Anthropology test #2 Flashcards
Archaeology
Study of the past, when an where things come from
Artifacts
things used by humanity (us and our ancestors)
Features
Burn marks, stains
Sites
The location where you find artifacts
Statigraphy
The study of rocks and its layers
Dating
Chronology is where it started, the study of time and events in time
Uniformatarianism
No a lot of change in the layers of things
Superposition
geological layers were diposited, layers changed (rocks)
Strata
Indivisual layers of rocks
Stategraphic sequence
sequence of layers in rocks
Relative Dating
dating things in comparison of other things (estimate)
Provenience
Indicating time, tracking data and time
Radio carbon dating
Dating living things with carbon (current)
Christian Thomson
He identified the three age system:
1. stone age
2. bronze age
3. Iron age
He discovered these ages uding strata, and he used relative dating
K-ar dating
Dating with rocks (100,000-1B years)
Site Groids
Each hole in archaeologist sites are in squares. Its easier to keep track of everything and its location
Benchmark
Proving something was there
Igneous stones
stones that were near a volcano, can be very sharp
Sedimentary stones
sand stone, flint, good for scraping
Metamorphic stones
Altered by heat
Human origin
All our ancestors are from Africa
Humans are hominid, right side up (Homosapiens are the only hominids alive)
hominids have been alive for 6 million years
Footprints were found in Tanzania that suggested hominids have been alive for a long time
Bipedalism
Using legs to walk on instead of hands too
originated from 5 million years ago in a forested area.
Pros:
- Efficiency: less exhausting to walk with
- Carrying capacity: hands can be used to carry things while legs can be used for transportation
- Improve sight: seeing everything, including predators
- body cooling: less energy is used, meaning body can be colder
- Climing ability: you can climb with your arms (can be a con)
Con:
- Speed and agility: less fast and agile
The aquatic ape theory
proven false
Alister Hardy thought that early hominids developed bypedalism by spending a lot of time in the water
He also thought that humans would have their heads above water since we need oxygen, which is how we are using our legs
This is proven false since there is no evidence, and if we were to evolve from sea animals like crocodiles, we would look very different
Australopithecines
Found in South Africa (1-4 million years ago)
Humans lived with them, and they may have bred with them
They were also bypedal
Encephalization- their brains were slightly larger than their body size
Canine reduction: smaller canine teeth
Moderate body size, moderate sexual demorphism
Homo Habilis (Early homo species)
2 million years ago (African)
very large brains (meaning they had bigger appetites
light facial structure (less chewinf required)
Full modern hands
Left Africa with the Australopithecines a million years ago
Their stone tools were found from 1.9 million years ago in Wushan cave site in China
Homo Erectus
Stood up straight
lived at the same time as Australopithecines
Very large brains (bigger appetite)
Small teeth
large body size
Heavy reliance on tools
Wide geographical distribution (Asia, Europe)
Used fire to cook, keep warm (evidence in spain and china, theres stains in caves)
Water craft (used water for making tools and traveling
Homo sapiens sapiens
Anatomical modernity Homo sapiens sapiens (AMHss)
Differenciated from Archaic homo sapiens (AHs)
Bigger face than humans
Less chewing stress
Smaller brain cases
Distinct chin (chin sticks out)
behaviour modernity
Symbolism
Complex language
AMHss
Herto, Euthiopia (150 000 years ago)
Middle east (100 000 years ago)
China, Australia (50 000 years ago)
South Eastern Europe (40 000 years ago)
Americas (14 000 year ago)
Arctic/pacific (3000 years ago)
Neanderthals
Germany in 1856
Hunted by humans
Intermixed with early humans
Vocal tracks were higher
Large nasal cavity
Lived in Europe and near east
Simple stone tools
Multiregional continuity theory
all hominids evolved into homo sapiens sapiens
Replacement theory
Neanderthals were “replaced” when they encounter AMH
Migration
Resource exploration: moving for resources
Social fission: moving to another place to avoid conflict
Incidental migration: colonization of australasia (Lake mongo skeleton was dated to 60 000 years ago, proof of the colonization from tools and art)
Colonization of the new world: Ice-free corridor hypothesis, coastal migration hypothesis
Colonization of the arctic: colonized recently, kayaks, sleds, igloos
Colonization of the pacific: there was double-voyaging canoes that can 100 people, pottery for cooking, fish hooks
Farming
Domestication:
Cultural selection: breeding plants and animals
Humans pick
Not all animals are domesticated
Animals that can be domesticated: good disposition towards humans, short life-span, and flexible diet
Larger scale than horticulture
intensified
systematized
economically integrated
commodities (value and shared)
Tools: ovens, axes, pottery, bridles, yokes, pens
Secondary tools: fibres, milk, blood
People farmed because:
vitalist group of theories (humans always wanted to improve)
Population group of theories (how to live better)
Climate change group of theories (domestication was near the equator because of warmer climate)
New world domestication: wild grass domesticated to corn (south American), llamas and donkeys, beans and squash, condiments, potatoes
