ANTH205 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Hunter-Gatherer, Jeffrey Dahmer, Hominidae
22 May 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
HUNTER-GATHERERS
2/26 DAY 10 & 2/28 DAY 11
Clicker Questions from Team 1
1. Common characteristics of small-band hunter gatherer societies around the globe
consist of high instances of social embeddedness, social support, purposeful living,
community social enjoyment, individual freedom, and cooperative relationships with
other groups. True or False? True
2. Today’s Western moral values and social environments are similar to those of
hunter-gatherers. True or false? False
3. The similarities between the Batek and Moriori cases include that necessarily
natural resources are readily for both two races to acquire, and these two ethnic
groups are both immediate-return foragers who live in small groups. True or false?
True
4. Intergroup conflict (conflict across different groups) was common among the
Australian Aborigines. True or false? False
5. In polygynous marriages among the Ju/’hoansi, senior wives were known for using
gossip to make the new co-wives and husbands’ life intolerable until he broke the
new marriage. True or False? True
Notes
I. Us vs. Hunter-gatherers
A. Table 17.1 Comparison of Two Types of Living: Small-Band Hunter-Gatherers
vs. United States Today
1. Natural world: embeddedness in and partnership with nature vs.
detachment from, control and fear of nature
II. The Myth of the Savage Cannibal:
A. Ancient cannibalism
1. Is it cannibalism? Exo- or endo- cannibalism?
B. Types of cannibalism
1. Subsistence
2. Ritual
a) Sacrifice
b) Funerary
C. Evidence of Cannibalism
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1. The problem of fractured bones: cannibalism, war, interpersonal
violence or just plain life
2. Funeral preparation
D. Cannibalism among Chimpanzees
1. Exo-cannibalism of the territorial stranger (368)
E. Cannibalism, not the same as war
F. Prehistoric evidence for violence and warfare
1. Killer apes & cannibals
G. Cowboy wash coprolite
1. You can find what people ate in fossilized poop
2. One coprolite studied by others found human flesh in it
H. Modern cannibalists:
1. Jeffrey Dahmer: to “keep them with him”
III. Challenging the Myth of Killer Apes and Aggressive Humans
A. Primatology: a significant part of modern physical anthropology
1. The study of living primates, including new and old world monkey
species, as well as the great apes.
B. Primatology & The Human Brain
1. Many researchers have turned to studying our closest living relatives,
the great apes (chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans)
a) All primates make use of relatively complex communication
systems that express information and emotions
b) Chimps in particular make use of many different types of
vocalizations along with a patterned use of gestures
2. The variety of language studies with primates has clearly shown
communication skills
C. Primatology & The Primate Brain
1. A groundbreaking study in understanding the origins of human
speech came from a chance discovery of a family in Britain that had
severe speech abnormalities (FOXP2 gene)
a) This family had a genetic mutation
b) Looks like the variant found in chimps -- explains why primates
can’t speak
2. Fossil casts of Neanderthal brains (recent human relative) have
shown similar structures in their brains, thus suggesting human
speech may predate humans (Neanderthals could probably speak)
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