Lecture Notes and Study Guide Chapter 1-7

Chapter 1

 

What is Anthropology?

Anthropology is a study that examines human variation(differences) across the globe. Anthropology also study human evolution( how humans were created).

Anthropology uses a holistic approach to studying humans in society, it study the entire history of humans. Anthropology examines the location were people are, religion, language, political systems, and food systems.We also study the similarities and  differences in human physical traits.

What are the fields of Anthropology?
There  three major fields of study in anthropology. Cultural Anthropology, Biological Anthropology, and Applied or Practicing Anthropology.

What is Cultural Anthropology?
Cultural  Anthropology  focuses on how and why society vary from past to present. There are four fields within cultural anthropology that examine society.

• Archaeology-is the study of past cultures, by examining the material remains of that culture. Archaeologist are interested in understanding and tracking the cultural changes. Most Archaeologist are interested in pre-historical  change. A Archaeologist may examine the great wall of china or the pyramids left from previous society.
• Anthropological Linguistics -study the changes in language that have taken place over time and  the variation of language.Linguistics are also interested in the differences in past and present language.
• Ethnology (Cultural) anthropology- study the similarities and differences between cultures, they also look at how past and present cultures are different one another and how this has an impact on behavior and actions. Remember the example of marriage I gave you  in class? there are different types of ethnology, ethnographers, ethnohistorians, cross cultural researcher- all definition of each could be found in your text.

What is Biological Anthropology?

Biological Anthropology looks at the physical or biological differences (DNA, genes, phenotype) charateristics in humans. There are two major focuses in Biological(physical) anthropology.

• Human Variation-focus on the differences between human beings biologically. Remember the example I gave you about skin color and eye color?
• Human Paleontology-is the study of human evolution through reconstruction of human evolution using fossils as well as geographical location, environments, plants, and animals population. 
• There are three ways in which Biological/physical anthropology study human variation and human evolution: human genetics( traits that are inherited), population biology(environmental impact on humans),  and epidemiologist( the study of diseases)

Applied Anthropology- anthropologist may only conduct research on human variation and human culture.
Practicing Anthropology- may conduct research and use their finds to help some part of society.

Chapter 2

Evolution Theory
Marcobois was a philosopher who coined the tern the Great Chain of Being and arranged society in hierarchical position.
-GOD
-People
-Animals
-Plants
He  believed that we all were interconnected in needed one another, but our evolution was separated from one another and fixed.

• Lineanus classified  human society different. He believed that animals and humans were in the same category and share a common ancestor.

• Lamarck- believed that animals were not fixed and could evolve over time, he believed that certain characteristics were inherited and passed on to other generation for survival purposes.

• Lyell argues that animals and humans evolved over time and he examined fossils and argued that geological and paleontological changes impacted species

• Charles Darwin was influence by Lyell's work and believed that animals were not created one at a time and were not fixed. He too believed that both animals and humans could evolve. He argued that Natural selection was the key evolution.(make sure you know what natural selection is)

Early Anthropology

Lewis Henry and Edward B. Tyler- believed that societies evolved from simple to complex. Furthermore, Henry and Tyler believed that people could evolve from "simple-barbaric" to "complex-civilized" beings.
Henry, Tyler, and the leaders of evolution theory contribute to race theory in early anthropology.

Race Theory-basically argued that  human culture differed in behavior from one another because they represent different subspecies groups. Race theory divided people into four different races : "American, European, Asiatic,and African"  each group were defined by physical, behavioral, and emotional characteristics. This classification justified colonialism and slavery.

Diffusionism- is the borrowing of different cultural characteristics. There were three different diffusion schools: The Britain School of diffusion, The German-Austrian School, and The American School. Please make sure you understand what diffusion is and how it was used in each school of thought.

Later Anthropology

Frank Boas, was anti-evolution and race theory. He believed that in order to understand humans we must collect as much anthropological data as possible and then cultural variation would emerge. He  focused on research instead of theory. He also believed that human variation(racial and biological) depended on geographical location.

