Midterm #1 Flashcards
What is the purpose of anthropology?
The purpose of anthropology is to study human beings, seeking to understand both universals and differences in human populations worldwide and throughout time, answering biological and cultural questions for academic and practical purposes.
What are the modern and ancient versions of Biological, Cultural, and Applied anthropology?
Biological Anthropology:
- Modern: Physical Anthropology
- Ancient: Paleoanthropology
Cultural Anthropology:
- Modern: Sociocultural and Linguistic Anthropology
- Ancient: Archaeology
Applied Anthropology:
- Modern: Forensic and Socio-Linguistics Anthropology
- Ancient: Cultural Resources Management
What does the cannonball analogy in anthropology signify?
The cannonball analogy implies that knowing the past helps shape the future, and those who cannot remember the past are condemned to fulfill it.
What are some negative changes that have occurred in society as it has evolved?
Negative changes in society as it has evolved include increased living expenses, greater productivity leading to longer work hours, population growth, and increasing social inequalities.
How did anthropology start in Canada?
Anthropology in Canada originated with French Canadian missionaries in the 1600s who were deeply interested in understanding the ways of life and beliefs of Indigenous people they lived among.
It was later established as a professional field in 1910 by Prime Minister Wilfred Laurier, and it has since grown and developed in academic institutions across the country.
What is the scope of anthropology?
Anthropology has a broad geographical and historical scope, focusing on people of all periods to ensure that any generalizations about human beings apply universally across all times and cultures.
What does the holistic approach mean in anthropology?
The holistic approach in anthropology involves studying various aspects of human experience as an integrated whole, seeking patterns of traits and relationships between seemingly unrelated characteristics.
What is anthropology’s distinctive curiosity?
Anthropology’s distinctive curiosity is marked by its broad scope, holistic approach, and a willingness to uncover patterns and connections that might not be found in other disciplines concerned with human beings.
What are the fields of anthropology?
Anthropology consists of four traditional fields:
biological anthropology (which includes paleoanthropology),
cultural anthropology (including ethnology,
linguistic anthropology
and archaeology
fifth field called applied anthropology, which cuts across all four and focuses on the practical application of anthropological knowledge.
What is the role of explanation in anthropology?
In anthropology, explanation involves providing associations (observed relationships between variables) and theories (explanations of associations).
It helps researchers understand and make sense of observed patterns in human behaviour and culture.
What is the process of operationalization? Why is is important in anthropology?
Operationalization involves specifying how to measure variables involved in relationships being studied, making predictions based on theories, and conducting investigations to test those predictions.
It’s important in anthropology as it helps ensure that research can be replicated and provides a clear basis for testing theories.
Why is measurement and statistical evaluation valuable in testing explanations in anthropology?
help test the validity of explanations and theories.
They provide objective ways to assess whether observed associations are statistically significant and whether theories are likely to be correct.
Why is anthropology relevant?
Anthropology is relevant because it contributes to our understanding of human beings across time and cultures, helps prevent misunderstandings between peoples, and provides insights into different cultures and societies.
It also helps us understand the past and its impact on the present and future.
What are the key characteristics of culture according to the “UPCHAD” acronym?
Culture is
Unique to human beings,
Patterned (exhibits cultural universals),
Compulsory (acquired through enculturation),
Holistic (an all-inclusive perspective),
Adaptive (can change in response to the environment), and
Dynamic (subject to change for internal and external reasons).
What are Hominins, and what is their significance in anthropology?
Hominins are a group of hominoids consisting of humans and their direct ancestors. They include at least two genera, Homo and Australopithecus, and are significant in anthropology as they are central to the study of human evolution and the emergence of our species.
What is the significance of a statistically significant association in anthropology?
A statistically significant association suggests that the observed relationship between variables is unlikely to have occurred by chance alone.
It provides support for the validity of a hypothesis or theory in anthropological research.
Describe the processes that create sites
Site formation processes are environmental and cultural factors that affect how and where materials are deposited at an archaeological site or fossil locale
Cultural factors:
ex. Past population dumping waste in the same area for a long duration of time → creates a garbage heap (midden)
Ex. a community’s dwellings → were they nomadic (moved around), or sedentary (still)
The study of taphonomy - post-depositional changes to remains - is crucial for reconstructing the past
Differentiate fossil locales and archaeological sites
- Archaeological sites are locations where evidence of the past has been buried and preserved → defined by assemblages of artefacts, ecofacts, and/or features.
