Chapter 13 Flashcards
Biological Anthropology
A subdiscipline of anthropology concerned with the biological origins, ecology, evolution, and diversity of humans and other primates. This term is increasingly preferred to physical anthropology, as many in the field now uncomfortably associate this original name coined by Aleš Hrdlička) with the ways in which questions of human variation were studied in decades past and the sociohistorical context that made anthropology problematic before 1950
Human diversity
Group differences involving variation in biology, physiology, body chemistry, behavior, and culture.
Race
The identification of a group based on a perceived distinctiveness that makes that group more similar to each other than they are to others outside the group. This may be based on cultural differences, genetic parentage, physical characteristics, behavioral attributes, or something arbitrarily and socially constructed. As a social or demographic category, perceptions of “race” can produce effects that have real and serious consequences for different groups of people. This is despite the fact that biological anthropologists and geneticists have demonstrated that all humans are genetically homogenous and that more differences can be found within populations as opposed to between them in the overall apportionment of human biological variation.
Ethnicity
A complex term used commonly in an interchangeable way with the term race see below).
Racism
Any action or belief that discriminates against someone based on perceived differences in race or ethnicity, and the characteristics, qualities, or abilities believed to be specific to a race that is inferior to another in some way.
Prejudice
An unjustified attitude toward an individual or group not based on reason, whether that is positive and showing preference for one group of people over another or negative and resulting in harm or injury to others.
Why is it important to study human diversity?
It helps with understanding ourselves and evolution
After you read the definition of race on the top of page 2, write about what aspects of that definition surprise you? Which ones did you expect?
In an ideal world, how might the work of anthropologists reduce violence, prejudice and even war?
This is how the role of the biological anthropologist becomes crucial in the public sphere, as we may be able to debunk myths surrounding human diversity and shed light on how human variation is actually distributed worldwide for the non-anthropologists around us
The author argues that people can’t be divided into discrete races. What is his evidence for this?
ecause most traits instead vary on a continuous basis and human biology is, in fact, very homogenous compared to the greater genetic variation we observe in other closely related species.
The Book of Gates
Ancient Egypt. Dated to the New Kingdom between 1550 B.C.E. and 1077 B.C.E. In one part of this tome dedicated to depictions of the underworld, scribes used pictures and hieroglyphics to illustrate a division of Egyptian people into the four categories known to them at the time: the Aamu Asiatics), the Nehesu Nubians), the Reth
Egyptians), and the Themehu Libyans). Showcased the origins of race.
Pliny the Elder
Roman philosopher who wrote about different groupings of people in his encyclopedia Naturalis Historia.
Naturalis Historia
Pliny’s the Elder’s encyclopedia about different groups of people.
Bible
the Bible, where it is written that all humankind descends from one of three sons of Noah: Shem the ancestor to all olive-skinned Asians), Japheth the ancestor to pale- skinned Europeans), and Ham the ancestor to darker-skinned Africans). Similar to the Ancient Egyptians, these distinctions were based on behavioral traits and skin color.
“The Great Chain of Being”
Finally, there is also the “Great Chain of Being,” conceived by ancient Greek philosophers like Plato 427‒348 B.C.E.) and Aristotle 384‒322 B.C.E.). They played a key role in laying the foundations of empirical science, whereby observations of everything from animals to humans were noted with the aim of creating taxonomic categories.
Plato
Greek philosopher
Aristotle
Greek philosopher who expressed the belief that certain people are inherently or genetically) more instinctive rulers, while others are more natural fits for the life of a worker or slave.
Write one or two major conclusions the Egyptians, the Romans, early Christians and Greek philosophers came to about humans and race.
each of these groups were made of a distinctive category of people, distinguishable by their skin color, place of origin, and even behavioral traits.
What limitations did these societies have when they drew their conclusions?
Genetics. Both behavioral traits and physical traits are coded for by multiple genes each, and how we exhibit those traits based on our genetics can vary significantly even between individuals of the same population.
Consider what you have already learned about the origins of humans. What conclusions have simply been debunked by later scientific discoveries?
Scientific Revolution
A period between the 1400s and 1600s when substantial shifts occurred in the social, technological, and philosophical sense, when a scientific method based on the collection of empirical evidence through experimentation was emphasized and inductive reasoning used to test hypotheses and interpret their results.
Carl Linnaeus
the author of Systema Naturae 1758), in which he classified all plants and animals he could observe under the first formalized naming system known as binomial nomenclature
Systema Naturae
a book that held the first classifications of all plants and animals he could observe under the first formalized naming system known as binomial nomenclature
Binomial nomenclature
how all organisms can be named by their genus and species, such as Homo sapiens or Pan troglodytes
Essentialism
a concept which dictates that there are a unique set of characteristics that organisms of a specific kind must have—organisms would fall outside taxonomic categorizations if they lacked any of the required criteria.
How are conclusions drawn during the Scientific Revolution likely different from the conclusions drawn by earlier societies?
The conclusions and claims they came to, consciously or subconsciously, often fit such an age when the superiority of European cultures over others was a pervasive idea throughout these scientists’ social and political lives.