Horticulture
Before farming
Preceded farming
Domesticated plants
Digging sticks rather than plows
Research methods of human culture
find informants that are reliable
interviews
unstructured
semi-structured or structured
photographs and mapping
Human culture
Culture = abstract
Cultures contain some other cultures
culture constantly changes
cultures cause conflicts (different ideas)
ecological determinism: culture directly reflects their physical environment
Encounters with other cultures
Internal culture: cultures can also change internally by themselves so that over time they differ from other cultures
Culture universals
Communication, ethical/justice system, right and responsibility to people (age and gender), mythos/idealogy, family structure, sexual regulations, food preference
Objects: material culture (wedding dresses, clay)
Diffusion vs. assimilation
Diffusion: sharing of ideas from another population
Border diffusion: sharing ideas with people on the other side of the border
Assimilation: being taken over, the population is being taken over by other populations (culture)
Innovation: new association of ideas, happens in anything, it changes culture when it’s stable
Cultural relavatism
The idea that different people have different cultural and ideas of food. Absolute cultural relavatism: having to understand the culture without critisizing it
Critiquing cultures relevatism: critizing and understanding a culture
Functional theory
Herbert spencer and Emile Dortherne think that all cultures are interconnected, if something is changed, it would change society
Structural functionalism
AR Raddcliff-Brown thinks that individuals don’t matter as society, because culture is maintained by instututions. Relationships matter more since individuals are replaceable and no one matters as much
Branislave Malinouski
Individuals together is what keeps society together. Individuals are the most important part of society because they make the choices, not corporations/instututions
Cultural materialism
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engel
Societies go through different phases:
Tribalism, feudalism, capitalism, communism
Infrastructure (base): how systems interact with environment
Structure: governments
Superstructure: ideology
Bank (Infrastructure), money (governments), moving money (superstructure)
Feminism Anthropology
Reduce male bias in everything
Hortense Powdermaker: looked at women’s reproduction in Melanesia
Post modernism
Nothing is the truth
Michel Foucault
- languages are important for existence
- literaly analysis appliance
- question everything
- critique of metanarratives
- argue against method and evaluation
- focus on power relations and hegemony
- question everything in the west (knowledge)
Communication
Chemical (phermones), audio (sounds, languages), visual (eyes ir light sensing urges)
Language
2 million - 100,000 years ago, proven from symbolic artifacts and the hyoid bone. “The size of the hypoglosseal canal”
Edward Sapir
American anthropologist-linguist
Studies ways which language and culture are connected
The Sapir-whorf hypothesis
Language shapes our culture, if something isn’t part of the language, it isn’t part of the culture.
There can be more than one word for something
problem: is it language or culture than influences the other?
Historical linguistics
study of language in a historical sense
Structural linguistics
Ferdinand De Saussure thinks that language buried on signs (the signified and the signifier)
Body language
gestures differ culture to culture
Supernatural world
A world beyond where we live in.
Religion
Includes:
a supernatural world
interaction with the afterlife
Proper behaviour (how to live in a material world to prepare)
Sociolinguistics
focuses on dialect, slang. emphasis on the way language maintains a social role
Functions of religion
- explains the unknown, makes the “impossible” possible
- Social unity
- comfort
- provides bedrock principles
- Guides people through the stages of life
Priests
They don’t have access to the supernatural world but they lead people with objects like books and wine
The origin of religion
Explanatory/rational origins (Islam, christianity, judiasm)
Self-actualizing origins: people wanting to achieve potential (buddism)
Social control bias: controlling people (North Korea)
Shamans
Someone with a supernatural power that allows them to be in a supernatural world
Rite of passage
Pat of a ceremony or ritual
1. segregation: individual is removed from status
2. Transition: becoming a new self
3. Incorporation/reintegration: giving up something to become a new self
Disaster
Over-population (used to be 5M 100,000 years ago)
4000 years ago was the first civilization
Types of religion
Shamanic: not an actual instutution or religion, but type of religion
Communal
Olympic (pagans, Greek gods)
Monotheistic/ecclesiastic
Politics
Society used to be religious, barely political
1. leadership selection: someone who has a lot of power
2. Applying power: the person applies power on people
3. Conflict/revolution: solve conflicts
4. relations with neighbors: be friends to not be at war
As people go through the civilization process the government becomes less religious and more political
Thomas Malthes
Studies populations
He said populations expand geometrically (double)
Food expands erithmatically (limited)
Populations are limited from a lack of food
JK Smail
1900’s, 200 years later
Disagrees with thomas