- Fossil locales are places where fossils are recovered
Describe the different kinds of evidence that we can use to understand the past.
What is the archaeological context?
Fossils: once-living organisms that have had their structure preserved in stone
Artifacts: portable objects partly or wholly modified from human activity
Ecofacts: natural objects that have a cultural significance (ex. bone)
Features: non-portable artifacts
Archaeological context: the association of artefacts, ecofacts, and features with one another
Provenience : the association of remains in a 3D space
Describe the different ways that sites can be found.
Site prospection, or reconnaissance, is the primary way of finding sites and determining post-depositional effects on remains
Reconnaissance techniques can be divided into two groups: surface and subsurface
Surface: includes surveying and field walking
Subsurface : includes shovel testing, augering, test pitting, and trenching
Non-invasive techniques = aerial survey
Explain how sites are excavated.
- Careful and detailed recording of the relationships between and among artifacts, ecofacts, fossils, and features is key to excavation
- Excavation requires control over spatial aspects of a site through the use of a grid system
- Detailed mapping and documentation of recoveries are related to the grid system to that all data can be incorporated at the end
What are the 3 contexts of archaeological remains?
Physical (space) → time-space systematics
Temporal (time) → “”
Cultural contexts → reconstruct past lifeways, explain process of change, reconstruct meaning, not just what people did at the time but why
What is the archaeological record?
- Sites = spatial clusters of artifacts, features, and ecofacts
- Regions = clusters of similar materials at a group of sites
What are two important questions to ask to understand the archaeological record?
- What influences the archaeological record? (there’s still things that have an impact)
- What are the material traces of behaviours? (does it leave a chemical trace, does it leave a genetic trace?)
What is the systemic context and what are the two different objects in a systemic context?
Living breathing society is what we want to learn about
Objects:
Secondary use → same object - different use, not extensively modified
Recycling → object transformed into a new product and modified quite a bit
What is the archaeological context and the two kinds of transformation processes?
Relationship amongst soils, artefacts, ecofacts, etc., at the time of excavation
- There’s a bunch of time that occurs between when something is discarded and when it’s recovered → that’s called the transformation process , and we want to understand what happened within that time
- Two kinds of transformation processes:
Natural (how it was deposited)
Cultural (how was it modified, what did people do)
What are depositional processes? (natural and cultural)
Natural: deposition of soils
- Pedogenic processes - soil evolution
- Catastrophic burial (very rare) → mudslides, volcanic ash falls, sand dunes, etc.
Cultural:
- Casual discard of materials (like garbage)
- Unintentional discard (loss, abandonment/decay of buildings, etc.)
- Intentional burial → retrieval (hiding food), burials of the dead
What are disturbance processes (natural and cultural)?
Anything that alters the archaeological record after it has formed
Natural:
- Ex. burrowing creatures affecting archaeological sites
Cultural:
- Reclamation → modern farmers reclaiming fields
- Scavenging → taking something that’s already been used and using it for something else
- Reuse
Explain how sites are dated from different kinds of evidence.
Techniques for dating archaeological material contribute to determining the context of finds
Relative dating:
Determining the age of archaeological materials relative to material of known ages
Ex. stratigraphy → provides a basis for determining whether a feature or object is younger or older than another features or objects in adjacent layers
Absolute dating:
Determined the age of archaeological deposits or materials by providing the age in years
Each technique has difference sources or error, so it’s important that different techniques be used as check on each other
What are some reasons for selecting to survey certain archaeological sites?
They’re going to be damaged or destroyed anyways
They hold great potential to answer questions
What is the first step of a site survey?
Look at the site records → many nations should have a catalogue of site records in a database
Get an understanding of everything that’s already known
Foster further research
Make sure cultural heritage is not being destroyed
What are the different kinds of aerial survey?
