Four fields of Anthropology:

• Cultural Anthropology - study of living cultures
• Archaeology - study of past cultures
• Linguistic Anthropology
• Biological (Physical) Anthropology

Subfields of Biological Anthropology:

• Forensic Anthropology/Skeletal biology
• Genetics
• Human Biology
• Paleoanthropology
• Primatology

6 Distinguishing features of hominins:

• Bipedalism 6 mya
• Non-honing canines 5.5 mya
• Material culture and tools 2.5 mya
• Speech (Hyoid bone) 2.5 mya
• Hunting 1 mya
• Domestication of plants and animals 11 kya

What does it mean to be human?

• People are a product of evolutionary history - biological changes over time leading to humans
• People are a product of inidividual life history - genetics and their environment
• Science is self correcting by retest a hypothesis
• Monogenism
• Single origin of humanity
• Biblical orthodoxy
• Polygenism
• Multiple origin of humanity

Scientific Method

• Observation
• Deduction
• Hypothesis
• Experimentation
• Refutation/support of the hypothesis
• Revise hypothesis if needed

European Renaissance (14th-16th Century)

• Discoveries, exploration, and rediscovery of Greeks and Romans
• Sense of deeper past
• Sense of physical and cultural varability (human and non-human)
• Sense of things can change

Convergence of evidence

• Modern synthesis is very new and relative to scentific discoveries
• Many ideas come together to make modern biohistory
• Earth history
• Geology
• Life's history
• Paleontology
• Mechanismas of evolution
• Genetics

Comparative Anatomy

Galen (129-200)

• disected Monkeys and pigs

Leonardo daVinci (1452-1519)

• Watched performances of autopsies to see how structures related

Andreas Vesalius (1514-1564)

• De humanis coporis fabria (1543)
• Founder of modern human anatomy by studying human cadavers

Edward Tyson (1650-1708)

• Chimpanzees resemble humans and other apes
• Anatomy of a pygmy (1699)
• Predate taxonomical classification

Carolus Linneaus (1707-1778)

• Known for work on taxonomy and development of binomial nomenclature
• Nested hierarchy rather than scala naturae
• Classification of humans based on geography, customs, skin color
• Americanus, Europaeus, Asiaticus, Afer
• Class -- Order -- Genus -- Species
• Mammalia -- primates -- homo -- sapiens

Johann Blumenbach(1752-1840)

• AKA “father of physical anthropology”
• Cranial form used to differentiate between populations
• Importantly, recognized that human variation was continuous, and so classifications would be arbitrary
• Identified populations based on geography
• Caucasion: Europ, West Asia, North Africa
• Mongolian: East Asia, Artic
• Ethiopiam: Africa
• American: Americas
• Malay: Oceania, South Pacific

Comte de Buffon(1707-1788)

• Environment has an effect on living forms
• Natural History (1749)

Georges Cuvier (1769-1832)

• Father of paleontology
• Catastrophism: theory that all geologic change occurs suddenly
• Immutability of species

Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire (1722-1844)

• Unity of form
• Famous form/function debate with Cuvier
• Worked with Lamarck and supported his work

Jean-Baptiste Lamarck(1744-1829)

• Inheritance of acquired characteristics

James Hutton (1726-1797)

• Gradualism: large scale change is the result of slow, ongoing processes
• Uniformitarian

Charles Lyell (1797-1895)

• Uniformitarianism
• Although he was a creationist, he embraced the antiquity of earth
• Principles of geology

Thomas Malthus (1766-1834)

• Political economist and demographer
• Modes of production provide finite resources that lead to a point of crisis

Alfred Wallace (1923-1913)

• Independently arrived at similar conclusions as Darwin
• Later known for his work on biogeography

Charles Darwin (1809 - 1882)

• Major works:
• On the Origin of Species (1859)
• The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex (1871)
• Tour of The Beagle: 1831-1836
• Adaptive Radiatiion
  • diversification of one species into multiple species and niches
• Natural Selection
  • differential reproductive success over multiple generations
  • works on the individula level
• Refinement of the Theory of Natural Selection
• Observation 1: All populations show the potential for exponential growth
• Observation 2: Populations remain relatively stable
• Deduction 1: There is a ‘struggle’ for existence
• Observation 3: Individuals vary, and some variations confer an advantage
• Deduction 2: Organisms that survive are those best adapted to the environment (“Survival of the fittest”)
• Observation 4: Beneficial characters tend to accumulate (and be inherited)
• Deduction 3: Natural selection gives rise to new species
• Preconditions of Natural Selection
• Inheritance
• Variation
• Environmental pressure
• Evolution
  • A change in population in the frequency of a trait or gene from one generation to the next
• Finches & tortoises from Galapagos Islands