Anthropology Vocab Chapter 1 Anthropology the study of humankind viewed from the perspective of all people and all times with four subdisciplines cultural anthropology archaeology linguistic anthropology and physical anthropology Culture learned behavior that is transmitted from person to person Artifacts material objects from past cultures Language a set of written or spoken symbols that refer to things people places concepts other than themselves Sociolinguistics the science of investigating language s social contexts Biocultural approach the scientific study of the interrelationship between what humans have inherited genetically and culture Hominids A group of extinct and living bipedal primates in the family Hominidae Includes all humanlike beings that postdate the split between the evolutionary lineage that led to modern humans and the lineage that led to living chimpanzees Primates a group of mammals in the order primates that have complex behavior varied forms of locomotion and a unique suite of traits including larger brains forward facing eyes fingernails and reduced snouts Bipedalism walking on two feet Nonhoning Canine an upper canine that as part of nonhoning chewing mechanism is not sharpened against the lower third premolar Material Culture the part of culture that is expressed as objects that humans use to manipulate environments Empirical verified through observation and experiment Anatomical pertaining to an organism s physical structure Arboreal Tree dwelling adapted to living in the trees Morphology physical shape and appearance Chapter 2 Adaptions changes in physical structure function or behavior that allow an organism or species to survive and reproduce in a given environment 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 Adaptive Radiation The diversification of an ancestral group of organisms into new forms that are adapted to specific environmental niches Endemic refers to a characteristic or feature that is natural to a given population or environment Demography the study of the population Evolutionary Biology the study of organisms and their changes Paleontology the study of fossils Taxonomy the classification of the past and living life forms Uniformitarianism the natural processes operating today are the same as natural processes that happened in the past Catastrophism the doctrine asserting that cataclysmic events such as volcanoes or floods rather than evolutionary processes are responsible for geologic changes throughout Earth s history Genus A group of related species Lamarckism first proposed by Lamarck the theory of evolution through the inheritance of acquired characteristics in which an organism can pass on features acquired during its lifetime Gemmules as proposed by Darwin the units of inheritance supposedly accumulated in the gametes so they could be passed on to offspring Blending Inheritance an outdated disrepute theory that the phenotype of an offspring was a uniform blend of the parent s phenotypes Gene the basic unit of inheritance a sequence of DNA on a chromosome coded to produce a specific protein Allele one or more alternative forms of a gene one from mother one from father Dominant refers to an allele that is expressed in an organism s phenotype and that simultaneously masks the effects of another allele is another one is present Recessive an allele that is expresses in an organism s phenotype if two copies are present but is masked if the dominant allele is present Homozygous same alleles present at locus on both homologous chromosomes 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 Genotype the genetic makeup of an organism the combination of alleles for a given gene Phenotype the physical expression of the genotype it may be influenced by the environment Chromosomes the strand of DNA found in the nucleus of eukaryotes that contains hundreds or thousands of genes Locus location of gene on chromosome Evolutionary Synthesis a unified theory of evolution that combines genetics with natural selection Population genetics a specialty within the field of genetics it focuses on the changes in gene frequencies and the effects of those changes on adaption and evolution Mutation a random change in a gene or chromosome creating a new trait that may be advantageous deleterious or neutral in its effects on the organism Gene Flow admixture or the exchange of alleles between two populations Genetic Drift the random change in allele frequency form one generation to the next with greater effect in small populations 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 Chapter 3 Somatic Cells Diploid cells that form the organs tissues and other parts of an organism s body Gametes sexual reproductive cells ova and sperm that have a haploid number of chromosomes and that can unite with a few gamete of the opposite sex tof form a new organism Genome the complete set of chromosomes for an organism or species that represents all the inheritable traits Homoplasmic refers to nuclear DNA which is identical in the nucleus of each cell type except red blood cells Mitochondria Energy producing ATP organelles in eukaryotic cells they possess their own independent DNA Adenosine Triphosphate ATP an important cellular molecule created by the mitochondria and carrying the energy necessary for cellular functions Matriline DNA such as mitochondrial DNA whose inheritance can be traced form mother to daughter or to son Heteroplasmic refers to a mixture of more than one type of organellar DNA such as mitochondrial DNA within a cell or a single organism s body usually due to the mutation of the DNA in some organelles but not in others Genomics The branch of genetics that studies species genomes Karyotype the characteristics of the chromosomes for an individual organism or a species such as number size and type Sex chromosomes the pair of chromosomes that determine an organism s biological sex Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms SNPs Variations in the DNA sequence due to the change of a single nitrogen base Patriline DNA whose inheritance