ARCH 131 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Georges Cuvier, Thomas Henry Huxley, Hugh Falconer
9 May 2018
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08/05/18
Lecture 1
Terminology:
• Physical Anthropology and Biological Anthropology are interchangeable.
• We can also call this field of study Human Origins.
4 Subfields of Anthropology:
• Physical/Biological Anthropology – the study of human biological evolution and human remains.
o This also includes many subfields, such as Forensic Anthropology.
o E.g. physiological evolution of humans, skeletal remains of ancestors, comparing old
skeletal remains to other modern/even older ones, etc.
• Archaeology – the study of past cultures through their material culture that survives in the
archaeological record.
o Ipoeished data set eause a thigs fo the past dot ake it to the peset;
you only get a snapshot of the past culture you are studying.
o E.g. tools/technology used in the past, etc.
• Cultural Anthropology – the study of living cultures (both traditional and modern/urban).
o E.g. religion, kin structure, etc.
• Linguistics – the study of language (not commonly part of the anthropology departments
anymore).
The History of Human Origins Research
• To understand what you are doing today, you have to know what happened in the past.
o Current learning (?) methods are a direct product of the way things were done in the past.
• The Earliest Scientists:
o White men with beards were not the first to study science.
o This field dates back a looong time.
o Arab scholars were collecting, translating and building on books (all fields basically) while
the Europeans were burning each other and their books.
• Pre-Scientific Frameworks:
o The sciences were developed in a predominantly religious society.
o Aout he Euopeas oke fee fo the ostaits of the Catholi huh.
▪ All churches heavily discouraged people from thinking about the world in any
other way than how the Bible explains it.
o James Ussher
• 1581-1656
• Irish Archbishop
• The old ega i , BC , eas ago.
o This was a fact according to the church.
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o October 23rd at 9:00???? Apparently????
o In the 1500s, people with some money started to be interested in/try to understand the
natural world.
▪ Some were serious and made huge advancements.
▪ They realize that fossils, kilometer-log deposits, et. at eall e eplaied
the 6,000-year theory.
o The original Neandertal
▪ 1856
▪ Feldhofer Cave, Germany.
▪ While blasting limestone to use, people find these bones.
▪ Johann Fuhlrott recognizes that these bones are human, but different from those
of modern humans, recognizes that evolution is real.
• “ie hes just a shoolteahe ood eliees him, so he calls Hermann
Shaaffhausen (a prof?).
• Then they run into Rudolf Virchow a eseahe, ho doest eliee i
evolution, says the bones belonged to a sick modern human who just died
a while ago.
• 3 Important Changes in Thinking:
o The Earth is much older than 6,000 years.
▪ Layers on mountains, erosion of rock from rivers, etc. all of these take time.
▪ James Hutton (1726-1797) argued that, seeing the things that are going on today,
there is nothing to keep us from realizing that the same changes happened in the
past.
• Law of Uniformitarianism: geologically-ancient conditions were the
sae as, o uifo to, those of toda.
▪ Charles Lyell (1797-1875) publishes a book on geology.
• Etee atiuit of the Eath. (1835)
• Basically, the first guy who addresses the issue of the age of the Earth.
o People have been around much longer than 6,000 years.
▪ Boucher de Perthes (1788-1868) was one of dozens of guys who was digging up
stone tools, etc. from gravel deposits.
• Flaked stone stool in the Somme River (1841).
• Extinct animals (elephants, hippos, cave bears??) were also found near
the river.
• These stoe tools the assued to e faerie olts, i.e. the tip of an arrow
used by faeries.
• Other theories existed:
o [Flit atifats ae] geeated in the sky by a fulgurous
ehalatio ogloed i a loud the iuposed huou. –
Tollius, an educated man, 1649.
o i.e. the ae eated lightig stikes.
▪ Hugh Falconer (1808-1865) was familiar with stone tools.
• Went to see Perthes, dug through the ground in Africa and found more
stone tools under layers that were older than 6,000 years.
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Lecture 1: physical anthropology and biological anthropology are interchangeable, we can also call this field of study human origins. Linguistics the study of language (not commonly part of the anthropology departments anymore). Johann fuhlrott recognizes that these bones are human, but different from those of modern humans, recognizes that evolution is real: i(cid:374)(cid:272)e he(cid:859)s just a s(cid:272)hooltea(cid:272)he(cid:396) (cid:374)o(cid:271)od(cid:455) (cid:271)elie(cid:448)es him, so he calls hermann. Layers on mountains, erosion of rock from rivers, etc. James hutton (1726-1797) argued that, seeing the things that are going on today, there is nothing to keep us from realizing that the same changes happened in the past. Jean-baptiste pierre antoine de monet, chevalier de lamarck (1744-1829): paleontologist, tries to explain how evolution works rather than whether it exists or not. Other directions of early biological anthropology research: variation in the morphology of modern humans, while we are very similar in our genetic makeup, humans are very different from one another (race, features, etc. )
