Academic literature on the topic 'Human biology - Physical anthropology - Human evolution'
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Journal articles on the topic "Human biology - Physical anthropology - Human evolution"
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Schwartz, Jeffrey H. "Developmental biology and human evolution." Human Origins Research 1, no. 1 (November 22, 2011): e2. http://dx.doi.org/10.4081/hor.2011.5.
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The Evolutionary or Modern Evolutionary Synthesis (here identified as the Synthesis) has been portrayed as providing the foundation for uniting a supposed disarray of biological disciplines through the lens of Darwinism fused with population genetics. Rarely acknowledged is that the Synthesis’s success was also largely due to its architects’ effectiveness in submerging British and German attempts at a synthesis by uniting the biological sciences through shared evolutionary concerns. Dobzhansky and Mayr imposed their bias toward population genetics, population (as supposedly opposed to typological) thinking, and Morgan’s conception of specific genes for specific features (here abbreviated as genes for) on human evolutionary studies. Dobzhansky declared that culture buffered humans from the whims of selection. Mayr argued that as variable as humans are now, their extinct relatives were even more variable; thus the human fossil did not present taxic diversity and all known fossils could be assembled into a gradually changing lineage of time-successive species. When Washburn centralized these biases in the new physical anthropology the fate of paleoanthropology as a non-contributor to evolutionary theory was sealed. Molecular anthropology followed suit in embracing Zuckerkandl and Pauling’s assumption that molecular change was gradual and perhaps more importantly continual. Lost in translation was and still is an appreciation of organismal development. Here I will summarize the history of these ideas and their alternatives in order to demonstrate assumptions that still need to be addressed before human evolutionary studies can more fully participate in what is a paradigm shift-in-the-making in evolutionary biology.
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Bogin, Barry, Carlos Varea, Michael Hermanussen, and Christiane Scheffler. "Human life course biology: A centennial perspective of scholarship on the human pattern of physical growth and its place in human biocultural evolution." American Journal of Physical Anthropology 165, no. 4 (March 25, 2018): 834–54. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ajpa.23357.
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Shephard, Roy J. "Physical activity and health: 34th symposium volume of the society for the study of human biology. Edited by N. G. Norgan. xi + 251 pp. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992. $69.95 (cloth)." American Journal of Human Biology 5, no. 5 (1993): 587–88. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ajhb.1310050510.
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Wolański, Napoleon, and Anna Siniarska. "Perspektywiczne kierunki rozwoju biologii człowieka w Polsce, ze szczególnym uwzględnieniem auksologii." Studia Ecologiae et Bioethicae 7, no. 1 (June 30, 2009): 7–34. http://dx.doi.org/10.21697/seb.2009.7.1.01.
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Protoculture has already existed in animals and is manifested by using a natural object as a tool or by coping the habits of another animals being successful in doing something. At the beginning it was the practice of everyday life, the act of survival, what can be understood as “technique”. After that the process of rational cognition (theory) takes place, and innovative theories propagate the “science” development. Science discovers rules in our nature and society as well as in human activity called culture. Science is a certain sphere of consciousness including self-consciousness, thus science could be created together with consciousness, as a product of thinking mind. Such mind is possessed by humans only.
Probably, science has been developed till nowadays following the technological progress. Most likely generalizations of tools behaviors and social contacts have caused brain development and favored abstraction, future vision and articular speech. Since the beginning of Civilization, science had been created not because there was a demand for it, but as the reflection on human life, the result of technical achievements, and as the answer for the question “why does it happen?” When man has protected his basic requirements and received nutritional surplus above daily needs, he has gained a little free time for contemplation, and his reflections have directed the civilization development. In this case, the only way: “thinking is the action” is not adequate.
Science, as a turn, causes a revolution in technology, but does not serve for small engineering improvements, as revolutions have also a destructive face. As long as evolution strengthens and improves existing system, revolution destroys the old system, and the new one may fail to be good. If science has been interfered in technique continuously, the technical progress which makes our life easier would have been stopped. Science takes into account cognition of existence, as well as, the realities which are still unknown according to their being and functions. Propagation of knowledge belongs to education, whereas invention of artifacts (things which do not come into existence
simultaneously) belongs to technique, engineering and art. The main aim of science is the summary (generalization) of technical and engineering achievements, which may serve as verification of the process of cognition. Science, as a tool of intellectual cognition, should provide a better contact with surrounding world, nature and universe. It should also serve human development and help to understand the sense of our existence, promote ability of thinking and intellectual self-realization.
In the context of previous considerations, there are four, very important problems in human biology, especially in auxology. The first one concerns directions of studies on the basis of current information concerning mechanism of ontogeny causing variation in body build and functions of contemporary human populations. The second one deals with dissemination of knowledge in human biology, on the university and general levels. The third problem is about application of human biology and ecology in medical and pedagogic practice, as well as concerns the evaluation of planned engineering actions, changes in human life environment. There is also a fourth problem, which varies in particular countries, and it includes the state of each scientific anthropological atmosphere.
