Human Variation Exam 1

ethnic groups or ethnicity

shared cultural characteristics

polymorphic variation

most variation is due to historical trends in marriage practices and diet

Polytypic variation

observed gene patterns between geographically separated human populations

the human species does not have a whole lot of variation in its genes (T/F)

true

who are the genetic diversity champions?

Daphnia pulex (water flea) has 31,000 genes

the most genetically diverse place on earth is

Africa

Humans have _____ 40.7 million base pairs as we evolved

lost

we are not a genetically diverse species (T/F)

true

Toba Catastrophe Theory

there is a large volcano that erupted 75,000 years ago where everything died out, caused a bottleneck of archaic homo sapien populations

disease pressures

scientists are not sure what caused severe human bottleneck, however some propose disease or virus

racial categories are ______

arbitrary

racial categories exists biologically (T/F)

false

race is a

social construct

what is one of the easiest outward visual ways to discriminate between groups of people

skin color

Human cupidity

human racism and greed

Ernst Mayer’s definition of species

any discrete population of potentially breeding organisms

George Gaylord Simpson’s definition of species

any two creatures that can be shown to have a descendent ancestor relationships

Platonism

different things share a hidden essential nature no matter the variation that surrounds this aspect

rationalism

reason and observed evidence outweigh perceptions

evolution

changes in the forms of organic life that have occurred throughout tine, since life first arose on earth

naturalists were heavily influenced by the _____

Bible; based on a study by Bishop Usher, believed the earth was 4,004 years old

Ole Worm

one of the earliest naturalist

Age of Antiquarianism

naturalists collecting curiosities from across the globe without much real academic study

The Great Chain of Being

the idea that you can rank species from simple to more complex

genisis

creation

mono

one

early naturalists believed all species were

created at the same time

fossils used to be considered

imperfect creations case down from heaven by God when he was angry

vesalius

renaissance anatomist, dissected cadavers illegally

Harvey

determined how blood flows

revival of botany

medicinal plants

Andreas Vesalius

flemish anatomist, jailed for operating on human cadavers, published the worlds first book on human anatomy, was advocating for physicians to stop using blood letting as a cure for illness

uniformitarianism

the idea that forces that change the earth’s crust now are the same forces that have shaped it throughout time

law of superposition

dirt on the bottom is older than dirt on top

Carolus Linnaeus

agreed with the great chain of being concept, never travelled outside Europe, developed a classification system for animals and plants, and tried to do human

Americanus

red, choleric erect

Europeaus

white, fickle, sanguine blue-eyed

Asiaticus

swallow, grave, dignified, avaricious, rules by opinion

Afer

black, choleric, obstinate, contented, regulated by customs

Ferus

wild man, walks on all fours, hairy

Troglodytes

ignorant people who live in caves

Monstrous

giants, mutants

Comte de Buffon

popularized the term race over the Linnaean term subspecies, believed in the fixity of species

Georges Cuvier

claimed that africans were closer anatomically to orangutans than europeans (has never seen an orangutans)

Thomas Malthus

father of Modern Demography, populations grow faster than food supply which leads to a struggle for existence, waiting on a biological mechanism like genes to come to fruition

Johann Friedrich Blumenbach

platonic reasoning, coined the term caucasian

Louis Agassiz

extremely racist, believed Africans were inferior, blacks should be trained for manual labor and whites should be trained for managerial and government positions

before Darwin,

the goal was to verify the historical accounts in the Bible

Earnest Hooton

large supporter of eugenics

cultural relativism

defined as understanding a group’s beliefs, living structure, and traditions within their own cultural context, without making judgement or placing value

biological determinism

the notion that all attributes of a person are innate including intelligence, brain size

historical particularism

rejects cultural evolution instead of arguing that each socierty or culture is a collective representation of its own unique historical past

Frank Boas

founded the first American School of Anthropology at the University of Chicago

Boasian Research on Ellis Island

wanted to test Darwinian Evolution, studied 18,000 immigrants, looked at skull sizes and limb proportions, then came back 10 years later