- Airborne Prospecting (aerial photography)
Can look at human modifications of the land and supplement to observations made during fieldwork
- Multi-spectral and thermal imaging
Looking at how the earth holds heat differently → things that are constructed by humans will be different
- Photogrammetry
Converting optical images to digital images → create 3 dimensions
Ex. scan a tooth and send pic to an expert to observe
- Drones
Better depth models than satellite imagery
Can be used where access and surveying is difficult
Limitations → piloting skill and environment
What are the different kinds of surface survey?
- Pedestrian survey is always step one
Going to the site and walking around
- Ground-level photography
Can be done over and over again - things will always look different
- Topographic survey
Maps the boundaries, features, and levels of the site → determines changes in elevation of the land
How we have interacted with the land leaves a trace on the landscape → much finer understanding and a slower, old fashioned process
- Underwater survey
Many limitations, very slow and expensive
Dive formations → very systematic
What are the different kinds of subsurface surveys?
- Resistivity
Measuring the electronic current passed through the ground
More resistance = not just natural soil
Can be used to target excavations
- Magnetic survey
Looking for anomalies of the normal magnetic field
- Ground penetrating radar
Waves converted to electronic signals - can get deeper into the surface
All about soil density and the quality of your took
3 different kinds of scans → A, B, C
- Seismic survey
Underwater survey - side sonar scanning (hangs off the boat)
- Shovel Testing
Digging square hole
- Augering
Large drill used in specific soils
- Coring
Getting deep in the soil - geological conditions
- Deep Testing
Machine operator
What are three common types of sites?
Campsites and caves : people stay and go
Permanent settlement : associate with adoption of farming
Cemeteries : any location used for the disposal of the dead
What are the different kinds of sampling strategies?
Random : assign numbers to everything and randomly select numbers- no bias
Systematic : ransom start but a non-arbitrary sequence
Judgmental: people have worked there before, you see something in the ground, experts have done it before → this is much more accurate
What is the F-U-N trio?
Fluorine, uranium, and nitrogen tests (relative dating technique)
- Bones and teeth slowly transform in their chemical composition - this transformation reflects the mineral content of the groundwater where they are buried
- The older a fossil is, the higher its fluorine and uranium content will be, and the lower its nitrogen content
- Cannot be used to compare the relative ages of specimens from widely separated sites
What is sequence dating?
- Comparing popularities of artifact styles (within a site and between sites)
- Stylistic seriation : presence/absence of styles (black pots vs. white pots) (relative dating)
- Cross-dating: artifacts at one site used to cross-date other sites in sequence (anchor with absolute dates)
What is historical dating?
Using historical records to help us guide our study
Not really relative or absolute
Bringing things back to a standard way of viewing time - like a shorthand
Deals with solar and lunar calendars
Provenience:
The location of an artefact or feature within a site
Taphonomy:
The study of changes that occur to organisms or objects after being buried or deposited
Lithics:
Technical name for tools made from stone
Phytolith:
Microscopic granules of silicon dioxide that enter a plant’s cells and take their shape
Landscape Archaeology:
Looking for locations of human habitation of human activity and thinking about how these are linked in an entire landscape
Describe the different ways that we can analyze artifacts. (specific steps and then the different categories of study)
- Many artifacts require conservation in order to prevent further decay
- Some require reconstruction → putting the pieces back together
- Study the form of an artifact, including through measurement, to try and understand how it was made
- Understand how an artefact functioned in the past in order to help understand issues of the human condition in the past
- Environmental archaeology → reconstruct past ecological conditions
- Paleonutrition→ diet
- Paleopathology → disease
- Political ecology → settlement patterns, socio-economic status, resource distribution and allocation
Describe the different ways that we can analyse human remains.
- Osteology (human skeletal biology):
Specialized sub-discipline of physical anthropology that deals with the biological remains of humans from past populations
- Skeletal biologist use human remains to learn about the size, composition, and health of past populations
- Paleodemography is the study of demographic structure and population process of the past
- Focuses on the age and sexstructure of the population, and patterns of mortality, fertility, and population growth
- Paleopathology - seeks to answer questions about the appearance, prevalence, and spread of diseases in past populations
What are life tables (what can we do after we find out about age and sex of human remains?
Mortality (death rates)
Fecundity (fertility rate)
Questions of demography (ex. Probability of death)
What is selective mortality?
