WORK/BUSINESSTRAVEL INFO

PRODUCT INFORMATIONSURFING

E-MAIL

What Users Do on the Internet

BARBIE SCAVENGER Jane L. Bahor

fills the space around the joint by

injecting foam into the silicon fin-

ger mold. Removing the knee joints

from the doll requires mini plastic

surgery (right ).

Oldest Asian axes

• Percent of households consisting of one person in 1969: 16.7

• Percent in 1998: 25.7

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Copyright 2000 Scientific American, Inc.