Anthro Ch. 7, 8, 11 PP

What does it mean to be a primate, and why does it matter to anthropology?

- "primate" derives from the Latin word for "of the first rank," implying that these creatures are a higher order than other life forms - they share a common ancestry that split from other mammals some 65 million years ago, and live in mostly tropical and subtropical areas of the Americas, Africa, and Asia

Anatomically-Modern Humans

- 200,000 and 25,000 years ago, archaic features in the fossil record change, including changes in morphology as well as dramatic changes in the types and complexity of tools and other aspects of material culture and behavior - language as we know it probably appeared with anatomically modern humans - 35,000-12,000 years ago, there may have been at least two species or subspecies of humans on the planet -- today all anthropologists agree that only one human species remains and all humans today belong to the same subspecies of Homo

Archaic Humans

- 500,000 - 300,00 years ago, changes in morphology and material culture suggests emergence of one or more new variety of Homo -- classic H. erectus traits of robustness decreased and cranial capacity increased -- Brow ridges became smaller and more separated, with reduced postorbital constriction: an indention of the sides of the cranium behind the eyes - these humans were known for making tools that were more refined and specialized than previous tools, and individuals with these traits are referred to as archaic humans - the oldest archaic human specimens are found in Africa. Their geolographic spread includes the Middle East, Mediterranean, East Asia, Siberia, and Eastern and Western Europe

Hominodiea

- African apes (gorillas and chimpanzees), Asian apes (orangutans and gibbons) and humans -- all except gibbons have larger bodies and brains - apes and humans don't have tails but have adaptations in the upper body permitting full rotation of the arm and greater hand movement, allowing them to hang and swim among branches - the initial adaptation for swinging from limb to limb (so-called brachiation) eventually led to bipedal walking, unique to the human lineage

Costs and benefits:

- An analytical approach that considers the caloric cost of obtaining food and the calories obtained - the basic economic model (cash in and out) measures energy expenditure and can help determine whether a certain behavior gives back to the organism what it expended

The ability to define a condition or behavior as a psychiatric disturbance reflects great social power, and can have serious consequences for an individual's life and experience of self.

- Because different societies define mental illnesses differently based on varying cultural understandings of individual psychology, treatments differ accordingly. - Western psychological terms, notions, and illnesses are globalizing rapidly. Such practices, which are usually based on an assumption of "hyper-individualism," destabilize indigenous notions and ways of treating mental illness in social context.

Alcoholism

- Between the founding of the U.S. and the early 20th century, excessive alcohol consumption was viewed as a sin or sign of weak character. - By the 1980s, American society, especially health insurance companies and healthcare providers, had begun to view it as a disease. - Consider the vast difference in social meaning between a "drunk" and a "person who suffers from alcoholism."

The emergence of genetic research as a branch of biology has led many Americans to believe it is "all in our genes" or our biological "hardwiring"

- Biology, genes, and hormones are used to explain sexual orientation, criminality, IQ, wealth, education, and who becomes CEO of a Fortune 500 company. - Anthropologists are skeptical of grandiose claims about biological destiny. - A full appreciation of the human condition requires that we avoid thinking of ourselves as either cultural or biological beings, but through a new and emerging paradigm that emphasizes humans as biocultural beings.

What did walking on two legs and having big brains mean for the early hominins?

- Bipedalism is one of the determining traits of hominins and is directly linked with our emergence and separation from the apes - increased brain size is also significant as it has enabled us to acquire a degree of social complexity and tool use not seen in other apes - there is a difference between a bipedal-allowing anatomy that still enables the use of four limbs for movement and climbing, and a bipedal-enforcing anatomy, as modern humans have

Similformes, include three superfamilies:

- Ceboidea, or monkeys of the Americas - Cercopithecoidea, or Asian and African monkeys; - Hominoidea, or apes and humans

Therapeutic Processes

- Clinical therapeutic process: the healing process in which medicines have an active ingredient assumed to address either the cause or the symptom of a disorder. - Symbolic therapeutic process: a healing process that restructures the meanings of the symbols surrounding the illness, particularly during a ritual. - Social support therapeutic process: a healing process that involves a patient's social networks, especially close family members and friends, who typically surround the patient during an illness. - Placebo effect: a healing process that persuades a patient that he or she has been given a powerful medicine, even though the "medicine" has no active medical ingredient.

