Classywriters.net



Anthropology: Origins of Civilization Exam 1 Study Guide Use your class notes, lecture PowerPoints, textbook (Understanding Humans: An Introduction to Physical Anthropology and Archaeology 11th Edition), and class films to answer these questions and study for the first exam. What is Anthropology? ? What is relativism, and why is it important to anthropology? ? What is ethnocentrism? ? List the four subfields of anthropology, and describe each one. Anthropological field methods ? Give some examples of anthropological fieldwork in each of the four subfields (cultural anthropology, archaeology, linguistics, and biological anthropology). Evolutionary theory, natural selection, and heredity ? Describe the theories of catastrophism and uniformitarianism, and explain how they contributed to our modern day understanding of evolution. ? Define natural selection, and give an example of how it works. ? Who were Darwin and Wallace? ? What did Gregor Mendel contribute to our understanding of evolution? ? Explain the difference between phenotype and genotype. ? What are the four forces of evolution, and how does each one contribute to evolution? ? If sickle-cell anemia is a lethal disease, why is the gene frequency for sickle-shaped cells so high in parts of Africa, India, and the Middle East? Your answer should include an explicit discussion of natural selection, malaria, mosquitos, and land-clearing practices. Modern human variation ? What is the difference between long-term adaptation and acclimatization? Give an example of each. ? Explain how and why human skin color varies. A good answer will discuss how UV rays, melanin, vitamin D, and folate determine human skin color. (Hint: watch the TED talk by Jablonski to review.) ? How do Bergman’s Rule and Allen’s Rule account for variation in human body size and shape? ? How have some human populations adapted to life at high altitudes (biologically and culturally)? ? Why are the descendants of some Northern European and African pastoralists lactose tolerant? Race and racism ? According to anthropology, what is wrong with popular understandings of “race?” ? What were the theories of “monogenesis” and “polygenesis” about? ? Who was Franz Boas, and why was he important? ? Explain why there is no biological basis to race. Your answer should include a discussion of genetics and the history of human classification. ? How were the racial categories of “Hutu” and “Tutsi” created in Rwanda, and what were the results? ? What is hypodescent? ? How is race in Latin America different from race in the United States? What does this tell us about the nature of racial stereotypes? ? Choose a popular “theory of race,” and use anthropological concepts to explain why it is false. Macroevolution (review your notes from the short film we watched for class) ? What is macroevolution? ? What is the difference between homologies and analogies in evolution? ? How does the study of primitive (or ancestral) and derived characteristics help us understand evolution? ? Define the biological species concept and the ecological species concept. How are they different? ? What is adaptive radiation? What kind of events can lead to an adaptive radiation of species? ................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download