Age of Discovery
A period between the late 1400s and late 1700s when European explorers and ships sailed extensively across the globe in pursuit of new trading routes and territorial conquest.
Race
The identification of a group based on a perceived distinctiveness that makes that group more similar to each other than they are to others outside the group. This may be based on cultural differences, genetic parentage, physical characteristics, behavioral attributes, or something arbitrarily and socially constructed. As a social or demographic category, perceptions of “race” can produce effects that have real and serious consequences for different groups of people. This is despite the fact that biological anthropologists and geneticists have demonstrated that all humans are genetically homogenous and that more differences can be found within populations as opposed to between them in the overall apportionment of human biological variation.
Comte de Buffon
Naturalist who believe that all people have a single origin, but they also believed that differences in environment could lead to biological changes between different groups of people
Johann Blumenbach
Naturalist who believe that all people have a single origin, but they also believed that differences in environment could lead to biological changes between different groups of people
Othering
In postcolonial anthropology, we now understand “othering” to mean any action by someone or some group that establishes a division between “us” and “them” in relation to other individuals or populations. This could be based on linguistic or cultural differences, and it has largely been based on external characteristics throughout history.
Carl Linnaeus made some contributions to anthropology that are relevant today, but other “contributions” are not. Describe first his relevant contributions, and then those that have since been proven incorrect.
When European people came to places like the Americas they encountered people who were notably different than any they had seen before. How did they explain these differences?
Building on the idea of species and “subspecies,” natural historians of this time invented the term race, from the French rasse meaning “local strain.” The idea behind this terminology was rooted in the observation that geography plays a significant role in producing the biological traits we observe today
What did J.F Blumenbach believe about human origins.
Buffon believed erroneously that human “subspecies” were “degenerated” or “transformed” varieties of an ancestral Caucasian or European race. According to them, the Caucasian cranial dimensions were the least changed over human evolutionary time, while the other skull forms represented geographic variants of this “original.”
Polygenetic
Having many different ancestries, as in older theories about human origins that involved multiple traditional groupings of humans evolving concurrently in different parts of the world before they merged into one species through interbreeding and/or intergroup warfare. These earlier suggestions have now been overwhelmed by insurmountable evidence for a single origin of the human species in Africa see the “Out-of-Africa model”).
Monogenetic
Pertaining to the idea that the origin of a species is situated in one geographic region or time as opposed to polygenetic).
Samuel George Morton
was a scholar who had a large role in 1800s scientific racism. By measuring cranial size and shape, he calculated that “Caucasians,” on average, have greater cranial volumes than other groups, such as the Native Americans and “Negros.”
Biological determinism
The erroneous concept that an individual’s behavioral characteristics are innate and determined by genes, brain size, or other physiological attributes, and with no influence of social learning or the environment around the individual during development.
Paul Broca
a region of the frontal lobe related to language use is named. he likewise claimed that internal skull capacities could be linked with skin color and cognitive ability. Broca thought that factors such as gender, education, and social status could have an influence on brain size for different groups, purporting that men had larger brains than women and that “eminent” men were superior to men of “mediocre talent.” He went on to justify the European colonization of other global territories by purporting it was noble for a biologically more “civilized” population to improve the “humanity” of more “barbaric” populations.
What is the difference between polygenetic and monogenetic?
For many reasons, wealthy white people and institutions In North America and parts of Europe wanted to justify slavery. How did the work of people like Morton and Broca help wealthy white people feel that slavery was not only justifiable but a desirable situation for African slaves and their descendants?
Alex Hrdlicka
Czech anthropologist who moved to the United States.
Journal of Physical Anthropology
Physical anthropology
Physical anthropology, as many in the field now uncomfortably associate this original name coined by Aleš Hrdlička) with the ways in which questions of human variation were studied in decades past and the sociohistorical context that made anthropology problematic before 1950
see Warren 2018).
“the study of racial anatomy, physiology, and pathology” and “the study of man’s variation”
Franz Boas
German American anthropologist who
established the four-field anthropology system in the United States and
founded the American Anthropological Association in 1902. He argued that
the scientific method should be used in the study of human cultures and
the comparative method for looking at human biology worldwide. he demonstrated how cranial form was highly dependent on cultural and environmental factors and that human
behaviors were influenced primarily not by genes but by social learning.
“While individuals differ, biological differences between races are small. There is no reason to believe that one race is by nature so much more intelligent, endowed with great willpower, or emotionally more stable than another, that the difference would materially influence its culture”
Francis Galton
created the field of eugenics
Earnest A. Hooton
created the field of eugenics
Eugenics
A set of beliefs and practices that involves the controlled selective breeding of human populations with the hope of improving their heritable qualities, especially through surgical procedures like sterilization and legal rulings that affect marriage rights for interracial couples.
Typologies
An assortment system that relies on the interpretation of qualitative similarities or differences in the study of variation among objects or people. The categorization of cultures or human groups according to “race” was performed with a typological approach in the earliest practice of anthropology, but this practice has since been discredited and abandoned.
What did Franz Boas bring to the study of anthropology that contrasted popular thinking at the time?