In most of countries, physical anthropology is still understood as natural history on Man, his variation in time and space, and as the biological base for social practices. However, the main accent which included anthropogenesis, rasogenesis, and ethnogenesis has changed into mechanisms of adaptation to changing environment (also understood as living conditions and social surroundings) during ontogeny, and causes the mechanisms of evolution (phylogeny is recapitulated during the first phases of ontogeny).
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Gangestad, Steven W., and Glenn J. Scheyd. "THE EVOLUTION OF HUMAN PHYSICAL ATTRACTIVENESS." Annual Review of Anthropology 34, no. 1 (October 2005): 523–48. http://dx.doi.org/10.1146/annurev.anthro.33.070203.143733.
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Lovejoy, C. Owen, Melanie A. McCollum, Philip L. Reno, and Burt A. Rosenman. "Developmental Biology and Human Evolution." Annual Review of Anthropology 32, no. 1 (October 2003): 85–109. http://dx.doi.org/10.1146/annurev.anthro.32.061002.093223.
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Gray, Peter B. "The Cambridge dictionary of human biology and evolution." American Journal of Physical Anthropology 132, no. 2 (February 2007): 318. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ajpa.20497.
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Bennike, P., and N. Bonde. "Physical anthropology and Human Evolution in Denmark and other Scandinavian Countries." Human Evolution 7, no. 2 (April 1992): 69–84. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/bf02437455.
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Bribiescas, Richard G. "Aging, Life History, and Human Evolution." Annual Review of Anthropology 49, no. 1 (October 21, 2020): 101–21. http://dx.doi.org/10.1146/annurev-anthro-010220-074148.
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Aging occurs in all sexually reproducing organisms. That is, physical degradation over time occurs from conception until death. While the life span of a species is often viewed as a benchmark of aging, the pace and intensity of physical degradation over time varies owing to environmental influences, genetics, allocation of energetic investment, and phylogenetic history. Significant variation in aging within mammals, primates, and great apes, including humans, is therefore common across species. The evolution of aging in the hominin lineage is poorly known; however, clues can be derived from the fossil record. Ongoing advances continue to shed light on the interactions between life-history variables such as reproductive effort and aging. This review presents our current understanding of the evolution of aging in humans, drawing on population variation, comparative research, trade-offs, and sex differences, as well as tissue-specific patterns of physical degradation. Implications for contemporary health challenges and the future of human evolutionary anthropology research are also discussed.
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Smith, Eric Alden. "Biology, human ecology, and the evolution of behavioral diversity." Evolutionary Anthropology: Issues, News, and Reviews 3, no. 4 (June 2, 2005): 112–13. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/evan.1360030403.
Full textDissertations / Theses on the topic "Human biology - Physical anthropology - Human evolution"
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Addison, Brian. "The biomechanics and evolution of impact resistance in human walking and running." Thesis, Harvard University, 2016. http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:26718734.
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How do humans generate and resist repetitive impact forces beneath the heel during walking and heel strike running? Due to the evolution of long day ranges and larger body sizes in the hominin lineage modern human hunter-gatherers must resist millions of high magnitude impact forces per foot per year. As such, impact forces may have been a selective pressure on many aspects of human morphology, including skeletal structure. This thesis therefore examines how humans generate impact forces under a variety of conditions and how variation in skeletal structure influences impact resistance.
This thesis includes four studies that can be separated into two parts. In the first part, I test two models of how variation in the stiffness and height of footwear affect the generation of impact peaks during walking and heel strike running. The first model predicts that variation in the stiffness of footwear introduces tradeoffs between three crucial impact force related variables: impact loading rate, vertical impulse and effective mass. The prediction of the second model is that higher heels have the same effects on impact forces as do footwear of lower stiffness. These hypotheses were tested using 3D motion data and force data in human walkers and runners wearing a variety of footwear. Experimental results show that soft footwear introduces tradeoffs between impact loading rate, vertical impulse and effective mass, and that high heeled shoes influence impact duration, loading rate and vertical impulse in predictable ways.
In the second part of this thesis, I document variation in hominoid skeletal structure and experimentally test how this variation affects function during impact forces. In particular, I examine trabecular bone volume fraction in the calcaneus of gorillas, chimpanzees and several H. sapiens populations that vary widely in geologic age and subsistence strategy. I then develop and test a model of how variation in trabecular bone volume fraction affects several mechanical properties of trabecular bone tissue, including the stiffness, strength and energy dissipation. The comparative data indicates that trabecular bone volume fraction in the human calcaneus has declined after the Pleistocene. The experimental data shows that larger trabecular bone volume fraction results in increased stiffness and strength but reduced energy dissipation of trabecular bone tissue. A final examination of the comparative data relative to the experimental data suggests that the human calcaneus resists impacts by being stiff strong rather than by dissipating mechanical energy.
