LECTURE 1:

Lucy

• -  Discovered in 1974

• -  3.2 million years old

• -  Afar region, Ethiopia

• What is Anthropology?

  - Greek:
  - Anthropos=human

  - logos=study Four Major subfields

1. Archaeology-geography or classics

1. Similarities between archaeology and cultural anthropology: history, art history

2. Approaches

   1. Focus on material culture

   2. Material culture: the physical manifestation of human activities, such as tools, art and structures

3. Subfields: prehistoric, historic, bioarchaeology, cultural resource management

i. Cultural Resource Management: the safeguarding of the archaeological

heritage through the protection of sites and through salvage archaeology... generally within the framework of legislation designed to safeguard the past

2. Cultural Anthropology-sociology/musicology

   1. Similarities between cultural and linguistic: literature

   2. Approaches: ethnography, cross-cultural comparisons i. focus on culture

      ii. Cultural: all aspects of human adaptation including technology, traditions, language, religion and social rules. Culture is a set of learned behaviors; it is transmitted from one generation to the next through learning and not biological or genetic means

   3. (other names) ethnology, social anthropology, social cultural anthropology

3. Linguistic Anthropology-linguistics

   a. Approaches:

   1. Focus on language

   2. Language and culture are closely intertwined

b. Overlaps with traditional linguistics, cultural anthropology

4. Biological/Evolutionary Anthropology-biology, ecology,medicine, anatomy, paleontology

a. Similarities between evolutionary and archaeology: geology, chemistry

b. Approaches:
i. Focus on evolution

1. Paleoanthropology-involving the study of human fossils and our immediate relatives

2. Paleoprimatology 3. Primatology

4. Subfocuses: modern human variability, human evolution ii. Modern human variability: osteology(study on bones), forensic

anthropology(study of human remains in a legal context), medical anthropology(human health and diseases, human care systems, and biocultural adaptation), molecular anthropology(genetic material of living people to answer questions about evolution, dispersal)

c. (other names) biological anthropology, physical anthropology LECTURE 2:

Basic Tenets of (19th c.) Biblical Creationism

- Creation: The earth was created by god relatively recently - Scola naturae

• -  (God,Angels,Humans,Animals,Plants,Minerals)

• -  Fixed order of complexity

• -  God’s conception

• -  Static, no movement between levels

• -  Catastrophism: large scale changes to the earth’s surface are the result of major catastrophes

• -  Uniformitarianism(Contrasts with catastrophism)

  • -  the theory that the earth’s features are the result of long-term processes that

    continue to operate today as they did in the past

  • -  Product of erosion

  • -  Formulated by James Hutton(self-regulating system of Earth)

• -  Catstrophism:

  • -  Product of an enormous flood

  • -  Magnitude of flood not witnessed today

• -  Fixity of Species: Living things do not change through time

• -  Fossils can be explained that way

  Jean Baptiste Lamarck View

- Adaptation to environment

Darwin Wallace View

• -  Natural selection explanation

• -  Basic Tenets of Natural Selection

  • -  Variation exists and is heritable

  • -  Some variants are better adapted to their environment than others

  • -  If left unchecked, organisms will produce more offspring than can survive

  • -  Offspring will have the adaptations of their parents

  • -  Over time, population will change to resemble the adaptable variants

  • -  Over a very long time frame, this will produce large scale changes, including

    speciation

- Organisms produce more offspring than can survive

Adaptation

Malthus view

- A feature of an organism that increases the likelihood of its survival and reproduction in a particular environment

Adaptive Radiation:

• -  The evolution of multiple divergent species from a single less specialized ancestral species

• -  Niche

- The role of a species in its environment where the adaptive radiations happen in

the context of open niches

Forces of Evolution - Selection

• -  Natural selection

• -  Artificial selection

  • -  Selection by humans for particular characteristics that are considered desirable

  • -  Examples: cow for milk, chicken for meat, the rock dove

• -  Sexual selection

- Selection on features or behaviors associated with mating - Male-male competition- physical adaptation

- Example:bighorn sheep head butting, male bowerbirds build decorative ‘bowers’

=>Effect:
- Lead to secondary sexual characteristics in males

- Weaponry, body size, ornamentation - Sexual dimorphism

- Different appearance between males and females(size,color, morphology)

