Chapter One: Encountering the Past

Question 1

Define Archeology

Answer 1

A sub-discipline of anthropology (the study of humanity), concentrating on the cultural evolution of past human beings.

Question 2

True or False: the accepted view of the world is one where the world is a static product of relatively recent, divine creation.

Answer 2

False, the accepted belief now is that the earth is the result of slow-acting, natural causes that continue to operate in the present with an ever changing history.

Question 3

Define Archeological Site

Answer 3

A place or group of physical sites in which evidence of past activity is preserved.

Question 4

Define Paleoanthropology

Answer 4

A branch of anthropology that deals with fossilized humans and their ancestors (hominids).

Question 5

Define Anthropology

Answer 5

The study of people through holistic and integrative approaches; studying how the interrelated parts of society allow it to function.

Question 6

Define Holistic

Answer 6

Comprehension of the parts of something as intimately interconnected and explicable only by reference to the whole.

Question 7

Define Ethnographers

Answer 7

Anthropologists that study humans by living in particular societies and observing the behaviours of the people living in them.

Question 8

Define Ethnology

Answer 8

The comparison of different cultures.

Question 9

Define Anthropological Linguistics

Answer 9

The study of language and how it evolved and the historical relationships among the known languages.

Question 10

Define Primatologists

Answer 10

Anthropologists who live among non human primates (prosimians, monkeys, apes, and humans are all primates) to gain insights into human ancestral lineage.

Question 11

Define Forensic Anthropologist

Answer 11

The application of scientific procedures in the solution of a crime using knowledge of the human skeleton and associated trauma and pathology.

Question 12

Paleoanthropologists and archeologists investigate the evolutionary history of humanity through what two avenues?

Answer 12

Biological evolution and cultural evolution through the use of bones and artifacts.

Question 13

What do Archeologists rely on?

Answer 13

The material remains left by past peoples, including things that people made and used such as stone cutting tools and monuments.

Question 14

What was the common belief of the 16th-17th century of the world’s age by Europeans?

Answer 14

The world was only a few thousand years old and was created by God and the world had not changed significantly since God first made it.

Question 15

How old did John Lightfoot believe the world to be in 1642?

Answer 15

5,570 years old.

Question 16

Who was James Ussher?

Answer 16

An Irish bishop who, in 1650, calculated the world to have been created in 4004 BC, October 23rd.

Question 17

Who was John Ray?

Answer 17

A creationist from the late 17th century who believed the world around him reflected the conserved works of God, in the same condition as the day they were first made.

Question 18

What belief arose in the late 17th to 18th centuries?

Answer 18

The belief that the world had dramatically changed since creation (from God) through a series of catastrophic, natural, processes that where set in motion by God when he originally created the world. This belief was held by catastrophists. They believed these changes could be understood through careful study.

Question 19

What does Noah’s Flood support?

Answer 19

The catastrophism view of the world. Astronomer Edmund Halley proposed (in the late 17th century) that a comet caused the flood.

Question 20

Who was Scottish scientist James Hutton?

Answer 20

One of the first oppositionists to catastrophism, expressed in his work “Theory of the Earth” (late 18th century), by saying that the operations of nature are equable and steady - not unpredictable and catastrophic. This lead to uniformitarianism, the thinking that the world was a machine built to readjust and recreate itself continually.

Question 21

What was found across Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries?

Answer 21

Symmetrical stone axes, which were explained by many observers in the early 17th century to have been made/used by fairies and elves. Theories were restricted because people “could not” have been more than 6000 years old.

Question 22

What was John Frere’s discovery?

Answer 22

Late 18th century (1797), he found stone axes buried 12 feet deep; below the bones of extinct animals in more recently deposited soil layers. Uniformitarian approach.

Question 23

Define Stratigraphy

Answer 23

The study of rock layers and layering.

Question 24

Who was Jacques Boucher de Perthes?

Answer 24

A French customs official with a passion for collecting artifacts, calling stone axes ‘antediluvian’ (from before the flood). Uniformitarian approach.

Question 25

Who was Charles Lyell?

Answer 25

British geologist who believed that to have a rational understanding of the earth, you must consider the past. ‘All past changes on the globe had been brought about by the slow agency of existing clauses’. Mid-late 19th century, his uniformitarian approach asserted that the earth was far more ancient than generally believed.

Question 26

What was Christian Jurgensen Thomsen’s three stage system?

Answer 26

Mid-late 19th century, the Danish museum curator created a guidebook that organized the museum’s collection into three prehistoric ages - stone, bronze, and iron - based on the most favoured material to make tools during the time period. It embodied that notion that culture had changed through time in a predictable sequence, in an increase of technological sophistication. Tools were more efficient but harder to manufacture.

Question 27

What is unilineal evolution?

Answer 27

An approach to changes in culture that assumes that there was a single pathway of technological progress across all cultures.

Question 28

What unilineal evolutionary sequence was suggested by Lewis Henry Morgan (late 19th century)?

Answer 28

All cultures progress through a series of fixed stages of development from savagery to barbarism to civilization. Savagery: fruits, nuts, fishing, fire, bow, arrow. Barbarism: development of agriculture, ability to make ceramics, forge iron. Civilization: written language. “Primitive” people in the modern world were stuck in savagery or barbarism.

Question 29

What is mutilineal evolution?

Answer 29

The modern view of cultural evolution, where there are many diverse pathways in which different people adapted to their surroundings and adjusted to change.

Question 30

Early-mid 19th century: Charles Darwin’s focus was on what?

Answer 30

Evolution, which can include the physical and cultural change of humans.

Question 31

What is biological evolution?

Answer 31

Implies a process of systematic change through time, usually through advantages that make it more likely for an organism to survive. Species do not actively develop strategies for survival (adaptation), and do not inevitably become bigger/stronger/faster.

Question 32

Modern human beings rely on what for survival?

Answer 32

Cultural adaptations through the adaptation of survival methods.