New Human Ancestral Species

- Discovery of Australopithecus sediba in 2010, and soon afterm Homo naledi in South Africa -- details remain ambiguous, but these finds represent new branches in our family tree

The Material Culture and Behavior of Archaic Humans

- Evidence for archaic human material culture and behavior comes from Neanderthal sites dating to 300,000 and 50,000 years ago. -- More complex tools appear, as well as evidence of organized group hunts. Regular use of controlled fire was widespread, and we see evidence of shelters of wood and possibly hide. -- 200,000 years ago, the Levallois toolmaking technique appears, yielding higher-quality blades capable of many more uses. - All of these changes gave archaic humans improved access to nutrition, and new pressures on the body to process the richer foods.

Increasing Medicalization in the United States

- Financial: everyone from pharmaceutical companies to health insurers is better situated to profitably treat disease than "moral failings." - Medicalization increases the social standing and authority of doctors. - Today, Americans are more comfortable seeking scientific solutions to social problems.

Hominin Fossil evidence

- Fossil evidence of ancestral hominins comes from Africa during the end of MIocene epoch (22 to 5.3 mya) -- were they undoubtedly hominin? Debate continues... -- the study of morphological differences in fossils often results in taxonomic designations through the differences - Numerous identifiable hominins emerged during the APilocene epoch *5.3-2.5 mya) and the Pleistocene (2.5mya to 11,500 years ago). The evolutionary relationships between these and earlier Miocene hominoids remains unclear -- they are Australopithecus, Paranthropus, adn Homo

Explanatory Models of Illness

- Healers and patients often have different explanatory models of illness: explanations of what is happening to the patient's body by the patient, his family, or a healthcare practitioner, each of whom may have a different model of what is happening. - Kleinman's research demonstrates that considering both the patient's and the doctor's explanatory models of illness will likely result in the most effective medical solutions.

How does healing happen?

- Healing is a complex biocultural process. - Medical anthropologists recognize four distinct therapeutic processes: -- Clinical therapeutic processes --Symbolic therapeutic processes --Social support therapeutic processes -- Placebo effect

Medicalization

- How illness is defined depends on individual, cultural context, and on historical context. - Conditions that aren't recognized as illness can become so through medicalization: the process of viewing or treating as a medical concern conditions that were not previously understood as medical problems.

What do we mean by health and illness?

- How optimally functioning does a person have to be to consider him- or herself healthy rather than ill? - The concept of "sick role" helps answer this question. - Sick role: the culturally defined agreement between patients and family members to acknowledge that the patient is legitimately sick.

The 2009 Swine Flu epidemic

- In Mexico, the government closed schools and emptied the streets. Residents wore surgical masks (despite the fact that swine flu is most often transmitted via handshake). - In the United States, the CDC and White House issued daily briefings. Anti-immigration politicians used swine flu as an argument for closing the US border with Mexico. - China banned the importation of American and Mexican pork products. Swine flu has nothing to do with pigs. - Egypt decided to kill the nation's pigs. Killing Egypt's pigs significantly impacted the stigmatized Coptic Christian minority.

Saving Global Health Problems

- In an increasingly globalized world, medical anthropologists emphasize that all medical systems are plural systems. These plural systems can be part of the solution to global health problems. - Medical anthropologists play a role in understanding and preventing the spread of disease, including viral epidemics like HIV and Ebola.

Cultural context

- In parts of Mali, infection rates of schistosomiasis are so high that it is not locally recognized as "illness." - Blood in the urine is a symptom experienced so frequently by adolescent males that they associate it with the transition to adulthood, not parasites. - People rarely worry about symptoms that are common in their environment

Multiple Dispersals models (MD)

- In this models, which is currently the strongest, Homo spread around western, central, and southern Eurasia, with back and forth gene flow across Africa and Eurasia. Other dispersal patterns considered include: -- 800,000 to 400,000 years ago, influencing Eurasian populations through interbreeding, affecting genetic patterns in the genus Homo. -- 150,000 to 80,000 years ago, also affecting genetic patterns in genus Homo. -- 60,000 years ago, influencing the genetic patterns of central Eurasian and African populations. -- 50,000 years ago, populations move into northern Eurasia, Australia, the Pacific Islands, and eventually the Americas (15,000 years ago) via migration. - The MD model predicts that African populations would have had forceful and recurrent effects on the genetic characteristics of humans over the past 1.7 million years, and that gene flow would be an important recurrent dynamic, with groups living closer to each other most affected by that flow.