He established the four field anthro system. That other races are not inferior.
What philosophy was behind the idea of Eugenics?
As a way of “dealing with” criminals, diseased individuals, and “uncivilized” people, eugenicists recommended prohibiting parts of the population from being married and sterilizing these members of society so they could no longer procreate
Population
number of people
Sherwood Washburn, Theodosius Dobzhansky, and Julian Huxley
came up with the word population to describe a unit of diversity instead of race
What is the difference between “race” and “population?”
“Races” were then defined simply as populations that differ in the frequency of some gene or genes. And, on the other hand, a “population” is a group of individuals potentially capable of or actually interbreeding due to shared geographic proximity, language, ethnicity, culture, and/or values. Put another way, a population is a local interbreeding group with reduced gene flow between themselves and other groups of humans.
What two principles of evolution were reconciled by the idea of populations?
Thus, Huxley’s “Modern Synthesis” outlines not only how human populations are capable of exchanging genes at the microevolutionary level but also how multiple alleles for one trait
Clines
A gradient of physiological or morphological change in a single character or allele frequency among a group of species across environmental or geographical lines e.g., skin color varies clinally, as, over many generations, human groups living nearer the equator have adapted to have more skin pigmentation).
Frank Livingstone
There are no races,only clines.
Continuous Variation
Variation that exists between individuals and cannot be measured using distinct categories. Instead, differences between individuals within a population in relation to one particular trait are measurable along a smooth, continuous gradient.
Natural Selection
An evolutionary process whereby certain traits are perpetuated through successive generations, likely owing to the advantages they give organisms in terms of chances of survival and/or reproduction.
Gene flow
A neutral or nonselective) the evolutionary process that occurs when genes get shared between populations
Genetic Drift
A neutral evolutionary process in which allele frequencies from generation to generation due to random chance.
How are clines and environmental factors related? Provide a couple examples.
Clinal patterns arise when selective pressures in one geographic area differ from those in another as well as when people procreate and pass on genes together with their most immediate neighbors.
Explain how distribution of blood type is an example of genetic flow or genetic drift.
For instance, scientists have identified an east-to-west cline in the distribution of the blood type B allele across Eurasia. The frequency of B allele carriers decreases gradually westward when we compare the blood groups of East and Southeast Asian populations with those in Europe. This shows how populations residing nearer to one another are more likely to interbreed and share genetic material
Richard Lewontin
a biologist and evolutionary geneticist who authored a paper evaluating where the total genetic variation in humans lies.
Fixation index
An event in which genetic diversity is significantly reduced owing to a sharp reduction in population size. This can occur when environmental disaster strikes or as a result of human activities e.g., genocides or group migrations). An important example of this loss in genetic variation occurred over the first human migrations out of Africa and into other continental regions.
Noah Rosenberg
explored worldwide human genetic variation using an even-greater genetic data set.
Founder Effects
population bottleneck
What assumption has traditionally been made about people who belong to the same typological category?
One problem with race-based classifications is they relied on an erroneous idea that people within a typological category were more similar to each other than they were to people in other groups
What basic conclusions did Richard Lewontin come to?
identified that most of human genetic differences found within local subpopulations e.g., the Germans or Easter Islanders), whereas 8.3% were found between populations within continental human groups, and 6.3% were attributable to traditional “race” groups
More genetic differences were found between local populations rather than differences between races
How was Rosenberg’s study different from Lewontin’s? Inspite of those differences, how did Rosenberg’s study support the conclusions lewontin came to?
findings, this lends support to the theory that distinct biological races do not exist, even though misguided concepts of race may still have real social and political consequences.
Out-of-Africa Model
A model that suggests that all humans originate from one single group of Homo sapiens in sub- Saharan) Africa who lived between 100,000 and 315,000 years ago and who subsequently diverged and migrated to other regions across the globe.
Isolation-by-Distance Model
A model that predicts a positive relationship between genetic distances and geographical distances between pairs of populations.
Population Bottlenecking
Mutations
What is the most likely explanation for groups of people showing similar genetic traits?
Why are populations less genetically diverse the farther from sub-Saharan Africa they are?
How does isolation impact genetic similarity?
How do the Out-of-Africa model and the isolation –by-distance model support the idea of abolishing race groupings?
Heterogeneity
The quality of being diverse genetically
Ecological Niche
The position or status of an organism within its community and/or ecosystem, resulting from the organism’s structural and functional adaptations e.g., bipedalism, omnivory, lactose digestion, etc.).
What is true of humans compared to other primates as well as other animals?
What are some explanations for the homogenous nature of human genes?
How could studies of genetic diversity in apes, chimpanzees and humans contribute to greater understanding of disease? How might these studies explain why humans are different than non-human primates?
Non-concordance
Bony labyrinth
Provide an example of non-concordance.
What factors account for variation in cranial shape, pelvic shape and the bony labyrinth.
Cystic fibrosis
Ancestry
How is skin color unlike height or cranial shape?
How is a forensic anthropologist able to determine what race person is from their bones?
Why is classifying people this way sometimes inaccurate?
Polymorphisms