There are different Approaches in Anthropology make sure you understand what each approach examine in human beings

• Psychological Approach
• Structuralism Approach
• Ethno-science and Cognitive Approach
• Evolutionary Approach
• Feminist Approach
• Interpretive Approach

Chapter 4 Genetics and Evolution

What are the principles of natural selection? There are three principle of natural selection they are:

• Variation-every species is composed of individuals who vary/ Some of these individual are able to adapt better to certain environments.
• Herediability-This is the process of acquring your parents traits
• Differentail Reproduction Sucess- is the idea that individuals who adapt better to a certain environment are better able to pass their genes on to their offspring. They are also able to produce more offspring.

What are the different types of natural selection?

• Directional selection- is when a particular trait is positively favored and the average value shift over time towards the "adaptive" positively favored trait
• normalizing selection-the average value doesn't change but over time natural selection removes the extremes(think about the case of the black moth in your text book)
• balance selection occures when a heterozygous gene is positively favored, even though the gene in the pair are homozegous and disfavored. (for this section of natural selection just know the different types of natural selection, don't worry to much about explain each type of natural selection process)

What are recessive and dominant genes?

• Recessive genes are genes that we inhert from our parents but they are the weaker genes and they usually do not appear 
• Dominant genes are genes that we also inhert from our parents but they are stronger and more visable.
• (Remember the video i showed you? refer to this video if you are still have trouble with recessive and dominant genes.)

What are Genotypes and phenotype?

• Genotypes is our genetic makeup, they are internal and you can not see them.
• Phenotype is our physical appearences or physical traits.

What are Chromosomes and what is Mitosis and Meiosis?

• Chromosomes are made up of protien and DNA and they are located in the necleus of our cells. We have 46 chromosome, 23 from each of our parents.
• Mitosis is the reproduction of cells
• Meiosis is the separation of sex cells think about how the (46 chromosomes are separated during this process. you can review the video for additional help)

What are the sources of variability?

• Genetic Recombination
• mutation
• Genetic Drift
• Gene Flow

What are the theories around the origin of population

• Speciation
• Creationism

What are the links between behavioral traits and natural selection?

There are several approaches that explain human and animal behavior through natural selection. These theories argue that we act the way that we act because of our genetic make up and natural selection. In particular the behavioral and sociobiology approach argue that history, biology, genes, and environment shape our behavior.Make sure you understand each of these(they can be found in chapter 4)

• Sociobiology
• behavioral ecology
• evolutionary psychology

Chapter 3 Research Methods in Anthropology

What is an explanation?

• is an answer to a what question.

What is an theory?

• Theory explain why things exist. Theories can never be proven with absolute certainty.

What are the different types of research in Anthropology?

• ethnography
• within-culture comparison
• regional controlled comparison
• cross-cultural research
• historical research

There are different techniques that are used to study the distant past make sure you know and understand each of these.

• Artifacts
• Eco-fact
• Fossils
• Feature
• Absolute or chronometric dating

Chapter 5

Acclimatization what is it?

• Acclimatization is the physiological adjustment to environmental conditions in individuals. Acclimatization does not occur because of genetics; however, they could have genetic factors. Meaning we are not born with acclimatization instead we develop them later on in life. 

 Physical Variation Among people

• Bergman’s rule: argues that there is a general relationship between people and their environment. He believed that people’s body size depend on temperature. He argued that slender population of species live in warmer parts of  the world, and people who are heavier, live in colder parts of the world.
• Allen’s Rule argues that arms and legs are shorter in cooler areas than in warmer areas.
• Gloger’s Rule: animals and mammals who live in  sunny climates have  dark pigmentation, in these regions people produce more melanin which protect them from the sun.
• Lighter skinned people live in cooler regions, they may not produce as much melanin as dark people but they are able to absorb more vitamin d.
• Height is related to temperature; taller and heavier people live in cooler areas and skinner and shorter people live in hotter areas.
• Race and Racism: Race is a term that biologist used to categorize people. Anthropology argue that race is a construct-basically not real. One of the main reasons for this is that there are too many similarities genetically between people who supposedly belong to different “races.”

Chapter 6 living Primates:

What are primates? 

Primates are mammals,  they are warm blooded,  all mammals give birth to  fetus that grow inside their mothers womb, these baby’s could be feed by the mother’s milk. Most mammals behavior are learned.

What are the physical features of primates?