Anthropologists have sought to mend the divide between biology and culture by considering the human mind: emergent qualities of consciousness and intellect that manifest themselves through thought, emotion, perception, will, and imagination.

- Increasing biocultural evidence indicates that even our most basic cognition does not happen separately from our bodies. - External factors include social context and culture, with which the nervous system interacts through individual cognition. - Cultural differences in perception suggest that mental development varies with cultural practices. - The mind manifests itself through the whole person, throughout an individual's lifetime.

Can we afford to be sick?

- Individual acknowledgment of illness is both subjective and incredibly variable. Earl Koos's 1940s study of American illness showed the following: --One respondent described feeling so bad that she could "curl up and die" but was not "sick" because her family lacked money to visit a doctor and the kids needed care: "most of us can't be sick—even when we need to be," she concluded. -- Others might have sufficient wealth to be "sick" often, seeking medical treatment for even the most minor ailments.

Illness and disease

- Medical doctors and their patients often have very different views, with patients focusing on illness and doctors on disease. - Disease: the purely physiological condition of being sick, usually determined by a physician. - Illness: the psychological and social experience the patient has of a disease.

Hominins share in common several unique traits:

- Modifications in the lower body, upper arms, and backbone that make them capable of bipedal locomotion: the use of two legs rather than four for movement - Smaller canine teeth than other members of the Hominidae family - A forward-placed foramen magnum (the opening at the base of the skull where the spinal column enters and connects to the brain) to support bipedalism - a reduced Canine/ Premolar- 3 shearing complex

How do Behavior patterns among monkeys and apes compare with humans?

- Monkey behavior patterns and morphology differ in key respects from both ape and human patters - understanding how these patterns vary among actual primates requires use of a comparative approach - macaques and chimpanzees offer a useful comparison

The Neanderthals and Denisovans

- Much attention has been directed to fossils of Homo neanderthalensis, dating from about 300,000 to 30,000 years ago -- Neanderthals were stockier than modern humans, but in our range of height and weight - Discovery of a coeval archaic human dating to 41,000 years in Denisova cave adds new evidence and interest -- Denisovans may have been similarly robust, but sparseness of skeletal evidence prevents any morphological description -- most of what we know about them comes from analyzing their mitochondrial DNA

Ningerum Sick roles

- Ningerum villagers had a very different perception of the sick role. - Believing the illness to be caused by sorcery, they expressed concern and spent long hours with Welsch to comfort him and remove any suspicion that they were involved with the sorcery. - The Ningerum are expected to demonstrate the severity of the symptoms as a call to action.

Studies of people with psychological problems across the globe question whether the psychological dynamics observed in Western countries are universal

- Numerous conditions vary greatly in their incidence in different cultures, suggesting that culture has a profound effect on the ways humans think about their psychology and display mental disorders. - Cross- cultural differences require us to approach mental illness in a culturally relative way. - Psychological abnormality is always defined culturally because what is considered abnormal is based on socially accepted norms. Not all societies define the same conditions as psychologically abnormal, nor do they necessarily share the same mental illnesses. There are well-known examples of so-called culture-bound syndrome: a mental illness unique to a culture.

Cultural expressions of sick role

- Our "natural" behavior of staying home from work or school, in bed, with chicken soup is a very specific social response to illness. - Anthropologist Robert Welsch contracted malaria while conducting fieldwork among the Ningerum people of Papua New Guinea. - He then followed the American norm of medicine, fluids, seclusion, and rest.

