Anthropologie générale chapter 1-5

Question 1

How is anthropology different from philosophy, in terms of methodology?

Answer 1

Philosophy is a purely mental exercise, is a mental intellectual reflexion it based on asking questions and try to find answers (not a science but it is the origin of all science) but anthropology is a discipline based on fieldwork, it is a science.
In anthropology we have fieldwork (fields based), it’s an empirical science

Question 2

How’s anthropology different from sociology in terms of scope?

Answer 2

• anthropology is interested in behavior on biology past
• it interested in human one more in one dimension, let’s say as anthropologist I see a man as primate “in biology” but he is also somebody who has culture and language and he has past so that’s mean Anthropology is holistic and comparative.

The Anthropologie is a cumulative science

Question 3

Why do you think anthropologist more interested on studying societies?

Answer 3

It’s enable them to understand and compare between societies

Question 4

What is the purpose of anthropology, and what s her main interest?

Answer 4

To understand what it is to be human, it goes to the field and study specific cultural context and compares
It’s to understand the human condition

Question 5

why is anthropology useful in many ways ?

Answer 5

• it helps understand that we are not all the same
• it helps us go beyond epistemological basis
  -it also helps us create peace between countries and manage globalisation

Question 6

what is the difference between a hypothesis and a theory?

Answer 6

• a theory need material evidence for its development over time and across space, it’s testable, unified, and fruitful, it’s already established, it’s a working model which can be widely applied
• a hypothesis is an intelligent guess which still need to be tested

Question 7

what is essentialism ?

Answer 7

according to plato essentialism iis a view that all living things that share the same essence belong to the same “natural kind” and there are many natural kinds in the world,each of which i the result of the imperfect incarnation in the physical world of one or another eternal form or ideal.

Question 8

What is the difference between Ethnology and Ethnography?

Answer 8

Ethnography: We take one particular society and we study the behaviors but the Ethnology is the method adopted for this study and we use it also in sociology.

Question 9

what is the great chain of being ( think of Aristotle)

Answer 9

According to Aristotle, is that kinds of organisms could be arranged from the most primitive to the most advanced and complex, and the attributes of one kind of an organism always overlap to some extent with the attributes of organisms closest to in the classification so that the difference between adjacent organisms were slight: (principle of continuity)

Question 10

(4) What is transformational evolution? (Think of Lamarck)

Answer 10

is the notion that an organism can pass on to its offspring physical characteristics that the parent organism acquired through use during its lifetime.

Question 11

What made Darwin posit the existence of a mechanism of “natural selection”?

Answer 11

When he was travelling, he found that there were different species that are more adapted to some kind of food and survive

Question 12

What forces must work together for natural selection to operate?

Answer 12

Four conditions are needed for natural selection to occur: Population, heredity traits, fitness, environment. If they are met, natural selection automatically happens.

Question 13

What does “fitness” mean?

Answer 13

Fitness means the adaptability, ability to survive and to procreate. It’s the score of how many children you can generate.

Question 14

Why didn’t Darwin have all the tools he needed to prove that he was right?

Answer 14

Because there havent enough science tools at that time and also it was impossible to observe the evolution of a species which takes a very long time and he didn’t know how traits get inherited.

Question 15

what is industrial melanism

Answer 15

Industrial melanism is a typical case of natural selection. This is when an industrial change has changed the environment so that the skin color of the birch moths turns into another color.

Question 16

How did genetics, first Mendelian, then molecular, contribute to the contemporary (neo-Darwinian) evolutionary synthesis?

Answer 16

Mendel suspected a trait that have been inherited. Mendelian genetics and Molecular biology participated in the neo-Darwinian synthesis because it provided us tools that Darwin didn’t have at that time

Question 17

What is the difference between genotype and phenotype, and why are they important?

Answer 17

Phenotype: is what we see from a person ex: skin color, shape…ect
Genes play a role in the genotype. There is no one to one relation between phenotype and genotype. There are other criteria that affects our phenotype and sometimes some of our genes are silenced or activated according to the surrounding environment.
Every trait has two forms: one dominant, the other recessive. When we have a small population, a trait can spread easily.

Question 18

How long ago, approximately, did primates diverge from other mammals?

Answer 18

Primates diverged from the rest of mammals about 60 to 70 million years ago.

Question 19

What are some of the shared traits of human and non-human primates that set them apart from other mammals?

Answer 19

An increase in brain size,
an increase in the complexity of the neo-cortex, an increasing dependence of the sense of sight (deeper vision),
a reduction in the number of teeth,
a reduction of the projection of the face and a reduction in the sense of smell, nails and finger prints, the use of the palms of the hand and foot rather than the toes for walking,
the presence of five digits on the hands with opposable thumb,
the presence of the clavicle or collar bone allowing for flexibility in the shoulder joint.

Question 20

Know the seven levels of Linnaean taxonomy, and the place of Homo sapiens within it

Answer 20

-kingdom: Animalia
-Phylum: chordata
- class : mammalia
- Order: primates
- family: hominidae
- Genus : Homo
-Species : H. sapiens

Question 21

How long ago, approximately, did hominoids (superfamily Hominoidea) diverge from other primates?

Answer 21

Hominoids diverged from other primates about 18 million years ago

Question 22

How are hominoids different from other primates?

Answer 22

This superfamily of primates has specific characteristics (they don’t have tales), a tendency toward bipedal motion, larger bodies, spends more time in the ground than trees, are more terrestrial.

