Understanding Human Evolution, Culture, and Society

Mosaid Evolution

Mosaic Evolution: Modular evolution comes from paleontology that evolutionary change takes place in some body parts or systems without simultaneous changes in other parts.

Origins of Bipedalism

Bipedalism: Locomotion where organisms move by two limbs or legs, such as walking, running, or hopping.

Neanderthals

Neanderthals: Lived over 120,000 years ago. They are an extinct species in the genus Homo and were among the earliest fossils. The term is sometimes used to describe an uncivilized, unintelligent, or uncouth person.

Microevolution

Microevolution: Evolutionary change within a species or small group of organisms, especially over a short period.

The Four Evolutionary Processes:

• Natural selection
• Mutation
• Gene flow
• Genetic drift

Mutation

Mutation: Natural variations in human genes that cause phenotypic changes.

Gene Flow

Gene Flow: Refers to the exchange of genes between two or more populations.

Genetic Drift

• Increases genetic variation between groups due to unrepresentative proportions of alleles.
• Represents random changes in gene frequencies from one generation to another.

Phenotypic Plasticity

Phenotypic Plasticity: The ability of one genotype to produce more than one phenotype when exposed to different environments.

Sedentism

Sedentism, or settling in one location, became increasingly common for farmers.

Broad-Spectrum Foraging

Broad-spectrum foraging is a theory that views domestication as directly related to climate change.

Consequences of Domestication and Sedentism

Domestication and sedentism had drawbacks, but societies became too dependent to return to foraging.

• Land was no longer freely available.
• Populations grew.
• Diseases were more readily spread.
• Surplus production of food became possible.
• Social stratification and social complexity increased.

Surplus Production

Surplus production involved producing more food than the bare minimum needed.

Classes

• Ranked groups within hierarchically stratified complex societies.
• Defined primarily in terms of wealth, occupation, or other economic criteria.

Prime Movers

Prime movers, or single factors, have been developed to explain the rise of complex societies.

These are sometimes seen as applying to the rise of all complex societies across the globe.

Prime movers include:

Domestication that supposedly gave people free time to invent complex social rules.

Irrigation needs in dry areas that required a complex bureaucracy to develop and manage complex canal systems.

Population pressure from growing populations that led to the rise of leaders to manage the populations.

Social conflict within societies.

Culture vs. Cultures

Culture is one person's own experiences with the place they live and grow up in, while cultures is other people's culture and how you perceive their culture through your own cultural lens.

Socialization/Enculturation

• Socialization: Infants are born without any culture, and this refers to the process of acquiring culture.
• Enculturation: Is the process of being socialized to a particular culture. You were enculturated to your specific culture by the people who raised you.

Cultural Relativism and Ethnocentrism

• Cultural relativism: The idea that a person's beliefs, values, and practices should be understood based on the person's own culture.
• Ethnocentrism: Evaluation of other cultures according to preconceptions originating in the standards and customs of one's own culture.

Participant Observation

Participant observation is the method anthropologists use to gather information by:

• Living as closely as possible to the people whose culture they are studying.
• Participating in their lives as much as possible.
• Can involve a stark contrast to the relatively comfortable life of the anthropologist.

Effects of Fieldwork

Ethnographers often experience anxiety and culture shock in the early stages of fieldwork.

Culture shock: The feeling, akin to panic, that develops in people living in an unfamiliar society when they cannot understand what is happening around them.