he said that by 2050, population would be 20B, meaning we would suffer
His theory: The reason why we overpopulate: medicine and agriculture
We need to prioratize overpopulation
Famine
food shortage
living in famine if you eat less than 1000 calories daily
naturally occuring
Politically
Hunter-gatherers hunted and only took what they needed, so there was no famine
Space debris/degree
we are overdue of a comet hitting us
We might go to Mars since Earth is dying out
Steven Hawkin brought up the idea of colonizing Mars
Carl Saga said that our planet will not be liveable. he called humans two-planet species
Young Dryas Impact
200,000 years ago
A comet that caused 99% of living things to go extinct (including humans)
Mass extinction event
Comet hits the planet, breaks into pieces, the whole planet’s temperature drops over less than 100 years (a lot below than average temperature)
slow and cold death
eventually ice melts, causing floods and even more things die
Some humans survived, we are descendants of them
This ice age lasted 1300 years
ice men
A case study “ice men” (molecular anthropology)
Myochondrial DNA (mtDNA): DNA passed from mother
Y-chromosome DNA: Father to son
DNA sequencing studies
Human leukocyte antigen (HLA) - useful for tracking populations
Some populations have the same genetics. Humans share 99% of the same DNA with Neanderthals
New theory: humans and Neanderthals are descendants from homoerectus from 3000 years ago
A frozen corpse in Italy was discovered (ice man)
He had a stone knife, 5000 it died, and it had blood on it, meaning there was conflict between humans
DNA taken from genetals showed that he was infertile
mtDNA- his mother’s ancestors came from Europe 30,000 years ago
Most Europeans share the same DNA with the Ice man
human molars
2 1 2 3
2 incisors
1 canine
2 premolars
3 molars
new world monkey molars
2 1 3 3
2 incisors
1 canine
3 premolars
3 molars
skulls
Homo:
homo habilis
homo erectus
homo sapiens sapiens
homo sapiens neanderthals
Robust australopithecines:
Australopithecus robustus
australopithecus boisei
australopethecus aetheopicus
gracile australopithecines:
australopethecus africanas
australopethecus afarensis
civilization
people coming together to form a society with certain structures (architecture)
social organization
started off in ands, relativly small groups of people that travelled, egalitarian in nature, they were all equal
tribes, were a bit larger, travelled less, specialized roles
chiefdoms, relied on hordiculture, ruled by someone from the royal bloodline
stats/civilizationd, categorized people into 3 classes (upper, middle, lower), don’t travel, farming
Characteristics of a civilization
urbanization: concentrate populations in a certain area (results in the growing of cities)
Long distance trade
Social stratification: division of the population based on socio-economic status (commoners), farming
Keeping records/writing
Armies/warfare: a standing army (military already available). Happens for materialism, expansion, food
Money: moving away from trading (introduction of coins). old systems, sumerians: first form of currency were shells, aztects: used beans as cacao beans
Slavery
temtonal sovergnity: independence, not relying on other civilization
vassal tribute: collect tribite from conquered people like taxes
Non food production specialists
astronomy, mathematics
Architecture
State religion
taxes
Adaptation
learning how to live somewhere
example: after humans migrated outside of africa, they were exposed to less sunlight, decreasing the melanin, meaning skin colour and birth rates dropped
charles darwin
outlined how everything evolves through natural selection
variation: every species has variety
heritability: individuals pass on traits to their offspring
environmental fitness: better adapted to environment will produce more offspring
bipedalism
The process of walking on two legs
tooth pattern
Recorded in 4 slots of numbers representing the 4 categories of teeth: Incisors, Canines, Premolars, and Molars
the Aquatic Ape Theory
The hypothesis that early hominids developed bipedalism by spending a lot of their time in bodies of water.
polyandry
A form of marriage with multiple husbands
globalization
A worldwide process of increasing cultural interaction.
Clyde Kluckhohn
The anthropologist that published a work that compared anthropology to a mirror.
Christian Thomsen
An archaeologists who developed the three-age system.
functional theory
A theory that argues that cultures are interrelated rather than isolated.
the Younger Dryas
An event that resulted in the destruction of most life on earth, occurring 12,600 years ago.
antiquarianism
A movement associated with the obsession of large-scale artifacts
mimetic consciousness
A type of thinking based on mimicking another individual.
Where did the Neanderthals live?
They lived in Europe and Near East 300,000 to 30,000 years ago.
What is an example of an Olympian religion?
The ancient Greek religion
What is an example of globalization?
Cotton grown in the U.S. is often shipped
to other countries (such as Honduras), assembled into garments there, and then shipped back to the U.S. and sold in American stores; this situation has economic effects (and therefore cultural effects) on each society here, and what one culture does has effects on the other.
emic perspective
Focuses on how the people being observed think rather than how the cultural anthropologist may think.
What is one of the candidacies for domestication?
