Human Variation & Race

The environmental stress I am going tone discussing today is high levels of solar radiation. This negatively impacts the survival of humans by disrupting homeostasis. One of main effects of this disruption at the hands of high solar radiation levels is skin cancer which can definitely reduce someone's chances of reproduction. Another, is a disruption in vitamin D development. A lack of vitamin D can affect bone growth and fetal development and thus affect someone's ability to reproduce. One way in which humans have attempted to adapt to this radiation, culturally, is through the development of sun screen that acts as another layer of protection against solar radiation. Facultative adaptations to high levels of radiation by humans can be found when humans tan themselves and purposefully expose themselves to UV rays in order to tan the skin. The tanning of the skin is caused by an increase in melanin production and thus people who are most susceptible to UV rays are better prepared to withstand it because of the increase in melanin. A developmental adaptation to this would be the evolution of people with naturally darker skin tones. Darker people are naturally less susceptible to the negative effects of solar radiation. However, darker skinned people do have a greater chance of having a vitamin d defficiency. I think there are many benefits to studying human variation from this persoective because it reinforces the fact that are phenotypic differences are not forms of superiority over one another but displays of adaptations to the various environments across the globe. You could use race to understand the developmental adaptation of darker skinned people as it literally pertains to the color of someone's skin. I also think race can be used to understand the facultative adaptation I mentioned as it is usually lighter folks who go to get tanned as darker people don't necessarily have the need to go and do that.

LANGUAGE

This was one of the more interesting things I think I’ve ever done. My experience was definitely a funny one, but also eye-opening as it made me realize just how vital language really is. I used my girlfriend and my girlfriend’s mum to do the experiment and they both had similar responses. At first, they thought it was funny and couldn’t hold it together. After the first 5 minutes had gone by, however, they seemed to be a lot less interested and were obviously less inclined to continue the conversation as I couldn't really add much to it. I tried to tell my girlfriend, who was making eggs at the time, that I didn't like them and that took me about 5 whole minutes to convey. Overall, the assignment was definitely a difficult one, as I had no interest in having such limited communication for 15 minutes straight. You would think that my participants would have changed their means of communication to fit with mine, but they didn’t. They continued to speak using language. However, my girlfriend did make a point to decipher each of the things I was trying to convey, word by word. But that wasn’t very efficient as it took way too long to even have a proper conversation in the first place.

The control of the conversation was entirely in the hands of my girlfriend and her mum. I could only really reply to what they were saying, as long as it was a simple question or comment. Otherwise, there was no complexity coming out of my end. Topics changed according to their discretion and became more and more simple as time went on. For example, they resorted to only asking me yes or no questions for the last 5 minutes. There were very few questions asked on my end. If conversation is supposed to be a balance between two people, then I would hardly consider this a conversation in the first place as the majority of the content was brought by them rather than myself. It definitely made me feel powerless as I had such a hard time getting them to understand me. For that reason, by the end of each conversation, I mostly left it to them as I would rather answer simple yes or no questions than spend 3 minutes trying to say “I don’t like eggs”. I consider conversation to also be a fast exchange of dialogue but unfortunately there was nothing “fast” about it.

If my girlfriend represented a culture of spoken language while I represented a language-lacking culture, I think she would have the advantage in communicating complex ideas within her population. As I mentioned earlier, I believe language to be a fairly quick exchange of information and in most cases, it is faster to use dialogue to get a point across rather than drawing, painting, or signaling symbols that mean the same things. Language looks to be specific, while symbolism and illustrations are more open to interpretation, and for that reason I believe language has the advantage. However, if me and my girlfriend (while still representing these cultures) attempted to communicate between each other, I think you would see some condescending behavior being displayed on her end as language, to most people, is the most modern form of communication. Seeing as how humans are the only species to have mastered it, I think people also see it as a display of intelligence. Therefore, I think the language bearing culture would be inclined to label the culture that uses symbolic language as either primitive or unintelligent. A modern example of this would be the sign language community vs. the spoken language community. One may think that sign language is not an effective means of communication compared to spoken language and thus, may develop a stigma or haughtiness about it. Nonetheless, the linguistic diversity displayed in sign language has proven to be quite beneficial, even to those who are able to use spoken language, as it widens the range of people you are able to communicate with. Regardless of the attitude that one speaking culture may have towards another, spoken language is only really valuable if it’s one of the more popular languages used around the world. For example, It’s usually quite rare to meet someone who can speak fluent balinese unless you are in indonesia. But why would English to Balinese communication not be a power trip of a conversation, while English to symbolism and Balinese to Symbolism, would be? Again, I think the answer to this question comes down to the common misconception that spoken language is a clear display of intelligence while Symbolism is not.

