ANT203Y1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Visual Appearance, Body Shape, Probability Distribution
Document Summary
Race doesn"t always make sense biologically, but if we look at the cultural differences it can help explain facets that don"t factually occur. Review: refer to notes from last lecture--it"s all there! Racial categories don"t represent a biological reality as there is continuous variation in human development. These traits are continuously variable with a huge range. How can we be convinced that we can put them in segmented boxes. They are polygenic with an extreme amount of variability between individuals. Hair and eye colour variation is very difficult to determine and the variation isn"t studied as deeply as it could be. Body shape and proportions: number one predictor of body shape is access to diet and nutrition. More variation in the continent of africa than anywhere else in the world. One of the factors that drives genetic drift is the founder affect---a smaller group breaks off from the main group and this smaller group has less variation.
