PowerPoint 1 PowerPoint 1 Physical Anthropology Introduction The History of U S Anthropology The father of American anthropology The 4 field approach was first articulated by Frans Boas 1858 1942 As the first chairman of the Anthropology Department at Columbia University NYC he insisted that all students learn Cultural Anthropology Archeology Linguistic Anthropology Physical Anthropology Frans Boas Cultural Anthropologists Examine human behavior in groups Seek patterns in norms mental templates for action societal behaviors and rules expectations of individuals and families Compare cultural behaviors among different societies without assigning levels of value to them cultural relativism Margaret Mead American cultural anthropologist Wrote Coming of Age in Samoa to show that American teens behavior was culturally and not biologically based Learned about the roles of women and children Popularized cultural anthropology by writing for popular magazines Analyzed Japanese culture for the U S government during WW II Margaret Mead 1901 1978 Field Work Ethnography In order to understand a people s culture you must engage in participant observation This requires going to live with the group under study and living according to their rules Archeology The study of past human culture through examination of objects manipulated and made by humans artifacts Royal Palace at Great Zimbabwe 1300 1400 C E Cave painting Lascaux France 20 000 B P Archeology Archeologists today focus on answering questions or hypothesis testing about the cultures of the past their influences and the true stories of history as opposed to mythology or the stories written in history books Howard Carter the discoverer of King Tut s tomb Linguistic Anthropology The study of the origins of language The study of the ways in which language reflects culture and history The study of the ways in which language shapes culture A Sumerian cuneiform medical prescription Linguistic Anthropology Goodenough s contribution to the field was to describe how the language of Truk an island in Melanesia Western Pacific had no personal possessive pronouns and thus no concept of individual ownership Field Work 1950 Ward Goodenough 1998 Physical Anthropology AKA Biological Anthropology 1 The study of human biological variation over space space Subfield growth and development among different cultures and under different environmental conditions Subfield Skeletal Biology or Osteology Subfield Forensic Anthropology 2 The study of human biological variation over time paleoanthropology time Subfield Paleopathology 3 Primatology the study of primates in relation to humans The History of Evolutionary Studies The World According to Archbishop Ussher 1658 The first day of creation was Sunday 23 October 4004 BC Adam and Eve were driven from Paradise on Monday 10 November 4004 BC And the ark touched down on Mt Ararat on 5 May 2348 BC on a Wednesday This is not the only creation story There are multiple other quite different creation stories in other cultures Previous explanations of the evolutionary process Jean Baptiste Lamarck 1744 1829 Explained that species changed and were influenced by the environment true And that the new characteristics acquired by an organism in its lifetime could be inherited by its offspring false Thomas Malthus 1798 1834 Argued that food supply increased linearly while populations increased in number exponentially false Concluded that there will always be social inequality and poverty and share the wealth liberalism is useless Darwin explicitly argued against this idea Georges Cuvier 1769 1832 Attempted to explain fossil evidence of extinct species Proposed catastrophism as an explanation Multiple destructive events true followed by multiple Creations no evidence Charles Lyell 1797 1875 Considered the founder of modern geology Major contribution concept of uniformitarianism the idea that the processes operating on the earth s surface in the past were the same as those occurring in the present By extension we assume that environmental processes in the past operated on biological organisms much the same as they affect organisms today Charles Darwin 1809 1882 I happened to read Malthus on Population and being well prepared to appreciate the struggle for existence which everywhere goes on it at once struck me that under these circumstances favourable variation would tend to be preserved and unfavourable ones to be destroyed The results of this would be the formation of a new species Here then I had at last got a theory with which to work Charles Darwin Autobiography Herbert Spencer 1820 1903 A journalist and political writer and a follower of Lamarck who coined the phrase survival of the fittest not Darwin In the 1860 s his views were given as much credence as were Darwin s Major premise to care for the less fortunate was to encourage laziness and this works against evolution Darwin specifically rejected this in relation to humanity Darwin s major contribution to the understanding of nature was the concept of natural selection which requires that we natural selection understand the meaning of the word Fitness Fitness is a combination of 2 factors 1 The chances that you will live to adulthood 2 The chances that you will produce fertile offspring You won t know if your offspring are fertile until you have grandchildren Natural Selection variation Natural selection acts on variation If the combination of features that you have gives you good fitness you live and pass on those features to your grandchildren If you die before reproducing or have no or infertile children those features disappear When there are varying forms of individuals in a population some variants inevitably have better fitness than others Darwin did not understand how this variation is Darwin did not understand how this variation is produced but you will shortly produced but you will shortly Natural Selection in Action The selective agent Fitness 0 Fitness 1 Natural Selection How does it work Increases the number of those organisms with improved fitness in the next generation How Those with good fitness survive and produce lots of fertile offspring The offspring also multiply They have been selected for Those with poor fitness do not survive or do not produce any or produce very few fertile offspring Their offspring do not multiply They have been selected against In succeeding generations those with good fitness become an increasingly larger proportion of the