With that being said, I think it is important to look into what communication between an English speaker and a Balinese speaker would look like. Both possess the intelligent gift of language so shouldn’t communication be easy? Well, if neither party can speak the other's language, one can assume that they would resort to hand movements, body language, or in other words, symbolism. For that reason, it can be argued that nonverbal communication is equally as important as spoken language.

Although body language patterns may differ from country to country, I think that is the most basic form of common ground that humans have with one another as far as communication goes. The ability to read body language as well as convey things properly through body language can prove to be extremely beneficial when traveling. If you get lost in china and you have no way to ask anyone how to get home, you would most likely resort to using hand signals that allow the other person to interpret what your saying. Even if you are stranded in the middle of the Amazon and you come across a small amazonian tribe, the only way you will be able to ask for help, food, resources, is through symbolism and body language. For that reason, I think the ability to read body language is equally if not more imperative than spoken language as spoken language is literally only beneficial to other people in your community. The ability to read body language is also very important in one’s own community as people may be saying one thing to you, but their body language is showing you something very different. With that being said, it’s evident that someone who can efficiently use symbolism or body language as a means of communication would have much more ease in navigating the world than someone who only relies on their language to communicate; Thus, symbolism and body language prove themselves to no longer be considered “primitive” or less intelligent means of communication.

Unfortunately, not everyone has the benefit of being able to read body language. People with Autism actually struggle with this a lot making it difficult for them to decipher the true meaning in a conversation such as whether or not the speaker is being sincere or sarcastic, among other things. This usually leads to an inappropriate response. Even for those who don’t live with Autism, however, have most likely experienced the situation where body language does not give you a reliable response. I actually had an incident where I was standing behind someone in line at a grocery store, presumably a bit too close, and at one point they turned around and gave me a small smile. By having that person smile at me, I was under the impression that there wasn’t a problem. However, a couple minutes later, that same person asked me if I could give them a little more personal space. Upon hearing this, I was very confused as a smile doesn’t usually indicate that someone is unhappy with what is going on. As I said earlier, one of the faults to body language and symbolism is that it is open for interpretation and in turn, gives you the chance to make the wrong interpretation, which is exactly what happened here.

THE PILTDOWN HOAX

The Piltdown Hoax began in the early 1900’s in southeast England when a laborer unearthed a strange piece of skull. That piece of skull eventually made its way to Charles Dawson, a local amateur archaeologist. Through the work of Dawson and popular geologist, Arthur Woodward, the world was led to believe that they had found extremely primitive human remains that were thought to be the missing link in the evolutionary lines between man and ape. However, 40 years later, it was found that the Piltdown man was actually an aged orangutan skull from roughly 100,000 years ago, and it had been forged to resemble some sort of ancient fossil. Dawson died before it was proved to be a hoax, but still was the presumable culprit.

This hoax had an array of different effects on the scientific community. First and foremost, it led scientists to literally go through 40 years of studying false information. The scientific community would have made so much more progress had their attention not been focused on what was thought to be extremely pertinent information.

The most unsettling part of the Piltdown man Hoax was that it stemmed from the scientific community in the first place. Scientists have always been regarded as a fact based, unbiased group of people. It was very uncommon for things like this to happen as most scientists worked under the same goal, and that goal was finding the truth in different phenomenas. However, these scientists are human and are subjected to the same pressures and desires as the rest of us. Although the scientific method is usually what is followed to prevent these sort of things from happening, there are certain scientists who manipulate the scientific method so that their findings can be interpreted to coincide with their theory. There is a lot of pressure among scientists to make advancements and come out with groundbreaking findings. Arthur Keith for example, was an anatomist whose personal theory of evolution stated that primate brains evolved to its largest size prior to bipedal locomotion - and the Piltdown Man findings supported this theory to a Tee. Although we now know that Keith’s theory is false, this situation is a great example of the sort of motivators that might bring someone to doing this. I’m sure that, as a scientist, everyone wants their theories to be correct. However, this need for being right, this need for being successful and regarded as such, (that we all look for at some point in our lives) can end up being a fault in the scientific process because even though the scientific method is there to facilitate, it doesn’t facilitate the personal emotions of the scientists and can’t control the inherent biases that affect the information being USED in the scientific method.

The best part about the scientific community is that there are different focuses. Not all scientists specifically study evolution, chemistry, the brain, etc. Although the scientific community that focused on evolution may have gone through what could be considered a 40 year hiatus, the scientific community focusing on technology, continued to flourish. Thus, new tools for dating and analyzing fossils had been developed, and were used to determine that the skull was a fraud. They did this by measuring the fluorine content of the fossil itself in order to roughly be able to date it, and found that the fossil was only 100,000 years old.

