ANTH1001 Study Guide - Final Guide: Breastfeeding, Homo Sapiens Idaltu, Steven Goldberg
Module 1: Humanity
• Human Diversity
• Perspectives anthropology provides
• Concepts anthropologists use
• Issues anthropologists face
• All leading to addressing the issue of what being human across the world
• Radical differences around issues like abortion, sexuality, race, etc.
• Living within and amongst the people that you are working with
• Cultural relativism, culture and society
• Issues anthropologists face:
• Complex ethical and legal issues
• Anthropology and sociology brings perspective on cultural and social difference and increasingly important issues
• We are implicated as others
• We are made up of other human beings
• Larger social and cultural sense, it is hard to extract yourself from the world around you
• Globalization
• Otherness is the challenge for the 21st century (trying to get away from globalization)
• Recognizing otherness is a critical idea
• We lie in a global village where all these things come at us
• We dont live in a world where we only consider -2 things at a time, its all rushing at us
• Too many ideas escalating from one topic
• Anthropology is about inspiring a new generation of young people to be deemed other
• Margaret mead (samoa)
• Anthropology is about inspiring us to make a difference in the world
• Anthropology is what anthropologists do
• Living amongst people, learning the local language and traditions
• Anthropology is the study of human nature, human society and human past
• Social = uk
• Culture = usa
What is a human?
• Consciousness
• Member of the homo sapien species
• Body
• Morality
• Self awareness
• Culture
• Emotion, thought and feeling
• Social
A faraway familiar place
Set in Papua new ginuea
its a long way away from the people who are likely to read this book, but it is also a familiar place
mena dn women have marital tensions
am I going to meet my financials
different group of people to encounter, but not so different that we cannot enter their lives
human beings like us trying to make sense of their world
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
stereotypes = this book is to defeat typical stereotypes
So what is a human?
Biology:
• Humans have distinctive biology that is the product of evolutionary processes
• Homo sapiens is a scientific name for humans
• What we call homo sapiens, sapiens is the taxonomic term for human, the only surviving member of the human species (around 12-19
early humans
• 1997 discovery of fossilized remains in Ethiopia of an early human revealed a previously unknown subspecies of homo sapiens called
homo sapiens idaltu
• DNA
• Upright bipeds with
• Nimble hands
• Big brains (organ of the body that chews through the most oxygen 20% of oxygen intake) we are smart
• Low sexual dimorphism, we can easily reproduce, we dont have seasons
• Short faces
• Weird pelage (hair)
• Protruding fat depots
• These are often used as ways to mark status (the first 4 are often used to show our power over nature) if we go back a few hundred
years, a religious uniqueness would have been stressed
→
• Anthropacine a time in history where humans were the most impactful thing on earth (globalization/ industrialisation)
Genetics
• Humans and chimpanzee genomes (hereditary information of DNA) is 99% identical
• (umans dont evolve quickly. Key DNA mutation has big effects in humans, unlike a rat and a mouse which have a much higher rate of
DNA different but a much lower morphological differentiation
• Best understanding at present is that regulatory mechanics that control gene expressions and to development of trains such as pelvic
morphology or brain size
• Take home message?
• Genetically and biologically, humans are NOT that special
• We share 65% of genetics with a banana (we are about half a banana) ^^^
• Brains are unlikely to get substantially larger due to reproductively females have decided how big brain size is (efficient brain size)
• Pelvic is not going to get large nor are bones going to get stronger
• If the brain gets larger, the brain needs more 02, more 02 is more heat expulsion, calorie intake, etc.
• If our brain was to get larger it would cause huge complications on environment
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
What makes us human? Comparing with non human primates
• Simple comparison, chimps knuckle walk, humans are bipedal, chimps build nests, humans dont,
• But could do comparison with snails and the differences only make the point that whatever you want to choose to reveal differences is
really an exercise in making meaning, which can change whenever we like, in other words, humans control the comparison to make the
point
• Where would we draw the line? If we say that humans can sraw and snails and babies cant draw, does that mean that babies are not
human?
• Two biggest differences are
→
imitation, ability to see things from another perspective (the theory of mind)
• We are able to tell when people are being sarcastic for example (knowing they mean something different to what they say)
What makes us human? Cognition, communication and language
• Nonhuman primates do have a limited theory of mind
• Nonhuman primates can engage in simple forms of shared attention and social referencing
• Monkeys and apes appear unable to recognize what other knows, cant perceive when another holds a false belief and have limited
knowledge of own thoughts
• Humans lie and its not easy to know when we lie
• Monkeys and apes can recognize many behaviors but cannot vocally produce much
• Is is thought that as human social environments became more complex communication that required complex vocalization evolved
(language is symbolic behavior, all about symbols, the capacity to develop complex symbolic behaviour
What makes us human?
Culture
• Culture is the full range of learned human behaviors and perceptions
• Culture is knowledge building, conservation and transfer
• Shared amongst individuals and across generations independently of genetic inheritance
• Theyre animals have culture but what seems to set humans apart from animals is the role culture played in human evolutionary
development
• The ability to share complex information and traditions seems to have been a critical factor…
Society
• A group of people with persistent relations, often ties to a territory, sharing a culture and tied by laws and political institutions
• In comparison to non human primates, it is out childrearing that sets us apart
• Human parents share childrearing efforts with others in their social groups – important because of long period of juvenile development
• Humans are able to communicate complex demands and cooperative ideas
• It is the scale of this that distinguishes humans from animals
Human nature?
• Humans are a biology, but human nature is also a philosophical and existential issue
• The drive to distinguish is as much as the question as the actuality
• It is not the fulfillment of a pre-established, formal template for the human species
• And it is not the fulfillment of being born into a society or culture
Shift from what humans are, to what humans do
Being human is something we work at
We perpetually, never endingly, make ourselves
To inquire into human life is thus to explore the conditions of possibility in a world peopled by beings whose identities are
established, in the first place, not by received species, or culture specific attributes but by relational accomplishment
-tim ingold
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Module 1: humanity: human diversity, perspectives anthropology provides, concepts anthropologists use, all leading to addressing the issue of what being human across the world. Issues anthropologists face: radical differences around issues like abortion, sexuality, race, etc, cultural relativism, culture and society. Living within and amongst the people that you are working with. Issues anthropologists face: complex ethical and legal issues, anthropology and sociology brings perspective on cultural and social difference and increasingly important issues, we are implicated as others, we are made up of other human beings, globalization. Living amongst people, learning the local language and traditions. What is a human: consciousness, member of the homo sapien species, body, morality, culture, emotion, thought and feeling. Low sexual dimorphism, we can easily reproduce, we don(cid:495)t have seasons. Short faces years, a religious uniqueness would have been stressed : anthropacine a time in history where humans were the most impactful thing on earth (globalization/ industrialisation)
