Chapter 1 Flashcards
Anthropology
The study of all aspects of the human experience
Four types: Archaeology, Biological Anthropology, Cultural Anthropology, and Linguistic Anthropology
Primates
The mammalian order to which humans belong
Archaeology
The study of the patterns of behavior and the material record of humans who lived in the past
Biological Anthropology
The study of the biological and biocultural facets of humans and their relatives
Cultural Anthropology
The study of the human culture; the patterns of behavior we exhibit in our families, relationships, religions, laws, moral codes, etc.
Ethnography
The focused study of a culture or aspects of a culture
Ethnology
The comparative study of many cultures
Linguistic Anthropology
The study of language, its structure, function, and evolution
Paleoanthropology
The study of fossil humans and human relatives
Fossil
Material evidence of past life on this planet
Ecology
Interrelationships between living organisms and their environments
Theory
A set of supported hypotheses
Paradigm
Predominant ways of thinking about ideas
The Fact of Evolution (observable, verifiable truth)
That life on this planet has changed over time
The Theory of Evolution
A set of hypotheses that explain how the change occurs
Great Chain of Being
An important idea of Greek and Roman Philosophy.
The notion that all forms of life on the planet can be ranked in order from the most important to the least important
-Supports the belief that higher ranked forms are better than lower ranked forms and that humans are superior to other life forms
Essentialism
Each organism has a true, ideal form and that all living representatives of that organism are slight deviations from the ideal type
-Answers are self-evident
John Ray
An English naturalist, classified plants and animals on the basis of similarities and differences
Robert Hooke
Believed that fossils represented extinct organisms and proposed that extinctions occurred because of changes in the earth
Nicolas Steno
Founded stratigraphy, the study of the rock and soil layers of the earth
-Proposed that the strata of the earth represented a chronological history of a constantly changing planet
Catastrophism
- The belief that great castrophes regularly wipe out much of life on earth
- Believed humans were all descendants of survivors of the Great Flood
Stratigraphy
The study of the layering of the earth’s sediments
taxanomy
Naming and classification of organisms based on morphological similarities and differences
Carolus Linnaeus
A swedish naturalist and Father of Taxonomy
- Invented a two name system to identify and group different forms (binomial nomenclature)
- Believed in fixity of nature: No new species could arise from other
- Binomial nomenclature destroyed notions of great chain of being
George-Louis Leclerc, Comte du Buffon
- Proposed that variation was the result of the dynamic interaction between organisms and their environment
- Still believed in Great Chain of Being
- Believed Earth was much older than 6000 years (160,000)
Erasmus Darwin
Process of Speciation: Gradual change of one species into another–had produced the diversity of forms we see on the planet
Lamarck
-Adaptation is the result of environmental challenges
Process of evolution: Will to change, the inheritance of acquired characteristics, law of use and disuse
-An organism can “will” itself to change over the course of its lifetime and pass those acquired traits off to offspring
-Largely Incorrect
Adaptation
Change in response to environmental challenges
Alfred Russel Wallace & Charles Darwin
-Variation present in populations means some individuals have traits that allow them to survive longer and produce more offspring
“Fit” traits are passed on to future generations (survival of the fittest)
-Organisms adapt to environments over time (Descent by modification/Natural Selection)
Reproductive Success
A measure of the number of surviving off-spring an organism has
Fit
Having the set of heritable traits that are best suited to existing and reproducing in a given environment
Natural selection
Process by which the better fit variants in a population become over-represented over time
Niche
Habitat or ecological role filled by an organism; the way in which an organism “makes a living”
Parsimony
Economy in explanation; the least complex path
Georges Cuvier
- Attempted to explain change/variation over time within the framework of the Great Chain of Being
- Became associated with the idea of catastrophism
Jacques Boucher de Perthes
- Discovered stone handaxes along with fossils of extinct animals in the river terraces of the Somme River in France
- Archeological work established that people lived at the same time as animals that now extinct
- Association contracted the idea of catastrophism
Uniformitarianism
The same geological processes have occurred throughout time and all across the Earth
-Proposed by Hutton and Lyell
James Hutton & Charles Lyell
- Proposed uniformitarianism
- Believed processes of uniformitarianism required enormous amounts of time (Greater than 6000 years)
Thomas Robert Malthus
Populations grow much faster than food, but they never exceed their food supply.
Implication: All organisms do not survive due to this environmental challenge
-Influenced Darwin
