BIO ANTH EXAM III

What was the disadvantages of Agriculture?

Increased demands on the environment, pollution, conflict between populations competing for the same lands, loss of wild species through overhunting, decline of biodiversity, health costs and quality-of-life implications

Neolithic

The late Pleistocene-early Holocene culture, during which humans domesticated plants and animals.

Dog domestication

This occurred by 15,000 yBP. Dogs were some of the first of the plants and animals to be domesticated.

Paleolithic Cave Art

30,000+ year old drawings deep inside dark caves; darkness (absence of visual stimuli) allowed for focus on inner mental experience and Mainly found in SW France and N Spain. Reached climax during Magdalenian period.

Homo floresiensis

A distinct species closely related to Homo erectus and only found on the Indonesian island of Flores. They are tiny, with cranial capacities of about 380cc. Nicknamed "Hobbit" for its diminutive size, a possible new species of Homo found in Liang Bua Cave, on the Indonesian island of Flores.

Levallois Technique

A distinctive method of stone tool production used during the Middle Paleolithic, in which the core was prepared and flakes removed from the surface before the final tool was detached from the core.

Fertile Crescent

A geographical area of fertile land in the Middle East stretching in a broad semicircle from the Nile to the Tigris and Euphrates. The archaeological record suggests that farming began in southeastern Turkey by 10,500 yBP or so. By 8,000 yBP, early agricultural communities had sprung up across a vast swath extending from the eastern side of the Mediterranean across an arch-shaped zone of grasslands and open woodlands

Neandertals

Archaic H. sapiens group inhabiting Europe and the Middle East from 130,000 to 28,000 B.P.

La Chapelle-aux-Saints Neandertal

Complete Neandertal skeleton described in great detail by French Paleoanthropologist Marcellin Boule in the early 1900s. Concluded that the La Chapelle individual walked with a bent-kneed gait (as in chimpanzees that walk bipedally) and could not have been able to speak, this led to prevailing view that neandertals represented a side branch of human evolution in that they were too primitive, too stupid and too aberrant to have evolved into modern humans

The Shanidar 1 Neandertal

Complete Neandertal skeleton recovered from the Shanidar 1 site in Kurdistan, Northern Iraq dating to 45,000yBP. Typical neandertal features with wide nasal aperture, forward projecting face. Upper facial fracture might have led to blindness, severe arthritis in feet which might have been a result from constant stress from traversing mountainous terrain, upper incisors worn from use as tools for holding and grasping and missing right forearm.

What is true about dental carries?

Dental caries are also called cavities or tooth decay and Dental caries are more common in agricultural people because of their diets

Archaic Homo sapiens

Hominins dating from 500,000 to 200,000 years ago that possessed morphological features found in both Homo erectus and Homo sapiens. The earliest forms of H. sapiens emerged around 350,000 yBP. They have been found in Africa, Asia, and Europe

Early Modern Homo sapiens

Pleistocene are represented in the fossil record throughout Africa, Asia, and Europe. During this time, hominins moved into other areas of the world. It was a time of significant increases in population size, increased ability through cultural means of adapting to new and difficult landscapes, and the development of new technologies and subsistence strategies.

Rice domestication

Rice was domesticated in China around 8,000 yBP and African rice was domesticated in Africa around 2,000 yBP

What was the advantages of Agriculture?

Support for larger numbers of people, creation of surplus food and long-term food storage, especially grains

Which of the following are correct statements about the Out-of-Africa and Multiregional Continuity models?

The Multiregional Continuity model emphasizes the importance of gene flow across population boundaries and upholds that separate species of humanity never arose. The Out-of-Africa model explains the single species of living humans by emphasizing a single origin of modern people and eventual replacement of archaic H. sapiens throughout Africa, Asia, and Europe.

Agricultural Revolution

The change from food gathering to food production that occurred between around 8000 and 2000 B.C.E. Also known as the Neolithic Revolution. The time when human beings first domesticated plants and animals and no longer relied entirely on hunting and gathering

what occurred with the rise of agriculture?

The long-term trend of face, jaw, and tooth changes seen due to a flux in hominin diet in the Pleistocene continued with the new foods and new food preparation techniques that came with the rise of agriculture

Domestication

The process of converting wild animals or wild plants into forms that humans can care for and cultivate.

Mosterian Tools

The stone tool culture in which Neandertals produced tools using the Levallois technique.

Why did domestication of plants and animals occur in the Holocene?

The warmer, wetter environment supported agriculture.

Cro-magnon

These people who are identical to modern humans appeared around 40,000 years ago. They had new tools, planned hunts, and appear to have migrated from Northern Africa to Asia and Europe. a species also referred to as Homo Sapiens; seem to have replaced Neanderthals50,000-30,000 human species that made tools-known for cave painting

How did modern H. sapiens reach North and South America?

They migrated from northeastern Asia along the Bering land bridge

When did the domestication of potatoes, sweet potatoes and manioc in South America occur?

This occurred at ~5,250 yBP. These were some of the latest plants to be domesticated

What was one of the first plants to be domesticated?

This occurred by ~10,000 yBP. Millet was one of the first plants to be domesticated

When were sheep, cattle, goats and pigs domesticated?

This occurred by ~7,000 yBP. Although meat-producing animals were not the last of the plants and animals to be domesticated, they were domesticated later in time.

