Anthropology 101 University of Michigan Exam 1

Culture

Traditions, and customs transmitted through learning, dynamic and change how we do things

Holism

Past, present, and future, connections across categories

Participant Observation

- Taking part in the community

- direct first hand observation often for 1-2 years

- paying attention to hundreds of details of daily life

- constant note taking

Key Cultural Consultants

Individuals that anthropologists rely on the help "translate their culture" or Individuals who "by accident, experience, talent, or training can provide the most complete

Four fields of anthropology

Linguistic (language), biological/physical (biological diversity), sociocultural, anthropological archaeology (study of material remains and "interpret human behavior and cultural patterns)

Emic and etic perspectives

Emic: interviewing someone and asking them why they do something

Etic: external analytical explanation

Ethnography

Making the familiar strange and the strange familiar

Biocultural

Human bodies, culture influences, biology and vice versa

Basic features of culture

Learned: through interaction with others, sometimes taught directly, sometimes through observation.

Symbolic: symbolic thought is unique and crucial to humans and cultural learning.

Shared: shared beliefs, values, memories, and expectations link people who grow up in the same culture.

All-Encompassing: encompasses features that are com times regarded as trivial.

Integrated: if one part of the system changes, others change as well.

Cultural Relativism

Behavior should not be evaluated by outside standards but in the context that it occurs in

Ethnocentrism

Viewing your own culture as superior to others

Enculturation

The process through which you learn your own culture

Human Rights

Rights based on justice and morality beyond cultures, countries, and religions

Acculturation

Mechanisms of Cultural Change

Exchange of cultural features that result when groups have continuous 1st hand contact

Diffusion

Mechanisms of Cultural Change

"borrowing of traits between cultures" Direct, forced, and indirect

Globalization

Mechanisms of Cultural Change

Fact and ideology as global free markets for goods

Independent

Mechanisms of Cultural Change

Cultural appropriation

The use of ideas, practices, and or materials of one culture by cultural "outsiders" across relations of power

Agency

"The actions that individuals take, both alone and in groups, in forming and transforming cultural identities"

Invention

Culture is contested

Not all members of culture believe the same thing

Great Chain of Being

Posited natural categories on a hierarchy established by God or nature.

Catastrophism

Fires, floods, and other catastrophies destroyed certain species.

Uniformitarianism

Characteristics and natural forces that happened today have happened also in past events

Evolution

Changes in heritable traits of organisms over succession populations, and done by random mutations

Natural Selection

Traits that allow an organism to be better suited in an environment will be passed on and become more common

Mutation

Changes in the DNA molecules of which genes and chromosomes are built.

Random Genetic Drift

Change in frequency resulting from chance

Gene Flow

The exchange of genetic material between populations.

Modern Synthesis

Darwin's theory of natural selection and mendelian genetics = unified theory of evolution

Epigenetics

Heritable changes that result from modification of gene expression rather than changes of genes themselves

Social darwinism

Through "survival of the fittest," "superior" societies would edge out "inferior ones".

Eugenics

Selecting desired traits to improve a population, often through sterilization

Phenotype

Organism's evident biological traits

Genotype

An organism's hereditary makeup

Heterozygous

Having dissimilar alleles of a given gene.

Homozygous

Having identical alleles of a given gene.

Dominant

Alleles that mask other alleles in heterozygotes.

Recessive

Traits that are masked by dominant ones.

Sickle Cell Anemia

Red blood cells are misshapen.

Allele

A different form of a particular gene.

Independent Assortment

Traits are inherited independently of one another.

Biological Variation as Continuous

Geographic explanation for skin pigmentation

The sun causes melanin in body to determine your skin color

3 hypotheses for skin pigmentation

Skin Cancer, Folate, Vitamin D

Cline

humans vary continuously rather than discretely

Hominin

Every kind of human that has ever existed

Characteristics of Hominin

Bipedalism

Brain size

Tool use

Teeth patterns

Brains/birth/childhood dependency

Increasing brain to body ration, bipedalism means limited pelvic opening to have stronger pelvis, need, needs large birth canals for bigger brains

Schaelantrhopus tchadensis

Earliest hominin, 68 mya, could be oldest hominin ancestor

Aridipthecus ramidus

4.4 mya, female, small, pelvis shows transition from arbored climbing to bipedalism, less sexual dimorphism

Australopiths

Diverse genus of hominins lead to the genus homo, 4.2-1.2 maya, shared many features and evolved in different ways, all more similar to chimps/gorillas than expected, bipedal, ape like teeth for grinding chewing and vegetation, human like pelvis, narrow birth canal and brain growth, child dependency for nurturing and protection

