OUTLINE ANTHROPOLOGY

OUTLINE: Introduction to Evolutionary Anthropology
I- INTRODUCTION
Anthropology is a holistic Science with five disciplines:

1- Socio-cultural anthropology: compare the human cultures and societies.
2- Linguistic and semiotic anthropology: focused on how language and other system of human communication contribute to reproduction, transmission and transformation of culture.
3- Archaeology: study of the material evidence of human activities in the past.
4- Medical anthropology: focuses on human health and its relationship with culture, behavior, and biology
5- Biological anthropology: study of human and non-human primate in their biological and demographic dimensions  Evolutionary Anthropology: is the application of modern evolutionary theory to studies of the morphology, ecology, and behavior of human and non-human primates.

The biological evolution has influenced and continues to influence humans, as It has all other life forms on Earth.

II- WHAT DO EVOLUTIONARY ANTHROPOLOGISTS (E.A.) STUDY?
Where we come from? Who we are? Why we are here? Specializations of E.A.:
1- Primatology: is the scientific study of our closest extant biological relatives: non-human primate species. They conduct their research on a variety of primate species and research topics, ranging from descriptions of primate anatomy through field studies of wild animals to investigations of primates in vanishing tropical ecosystems.
2- Paleoanthropology: is the multidisciplinary study of the biological evolution of humans and non-human primates. Best known for excavating fossil, they also investigate the advent of and changes in human cultural activities (tool use, subsistence patterns, disease) and the evolutionary history of behavior in human and non-human primates.
3- Human Variation: anthropologists study human variation to determine spatial and temporal variations in human features. (sizes, shapes, colors, skeletal and dental variations). Despite this variation, all human are members of one species Homo sapiens.
4- Medical Anthropology: the study of how social, environmental, and biological factors influence health and illness of individuals at the community, regional, national, and global levels.
5- Forensic Anthropology: focuses only on the skeletal remains of humans to determine the age, sex, stature, ancestry, and any trauma or disease of the deceased.

III- HOW DO EVOLUTIONARY ANTHROPOLOGISTS CONDUCT THEIR RESEARCH?
E.A. conduct 3 types of research:
Descriptive: involves collecting data about the study subjects or objects. Example: to walk through a forest recently damaged by logging and notice that some primate species were missing.
Casual: involves looking for one thing that causes another thing to happen or change. Example: the cause of the primate species were missing.
Applied: a scientist determines the means by which a specific, recognized need can be met. Example: if the cause of primate species missing is the missing of food, the solution could be planting various primate food tree in the forest.

a) What’s a Theory?
A scientific theory is a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world that incorporates facts, laws, predictions, and tested hypotheses. It is different from a common theory. It is necessary a series of experiments to test the hypothesis.

b) What’s a Hypothesis?
A hypothesis is a testable statement about the natural world that a researcher uses to build inferences and explanations. Importance of falsifiable hypothesis: the research should not proceed because, in part, the hypothesis is not falsifiable.

c) The Scientific Method
E.A. employ the scientific method as often as possible in their research. The scientific method involves investigating phenomena, acquiring new knowledge, or correcting and integrating previous knowledge. It involves 5 sequential processes:

1- Observation of the phenomena.
2- Formulation of a hypothesis concerning the phenomena.
3- Development of methods to test the validity of the hypotheses.
4- Experimentation.
5- A conclusion that supports or modifies the hypothesis.

Quantitative data: information referred to numerical in nature.
Qualitative data: information about anything that is non-numerical in nature.

IV- DEVELOPMENT OF EVOLUTIONARY CONCEPTS
People who influenced the development of evolutionary concepts: +/- 2600 years ago – Greece and Asia – Aristotle and Zhuangzi.
1- Historical Contributors

a) Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778): Swedish physician and botanist. Idea: Classifying plants and animals. Created:
Taxonomy
Binomial nomenclature
i.e.: Homos sapiens or Homo sapiens

b) Georges-Louis Leclerc (1707-1788): French aristocrat, mathematician and naturalist. Author of 36-volume Histoire Naturelle that described everything known about natural history at the time. His ideas were used in the modern science of biogeography (Brown and Gibson, 1998). Other idea: species changed and evolved after they moved away.

c) Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744-1829): reformulation and specification of a very old idea on how organisms change. They lose what do not use and improve what is useful. Also they can pass these characteristics to their offspring. He theorized that environmental changes could alter behavior and biological organs.