- Female choice

- Examples: Female bower birds choose mates based on the bowers

- Main goal: maximize reproductive success(number of infants that survive until adulthood

- Genetic Drift-evolutionary change as a result of random processes, particularly significant in small populations

- Random inheritance
- Changes in genetic material passed on to the next generation as a result

of random chance in which variants get passed on

• -  Founder effects

  • -  Differences in the frequency of variants in a population as a result of random chance in which members start a new population

  • -  Effect is an increase in relative frequency of a rare type

  • -  Rare, but on fatal disease

• -  Population bottleneck

- A restriction in genetic variability with a decrease in population size resulting from random factors

- Mutation

- Effect is low genetic variability in cheetahs(makes them more susceptible to disease)

- A change in DNA bases as well as changes in chromosome number or structure - Example: sickle cell anemia(result of point mutation in a codon)

• -  Only important when it happens to sex cells(inheritable)

• -  Ultimate source of all mutation

• -  Example: Sickle Cell Anemia

  • -  Result of point mutation

  • -  A point mutation occurs in a single base in a codon

- Gene Flow

- Exchange of genes between populations=>has the effect of making populations more similar

Timescale of Evolution

- Microevolution

• -  Small scale changes occurring within a species

• -  Can occur in an observable timeframe

• -  Example:

- Industrial Melanism:peppered moth(light and dark variants)

- Macroevolution

• -  Changes produced only after many generations

• -  Events at a higher level, such as speciation

• -  Example:

- Small generalized herbivore->large animal specialized for speed and eating grass

Early Genetic Ideas

• -  Blending inheritance: mate smooth and wrinkled peas would lead to intermediate peas

• -  Particulate inheritance:mate smooth and wrinkled peas with lead to both smooth and

  wrinkled peas

• -  Alleles: alternate forms of a gene. Codes for the same trait but a different phenotype

  - 1.

  • -  Homozygous:same allele from each parent

  • -  Heterozygous: different alleles from each parent

    - 2.

  • -  Dominant allele:heterozygous allele

  • -  Recessive Allele:not heterozygous allele

• -  Gene: a sequence of DNA bases that specifies the order of amino acids in an entire protein, portion of a protein or any function product

- Genotype(genetic makeup)
- Homozygous dominant or recessive; heterozygous

- phenotype(physical characteristics)
- Observable or detectable characteristics

Evolution

- Def: a change in allele frequencies in a population over time

- Types

• -  Monogenic:characteristics coded for by only one gene(mendelian traits)

• -  Polygenic: characteristics coded for by more than one gene

- The complex interaction of multiple genes can produce the appearance of blending

DNA and Protein Synthesis

- Structure of DNA

• -  Adenine always bonds with Thymine

• -  Cytosine always bonds with guanine

1. Nucleus

   1. “Control centre of the cell”

   2. Contains nuclear DNA, which you get from both parents

2. Ribosomes

a. Protein manufacturing centre of the cell

3. Mitochondrion

   1. Energy producing part of the cell

   2. Contains mtDNA which is only from mother

4. Karyotype

   1. 23 pairs of chromosomes=46 total

   2. 22 pairs are autosomes

   3. 1 pair are the sex chromosomes

- Protein Synthesis

• -  Transcription: mRNA transcribes/copies DNA sequence and delivers the copy

  from the nucleus to the ribosome

  • -  Codon: a set of three bases in mRNA that codes for a particular amino

    acid

  • -  Anti-codon- corresponding set of three bases on the transfer RNA

    molecule

• -  Translation: tRNA builds a protein by translating the mRNA code into amino

  acids(protein) LECTURE 3:

  Relative Dating:

- Provides a relative ordering of material or sites
- Stratigraphy(study of the sequential layering of deposits)

- Physical correlation-linking of geological layers based on their physical characteristics

• -  The law of faunal succession

  • -  Strata that contain fossils of the same animals are of the same age

  • -  Makes use of index fossils: fossil remains of kown age

  • -  Should be broadly distributed with species of short duration

  • -  Used in biostratigraphy(faunal dating)

• -  Cross dating

Absolute Dating

- Estimates the use of artifacts and features based on their similarities with comparable materials from dated contexts

- Provides an actual chronological age, usually with an error range, for an object or part of a site