Question 23

What extant (living) genera are included in Hominoidea? (There are five)

Answer 23

1. Human: homo
2. Chimpanzee, bonobos ,: pan
3. Gorilla: gorillini
4. Orangutan : pongo
5. Gibbons: They are considered apes, but they are sometimes distinguished as lesser apes, they are monogamous, with almost no sexual dimorphism.

Question 24

Why are primates considered “generalized” organisms?

Answer 24

Because they are distinguished mainly by a tendency to retain specific parts or different traits from different ancestors that other animals have lost during their evolution.

Question 25

How did being “generalized” help primates, including humans eventually, thrive in their environment?

Answer 25

They were successful in adapting to so many different environments (cold, hot …) because of so many traits that they have conserved during their evolution.

Question 26

Why is the popularized saying “قرد اﻹنسان أصل” just as scientifically wrong as “لﻸقوى البقاء”?

Answer 26

The saying that our origin is monkey is false, because apes have a common ancestor. We are not descendants of apes, our ancestor is instincts, and humans in the past were not gorillas or chimpanzees

Question 27

Name the only two primates that are still extant in the wild in Morocco (Use Genus species nomenclature)

Answer 27

Barbary macaque (Macaca sylvanus) and homo sapiens are the two last primates living in north Africa and Gibraltar.

Question 28

what are the characteristics of primates?

Answer 28

o Have a clavicula
o Walk on soil with our feet
o The ratio of the size of out skull is larger to our size
o Less pugnacious
o Binocular vision
o Fewer teeth
o Apposable thumbs
o Nails instead of clawa
o Fingerprints.

Question 29

What is the difference between the concepts of phyletic gradualism and punctuated equilibrium?

Answer 29

 Phyletic gradualism is the gradual transformation into new species and the detection of borders can only be done arbitrarily. It is the accumulation of mutations over time.
 While the punctuated balance is when extinctions are generalized and many new species appear.

Question 30

What does speciation mean?

Answer 30

Speciation is the creation or appearance of new species through time

Question 31

When (approximately) and where did hominin bipedalism evolve?

Answer 31

It was in Africa that some hominoids adapted to the modified conditions by spending more time on the ground, which favored bipedalism.
Bipedal hominins appeared for the first time in Africa at the end of the Miocene or the beginning of the Pliocene, between 10 and 5 ma but we can say 7 ma.

Question 32

What is the earliest direct evidence that we have of bipedalism?

Answer 32

the earliest direct evidence that we have of bipedalism is the prints we found in Tanzania

Question 33

Who were the first fully bipedal primates (hominins)?

Answer 33

The species of anterior hominines that have been entirely bipedal are the Australopitheques.

Question 34

How do we know that they were bipedal?

Answer 34

This is based on a number of skeletal characteristics that indicate a usual
bipedalism:
 A vertebral column forming a right angle with the base of the skull and which has a specific camber that allows better dampening of the shocks and tensions due to bipedal walking;
 A wider basin, It allows to support the viscera and the weight of the trunk, which causes a more complicated (and certainly painful) delivery of all mammals.
 The shape and size of the femur and its articulation with the pelvis measure the stability and the possibility of standing.
 The general shape of the foot has a longitudinal arch that allows to absorb the shocks due to the bipedal and to give an additional impulse during walking.
 Limb ratio: a reduction in the length of the forelimbs (arms) relative to the hindlimbs (legs).

Question 35

Why do you think full bipedalism evolved in some primates (hominins)?

Answer 35

They may have had more beneficial traits for survival and reproduction, or they may have evolved other skills using tools. It makes more sense for natural selection

Question 36

What is a key difference between Australopithecus and Homo Habillis that made paleoanthropologists classify them as two distinct hominin genera

Answer 36

Among the Homo Habilis, we discovered the presence of evidence of an early culture (material culture and symbolic culture).

Question 37

How is Homo erectus(1.7 mya) different from his/her ancestor Homo habilis (2 mya)?

Answer 37

Homo Habilis is the first to use tools.

Question 38

What is the earliest evidence that we currently have our own species Homo sapiens?

Answer 38

The discovery in Morocco took place well after the release of the 4th edition may be the 5th edition mentionned it).

Question 39

Homo neanderthalensis and Homo sapiens coexisted for a while. How are they different?

Answer 39

The Neanderthal lived in Europe and Asia and not in Africa. He was sturdy and small while Homo sapiens had a more sophisticated brain and was the only one with a chin.

Question 40

when does evidence of symbolic culture begin to show up in the fossil record? What is it?

Answer 40

With the Homo sapiens, about 40,000 years ago, we discovered statues, figurines and cellars with symbolic paintings.
First existence of religion, about 100,000 years ago with burial clues.

Question 41

Why is anthropology cross-disciplinary?

Answer 41

Because of its broad scope and holistic view, since it deals with humanity. Its needs tools from biology, archeology, history as well etc.. to understand the human nature and its conditions

Question 42

Why is the concept of culture important for anthropologists ?

Answer 42

Humans are very special because they are the only form of life that have
. Anthropologists deal with this concept because it’s the major difference between Human and other species..

Question 43

Why is evolutionary theory also equally important for anthropologists?

Answer 43

Evolutionary theory is equally important because we are a living organisme, anthropology deals with all human aspects.

Evolutionary theory explain how our specie evolve from inferior organisms over past. So it gives us a view of our past.