Physical Anthropology                                                  Instructor:  Jim Snoke

Spring Semester, 2007

Week 1, Chapter 1

Lecture Outline and Notes

 

I.                    Introduction:

a.       Hominids are members of the family Hominidae (hominids) and are distinguished from the Hominoidea by bipedal locomotion.

                                                              i.      The 3.7 million year old footprints at the Laetoli site, as well as numerous fossil discoveries elsewhere in Africa, are clear evidence for early hominids. **see the sheet called “Criteria For Scientific Judgments”.

b.      Homo sapiens are the result of the same evolutionary forces that produced all other life forms on this planet.

                                                               i.      Evolution may be defined as a change in the genetic makeup of a population from one generation to the next.

1.      Evolution can be studied at the microevolutionary or macroevolutionary level.

c.       Physical anthropologists are involved primarily in the study of biological systems, yet the role of culture must also be considered.**see discussions in the text and on the Internet regarding Sociobiology, Ethology, and Comparative Psychology.

                                                               i.      Culture is the strategy by which humans adapt to the natural environment. **Plenty of data on this subject from Cultural Anthropology.

                                                           ii.      Culture has assumed an increasingly greater role throughout the course of human evolution and has interacted with biological evolution. **Genetic Biofeedback Looping is controversial as Sociobiologists present it.

1.      This concept is called:  Biocultural Evolution

2.      Physical Anthropology has the two concepts working simultaneously – each contributing to the success of the other.  **ask me about “instincts” and primate studies that indicate the difference between genetics and culture.

II.                 What is Anthropology?

a.      Anthropology is the study of humankind.  That is, those life forms that fall within the primate order and that are human or closely related to humans through a direct or indirect genetic history. **ask me about antigenic distance and other molecular tests and the placement of primates in proximity to humans.

                                                              i.      It is derived from the Greek words anthropos (meaning human) and logos (meaning the study of).

                                                           ii.      In the United States, anthropology is typically divided into the following subfields:

1.      Cultural (sometimes called social) anthropology

2.      Physical anthropology

3.      Linguistics

4.      Archaeology

III.               Cultural Anthropology is the study of human cultures including linguistics.

a.       Early anthropologists concentrated on descriptive works – ethnography – but later broadened their scope to include cross-cultural study and actual ethnology – approaching behavior from a scientific, cause-and-effect stance.

b.      Ethnographic techniques are now being used is such subfields as:  urban anthropology, medical anthropology, economic anthropology, and applied anthropology.

IV.              Linguistic Anthropology is the scientific study of human speech and language.

a.       The spontaneous ** acquisition and use of language is a uniquely human ** characteristic.

                                                              i.      Linguistic anthropologists are interested in the process of language acquisition in culture and its implications for tracing the evolution of language.  **ask me about speech as an “overlain physiological function”.

V.                 Archaeology is the study of prehistoric cultures and material culture.

a.      The primary sources of information are artifacts and other material culture.

                                                              i.      Archaeology is not simply the digging up of valuable artifacts.  It is a multidisciplinary approach to the study of human behavior.

VI.              Physical Anthropology is the study of human biology within an evolutionary framework.  Its many subfields include:

a.      Paleoanthropology – the fossil record

b.      Primatology – study of non-human primates ** overlaps with Cultural Anthropology and Linguistics here.

c.       Osteology – study of the skeleton in primate populations

                                                              i.      Includes forensic anthropology – the identification of skeletal remains in a legal context or in situations such as natural disasters where identification of remains is of critical importance.

d.      Physical Anthropology – sometimes called biological anthropology

                                                              i.      Emphasis in the discipline has shifted away from anthropometry, which was used early on to identify and classify “living races” of humans and

                                                           ii.      Toward genetics, evolutionary biology, nutrition, and adaptation.

1.      genetics can help explain the evolutionary process and provide information concerning the evolutionary distances among living primates and the direct ancestors of modern Homo sapiens.

VII.           Physical Anthropology and the Scientific Method

a.      Physical Anthropologists follow the scientific method of hypothesis testing through data collection and analysis ** see Criteria For Scientific Judgments.

                                                              i.      A hypothesis is defined as a provisional statement.

                                                           ii.      The hypothesis must be tested empirically and either accepted provisionally, or rejected.

                                                         iii.      If the hypothesis is not rejected after the scientific community weighs in on it through extensive testing and replication ** see Criteria For Scientific Judgments ** then it may “rise” to the level of a Theory – a statement of scientific relationship(s) verified through testing.

1.      A theory is not an absolute truth, since they may be disproved or modified significantly in light of new empirical data.

VIII.        The Anthropological Perspective

a.      The anthropological perspective means that humans and their relatives can only be studied in a “context”, and that the context must include culture.  The anthropological perspective is also decidedly “holistic”, meaning that statements about humans, for example, must include information on multiple aspects of behavior and culture, not isolated ones.  Studying single behaviors such as economic, political, social, genetic, psychological, linguistic, archaeological – without the others – is impossible since each of them occurs in culture with the others and is interwoven with them.  If cause-and-effect explanations (science) are ever to be done, a holistic approach – with empiricism – must be used.