Professional athlete must pass on to his offspring musculature that he acquired trait - not true

d) Georges Cuvier (1769-1832): French aristocratic naturalist studies and publications on structural similarities and differences between organisms helped establish the scientific disciplines of comparative anatomy and paleontology. Compare/contrast tissues of living and extinct organisms.

e) James Hutton (1726-1797): Scottish naturalist and geologist contributed to the founding of geology as a science. Idea: successive upheaval and erosion of sedimentary rock had been occurring for millions of years and would continue to occur forever. He’s ideas influenced the school of thought known and uniformitarianism.

f) Charles Lyrell (1797-1875): Scottish geologist – numerous important contributions to geology, specially stratigraphy and glaciology. He wrote 3 volume Principles of Geology. Although indirectly, he’s thoughts contributed to the development of evolutionary concepts  Charles Darwin.
2- Charles Darwin and the Theory of Natural Selection
Charles Darwin (1809-1882): English geologist and naturalist.
Went to medical school  family tradition, but uninterested
Fascinated  tropical forest - John Edmonstone (free slave from Guyana)
Spoke about: zoology, taxonomy, and basic concepts in biological evolution
Spent time  collecting insects
Failed in the 2º year of medical school  Theology at Cambridge University
Free time: collecting insects, learning natural history from local authorities, reading natural history books
Expedition to survey geological formations in Wales – position of naturalist
-2 years in South America, extended to 5 years
- visited: South America coasts, Galapagos, Islands, Australia, Islands in Indian Ocean, and South Africa
- In the sea read about natural history and geology
- On land explored geological formations, collecting thousands of plants and animals specimens.
Sent the collection and notes  John Henslow Cambridge University
1836: return to England  Became a respected Naturalist
1839: get married  gentleman researcher

RESEARCH:
Want to know: how species evolved
Darwin’s birds collection: Galapagos – 12 closely species  1 bird arrived than been altered become different species.
Used economics: Malthus’s “An Essay on the Principle of Population”
Populations grow geometric and foods grow arithmetic.  more individuals are born than can possible survive.

How nature selects for traits in animal
-Environment chooses certain physical aspects  individuals more likely to survive  favorable passed to offspring successive changes  new species  THEORY OF NATURAL SELECTION

Darwin shared his studies with a few colleagues the ideas
In 1858: Alfred Russel Wallace British naturalist and explorer described similar ideas to those Darwin’s theory  Darwins published:
Nov, 1859: On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life

Main ideas of the book:
All extant and extinct species share a common ancestry
How nature selects for certain characteristics of individuals. i.e. domestic dogs

3- Misconceptions about Darwin’s Ideas
Social Darwinism is the idea of “survival of the fittest.
Creationism is the idea all lives were created by God
Intelligent Design is the of living things occur because of intelligence cause
Agnostic is the belief that God is unknown and unknowable

4- Introduction to Mendelian Genetics
Gregor Mendel (1822-1884): monk, Czech Republic. Father of genetics
Pea plants experiment
Observed the physical characteristics were consistently expressed by ratio of approximately three to one (3:1)
*Organism’s physical traits pass from one generation to next by “units” or “factors”
* Each individual inherits one “factor” from each parent
* A trait may not show up in an individual, although the trait can still be passed from one generation to the next.

Naturalists derided or ignored his conclusions.
Rediscovered early 20th century

5- What Actually in Mendel’s experiments?

Phenotypes: Observable traits of characteristic of an organism
Genes are the functional units of heredity.
Genotype is the Genetic makeup of an organism.
Alleles are one of the several forms of the same gene.
Homozygous is the identical rather.
Heterozygous is the different rather.
Dominant is the allele fully expressed in the phenotype.

* Selected pea plants  luck
Pea plants and animal do not sort out into purely dominant or recessive alleles.
i.e.: Eye color is the result of a complex interaction of multiple alleles on multiple genes.