The notion that skeletal samples represent not all the people who were susceptible for a given age group, but only those individuals who died at that age
What are primary products and secondary products in zooarchaeology?
Primary products → have to kill the animals for them (ex. Meat, hide)
Secondary products → don’t have to kill the animals (milk, wool, eggs)
Describe the different approaches to reconstructing diet in the past.
Direct evidence:
Preserved remains of food itself → in the stomach or coprolites (faeces)
Indirect evidence:
Animal remains, plant remains, stable isotopes, trace elements, and experimental archaeology
Stable isotope and trace element → explore the biochemical evidence of diet using human and animal skeletal remains
Experimental archaeology → examines how people used tools to process foods by matching wear patterns and organic residues on ancient tools with those on experimental ones
Explain how archaeologists reconstruct past environments.
Environmental archaeology reconstructs ecological climatic conditions of the past to better understand how people interacted with and were influenced by the environment
Study of past environments concerned with both local and global environmental conditions
Local conditions: studied by reconstructing past vegetation through the study of pollen (palynology) and general conditions through the the study of isotopic data, such as changes in temperature and rainfall conditions provided by the study of oxygen isotopes in ice cores
Geoarchaeology → concerned with the effects of changing climate on the terrain where archaeological sites are found
Explain the process of the changing oxygen isotopes and temperature in sea water and the temperature of the basic state of earth. (+ sources of this information)?
The basic state of earth is cold
- Sea water naturally contains both 18O and the lighter 16O
- The lighter 16O evaporates first, and when this water vapour falls as snow, some remains “locked up” as glacial ice in northern latitudes
- So, the relative abundance of 18O goes up
- During warmer period, less precipitation falls as now and glacial meltwater returns to the oceans, thereby reducing the relative abundance of 18O
INTERGLACIALS: precipitation and glacial ice contains water with a low 18O content = ocean water is warmer
GLACIALS: large amounts of 16O water are being stored as glacial ice, sothe 18O content of oceanic water is high and ocean water is cooler
Sources:
Sea beds: dead marine creatures sensitive to temp changes
Ice cores: changes in abundance of oxygen isotopes
Explain how archaeologists reconstruct past settlement patterns.
- Settlement archaeology concerned with the distribution of sites across a landscape and the relationship structures in past communities
- Settlement data can tell us about how many people lived at settlements, how families and larger social groups were organized, who performed different tasks, and the beliefs, values, and attitudes of the people
Local systems (community): groups of people that share life interests and culture (most of the time), living in a prescribed, small area
Regional systems (landscape): area with multiple communities
Also concerned with how people lived on the landscape → resources they used, nomadic or sedentary lifestyle
Explain how archaeologists study social systems.
Involves the study of burials because they can reveal much about social relations, beliefs, and how people interacted with other communities
Ideas of reciprocity and redistribution
Artifacts in settlements and burials provide evidence for exchange and trade among populations
Explain the sources and processes of cultural change.
Culture is always changing
Discoveries and inventions are the main sources of change
Diffusion → the process by which elements of culture are borrowed from one society and incorporated into another (a selective, non-automatic process)
Acculturation → when people do not have a choice in their
cultural change → contact between two societies involves on being more powerful than the other and the dominant society exerting pressure on the subordinate society to adopt cultural changes
What are the three basic patterns of cultural diffusion?
Direct contact → when elements of a society’s culture are first taken up by neighbouring societies and then gradually spread farther apart (ex. The spread of paper across civilizations)
Intermediate diffusion → occurs through the agency of third parties (ex. our alphabet)
Stimulus diffusion → knowledge of a trait belonging to another culture stimulates the invention or development of a local equivalent (ex. Cherokee syllabic writing system - idea from the European english writing system - made up their own symbols)
What are some local settlement systems?
Small spatial scales
Community lifeways
Organization and use of space to understand economics, politics, social organization, belief systems
What are some regional settlement systems?
Ecozone: river valley, grassland, forest)
Finding debris at certain areas across a landscape where different activities took place - looking at activity patterns and then looking at the material remains
Ecological range: multiple ecozones
People moving between ecozones according to the season/environment
Looking at if the place could actually sustain itself (can you feed everyone with what’s around, is there water around)
What are the interacting components of social systems?
