Anthropology 1020E Lecture 2: How Do Anthropologists Use Evolutionary Theory? (Sept 19)
20 Sep 2017
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Document Summary
Shared patterns of learned behaviors: what is the anthropological perspective, holistic, comparative, field based. Data collection involves direct contact with the people, sites, artifacts, skeletal remains or animals of interest: embraces cultural relativism, evolutionary framework. Evolution is a change in frequency of traits in a population over multiple generations. Rely on evolutionary frameworks to explain human origins and human biology. Science: science is a systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment. Hypothesis observation/experiment/data hypothesis rejected or supported or refined: falsifiability. Sometimes scientists get it wrong; science is not perfect. If evidence refuting the hypothesis is found, that hypothesis must be rejected or revised. Human evolutionary theory: hypothesis: modern humans (homo sapiens) originated from pre- existing types or ancestor species. Testing hypothesis: observation: chimpanzee locomotion in the wild, experiment: compare calories burned and oxygen consumption between humans and chimpanzees walking on treadmills.