A relatively good disposition toward humans.
groupthink
A phenomenon that suppresses individuality (implicitly and/or explicitly) and promotes using a rigid and uncompromising way of thinking (defined by the conflict group) for all decision-making.
Ice Man
A well-preserved human who was 700 years dead when the first stones of the great pyramids of Egypt were just being laid.
What occurred 300,000 years ago?
The divergence between Neanderthals and modern humans.
What is the primary goal of archaeology?
The establishment of
Chronologies
Spatial understanding
Understand evolution of culture
What is one of the characteristics of a biped?
Lateral and transverse arches built into the foot so that we aren’t flat- footed but supported by three main points of contact (the heel and under the big and small toes) in a stable, tripod-like structure.
What is an Early Homo?
A hominid that lacked a sagittal crest.
What is the hypothesis that argues that language labels our reality and shapes our cultural reality?
The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis
Clyde Kluckhohn
The anthropologist that published a work that compared anthropology to a mirror.
Jane Goodall
an English primatologist and anthropologist.She is considered the world’s foremost expert on chimpanzees
Bipedalism
Using legs to walk on instead of hands too
originated from 5 million years ago in a forested area.
Pros:
- Efficiency: less exhausting to walk with
- Carrying capacity: hands can be used to carry things while legs can be used for transportation
- Improve sight: seeing everything, including predators
- body cooling: less energy is used, meaning body can be colder
- Climbing ability: you can climb with your arms (can be a con)
Con:
- Speed and agility: less fast and agile
Younger Dryas
An event that resulted in the destruction of most life on earth, occurring 12,600 years ago.
Charles Darwin
outlined how everything evolves through natural selection
variation: every species has variety
heritability: individuals pass on traits to their offspring
environmental fitness: better adapted to environment will produce more offspring
Homo Erectus
Stood up straight
lived at the same time as Australopithecines
Very large brains (bigger appetite)
Small teeth
large body size
Heavy reliance on tools
Wide geographical distribution (Asia, Europe)
Used fire to cook, keep warm (evidence in spain and china, theres stains in caves)
Water craft (used water for making tools and traveling
Cultural Materialism
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engel
Societies go through different phases:
Tribalism, feudalism, capitalism, communism
Infrastructure (base): how systems interact with environment
Structure: governments
Superstructure: ideology
Bank (Infrastructure), money (governments), moving money (superstructure)
Urbanization
concentrate populations in a certain area (results in the growing of cities)
Human Leukocyte Antigen (HLA)
useful for tracking populations
Some populations have the same genetics. Humans share 99% of the same DNA with Neanderthals
Domestication
Cultural selection: breeding plants and animals
Humans pick
Not all animals are domesticated
Animals that can be domesticated: good disposition towards humans, short life-span, and flexible diet
Ferdinand De Saussure
Structural linguistics
thinks that language buried on signs (the signified and the signifier)
Structural Functionalism
AR Raddcliff-Brown thinks that individuals don’t matter as society, because culture is maintained by instututions. Relationships matter more since individuals are replaceable and no one matters as much
Mitochondrial
DNA (mDNA)
DNA passed from mother
Ice man’sDNA showed that mother’s ancestors came from Europe 30,000 years ago
Neanderthals
Germany in 1856
Hunted by humans
Intermixed with early humans
Vocal tracks were higher
Large nasal cavity
Lived in Europe and near east
Simple stone tools
Rite of passage
Pat of a ceremony or ritual
1. segregation: individual is removed from status
2. Transition: becoming a new self
3. Incorporation/reintegration: giving up something to become a new self
Explain how humans could survive if another Younger Dryas-like event
occurred. How can the study of anthropology prepare humanity for a potential apocalyptic event? Provide six pieces of specific evidence to defend your
argument.
- we would know around the time a comet would hit us so we would prepare
- Move to Mars since it’s liveable and Earth is dying out anyways
- Moving somewhere like a bunker can protect you from pieces of the comet and an apocalyptic event
- Saving food and water could help to stay inside for a long time
- Weapons could help during the apocalyptic event
- Communication in the radio across the world helps to get information on what’s happening
Explain the connection between adaptive traits (adaptation) and natural selection. Provide six pieces of specific evidence to defend your argument
Adaptation is learning how to live somewhere
example: after humans migrated outside of africa, they were exposed to less sunlight, decreasing the melanin, meaning skin colour and birth rates dropped
This has to do with the place you live in and the environment
Natural selection depends on the parents that pass their traits to the couple. Adaptive traits affect natural selection.
Why did humanity take up farming? How did farming impact humanity’s growth? Provide six pieces of specific evidence to defend your argument.
Humans took up farming after accidentaly growing fruits and vegetables from seeds that dropped on the ground. From there, foods were grown. Animals were also used for farming from experiment. Tools provided even more accessibility to farming. Since farming is easier near the equator, people living there gained results for their experiments.