Social relations
Subsistence
Contact and exchange
Belief and thought
Technology
What are the different patterns of exchange within a social system?
Reciprocity: the exchange of goods and services
An exchange between two parties
Relatively equal value
Doesn’t involve money
Redistribution: goods are given to a central authority and then distributed to people in a new pattern → glow of goods or services inward and then outward
- Potlatch: chief gives away/destroys most of his property - this is a measure of prestige (they’re willing to give away everything to their people)
Doesn’t accumulate wealth, get rid of it
- Market exchange: goods bought and sold, usually with a standardised currency = less personal
What are the 3 different mechanisms of change?
Innovation (discovery or invention):
can be the consequence of a society’s setting itself a specific goal, like eliminating a disease
Can be accidental or intentional
- Push → cumulative series of results that end up in something new (things or ideas)
- Pull → something happens and we respond to and come up with a solution
Diffusion (how things spread around)
- Direct contact → when elements of a society’s culture are first taken up by neighbouring societies and then gradually spread farther apart (ex. The spread of paper across civilizations)
- Intermediate diffusion → occurs through the agency of third parties (ex. our alphabet, traders carrying cultural traits across groups)
- Stimulus diffusion → knowledge of a trait belonging to another culture stimulates the invention or development of a local equivalent (ex. Cherokee syllabic writing system - idea from the European english writing system - made up their own symbols)
Acculturation (one group adopts thing from another group)
** this always involves inequalities of power between the groups
A group is forced to abandon their own way of doing things
- One of the earliest examples of acculturation = Inca - largest preindustrial empire that we’ve known (had the principle that empires expand)
capture people in the area they’re expanding, bring them into the centre and indoctrinate them into their way of living
Osteology:
The study of the form and function of the skeleton
Remodelling:
Occurs after growth has ceased and replaces old tissue with new formed bone to maintain bone strength from microscopic fractures from normal biomechanical stress
Used to see how microscopic fractures may occur normally from everyday wear and tear
Polymerase Chain Reaction:
Technique for accurate recovery of ancient DNA
Requires only a few molecules for the amplification of DNA sequences from trace amounts of the original genetic material
Stationary:
In demography, a population is considered to be stationary when there is no in-migration or out-migration and the number of deaths equals the number of births per year
Experimental Archaeology:
Specialty within archaeology used to explore a variety of historical questions, especially those related to diet and subsistence, by reproducing or replicating technological traits and patterns observed in the archaeological record
Molecular Anthropology:
Study of anthropological questions using genetic evidence
Stable Isotopes:
Isotopes of the same elements with different atomic masses
Helps us identify plant foods → comparing the ratio of certain isotopes (two pathways = C3 or C4)
One pathway for temperate climate plants (C3) and one for tropical plants (C4)
Trace elements:
Elements found in extremely small amounts within the body
Can identify meat sources
Diagenesis:
Chemical changes that occur in materials after deposition in the ground
Palynology:
The study of pollen from archaeological contexts
Can tell us about crops, vegetation, ground cover present when a layer was deposited
Phytolith Analysis:
Phytoliths are silica bodies produced by plants
Very durable and decay-resistant plant remains
Can be transported easily
Geographic Information System (GIS)
An integrated software package for the input, analysis, and display of spatial information
Site Catchment Analysis:
An analysis based on the assumption that the more dispersed resources are from habitation sites, the less likely they are to be exploited by a population
Funerary Archaeology:
The study of burial customs from archaeological evidence
Review the early thinkers who shaped the theory of evolution. Explain the contributions of both biological and geological views to the theory of evolution.