Chimpanzees

- Pan troglodytes (common chimpanzee) and Pan paniscus (Bonobo) are found across Central Africa -- they are primarily fruit eaters -- both species live in mixed sex communities, and males are more often more dominant over females - common chimp males can attain high rank from alliances with other males. Competition can cause injuries and even death - common chimp female rank can result in improved access to food and sometimes higher rates of infant survivorship

Hominidae has two subfamilies:

- Ponginae: the Asian derived subfamily of Hominidae to which the Orangutan belongs - Homininae: the African subfamily which includes humans, chimpanzees and gorillas

How should we make sense of biological and cultural factors that jointly shape our bodily experiences?

- Since the 1920s cultural anthropologists have struggled with questions about the relative importance of our human biology compared to the profound effects that culture has on individuals. - Tylor (1871) and Morgan (1877) thought biology could explain why indigenous peoples had such modest toolkits to work with when compared with Europeans and white Americans. -- Their answer: the bodies and minds of "primitive" people were not as developed as those of Europeans.

social expectations

- Social expectations related to illness vary with class, gender, age, employment, and lifestyle. - People in poverty usually work more physically demanding jobs, eat less healthy food, and are less likely to seek medical care.

Primate suborders -- taxonomists identify 2 suborders in the order Primates:

- Strepsirrhini, consisting of prosimians; - Haplorrhini, which include all species of tarsiers, monkeys, apes, and humans

Interrelationship of Three species

- Strong fossil evidence suggests Neanderthals, Denisovans, and modern humans overlapped over a period of 10,000 years or more -- some evidence exists of Nranderthals using modern human-like tool kits and modern humans using Neanderthal-like tool kits - The relationship among these varieties of Homo has grown more complicated and intriguing as ancient human genomics has developed technological innovations in sequencing, informatics, and improved recovery of mitochondrial DNA from fossilized bones less than 100,000 years old -- findings suggest interbreeding and gene flow between Neanderthals, Denisovans, and modern humans

Tarsiers, Ceboidea, and Cercopithecoidea

- Tarsiers are found in SE Asia -- small bodied, nocturnal, possess extreme leaping abilities, and live in small groups - Ceboidea, or New World Monkeys, range from Southern Mexico to Southern Argentina -- most are arboreal, have a prehensile tail - Cercopithecoidea, or Old World monkeys, are found in Asia and Africa -- baboons and macaques, Active in the daytime, arboreal and terrestrial (living on the ground)

Medical Pluralism

- The coexistence of distinct medical traditions with different cultural roots in the same cultural community. - Indian Ayurvedic practitioners diagnose health problems by reading the pulse and mixing specific herbs. - Practitioners also use Sinhalese (referring to the people of Sri Lanka) medical ideas in a mediation of Ayurveda and local Sinhala medicine. - These practitioners have begun to include thermometers and standard Western medicines along with their herbal preparations.

How do we know if the first humans were cultural beings, and what role did culture play in their evolution?

- The cultural capacity of hominids emerged over a long period of time and interacted with biology to meet selective demands through biocultural evolution: the interaction of cultural capacity and biology to meet selective demands. - Humans approached environmental challenges with more than their hands and teeth during the Paleolithic(literally, "old stone"), which refers to a long epoch in human prehistory from about 2.5 mya to 10,000 years ago, and roughly corresponds with the Pleistocene geological epoch.

How and why do doctors and other healthcare practitioners gain social authority?

- The prestige associated with the medical profession is relatively new. In the 18th and 19th centuries doctors had a lower social status. - What social processes privileged the doctor's perceptions over the patient's throughout the 20th century? -- According to Paul Starr (1982) 20th-century physicians in the U.S. used their status to increase their incomes, respect, and the exclusive right to determine medical treatments. Organizations like the American Medical Association gave doctors greater control over training doctors of the future. - But the wealth and respect of American doctors are not evident in most other countries' medical communities.

What can anthropology contribute to addressing global health concerns?

- The themes of understanding and actively addressing global problems are key concerns of contemporary medical anthropology. - In the 1950s, medical anthropologists assisted with an early attempt to reduce infant mortality in Latin America through public health programs. - By the 1970s, the idea that global diseases could be eradicated by the year 2000 seemed justified. - However, the emergence of new diseases like HIV and Ebola and the reemergence of older ones created a continued need for medical anthropology.