• Arboreal- meaning tree living.
• Omnivorous- they eat all kinds of food including insects small animals, nuts, fruits, and plants.
• Teeth- all primates have molars, premolars, incisors, and canines.
• Brain- our brains are bigger than other species. We depend on our brain for survival.
• Flexibility-we are able to grab things with our hands and feet.
• Oppossable thumbs- we all be to grip things with more poor.
• Reproductive system is different from most species, we are able to breast feed, and carry a fetus full term.

What are the Social Features of primates? 

•  primates are social creature, our lively hood depends on it.
• primates are very active during the day.
• primates are dependent on relationships with others, our mother especially- if this is lacking we aren’t able to develop properly.                           
• Primates at play- we are very dependent on play which is very important during the dependency stage of development. Play is extremely important for learning.

What are the Classification of primates?

• Prosimians
• Anthropoids-new world monkeys
• Hominoids: apes and humans-there are three different groups the lesser apes, Hylobates, pongids/ Hominids

Physical traits

• Bipedalism-dish-shape pelvis, lumber curve spine, straight lower limbs, and , arched feet
• Cerebral Cortex- the center of speech is larger in hominids.

Behavioral abilities

• Toolmaking- we have the ability to make tools
• Language-we have modern language abilities as humans-our language are symbolic, however, there have been studies done on vervet monkey have the ability to make different alarming sounds. Chimpanzees are also said to use communicative language specifically sign language.
• Hunting Hominids also hunt other mammals

What are the Primates Adaptations

• Body Size- body size vary among primates, some argues that body size adaptation is contributed to  the time of day a species is active, where it is active, and the kinds of food it eats. One thing to note is that nocturnal primates are small compare day primates
• Relative Brain Size- larger primates have larger brains and there is a difference between fruit eating primates who generally have larger brains compare to leaf eating primates.
• Group size-primate group size generally vary, primatologist argue that the time of activity has a lot to do with  group size, animals who do activities such as hunting or gathering food maybe more at an advantage to have a bigger group compared to nocturnal primates.

Chapter 7 Primates early Evolution: 

When did the first primates emerge? 

• This question is extremely hard to answer the current fossil record. Some argue that the first primate emerge during the paleocene epoch which dates back to nearly 65 million years ago these fossils where found in Europe and in north America which both use to be connected. Other argue that the first primate emerge during the eocene which is about 55 million years ago these are the  adapis and omoymid. Some argue that these fossil where found towards the end of the Paleocene and the beginning of the Eocene, they agrgue that there is a another common ancestor between the primates and this is the  carpolestes simpsoni.

What about the environment?

•  Its agree that the first primate emerge during the Paleocene which was between 65 million and 55 millions years ago.
• Geological transformation- most animals that live before this period became extent. the dinosaur extinct is among one of these phenomenons
•       During this period the environment was damped and mild
•       However temperature began to change, and it became dried and swamp like
•     The continental draft played a major role in the temperature changes

What is the Arboreal Theory?

•  The arboreal theory- which argue that primates evolve from insectivores that took  to the trees in order to find food.

The emergence of the  anthropoids

•  The anthropoids emerge during the Oligocene epoch which dates back to 34 million to 24 million years ago.
• Very tropical area
• Warm like climate
•  Two groups: parapithecids(monkey like) and propliopithecids(ape like)

The Miocene Anthropoids : Monkeys, apes, and hominids

• Emerge during the Miocene which is dated as 24 million to 5.2 million years ago
• During this period monkeys and apes diverge
• Various types of apes emerged in Europe, Asia, and Africa

Early Miocene Proto-apes

•   Proconsul found in Kenya and Uganda dated to about 20 millions year old
•  Lacked tails
•  Extremely big
• Modern hominoids are very similar to these animals.

Middle Miocene  apes

• Pierolapithecus found in Barcelona
• Kenyaapithecus found in Kenya
• Have proconsul feature but teeth and face more modern

Late Miocene Apes

• Apes diversified and migrated to many areas
• Climate cooler and drier
• 8 million years old

Sivapithecids

• 13 million year to 8 million years ago was thought to be our ancestor
• Had flat thick teeth

Dryopithecids

• Appeared about 15 million years ago
• Ape like features
• Live in Eurasia
• Looks like African ape and humans
• Divergence of hominids from other hominids