18th and 19th centuries, scientists increasingly interpreted evidence to suggest that evolution was a viable theory
Thinkers who began to discuss evolution:
- Carolus Linnaeus (18th century) → revolutionised the study of living things by classifying them according to similarities in form (his system provided a framework for the idea that humans, apes, and monkeys all had a common ancestor)
- Georges Cuvier → proposed the theory that the earth is shaped by a series of catastrophic events (opposed evolution)
- Georges Buffon → proposed the notion of uniformitarianism which was the idea that repeated uniform processes, like rivers cutting channels, and wind and rain eroding mountains, operated throughout time
- Charles Lyell: the world is changing constantly and the world is older than we think because these geological processes take so long
- James Hutton: The Theory of the Earth (first textbook of geology) → advanced the notion of studying the uniform, slow-acting processes of erosion to estimate the age of earth, and argued that using this measurement, the earth was at least a few hundred thousand years old
- Lamarck → proposed that the use of a trait- such as an elephant using its trunk to get food higher in a tree - could influence an offspring’s phenotype in the next generation
- Darwin instead → showed that change could only occur across generations based only on the selective retention of some traits and the filtering out of others
19th century: emergence of cultural evolutionary theory by theorists like Herbert Spencer, Edward Burnett Tylor, and Lewis Henry Morgan (Human institutions progress from simple to complex forms and each culture passes through each stage of development)
Anthropologist Franz Boas challenged many of the notions of cultural evolution and introduced the concept of cultural relativism
How long has the universe been in existence? When was the sun formed? When did evidence for the first signs of life arise? When did plants and insects evolve on land and fish in the sea? When did mammals arise? What about primates, monkeys and apes, human-like beings, and modern looking humans?
If the history of the universe is represented by 12 months, the history of human-like primates would only take up about 90 minutes
Universe = 15 billion years
Sun = 4.5 billion years ago
Life = 3.6 billion years ago
Plants, insects, fish = 425 million years ago
Mammals = 65 millions years ago
First primates = 55-65 years ago
Monkeys and apes = 35 million years ago
First human-like beings = 4 million
Modern looking humans = 100 000 years ago
What did they believe about the world in the early 18th century? (how old is the earth, where did black people and native people come from)?
Believed the earth was 6000 years old
Black people are the children of Adam’s brother Ham
Don’t know where to put the Native Americans
Appalled at the idea of being related to a monkey and believe in the great chain of being
What were Plato and Aristotle’s beliefs?
4th century BC → They stated that animals and plants formed a single, graded continuum moving increasingly towards perfection
Plato → variation in animals has no meaning
Aristotle → grouped animals with similar characteristics into genera and the distinguished subgroups of species within the genera → humans at the top of the scale
Explain the principles of natural selection:
Charles Darwin + Alfred Russel Wallace → proposed the mechanism of natural selection to account for the evolution of species
3 Basic Principles of natural selection:
- Every species is composed of a great variety of individuals, some of which are better adapted to their environment than others
- Offspring inherit traits from their parents, at least to some degree and in some way
- Since better-adapted individuals generally produce more offspring over the generations than those that are more poorly adapted, the frequency of adaptive traits increases in subsequent generations. In this way, natural selection results in increasing proportions of individuals with advantageous traits
Natural selection depends on variation within a population
What did Jacques Boucher de Perthes and Eugene Dubois do?
Jacques Boucher de Perthes:
Found bones of extinct animals associated with things hat could not have been made by animals (stone handaxes)
Law of stratigraphy
Eugene Dubois:
Found a series of fossils in Asia that were kind of like humans but were not exactly like us → Pithecanthropus erectus→ standing ape
What did Christian J. Thomsen do?
Provided a way to organise materials that were not found in stratigraphic areas (archaeology Methodology)
Originally just for museum purposes and just a way to organize material
Three age system: stone age, bronze age, iron age
What are the stages of development proposed by Lewis Henry Morgan?
Savagery - hunting and gathering
Barbarism - farming and herding
Civilization - cities, complex societies
Band → tribe → chiefdom → state model
Cannot go backwards, can only follow the line
What did Robert H Lowie and Marshall D. Sahlins say?
Robert: both simple and complex societies participated in the exchange of ideas
Marshall: both biological and cultural evolution move in two directions at the same time, providing diversity and progress
Describe how new species emerged.
Speciation: the development of a new species, may occur if one subgroup in a population becomes separated from other subgroups
In adapting to different environments, these two populations may undergo enough genetic changes over time to prevent them from interbreeding, even if they re-establish contact
Once species differentiation occurs, the evolutionary process cannot be reversed and speciation has occurred
Cultural Relativism:
The attitude that a society’s customs and ideas should be viewed within the context of that society’s problems and opportunities
Migration in culture change:
The spread of ideas by the spread of people
Species:
A population that consists of organisms able to interbreed and produce fertile and viable offspring
Explain the processes that lead to hereditary information being passed from generation to generation.
