Transcript Investigating the Nature of Humankind

Investigating the
Nature of Humankind
Chapter 1
What is Anthropology
• The holistic study of human societies and cultures and their
development.
• A powerful means of explaining variation in human
adaptations
• Four fields:
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Cultural Anthropology
Archaeology
Linguistic anthropology
Physical (or Biological) Anthropology
Physical Anthropology
• Physical anthropology
• The subfield of anthropology that studies humanity
biologically
• Anthropologists who specialize in this subfield study
topics such as genetics, growth and development,
evolution, primatology, the fossil record, and modern
human variation
• Some specialties:
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Paleoanthropology
Studies of human variation
Paleopathology
Molecular anthropology
Anthropology as a Science
• Science - A body of knowledge gained through
observation and experimentation
• Scientific Method - Science is a process of explaining
natural phenomena by means of observation, developing
explanations, or hypotheses
• The steps of a scientific investigation include empirical
observation, identifying variables, proposing a
hypothesis, testing hypotheses, and developing
generalizations
• Some questions cannot be subjected to scientific inquiry
and therefore are not in the domain of empirical
research
Anthropology and Perspective
• Early views of Humanity
• Anthropocentricity - the belief that earth and humanity, are the
center of the universe
• Believed that humans and animals were the product of
spontaneous generation
• The world was thought to be no more than 6000 years old
• Humanity and Anthropology
• A broad perspective that helps us understand the diversity of the
human experience
• By learning about cultures other than our own, we can avoid an
ethnocentric view of other cultures.
• By recognizing that we have similarities with other animals, we
may recognize that they have a place in nature just as we do
Challenging Tradition
• Nicolaus Copernicus (1473 - 1543)
• Polish astronomer
• Heliocentrism (vs Geocentrism)
• Challenged the idea that the earth was at the center of the
universe
• Galileo Galilei (1564 - 1642)
• Italian astronomer
• Supported the idea that the universe was a place of motion
• John Ray (1627 - 1705)
• English naturalist
• Species
• Recognized that plants and animals could be differentiated by
their ability to mate with one another and produce offspring
Precursors to the Theory of Evolution
• Carolus Linnaeus (1707-1778)
• Swedish naturalist ands botanist who developed a method
of classifying plants and animals
• In 1735, standardized Ray’s use of genus and species
terminology to establish a system of binomial nomenclature.
• Later added class and order
• Four-level system became the basis for modern taxonomy
• Georges Cuvier (1769 – 1832)
• French naturalist and zoologist
• Catastrophism - Explained the fossil record as the result of a
succession of catastrophes (extinctions) followed by new creation
events The earth’s geological landscape is the result of violent
cataclysmic events
• Added phyla to Linnaean taxonomy
Malthus and Lyell
• Thomas Malthus (1766 – 1834)
• English cleric and economist
• Argued for limits of human population growth, not overly
concerned with how species change
• The limits for populations to increase is controlled by availability
of resources
• Inspiration for Charles Darwin
• Charles Lyell (1797 – 1875)
• Lawyer, geologist, and mentor to Darwin
• Supports Uniformitarianism - natural laws and processes (wind,
water, volcanoes, decomposition, earthquakes, etc.) that operate
in the universe now, have always operated and will always
operate as such
• Determines that the Earth was much older than 6,000 years
Charles Darwin
(1809 – 1882)
 English naturalist
 5-year voyage (1831 to 1836) of
the HMS Beagle
 Saw the importance of biological
variation within a species
 Recognized that sexual reproduction
increased variation
 The idea that in each generation more
offspring are born than survive to adulthood, coupled with the
notions of competition, led to the theory of evolution
Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913)
• Presented joint paper, coauthored with Darwin, on evolution
and natural selection to the Linnaean Society of London
Natural Selection
• Based on work by Malthus, Darwin noted that populations
grow more rapidly than resources do
• Individuals vary from one another, and those individuals with
traits that are better adapted to their environment are more
likely to survive and reproduce
• If these individuals pass the favorable trait down to their
offspring, the trait will spread throughout the population over
time
• Opposite of Artificial Selection
• All domestic dogs share a common ancestor, the wolf
• The extreme variation exhibited by dog breeds today has been
achieved in a relatively short time through artificial selection
Evolutionary Change Through
Natural Selection
1. A trait must be inherited if natural selection is
to act on it
2. Natural selection will not occur without
population variation in inherited characteristics
3. Fitness, or reproductive success, is a relative
measure that changes with the environment
4. Natural selection can only act on traits that
affect reproductive success
Evolution and Religion
• There are people who believe that evolution
should be discarded in favor of a creationist
interpretation
• However, religion and science concern different
aspects of the human experience
• Not inherently mutually exclusive categories
• Belief in God does not exclude the possibility of
biological evolution
• Acknowledgement of evolutionary processes doesn‘t
preclude the existence of God
• Evolutionary theories are not rejected by all
religions or by most forms of Christianity
Christian Challenges
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Conservative Christians (Creationists) seeking a revival
of “traditional values” and banning any theory that
does not support the biblical version of the creation of
humankind
• Adherents to a movement in American Protestantism that
began in the early twentieth century
• The teachings of the Bible are infallible and are to be taken
literally.
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Argue that creation science and intelligent design (ID) is
as much a scientific endeavor as is evolution and
suggest scientific evidence to support creationist views
• It is not science
• Creationists argue their view is absolute and fallible, which
is counter to science which seeks testable hypotheses
The Synthetic Theory
• The basic concepts of Darwin’s theory of evolution remain the
cornerstone of modern evolutionary theory, but have been further
built upon
• The addition of genetic knowledge to Darwin’s ideas has greatly
increased our understanding
• With the discovery of the structure of DNA came the understanding of
the entire genetic makeup of an individual or species
• Human and chimpanzee genomes sequenced in 2003 and 2005,
respectively
• DNA sequence that can be directly compared between the two genomes
are 98% identical
• As this understanding is based on a synthesis of information from
diverse fields, it is sometimes called the synthetic theory of
evolution