Unit 3: Human Variation and Adaptation

Question 1

Describe how the history of studies on race has influenced current popular views on human variation

Answer 1

• They started off by looking at simply their physical appearance as a whole then they slowly started to breakdown people in groups of people then they started to group them by their colour and culture and internal variability like blood types and according to their cultures to further understand everyone more.

Question 2

Explain why anthropologists no longer consider these historical approaches biologically useful

Answer 2

• This happened because of the problems, confusion and horrendous consequences of racial models of classification.

Question 3

Illustrate how the concept of a population is necessary to understand how evolution operates

Answer 3

• It is necessary because the population concept can take into account larger groups of people in both the same group and among different groups of people even if it is across the ocean, for instance this concept can help compare the African Americans with the Africans and it can in turn allow for the investigation of genetic differences among these groups that reflect interesting and significant historical and evolutionary processes

Question 4

Explain why recent population history of the sickle-cell trait, as well as lactase persistence are good examples of biocultural evolution

Answer 4

• For some regions they are primarily dependent upon animal milk , mostly from cattle as a major source of food. SO instead of leaving it the have shown evolution and have started to make adaptation to their diet through a high incidence of a mutant form a gene that allows them to secrete lactose during adulthood.
• For Sickle cell anemia , it was only effecting people at a slower rate, but with agriculture evolution, it really caused the speed of spreading the disease to increase because the open terrains with water pools were favorable breeding ground for malaria bearing mosquitos . Those populations that introduced or adopted agriculture first would be more prone to malarial attacks and would be more quickly effected