Gregor Mendel:
Monk and ammature botanist
his research on pea plants helped scientist to understand the biological mechanisms by which traits may be passed from one generation to the next
The basic units of heredity are genes :
- Gnese occur in pairs
- Each member of a pair is called an allele
- Genes are inherited through sperm and egg cells, which are created through meiosis
Genes made up of DNA, which provide instructions for cells to make proteins (major function of DNA = make copies of itself to allow hereditary information to be passed down)
Proteins = long chains of amino acids
Segments of DNA are transferred from the cell nucleus by mRNA → the mRNA is then “read” by a ribosome in the cell to construct proteins
Mitosis:
The process of normal somatic cell division that occurs during the life of an organism
Meiosis:
The process of cell division that ensures half the number of chromosomes appropriate for the species is carried in each sex cell
The phenotype of an organism is the product of its genotype and the environment in which it developed and grew
Describe the sources of biological variation:
Genetic recombination:
- Involves a random reshuffling of the parent genes as a consequence of segregation or crossing-over
Mutations:
- Changes in the DNA sequence that can be detrimental to the fitness of an organism or they can be beneficial → many are neutral because they do not lead to any change in protein structure or function
- The rate of natural mutations is always slow and fixed within a population
- Mutations that are adaptive (and valuable)will multiple relatively quickly by natural selection
How does natural selection operate - biological and cultural evolution?
Natural selection can operate on the behavioural characteristics of populations
Sociobiology and behavioural ecology involve the application of evolutionary principles to the behaviour of animals
Controversy on this topic but more agreement that biological and cultural evolution in humans can influence each other
What are the different types of selection?
Directional selection → favouring of a particular trait on one end of the extreme
Normalizing/Stabilizing selection → stabilized trait → the trait in the middle of both extremes is favoured(ex. Baby’s birth eight(=)
Balancing selection → heterozygote advantage (sickle cell anaemia)
Describe genetic drift and gene flow?
Genetic drift:
- Random processes that affect gene frequencies in small, isolated populations
- INCREASES differences between populations
- Can be a result of population fission → the breaking apart of a previously large population into smaller, distinct groups
Some alleles can become permanently selected, while some can disappear
Gene Flow:
- Movement of genes between populations through reproduction
- DECREASES differences between populations
- Can occur between distance and close populations
- Long-range movement of people → to trade or raid or settle may result in gene flow but not always
- A-B-O blood groups → Type O less frequent in India than it is in America
Describe different aspects of evolution intertwined by the cultural and physical environment:
- Effects of the cold modifies cultural traits of living in houses, the clothing you wear, etc.)
- Cultural practices leading to physical variations (ex. Elites in andean societies head binding - skull took on an elongated shape)
- Culture of drinking cows milk led to the increasing of genes that help us digest milk
- Physical environment : acclimation → impermanent physiological changes that people make when they encounter a new environment ; can have underlying genetic factors but are not themselves genetic; developed over a lifetime rather than being born with them
- Ex. shivering (short-term) and increased metabolic rate (long-term)
Gene Penetrance:
Dominant vs. recessive
Segregation:
The random sorting of chromosomes in meiosis
Crossing-over:
Exchanges of sections of chromosomes from one chromosome to another
Cline
The gradually increasing or decreasing frequency of a gene from one end of a region to another
Hybridization:
Could be a new source of variation in some populations
The creation of a viable offspring from the mating of two different species
Genetic Bottleneck:
Form of genetic drift
Original population composed of red and blue genetic members
Bottleneck event in which the population is greatly reduced
Only a few red individuals survive to pass their reduced number of genes to the new red population
Epigenetics:
Changes in the gene expression (without changes in the DNA itself) that are inheritable
Behavioural Ecology:
The study of how all kinds of behaviour may be related to the environment
The theoretical orientation involves the application of biological evolutionary principles to the behaviour (including social behaviour) of animals, including humans
Also called sociobiology (when apple to social organisation and social behaviour)