Changes during the Paleolithic -- beginning with H. erectus, we know culture played a greater role in their lives than earlier hominins because:

- Their diets changed. Increased brain and body size meant higher metabolic rates, requiring more and higher-quality food. - Their tools changed. Early Homo used Olduwan tools, allowing processing of animals and plants. About 1.6-1.4 mya, Acheulean tools, with better edges and different styles, appear in the fossil record. - They used fire, which enables consumption of a wider variety of foods and a higher energy return on foods eaten and marks the beginning of cooking. - Cooperative behaviors increased.

A biological approach combines cultural and biological insights

- Understanding that the most basic matters of human cognition and psychology are not simply the function of our biological hardwiring, we can productively understand more broadly how all matters of disease, health, and illness are powerfully shaped by culture.

The Significance of Culture

- We cannot say with certainty when it appeared. -- Human activity is based on social interdependence and intensive cooperation, which depends on communication. -- Cultural meanings allow for group memory, establishing patterned ways of doing things, and metaphysical thought. - By 50,000 years ago, anatomically modern humans created images on cave shelter walls and rocky outcrops that some scholars interpret as art. -- We have to be careful about using present-day views and experiences to interpret that artistic expression because there are some dilemmas involved understanding the production and significance of this ancient art.

Genus Paranthropus

- a cluster of hominin fossils dating to 2.7 and 1 mya differ in morphology from australopithecines - Paranthropines had larger brains, broad, "dish-shaped" faces, small foreheads, widely flared cheeckbones, a pronounces sagittal crest - they exhibit megadontia: the characteristic of having large molar teeth relative to body size - they ranged from 1.3-1,4 m in height; all three species were bipedal - they probably lived in open woodland or savannah landscapes and were almost certainly tool users

Genus Australopithecus

- a span of over 2 million years in the fossil record - most researchers hypothesize that the human lineage emerged from the australopithecines: -- australopithecines were between 1.2-1.4m tall, exhibited a fairly high degree of sexual dimorphism, with males larger than females, and were gracile: a body of slender build -- tghet gad relatively large brain sizes and a gripping hand. They may have processed food as early as 3.3 mya - arm length suggests a partially arboreal existence, although they also had bipedal stature

Anatomically-Modern Homo sapians

- anatomically-modern Homo sapiens usher in radically different social behavior -- size of human social groups grow, becoming more sedentary - divisions of labor create new social roles -- agriculture enables population growth and environment change - -cultural differences between groups increase - although certain elements resemble primates, no single primate exhibits them all - no primate species mediates these relationships and behaviors so thoroughly through culture

The odds of finding new species...

- are very small, given the scarcity of fossils -- but paleoanthropology (the study the fossilized remains of ancient hominids to shed light on their biological and behavioral evolution) is very active right now -- advancements in genomic science and technology, including the use of DNA evidence recovered from fossils in the lab, have had a a major influence on this field

Conflict and fighting

- because it superficially resembles human patterns of fighting, chimpanzee and bonobo intergroup fighting has received a great deal of attention - researchers have reported some incidents of intercommunity conflict that end with death - groups of males circulating around the community's geographic perimeters have been seen in most populations -- a kind of border patrol. But patterns of perimeter patrolling are different from the broader patterns of aggression and violence found in human communities

What does studying monkeys and apes really illustrate about human distinctiveness?

- claims of morphological, genetic, and behavioral terms have proliferated - different discipline answer this question differently -- it is more than listing behavioral characteristics, checking off similarities and differences - a holistic and comparative anthropological approach is needed

limitations of cost-benefit analysis

- cost-benefit analysis cannot deal with great complexity and it is difficult to identify direct causal links between genes and behavior - ecological conditions create a range of selection pressures for which certain behavioral responses might be appropriate - some behaviors will be more successful than others and exist along a spectrum. The spectrum establishes the potential for a trait or behavior

Bipedalism

- currently, bipedalism is seen as a consequence of multiple, independent selections: -- it aids carrying objects -- it benefits hunting -- it allows upright reaching -- it aids vigilance and visual surveillance -- it aids long-distance walking and running -- it aids heat regulation - no single explanation is entirely satisfactory, probably because evolutionary processes have overlapping dimensions and complex effects on any species

Who were the first humans and where did they live?

