Vocab 1-5 Flashcards
What is anthropology?
Is the study of humankind, viewed from the perspective of all people and all times
What is biological anthropology?
biological anthropology is the study of human biological evolution and human biocultural variation.
What makes Humans so different from other animals?
The six key attributes developed that make us unique: bipedalism, nonhoning chewing, complex material culture and tool use, hunting, speech, and dependence on domesticated foods
How do biological anthropologists know what they know?
By the scientific method + They examine the cultures, languages, archeological remains, and physical characteristics of people in various parts of the world.
What are the 4 branches or subdiciplines:
Cultural anthropology, archeology, linguistic anthropology, and biological anthropology
What does cultural anthropologist study?
living population, often spends time living with cultural groups to gain more intimate perspectives on those cultures
What do archeologists study?
past human behaviors by investigating material remains that humans leave behind, such as buildings and other structures
What does Linguistics study?
all aspects of language and language use
What does biological anthropology study?
Human Variation and Evolution
What do cultural anthropologists typically study?
present-day societies in non-western settings such as Africa, South America, or Australia
Culture
defined as learned behavior transmitted from person to person
Artifacts
material objects from past cultures, such as weponary and ceramics
Archeologists are what
they are the cultural anthropologists of the past
Language
defined as a set of written or spoken symbols used by humans to refer to things
What is a popular subfield of linguistic anthropologists?
Sociolinguistics
What is sociolinguistics?
the investigation of languages social context
What is biological anthropology sometimes called?
physical anthropology
What is physical anthropology?
deals with evolution of and variation among human beings and their living past relatives
What are humans?
humans are biocultural both biological and cultural
What role do medical anthropologists have?
They are the key players in addressing disease outbreaks in a range of settings worldwide such as West Africa by the Ebola outbreak
What is your biological makeup determined by?
genes
What is the human genome
all genetic material in a person-includes some 20,000 or so genes
What is your biological makeup influenced by?
your environment
What do biological Anthropologist do?
travel to places throughout the U.S. and around the world to investigate populations
What do some bio anthropologists study?
living people or extinct and living species of our nearest biological relatives, primates such as lemurs, monkeys, and apes
What is bipedalism?
Walking on two feet
What is unique in humans in which they process food?
nonhoning canine
What bone is unique in hominins and reflects their ability to speak?
Hyoid bone
What is Material Culture?
the part of culture that is expressed as material objects that humans use to manipulate environments
Ex: hammers and nails
what are the only things that humans can do?
we are the only ones that can communicate by talking
What are the key attributes of humanness
Hunting, speech, and dependence on domesticated foods
Social learning
provides a means of accumulating and maintaining knowledge over many generations
What is the order of the Scientific Method?
- Observations
- Hypothesis
- Predictions
4.Test
What is a theory?
to scientist a theory is an explanation grounded in a great deal of evidence
What is scientific law?
a irrefutable statement
A biological anthropologist would be most likely to study…
The evolution of humans or other primates
What is influenced both by genes and by environmental factors?
Biological makeup
What is not unique to humans?
large, honing canine teeth specialized for shredding food
In the scientific method, a theory is supported by
rigorous testing of hypothesis
Franz Boas helped establish that human societies
are influenced by both biology and culture
Arboreal
Tree dwelling- adaptive to living in trees
Empirical
verified through observation and experiment
Hominins
Humans and human like ancestors
Morphology
physical shape and appearence
Primates
a group of mammals in the order primates that have complex behavior varied forms of locomotion and a unique suite of traits, including large brains, forward facing eyes, fingernails and reduced snouts
How did the theory of evolution come to be?
In developing his theory of evolution by means of natural selection, Darwin drew on geology, paleontology, taxonomy and systematics, demography, and what is now called evolutionary biology.
What was Darwin’s contribution to the theory of evolution?
Darwin’s key contribution was the principle of natural selection. Three principles allowed him to deduce that natural selection is the primary driver of evolution:
1.number of adults in a population tends to remain the same over time
2.variation exists among members of populations
3.individuals having variation that boosts survival and reproduction increase in relative frequency over time
What has happened since Darwin in the development of our understanding of evolution?
That Gregor Mendel discovered the principles of inheritance which is the basis for our understanding of how physical attributes are passed from parents to offspring
What is Mendel’s revelation
Attributes are passed as discrete units, which we know as genes thanks to him we understand genetics
How does genetic changes in a population or species occur?
by one or more of four causes:
1.natural selection
2. mutation
3.gene flow
4. genetic drift
What is the blueprint for all biological characteristics and functions
DNA
Which Idea did not help Darwin form his theory of evolution?
Parents get new traits through their actions and pass them to offspring
Which observation supports the principle of natural selection?
Trait variants that help organisms survive to reproduce become more common in a population over time
How would Lamarckism explain why the giraffe has a long neck?
