Introduction to Anthropology: Evolutionary Theory, Human Variation, and Race

Vocabulary flashcards covering evolutionary mechanics, genetics, human variation, history of racial classification, and applied anthropology based on the lecture material.

Modern Evolutionary Synthesis

The integration of Mendelian genetics with Darwinian evolution that defines evolution genetically as a change in allele frequency from one generation to the next.

Adaptation

The shaping of useful phenotypic traits through natural selection, representing a mutual process of adjustment between organisms and their environment.

Niche Construction

The process in which organisms actively perturb and modify their environment, altering the selection pressures experienced by subsequent generations.

Genetic Drift

An evolutionary mechanism involving the random loss or change of alleles from a gene pool, which increases genetic differentiation between populations.

Founder Effect

A form of genetic drift that occurs when a small group breaks off from a larger population to establish an isolated community, randomly altering allele frequencies between the parent and migrant groups.

Bottleneck Effect

A drastic reduction in population size due to environmental events or disasters, resulting in a surviving population with significantly reduced genetic variation.

Gene Flow

The exchange of genetic material between separate populations through interbreeding, which decreases genetic variance between those populations.

Microevolution

Short-term evolutionary changes in allele frequencies within a species across generations over ecological time.

Macroevolution

Long-term evolutionary changes operating over millions of years of geological time, leading to speciation and major structural transformations.

Epigenetics

The study of changes in gene expression and phenotype caused by internal or external environmental factors without altering the underlying DNA genotype sequence.

Racism

An extreme form of ethnocentrism in which sociocultural, linguistic, and historical differences between human groups are falsely rationalized as innate biological differences.

Ethnocentrism

The belief that one's own cultural group is superior to others and represents the only correct way of living.

Social Evolution

An early theoretical perspective asserting that human societies inevitably progress through unilineal stages from $1$ (savage) to $2$ (barbarian) to $3$ (civilized).

Environmental Determinism

The outdated belief that physical geographical environments directly dictate a human society's level of cultural and technological complexity.

Eugenics

A movement focused on modifying the human species by selectively encouraging reproduction among individuals with supposedly desirable traits and forcibly preventing reproduction in those with undesirable traits.

Historical Particularism

Franz Boas's framework asserting that every culture has a unique historical trajectory that shapes its traits, disproving unilineal social evolution.

Plasticity

The capacity of an organism's phenotype to adjust or alter its physical traits in response to environmental conditions.

Linguistic Relativism

The concept that languages cannot be judged by universal standards and that every human language is inherently complex and valid.

Essentializing

The cognitive assumption that because individuals or groups share a single trait, they automatically share all other characteristics associated with that category.

Applied Anthropology

The practical application of anthropological methods, theories, and empirical data to solve real-world problems in areas such as public health, disaster relief, and policy.

Medical Anthropology

A subfield of anthropology studying how cultural practices, social inequalities, and biological realities shape human health, illness, and healthcare systems.

Biological Species Concept

The definition of a species as a population of organisms capable of interbreeding and producing fertile offspring under normal environmental conditions.

Cephalic Index

An anthropometric calculation devised by Anders Retzius expressed as $\text{cephalic index} = \frac{\text{biparietal diameter}}{\text{occipitofrontal diameter}} \times 100$ to classify human skull shapes into brachycephalic or dolichocephalic categories.

Cline

A continuous and gradual variation of phenotypic or genotypic trait frequencies across geographical space.

Acclimatization

Reversible physiological responses and adjustments made by an individual organism to environmental stress over its lifetime that are not inherited genetically.

Melanin

A pigment produced in skin cells that shields bodily tissues against harmful solar ultraviolet (UV) radiation.

Lactase

An enzyme produced in the small intestine required to digest lactose, which persists into adulthood in human populations with historical traditions of dairy farming.

Thrifty Genotype

A genetic hypothesis proposing that certain human populations evolved efficient metabolic fat storage to survive periodic food shortages.

Paleolithic Prescription

A nutritional hypothesis developed by Eaton and Konner suggesting modern health issues stem from a discordance between modern diets and ancestral human genes adapted over $99\%$ of history in the Paleolithic era.

Essentialism

A pre-Darwinian worldview derived from Plato asserting that all physical organisms possess a fixed, perfect, unchangeable ideal essence.

Great Chain of Being

A hierarchical pre-Darwinian concept rooted in Aristotelian philosophy that organized all matter and living beings in a continuous static ladder from non-living elements up to God.

Catastrophism

Georges Cuvier's pre-Darwinian geological theory stating that sudden, violent global disaster events created fossilized extinction layers.

Uniformitarianism

Charles Lyell's geological principle asserting that the same natural, gradual physical processes observing today operated at constant rates in the geological past.

Transformational Evolution

Jean-Baptiste Lamarck's evolutionary theory proposing that organisms modify their physical structures through use and disuse during their lifetimes and transmit these acquired traits to offspring.

Natural Selection

The primary mechanism of evolution formulated by Darwin and Wallace where environmental pressures favor individuals with advantageous inherited variations, enabling greater survival and reproductive output.

Taxonomy

The formal biological discipline of identifying, naming, and classifying organisms into hierarchical taxa.

Genotype

The specific genetic composition and combination of alleles present within an organism.

Phenotype

The observable structural, physiological, and behavioral features of an organism resulting from interactions between its genotype and environment.

Allele

One of two or more alternative variants of a specific gene found at a specific chromosomal locus.

Law of Segregation

Gregor Mendel's genetic principle stating that paired gene alleles separate during gamete formation so that offspring inherit only one allele from each parent.

Law of Independent Assortment

Mendel's principle establishing that alleles controlling different physical traits are inherited independently of each other during sex cell formation.

Cladogenesis

A branching pattern of macroevolutionary speciation where a single ancestral lineage divides into two or more distinct descendant species.