- during the Pleistocene epoch our lineage began to spread out of Africa and populate other corners of the Earth - Homo erectus appeared about 1.8 mya. They had human-like body proportions and height, lived their lives on the ground as obligatory bipeds, appear to have cared for their young and the weak, made and used stone tools, controlled fire, and may have even had some kind of simple proto-language

Genus Homo

- emerged from one australopithecine lineage about 3 to 2 mya - most hominin fossils younger than about 1.8 mya are considered members of this genus -- disagreement persists about how many species they actually represent, or even if some early cases are members of Homo or Australopithecus - large cranial capacity, competent bipeds - they made and used stone tools, called Olduwan tools: rocks that were modified to produce sharp flakes and edged choppers

Bonobo social and sexual behavior

- female bonobos are generally dominant over males -- they display dominance by dragging objects to get the attention of others - dominance interactions rarely lead to serious fighting. Conflicts are resolved with non-reproductive sexual behavior - male bonobo dominance hierarchies do exist, but male rank is linked to the rank of his mother - there is little evidence that bonobo males can effectively restrict female mating choices, since the females are usually dominant over males

Shared characteristics

- general intelligence - locomotive flexibility and a collarbone which provide greater mobility; - longer gestation times and childhoods which often involves training to live in complex social groups

What are the basic patterns of primate behavioral diversity, and under what conditions did they develop?

- in creating a comparative baseline for understanding humans, anthropologists look for three kinds of behavioral patterns in primates: - primate-wide trends; - huminoid-wide trends - unique human characteristics

Increased cranial capacity

- increased cranial capacity in hominins over several million years afforded greater brain power, which meant increased metabolic costs for the body - all species of homo are omnivores, but it is likely that expanding the amount of meat consumed in the diet helped meet the added energy cost -- the consumption of meat is supported by findings in fossil sites, but it was a small portion of early diets - abundances and the relative ease of gathering roots, tubers, nuts, and fatty fruits as sources of high quality nutrition made them staple elements of their diets

The "missing link"?

- is one of these early species the "missing link?" NO. -- deciding which one is impossible: the fossil record is incomplete -- evolutionary theory rejects a "link" -- this assumes a linear series of relationships, which is not how species evolve -- what we do have are many "missing links." and what paleoanthropologists are looking for are evolutionary relationships between existing hominins - Paleoanthropologists are still working through who our most direct ancestor is

Comparing Humans and Chimpanzees: commonalities

- living in community - division into subgroups and types of relationships between individuals in communities are similar - male-to-male binding in aggression contexts, social use of sex, hunting - sexual aggression, mate guarding, and aggression between communities might superficially seem like rape, marriage laws, and war in humans

Homo erectus

- looks a bit like us... but thicker bones, a more robust skeleton, and a differently shaped cranium -- some of the fossils also have a sagittal keel: a raised area in the mid-cranium - found throughout Africa, Europe, India, Indonesia, and China - the taxonomic and the debate continues today -- long assumed to have evolved out of H. habilis, recent finds increasing H. habilis' temporal range suggest co-existence -- the sparse nature of the fossil record and new findings and evidence challenge existing interpretations

Macaques

- macaques are widely dispersed, generalists, and live in groups -- males leave their birth groups, females stay with female relatives -- this particular arrangement is known as a matrifocal unit: a cluster of individuals generally made up of related females - Dominance relations among macaques are closely aligned with sex -- macaques have a unique ranking system, in which female groups can be dominant - male macaques also have relationships involving dominance of one individual over another to help them resolve and negotiate disputes. Males move between groups and their rank is fragile - sexual behavior varies considerably. Most females mate with more than one adult male, sometimes with all males in a group. Many are seasonal breeders

About ethnoprimatology

- many cultures around the world have strong and variable connections to primates, often expressed in religious beliefs, local attitudes, and informal, everyday interactions - ethnoprimatologists study primate behaviors and how humans think about them, as well as under what conditions the different species come into contact with each other

Human distinctiveness

- most of human evolutionary history has involved humans living in small groups of mostly genetically-related individuals, cooperating together in foraging, defense, and raising the young - about 2 million years ago, these early humans began moving out of Africa and encountered new environmental challenges - to meet those challenges, those humans relied on tools and basic forms of social cooperation and alliances

socioecological pressures on primates come in four primary forms:

- nutrition, or the necessity of sufficient food and water. - locomotion, or the necessity to move around in an environment - predation, or the necessity to avoid predators - competition, within and between a species

about dominance hierarchy

- often hierarchy is obvious, and an "alpha animal" has priority over other members of the group -- in these situations, individuals have priority over others except those who outrank them - dominance is a social role, not an inborn trait, which an individual occupies for a period in their life -- males are often dominant over females, but in some circumstances females are dominant over males

Biocultural evolution and early humans

- paleoanthropologists hypothesize that among the early hominins bipedalism and increasing brain power, with associated changes in diet, tool use, and social relations, contributed to evolutionary changes that led to the alter forms of Homo - If true, this hypothesis points to something powerful and new: the interaction of biology and culture through evolution to meet selective challenges

strategy

- patterned behaviors that maximize net energy gains and minimize costs to support reproductive success - kin selection: the behavioral strategy favoring of your close genetic relatives -- when an individual receiving a benefit from another individual is related, then their shared genotype benefits

Primates and anthropology

- primate studies within anthropology began in the 1950s -- early thinking held that human social behavior evolved from primates - biological anthropologists helped create primatology as an interdisciplinary field - anthropologically-specific approaches to primates are often approached through study of living primates as a window into the evolution of social behaviors among humans -- Eduardo Fernandez- Duque

Grooming

- primates create affiliations and avoid agonism through grooming: touching another individual to remove dirt, insects, and debris, usually as a way for individuals to bond

Common Behavioral Patterns

- primates share a number of common behavioral patterns, all of which are connected to the requirements of living in groups and negotiating social relationships - mother-infant bond - affiliation and grooming - dominance hierarchies - disersal - cooperation and conflict

Comparing humans and Macaques: Differences

- significantly different body morphologies - how we move around through locomotion - the size of our brains - the scale and complexity of social organization - significant differences between male and female life patterns, which most human societies don't have

Socioecological pressure

- socioecological pressures act individually on an organism -- differences in behavior emerge out of the ways organisms respond to those particularities

Comparing humans and chimpanzees: significant questions about social patterns yield different possibilities:

- some patterns are analogous: similar in appearance or function, not the same - some patterns are homologous: similar due to shared ancestry - some patterns are not even comparable because they are totally distinct behaviors

Our close relationship with Great Apes

- the Ebola virus episode of 2014 is a tangible reminder of the close relationship between the great apes and our species - we share an extensive evolutionary history as primates - biological anthropology encompasses the study of primates with a goal of identifying what in human behavior is general to primates, what is restricted to a few kinds of primates and humans, and what is uniquely human

Comparing Humans and Macaques: commonalities

- the existence of mixed groups of males and females; social interactions around kin relations - widespread dispersal based on remarkable adaptability - similarities in dominance hierarchies, including how we establish and maintain them - both species are able to survive in diverse habitats

Do non-human primates have culture?

- the idea that nonhuman primates have "culture" has become more popular -- some non-human species of primates exhibit patterns of behavioral variation across groups which are not reducible to genetic or to ecological factors - use of the term "culture" to describe these behavior patterns is controversial -- there is a tendency to reduce culture to socially-transmitted learning - reducing culture to social transmission of behaviors and variation across groups vastly oversimplifies the role of language and symbolic abstraction in culture

Dispersal

- the life cycle of a primate involves several main stages: -- growth and development; -- reproductive maturity -- old age and death - as they enter reproductive maturity, selected members leave the group, referred to as dispersal: a pattern of one sex leaving the group they were born into about the time of reproductive maturity

Mother-infant bond

- the mother-infant bond is a long period of infant dependency -- the infant relies totally on others for its nutrition, movement, regulation of body temperature, and protection from predators - mothers and other relatives have a clear evolutionary interest in ensuring the offspring will reach maturity - caregiving is a learned behavior, gained through individual experience and observations of how other group members handle infants

The Big Picture

- the rarity of primate and hominin fossils leaves us much to learn about the lives of ancient hominins and their relationship to us - while fossils, genetics, and morphology are critical elements of biological anthropology, alone they will never give us the holistic picture of humans that anthropologists strive to develop, because we also know that culture played a critical roles in the evolution of the first humans.