Homo erectus

The HUNTER

Split from A. boisei and H. Habilis probably linked to H. Erectus reliance on hunting, better cultural adaptations

Tools better: Acheulean

Tools = regular access to meat and processing plants more efficiently = less demand for chewing, impacts selective pressure on teeth and jaws

Signals a major cognitive leap

Anatomically Modern Humans

200,000 years ago, this is all we need

Behavioral modernity

Behavior that is fully human, based on symbolic thought and cultural creativity

Evidence: Sophisticated tools, adorned bodies, cave paintings

Neadertals

Europe, SW Asia (130,000-28,000 years ago)

Large brain size

Stocky, adapted to cold temperatures

Rounded crania

Large brow ridge

Small cheek teeth, large front teeth

Neandertal stereotype

Le Chapelle-aux-Saints skeleton 1908

Thought not to be bipedal and to have an inferior brain

However, the skeleton was actually an aging man with osteoarthritis

Neandertal burials bring up implications of empathy, and possibly religion/belief in afterlife

Hominin migration from Africa

Hominins in Africa 6 mya

Use tools 2.6 mya

Migrate to Asia + Africa 1.7 mya

Anatomically modern humans (AMH) 200,000 years ago

Out of Africa vs. Multiregional

Out of Africa

Based on mtDNA and fossil evidence

Single species from Africa, replaced other hominins

Multi-regional hypothesis

Gradual evolution linked by complex gene flow

Latest thinking

Merging of 2 theories

Multiple migrations

Neolithic

Cultural period in a region in which the first signs of food production are present (Middle East 10,000 years ago)

Broad-Spectrum revolution

Wider range of plant/animal life hunted

Focused on animals with quick, prolific reproduction

Formed groundwork for emergence of food production

Vertical economy

Seasonal foraging and trade between close but contrasting environments

Marginal zones in Middle East thrive

Irrigation develops in Hilly Flanks in 7,000 BP

Origins of food production in the Middle East

Differences between Old and New World food production

Cost and Benefits of food production

cost --> More work

Lower adult stature

Lower quality foods, worse nutrition

Less variety

Heavier disease burden

Territoriality and competition

Vulnerable to collapse

Obesity and depression? hm

Benefits --> Predictable in time and space

High productivity

Uniform ripening

High starch (calories)

Storable surplus

Sedentism?

Larger populations

Cost of corn production in the U.S.

Chiefdom

"A polity with hereditary leaders and permanent political structure but lacking class divisions" (207)

State

"A society with a central government, administrative specialization and social classes" (208)

Egalitarian, ranked, and stratified societies

Egalitarian: Status of distinction of age gender and individual attributes

Not usually inherited

ranked: Status inherited but no stratification (presence of social divisions with an unequal distribution of wealth and power across those divisions)

Stratified: Class status often inherited

"Upper class having privilege to wealth and power, while lower class have inferior access" (214)

Theories of state formation

-Hydraulic Agriculture ex.) Egypt and Mesopotamia

- Regional trade, need to control trade within a region and key nodes (crossroads of caravan routes) and networks

- Robert Carneiro 1970 Population increase in conflict which leads to warfare, Ex.) Arid coastal Peru → Limited water and circumscribed valleys

Characteristics of the state

Regional control

Productive farming, supporting larger and denser populations, requires water control

Tribute/taxation, accumulation of resources

Social stratification (aka classes)

Public, monumental architecture

Writing, some form of recording system

Mesopotamia

Earliest state

Teotihuacan

"Four-level settlement hierarchy... provides evidence for state organization" (225)

Irrigation, status differentiation, and complex architecture

Peak population believed to be 125,000 ...

Risk factors for state collapse

Drought/climate change

Burning/looting in elites areas

Closing of corridors/outposts

Infant mortality/health issues in apartment compounds

Rival city-states

Power vs. Authority

Power: Ability to organize and control people, material, and territory

Authority: Sanctioned power; power people recognize as legitimate

Charles Darwin

Origins of species --> natural selection

Evolution, explained how it worked

Gregor Mendel

Paint pot theory --> Two traits of parents mixed together to create child

- Inherited discrete particles or units (in pea plants)

- Dominant and recessive traits (not prevailing, not in phenotype)

Jean-Baptiste Lamarck

Liar idea of evolution: Said that traits you have acquired during life are passed on through genes