Height and agriculture

Thus, for some groups shorter height might have been the biological result of adopting agriculture, but for other groups it might have been an adaptation to reduced resources, as smaller bodies require less food. However, all the human populations whose height decreased because of stress also experienced elevated infectious disease loads, anemia, malnutrition, and other factors indicating that a smaller body does not confer an adaptive advantage. These people were smaller but not healthier

What technique has been used by anthropologists to understand bone density and function

Using engineering principles, anthropologists gain insight into activity patterns by examining the cross sections of long bones, such as the femur and the humerus. The shapes of long bones, like those of I-beams (building materials used for structural support), maximize both strength and ability to resist bending by distributing mass away from the center of the section.

Climate changes had profound impacts on human development and culture, what was this change?

When temperatures increased, human population increased as well. The improved environmental conditions also allowed for agriculture to develop, leading to even more population increases. This is known as the agricultural revolution.

Homo floresiensis has NOT been proposed to be

a descendant of modern humans

Neolithic demographic transition

another term for the Holocene Agricultural Revolution because of the population growth in Neolithic farming areas. Farming resulted in increasing population size, High birthrate and earlier weaning with grains cooked into mushes

Denisovans

close relatives of neanderthals also interbred with humans. A newly discovered group of archaic Homo sapiens from southern Siberia dated to between 30,000 and 50,000 years ago. distant cousins to Neandertals, from Asia 400,000-50,000 years ago.

The masticatory-functional hypothesis states that with a diet of cooked, soft-textured foods, face and jaw size

decreases, so teeth become crowded.

Plant domestication

deliberate tending of crops to gain certain desired attributes; began around 12,000 years ago along several fertile river valleys and cultural hearths. Plants were domesticated independently in at least 11 different regions, In North America, goosefoot, sumpweed, and sunflowers were farmed prior to 1,000 years ago and then largely replaced by corn and In Southwest Asia, crops that would eventually become domesticated were intensively harvested from wild stands for the first ~1,000 years

During the agricultural revolution, the overuse of scant resources led to

environmental degradation and organized warfare.

Modern H. sapiens most likely evolved

in Africa and assimilated archaic H. sapiens in Asia and Europe

Which of the following are Neandertal traits that evolved to deal with life in relatively cold climates?

increased supply of blood to facial tissues, a relatively stocky build and a large nasal aperture

Out of Africa hypothesis

modern H. sapiens first evolved in Africa and then spread to Asia and Europe, replacing the indigenous archaic H. sapiens populations (Neandertals) living on these two continents.

Assimilation Model

modern Homo sapiens evolved first in Africa from Homo erectus. Groups of Homo sapiens then spread to Europe and Asia. Once in Europe and Asia, these modern H. sapiens interbred with populations they encountered, the late archaic H. sapiens (Neandertals). This admixture is the biological foundation for modern H. sapiens living outside of Africa today.

Plant domestication began in _________ and spread through _________.

multiple locations; diffusion and migration

Iron deficiency appears in the skeleton as

porotic hyperostosis.

What distinguishes early archaic Homo sapiens from H. erectus?

reduction in skeletal robusticity

What is so modern about modern humans?

small face, small jaws, small teeth, a vertical and high forehead, a narrow nasal aperture, a narrow body trunk, and long legs.

Anemia and agriculture

studies of living agrarian populations in different settings indicate that agriculturalists' diets tend to overemphasize one plant or a couple of them, such as rice in Asia, wheat in Europe and temperate Asia, corn in the Americas, and millet or sorghum in Africa. Thus, many groups, especially in the later Holocene, received poor nutrition from an increasingly narrow range of foods.

What aspect of Neandertal culture supports their intelligence?

symbolic burial rituals

Biological consequences of agricultural revolution

the adoption of agriculture resulted in the development and spread of infectious disease and a reduction in health generally

Population pressure

the beginning of agriculture coincided with an increase in the number and especially the sizes of villages. As human population sizes grew all over the world, people likely needed more food than hunting and gathering could provide.

Çatalhöyük

the early agriculture-based settlements of Jericho and Çatalhöyük, in Israel and Turkey, respectively, grew from tiny villages consisting of a few huts to the first cities, containing several or more thousands of people living in close, cramped settings.

Agriculture Affect in Human Biology (skull, teeth and postcranial area)

the face and jaws have continually reduced in size and robusticity, reflecting a general decrease in the demand placed on the jaws and teeth as culture became increasingly complex and foodstuffs changed.

Multiregional continuity hypothesis

transition to modernity as having taken place regionally and without involving replacement.

What do Homo sapiens fossils reveal about modern humans' origins?

• Early archaic H. sapiens evolved from Homo erectus. • In Africa, nearly modern people evolved 200,000-150,000 yBP. After 130,000 yBP, an archaic form of H. sapiens called Neandertals occupied western Asia and then Europe. • From about 40,000-30,000 yBP, multiple hominin groups occupied Europe: Neandertals, modern H. sapiens, and Denisovans.

What other developments took place in H. sapiens' evolution?

• More advanced tools, diet diversification, and symbolism appeared first in Africa and later in Europe and Asia. • Neandertals were likely capable of articulate speech. • Neandertals and contemporary humans were the first species to intentionally bury their dead. • Fully modern humans migrated to Australia by 40,000 yBP and to North and South America by 15,000 yBP. • Modern human populations globally have evolved in significant ways morphologically since the late Pleistocene, as established by the ancient DNA record.

How has variation in fossil H. sapiens been interpreted?

• The Out-of-Africa model argues that modern H. sapiens migrated from Africa to Asia and Europe, replacing native late archaic H. sapiens, including Neandertals. • The Multiregional Continuity model argues that modern H. sapiens arose regionally in each of the three inhabited continents: Africa, Asia, and Europe. • Physical characteristics and DNA in fossils Neandertals were assimilated through admixture with early modern H. sapiens and did not go extinct.