Humanities

Absolute dating methods

Provides specific chronological dates or date ranges for archaeological materials.

Radiocarbon dating

A method of absolute dating that measures the decay of carbon-14 in organic remains to estimate their age.

Subfields of anthropology

The four main subfields are physical anthropology, archaeology, cultural anthropology, and linguistic anthropology.

Archaeological anthropology

Focuses on examining the material remains of past societies to understand their cultures and ways of life.

Enculturation

The process by which individuals learn the norms, values, beliefs, and behaviors of their culture, beginning at birth.

Social brain hypothesis

Suggests that the primary driver of primate brain evolution is the increasing complexity of sociality.

Relative dating methods

Determine the age of artifacts or sites relative to one another.

Robin Dunbar's social brain hypothesis

Predicts a natural community size of approximately 150 for modern humans.

Culture

A learned system of shared knowledge, values, ideas, concepts, meanings, and rules that underlies and is expressed in people's thoughts and behaviors.

Time budget models

Consider the time an animal allocates to essential activities in relation to environmental factors to determine group size.

Bipedalism

The ability to walk upright on two legs, which allows hands to be free for carrying objects and tool use.

Laetoli footprints

Early evidence of bipedalism in hominins.

Cranial volume limitations

Using cranial volume alone can be limiting as brain regions evolve at different rates, affecting social group size predictions.