• -  Radiocarbon dating-

  • -  Isotopes: atoms that have the same number of protons(belong to the

    same element) but have different numbers of neutrons

  • -  Half life: the time period in which one half the amount of radioactive

    isotype is chemically converted to a daughter product(Carbon 14 decays

    into nitrogen 14)

• -  Carbon 14

  • -  Half life:5730 years

  • -  Can date -1000 to 50,000 years old

• -  Potassium-argon

  • -  Half life:1.25 billion years

  • -  Can date volcanic material -100,000 to 4.6 billion years old

• -  Argon-argon

  Archaeology ‘stuff’

- Artifacts: objects or materials made or modified for use by hominins - Pottery sherd, arrowhead, scrimshaw

- Features: non-portable elements of an archaeological site - Hearth, shell midden

- Ecofacts: natural materials that give environmental information about a site - Antlers, snails

Things that can be found using skeleton

• -  Age

• -  Biological sex

• -  Health status

• -  Appearance

• -  Some aspects of behavior

  Archaeological site: location of past human activity
  Site survey: the process of discovering the location of archaeological site Context

• -  The spatial and temporal associations of artifacts and features in an archaeological site

• -  Defined as the location where artifacts are found

• -  Provides MOST of the important archaeological information

• -  Artifacts not found in context (located, found eroded on surface) have lost much of its

  value

  Types of Excavations

- Horizontal dimension

• -  Exposes large areas of a layer or level

• -  Reveals spatial relationship between artifacts and features

- Excavatio units(boxes), baulks(side) - Vertical dimension

- Cutting to reveal stratification LECTURE 4:

Primates

- Primates are a rather nondescript mammalian order that cannot be characterized by a single derived feature shared by all members.

Three Core characteristics

1. Flexible body, arboreal signature
- Generalized skeletal structure: all non-human primates are quadrupedal(move on

4 limbs)
- Locomotion behaviors include branchiating, vertical clinging, leaping,

knuckle walking

• -  upright upper body posture

• -  upper/lower limbs,major joints separate

- Flexible shoulder joint/clavicles

• -  Emphasis on touch

  • -  Grasping hands and sometimes feet

  • -  Mobile joints in hands and feet along with opposable thumb=>power and

    precision grips

  • -  Sensitive finger or toe tips, presence of dermal ridges(finger and toe

    prints) to enhance tactile sense, reduce slipping, nails instead of claws(to

    protect and support digits)

• -  Emphasis on vision

- Increased reliance on vision

• -  Stereoscopic vision(ability to see in three dimensions)

• -  Enclosed bony orbit(to protect eyes)

  • -  Postorbital bar in strepsirrhines

  • -  Postorbital plate or cup in monkeys, apes, humans

• -  Color vision common

- Exception-nocturnal prosimians - Decreased reliance on smell

- Reduction in snout size and olfactory areas of brain

2. Dietary plasticity

   • -  Folivorous-leaf-eaters

   • -  Frugivorous-fruit-eaters

   • -  Insectivorous-insect-eaters

   • -  Carnivorous-meat-eaters

   • -  Omnivorous-varied sources

3. Parental investment

   • -  Fertility-usually have one offspring at a time

   • -  Birth interval-long gaps between births

- Preadult care- long period of offspring care

Reliance on Learned Behaviors

- Long period of offspring dependency - More time for learning

- Extended life span

Brain Size

- Primates have large brains for their body size
- (especially neocortex:memory, problem solving, abstract thought)

Primate Classification

• -  Hierarchy based on taxonomic ranks

• -  Species names are binomials(Genus+species)

  Close Relatives of Primates

  1. Euarchonta:

  • -  Primates

  • -  Scandentia(“tree shrews” not shrews)

  • -  Dermoptera(“flying lemurs”, not lemurs)

2. Tree

   • -  Neither trees, nor shrews

   • -  Eat fruits and insects

   • -  Either arboreal or terrestrial

   • -  Were once considered primates, but removed from the primate order after better

     study of their anatomy and genetics

   • -  Serves as a good model for the earliest primates

3. Flying Lemurs

   • -  Cannot fly, nor are they lemurs

   • -  Eat leaves

   • -  Having a gliding membrane, the largest gliding mammal

   • -  Have very odd lower incisors

     Memorize Human Body Bones Memorize Primate Classification

Shrews