Where anatomically-modern humans actually originated has led to the development of three-explanatory models:

- the recent african origin model proposes that modern humans arose as a new species in Africa between 200,000 and 180,000 years ago, during the late Pleistocene - The Multiregional evolution model proposes that modern humans are only the most recent version of a single species, Homo sapiens, that had been in Africa, Asia, and Europe for nearly 2 million years - The Multiple DIspersal model (MD) argues that modern humans left Africa in multiple waves, and edges out the others giver the current fossil and DNA evidence. In this model the initial movement out of Africa occurs approximately 1.8 mya

Behavioral Ecology

- the study of behavior from ecological and evolutionary perspectives -- ecological conditions challenge organisms, and behavior evolves.. - ...yet, primates behaviors also involve complex interactions between: - morphology, learning and experience, environmental circumstances, and chance occurrences

Hominini:

- the tribe to which humans and our direct human ancestors belong. Referred to as hominins - In this classification, all hominins are hominines, but the reverse is not true: only some hominines are hominins, these being modern humans and our direct lineage

Srepsirrhini

- there are 2 subgroups of strepsirrhini, or prosimians; lemurs and a group that includes the lorises and galagos - strepsirrhines have smaller body sizes than other primates, a smaller brain- to - body-size ration (still larger than most other mammals), and a keener sense of smell (olfaction) than other primates - Most Strepsirrhinesw are arboreal (living in the trees) and nocturnal (living at night)

Haplorrhini

- there are two infraorders of Haplorrhini: Tarsilformes and Simliformes - Haplorrhines have larger bodies and larger brain-to-body-size rations, lack a wet nose, and have more brain devoted to vision that olfaction. They show greater diversity in lifeways (tree-living, ground living, and a mix of both), so their skeletons are more varied

Anthropologists classify archaic humans in one of two ways:

- they may all be put into one category of archaic Homo sapiens, a broad category that assumes that we ourselves, evolved directly out of this group - Or separated into two different species, Homo heidelbergensis and Homo neanderthalensis

The authority gap

-- The structure of American society upholds the doctor's view as the officially sanctioned one. -- The patient who has to live with the symptoms generally lacks any ability to make an official diagnosis or make a prescription. - Understanding the different perspectives of doctors and patients, and the difference between disease and illness, is a focus of medical anthropology.

Medical Anthropology

-Medical anthropology is the subfield of anthropology that studies how social, cultural, biological, and linguistic factors shape the health of human beings. - Healthcare providers and public health officials are also devoted to treating sickness and preventing the spread of disease. Medical anthropologists differ in their emphasis on illness and disease as culturally influenced subjective states.

All great apes and humans are placed together in Hominidae:

a family of primates that include the Hominids (humans and their ancestors)

affiliation

a relationship between individuals who are frequently in close association based on tolerance, even friendliness

agonistic relationships:

exists where individuals are in conflict with each other

Manual dexterity:

primates are able to live in a wide variety of environments and make use of many different resources, which manual dexterity supports

Visual activity

primates have excellent vision, and are not as reliant on smell as other animals. Their eyes face forward and are close together, and each eye captures its own information, creating stereoscopic vision, or three-dimensional vision with depth perception

Tarsiformes:

tarsiers

biocultural evolution

the interaction of cultural capacity and biology to meet selective demands.

Dominance Hierarchy

the ranking of access to desired resources by different individuals relative to one another

Ethnoprimatology

the study of the interface between human and ape communities

Being Primate and Human

there is a wide array of possibilities involved involved in being a primate and no single primate provides a totally adequate model for human evolution or behavior

tool use

tools have long been considered a hallmark of humanity, but both chimpanzee species exhibit a wide variety of tool modification and use

The fossil record shows that the genus to which we belong, Homo, emerged?

two million years ago and began to diversify between 1.8 million and 300,000 years ago, exhibiting a growing "humanness" in our ancestors

How does culture influence our experience of health and illness?

Anthropologists apply their knowledge of culture, biology, and disease to address real-world health crises