ANTH 222 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Confocal Microscopy, Australopithecus, Orrorin

• School: University of Maryland
• Department: Anthropology
• Course: ANTH 222
• Professor: Miguel Vilar

Document Summary

Human evolution: a very short introduction: bernard wood. Chapter 1: introduction: paleoanthropology: science that tries to reconstruct the evolutionary history of this small, exclusively human, twig, clade. Chapter 2: finding our place: greek scholars, modern humanity, part of natural world, plato and aristotle, 5th and 6th bce, earliest ideas about origin of humanity. Reason is replaced by faith: 5th century, genesis: reason-based explanations were replaced by faith-based ones, biblical explanation: dark ages (5th to 12th centuries) Science re-emerges: englishman, francis bacon, major influence, scientific investigations developed, deductive method: belief, deduce, consequences of that belief, make observations, investigate the phenomenon for yourself, devise and test your own. Anatomy starts to become scientific: andreas vesalius: born in 1514, efforts to make anatomy more rigorous ensured scientists would have access to reliable information about structure of the human body. Geology emerges: geology, earth science, uniformitarianism suggested process that shaped earth"s surface in past such as erosion and volcanism, same processes in action today.