A giraffe’s neck grows as it stretches to reach food, and this trait passed on to offspring
Today we know that ______ pass on traits
genes
The evolutionary synthesis combines natural selection with
genetics
Adaptation
Changes in physical structure, function or behavior that allows an organism or species to survive and reproduce in a given environment
Adaptive radiation
The diversification of an ancestral group of organisms into new forms that are adapted to specific environmental niches
Allele
one or more alternative forms of a gene
Bleeding inheritance
An outdated refuted theory that the phenotype of an offspring was a uniform blend of the parents phenotypes
Catastrophism
The doctrine asserting the cataclysmic events ( such as volcanoes, earthquakes, and floods), rather than evolutionary process are responsible for geologic changes throughout earths history
Chromosomes
The strands of genetic material (DNA) found in the nucleus of multicelled organisms that contain hundreds or thousands of genes
deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA)
A double stranded molecule that provides the genetic code for an organism, consisting of phosphate, deoxyribose sugar, and four types of nitrogen bases
Dominant allele
an allele that is expressed in an organisms phenotype and that simultaneously masks the effects of another allele, if another one is present
evolutionary synthesis
A unified theory of evolution that combines genetics with natural selection
gemmules
As proposed by charles darwin, the units of inheritance, supposedly accumulated in the gametes so they could be passed on to offspring
gene flow
Admixture, or the exchange of alleles between two populations
Genetic drift
The random change in allele frequency from one generation to the next with greater effect in small populations
genomics
study of an organisms entire set of genes or genome
genotype
The genetic makeup of an organism;the combination of alleles for a given gene
genus
a group of related species
geology
study of earths physical history
Hybridization
Process of interbreeding between members of different species
Lamarckism
the theory of evolution through the inheritance of acquired characteristics in which an organism can pass on features acquired during its lifetime
Mendelian inheritance
The basic principles associated with the transmission of genetic material, forming the basis of genetics, including the law of segregation and the law of independent assortment
Mutation
A random change in gene or chromosome, creating a new trait that may be advantageous
Natural selection
The process by which some organisms, with features that enable them to adapt to the environment, preferentially survive and reproduce, thereby increasing the frequency of those features in the population
Paleontology
Study of extinct life forms through the analysis of fossils
Phenotype
The physical expression of the genotype; it may be influenced by the environment
Population genetics
A specialty within the field of genetics that focuses on the changes in gene frequencies and the effects of those changes on adaptation and evolution
recessive allele
Allele that is expressed in an organisms phenotype if two copies are present but is masked if the dominant allele is present
taxonomy
the classification of organisms into a system that reflects degrees of relatedness
uniformitarianism
the theory that processes that occurred in the geological past are will at work today
What is genetic code
DNA that is packaged in chromosomes
What provides most of the genetic code?
Nuclear DNA
What does genetic code do?
DNA serves the chemical template for its own replication and for the creation of proteins
What is the first step to producing new cells
DNA replication
Explain Mitosis
Produces two identical somatic cells
46 chromosomes in 23 homologous pairs
Explain Meiosis
Produces 4 gametes in humans, each has 23 chromosomes
What is the genetic basis for human variation?
A gene is a linear sequence of nucleotides that codes for specific bodily structures and functions. Each gene has a particular locus on each chromosome.
Which is true about gametes (sex cells) ?
Gametes pass the genetic code from parent to offspring
What process is necessary for both Mitosis and meiosis to occur?
DNA replication
What is not a role played by a type of RNA in protein synthesis?
pRNA is the product of chemically linked amino acids
For a Mendelian trait that is not codominant, an individual with a heterozygous genotype will express
the dominant phenotype
Human heights are affected by many genes, so it is a
omnigenic
Adenine
nitro base that make up DNA and RNA pairs with thymine
Mutation, natural selection, genetic drift, and gene flow can all
Change allele frequency in a population
A population at equilibrium according to the Hardy-Weinberg law
is not evolving with respect to a given gene
Evolutionary fitness measures
Reproductive success
Why is the heterozygous sickle-cell genotype common only in malarial regions?
Immunity to malaria outweighs the fitness risk of the sickle- cell allele
Gene flow involves
members of one species only
Is race valid, biologically meaningful concept?
Race is a typological leftover that is neither a useful nor an appropriate biological concept.
Human variation is clinal. In general, traits do not correlate in their distribution.
What do growth and development tell us about human varriation?
Differentiation and development of all the body’s organs occur during the parental stage of life
How do people adapt to environmental extremes?
Most functional adaptations—adaptations that occur during the individual’s lifetime—have important implications for evolution.
Which is true about race?
Race is socially constructed and is not a biological concept
Which is an example of a physiological adaptation to climate?
Vasodilation of blood vessels in response to temperature
What reproductive benefit from reduced absorption of UV radiation could be driving natural selection for dark skin?
Protection of stored folate
Which is a developmental adaptation to high altitude hypoxia?
Growth of an expanded chest during childhood
The nutrition transition refers to the
shift from eating local foods to eating highly processed foods
Bergmann’s rule
The principle that an animals size is heat related; smaller boddies are adapted to hot environments and larger bodies are adapted to cold environments
diaphysis
main midsection, or shaft, portions of long bones; each diaphysis contains a medullary cavity
Wolffs law
The principle that bone is placed in the direction of function demand; that is, bone develops where needed and receded where it is not needed