I don't think there is any way to remove the human factor from science, but I do think there are ways to facilitate it. If you look at the Piltdown Man study, there was no widespread research done and barely anyone was allowed to even examine the artifacts. This idea of allowing a study to be widespread, allows for more eyes on the subject as well as more criticism. Had this been one of those widespread studies, I think someone down the line would have been able to identify the falsehoods. Even so, I wouldn’t want the human factor from science for two reasons. The first reason is because of curiosity I consider curiosity to be one of these “human” factors, and curiosity is the basis for even studying these things in the first place. The second reason is because science takes so much more than just facts in order to progress. It takes things like intuition and philosophical thinking as well in order to come up with creative ideas and different ways to look at things.

Again, the biggest issue with the entire Piltdown study was that it wasn’t analyzed on a large scale and thus, never made way for any verification of the artifacts, or how they were found. With that being said, if there is anything to take away from this whole thing, it's that one should always make a point to make sure that what you are analyzing is credible. This was a difficult situation because the fossil was found by people who were in the scientific community, a group of people whose statements are usually not questioned, but rather accepted as credible. Nevertheless, it just shows that you need multiple different sources to determine whether something is credible or not, not just one or two.

Homologous and Analogous Structures

Homologous Structures

Beaver front teeth vs. Elephant tusks

Beaver:

Elephant:

- Upon examining these two structures, you see that each is just a modification of the basic incisor tooth structure. These homologous traits exhibit differences because over time, evolution adapted each of their incisors to preform certain functions. Beavers use their teeth for chewing through tree trunks while elephants use their tusks for digging, peeling back bark, fighting, among other things. They inherited these from a common ancestor (most likely a mammal) with incisor teeth.

Analogous Structures

Whale tail vs. Alligator tail

Whale:

Alligator:

- Although these two Structures may look similar and preform similar functions, they are not homologous because whales and alligators evolved separately. The whale tail is made of dense collagenous material, and two horizontal lobes make up the tail ends. Whales move their tales in an up and down motion to propel their bodies forward. Alligator rails, however, are made of bone and unlike whales, they make a side to side motion with their tails to propel themselves through the water. Not only that, but whales are mammals while alligators are of reptilian descent. It's is in fact possible that far enough back, their common ancestor could've had tails.

Protein Synthesis Assignment - DNA Code

ACC ACA GAU GAC TAC TTG GAA ATT CTG TCT AGT ACT GAA CGC ATC GGC CUG CGC

Anthro 101

Historical influences blog post.

1. Probably the most influential person on Darwin’s theory of Natural Selection was Thomas Malthus. He was not a scientist but an economist who wrote several essays on how the increasing population would grow faster than the amount of food production could support resulting in many fatalities due to starvation. Darwin took this and applied it to all species of animals. Malthus’ ideas were the same as “survival of the fittest” Darwin observed that it applied to humans and well as animals. Darwin gave a Malthus’ work a lot of praise for helping him develop his own ideas about evolution.

2. http://evolution.about.com/od/scientists/p/Thomas-Malthus.htm. Thomas Malthus biggest contribution to the scientific community was his most prominent piece of work the essay titled ‘The Principles of Population’ written in 1798. Poverty interested him as all periods throughout history, suffering has been prevalent. He theorized that as populations increase in size there would be insufficient food to facilitate for that many people. He suggested that as a result there would be starvation and famine.

3. There are several points that were influenced by Thomas Malthus; resources are limited. Our planet a limit of how much we can hold and produce. There will not be enough resources available for all organisms to reproduce as many offspring they can. This point was hugely influenced by Malthus because it was his essay that first theorized that as the population gets bigger the demand for food is higher, however there will be not enough food to provide for the population leading to starvation and deaths. Organisms with better access to resources will be more successful in their reproductive efforts. This can be related to humans and how the lower classes were dying due to the lack of resources that were presented to them. Malthus solution was to limit the number of offspring the lower classes were able to produce, he blamed the poor for continuing to reproduce even though they don’t have the resources to do so. This is essentially the same as “survival of the fittest” those who cannot successfully reproduce as a result of their access to resources die and do not prosper.

4. Darwin essentially read and was inspired by Malthus’ essay ‘The Principles of Population’. He then took his theory and applied it to species of animals. Malthus helped inspire Darwin to refine his natural selection theory by giving a reason to why there is competition between members of the same species. You could argue that without the influence of Thomas Malthus, Darwin would never have been able to refine his theory of ‘Natural Selection’. Because he was able to look at Malthus’s work, relate to it and use it to further his own scientific theories.
5. The attitude of the Church affected Darwin and the publication of his book because he knew how much it would anger them and how much they would be opposed to it. The church obviously didn’t take too kindly to ideas being published that denounced the word of God which Darwin’s theory directly opposes. However Alfred Wallace urged him to push on with the book’s publication regardless of the result.