BIOLOGICAL ANTHROPOLOGY
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
What are some kinds of physical/biological anthropology? - Answer--Primatology
-Paleoanthropology
- human biology
-skeletal biology
-paleopathology
How do humans adapt to environmental stressors? examples? -
Answer--biological/cultural adaptations
-e.g. living at altitude as an ex (bergmanns & Allen's Rule)
Are all Human biological adaptations evolutionary? - Answer-
How does genetics contribute to biological anthropology? - Answer--biological diversity
among humans, genes provide important means to study that variation, evolution can
go along to explain why it exists
-e.g. lactase persistance, sickle cell, etc
What is the significance of racial categories? - Answer--bring order to the diversity of
people; makes sense of the world around us and how to understand various
phenomena we experience (understanding the differences between humans)
Why are racial categories not good biological markers? - Answer--arbitrary and
subjective divisions of clinical variation, rely upon homogenized central tendencies
-ignoring greater variation within racial categories than between them and traits (skin
color, hair type, body type) do not co-vary)
-genetic variation does not match neatly with phenotypes
What traits characterize primates? - Answer--grasping hands (and feet)
-nails, not claws
-vision important (convergent orbits and postorbital bar) (reliant on vision)
-increased brain complexity
-fewer children
-
What is the evolutionary history of primates? - Answer-- after 23 mya have evolution of
a 1st of ape species
-relative to other primates apes are bigger, lack tails, and have adaptations for moving
in trees, other groups of primates also evolving at the same time
-about 7 mya have development of earliest hominins, these are our human ancestors,
called sahelanthropus tchadensis
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