Anthropology and Evolutionary Biology Vocabulary

Vocabulary flashcards covering core terms, subdisciplines, concepts, and historical scientists from the lecture notes on anthropology and evolutionary theory.

Anthropology

The study of humans/humankind from the perspective of all the peoples through time, focusing on how humans evolve, vary, and interact.

Holistic

An approach that considers how all aspects of human existence—including past, present, biology, culture, and language—are taken into account to understand human variation and evolution.

Sociocultural Anthropology

A subdiscipline of anthropology that examines variations in cultural behaviors among current and past human populations.

Culture

Learned behavior transmitted from person to person, including social systems, economic systems, marriage customs, religion, and philosophy.

Archaeology

The study of past cultural behaviors in the historic and prehistoric past through the analysis of a culture's material remains, such as sites, features, and artifacts.

Linguistic Anthropology

The study of the structure, evolution, and usage of language in human societies and its relation to cultures.

Language

A set of written or spoken symbols that refer to things (people, places, concepts) other than themselves.

Biological Anthropology

A subdiscipline that examines all aspects of present and past human biology, including human biological evolution, variation within and between populations, and relationships to other organisms.

Skeletal Biology/Paleopathology

A subfield of biological anthropology that studies skeletal biological variation, health, and disease among past populations.

Forensic Anthropology

A subfield of biological anthropology focusing on human identification as a skeletal biologist within a medico-legal context among modern groups.

Primatology

The study of primate cousins, including lemurs, monkeys, and apes.

Human Biology

A subfield of biological anthropology that studies variation and health in modern, living groups.

Genetics

A subfield of biological anthropology that studies relatedness, human variation at the genetic level, and population movements.

Paleoanthropology

A subfield of biological anthropology concerned with the origins, evolutions, and development of early humans.

Biocultural

A perspective examining human beings as biological organisms while considering the impact of culture.

Bipedalism

The ability to walk on two feet.

Non-homing Canine

A canine tooth that is not sharpened against lower premolars and lacks a diastema or space.

Material Culture

Objects humans use to manipulate their environment, functioning as tools for survival.

Science

A way of acquiring knowledge through observation, going beyond just knowledge and facts.

Data

Evidence gathered from observations that assists in answering questions, solving problems, and testing hypotheses.

Empirical

Based on observation or experience.

Theory

The best possible explanation based on our understanding of real-world problems, formed when hypotheses stand the test of repeated testing.

Evolution

Change over time in biological and cultural systems.

Adaptations

Physical characteristics or features that increase an organism's ability to survive and reproduce in its diet and environment.

Theory of Natural Selection

The process by which features enabling organisms to adapt to an environment preferentially survive and reproduce, thereby increasing the frequency of those features in the population.

Fixity of Species

The concept that species are unchanging over time.

Great Chains of Being

A hierarchical model of the world structured as God, angels, heaven, humans, beasts, plants, flame, and rocks.

Heliocentric

The astronomical model placing the sun in the center of celestial bodies, proposed by Nicolaus Copernicus.

Archbishop James Ussher

Assessed that the earth was created upon the entrance of the night preceding October 23, 4004 BC by counting genealogical lineages in the Old Testament.

Natural Theology

The practice of naturalists investigating nature to understand God's work, viewing the world as physical expressions of God's thoughts.

Species (John Ray)

Coined in 1686 based on the interbreeding criterion, defining a species as organisms that can interbreed and produce fertile offspring.

Carlos Linnaeus

Created a formal classification system (taxonomy) in Systema Naturae (1736) and perfected the binomial nomenclature system using genus and species.

Binomial Nomenclature

A formal naming system perfected by Carlos Linnaeus that uses two different unique names (genus and species) to describe organisms.

Gerges-louis Leclerc, comte de buffon

A contemporary of Linnaeus who suggested common descent and organic change, arguing that the environment acted directly on organisms through organic particles and that the planet was older than 6,000 years.

Baron Georges Civier

The father of paleontology who was the first to document extinction and advocated catastrophism while rejecting evolution in favor of the fixity of species.

Catastrophism

The theory that violent and sudden natural catastrophes caused localized extinctions, followed by new life forms moving into the area.

James Hutton

The father of modern geology who suggested an infinity of time and introduced uniformitarianism and gradualism.

Uniformitarianism

The principle that processes occurring in the present operated in the past and will continue, requiring millions of years to shape the earth.

Lamarckism

The theory proposed by Jean Baptiste de lamarck that evolution occurs through the inheritance of acquired characteristics as creatures alter body parts to survive in changing environments.

Thomas Robert Malthus

An English demographer who wrote Essay on the Principle of Population (1798), asserting that overproduction of offspring leads to an inescapable 'struggle for existence' such as famine and war.

Charles Lyell

Author of Principles of Geology who provided evidence for Hutton's uniformitarianism, demonstrating slow and gradual geological change without divine intervention.