The results of this thesis suggest that way in which impacts are both generated and resisted has changed in recent human history, as modern footwear alters impact loading rate and vertical impulse and decline in trabecular bone volume fraction negatively influence trabecular bone strength. These results also have implications for how bones evolve to resist impacts, suggesting that bone structures than favor stiffness and strength are favored to cope with impacts. Finally, the results of this thesis are important for understanding the etiology of osteoarthritis, and musculoskeletal disease that has been linked to both repetitive impact forces during human locomotion and to variation in trabecular bone volume fraction.Human Evolutionary Biology
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McGinsky, Elizabeth Ann. "Analyses of Sex Ratios among Residents of the Khumbu of Nepal Support the Trivers-Willard Hypothesis." Master's thesis, Temple University Libraries, 2011. http://cdm16002.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/p245801coll10/id/120545.
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AnthropologyM.A.
The Trivers-Willard hypothesis predicts a sex ratio bias contingent on maternal condition in species characterized by variation in male reproductive success. A male-biased sex ratio among mothers in good condition, and a female-biased sex ratio among mothers in poor condition is expected. Studies in humans have thus far provided mixed answers to the question of whether or not sex ratio is affected by maternal condition. The present study assessed whether or not the introduction of a western cash economy influenced the observed secondary sex ratio in Nepal's Khumbu region. Because acculturated villages provided better access to the cash economy and to health facilities, residence in an acculturated village was used as a proxy for "good" maternal condition. I analyzed demographic data gathered by survey in 1971 and 1982. The sample included 734 children from the 1971 survey and 1598 children from the 1982 survey. Using Poisson regression I analyzed the extent to which the sex ratios in age-stratified groups differed between the acculturated and unacculturated villages. In the 1971 dataset, the younger women in the acculturated villages displayed a significantly higher (p=.014) proportion of male offspring. It is likely that older women were subjected to minimal acculturation effects during their child-bearing years and among these data there was a lack of significant deviation between acculturated and unacculturated post-menopausal women. The rapid overall increase in acculturation between 1971 and 1982 likely made conditions in the two sets of villages much more similar by 1982. The results of this study underscore the impact that the transition to a market economy had on women in Nepal's Khumbu region.
Temple University--Theses
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Wobber, Victoria Elizabeth. "Comparative Cognitive Development and Endocrinology in Pan and Homo." Thesis, Harvard University, 2012. http://dissertations.umi.com/gsas.harvard:10253.
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Key insights into the evolutionary origins of human social behavior can be gained via study of our closest living relatives, bonobos (Pan paniscus) and chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes). Despite being equally related to humans, these two species differ importantly in aspects of their morphology, physiology, behavior, and cognition. Morphological comparisons reveal numerous traits in bonobos that can be viewed as paedomorphic, or juvenile, relative to chimpanzees. Meanwhile, comparisons of endocrinology in the two species suggest that aspects of steroid physiology have changed significantly in bonobos in line with their reductions in male mating competition. Based on this evidence, I tested the hypothesis that behavioral and cognitive differences between bonobos and chimpanzees derive from changes in their 1) developmental trajectories of behavioral and cognitive traits and 2) neuroendocrine influences on behavior and cognition. I tested this hypothesis by studying semi free-ranging populations of bonobos and chimpanzees. First, I found that bonobos retained juvenile levels of food sharing and social inhibition into adulthood, leading them to differ from chimpanzees in these traits as adults. Second, I found that bonobos showed muted elevations in their levels of testosterone from infancy to adulthood in comparison to chimpanzees, suggesting that numerous aspects of development differ between these two species. Third, I found that male bonobos and chimpanzees differ in their immediate neuroendocrine shifts surrounding competition, implicating changes in proximate mechanisms influencing social behavior between the two species. Fourth, I found that patterns of cognitive development in these two apes differed significantly from those of human children. These results provide substantial support for my hypothesis that phenotypic differences between bonobos and chimpanzees evolved via shifts in bonobo development and neuroendocrine physiology. More broadly, they illustrate how behavioral and cognitive evolution can occur through changes in ontogenetic trajectories and neuroendocrine mechanisms. These findings thus show the merits of integrating ultimate and proximate levels of analysis in studies of the evolution of human behavior and cognition.Human Evolutionary Biology
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Tillquist, Christopher. "Voyages of the Vikings: Human haploid variation in northern Europe." Diss., The University of Arizona, 2002. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/279948.
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Europe is a region characterized by a long history of both settlement and resettlement. This study uses information from the haploid systems of the human genome in order to investigate the presence of population structure in Europe and discuss the mitigating effects of shared population history and the impact of evolutionary forces. By means of two kinds of data from the Y chromosome, the study first establishes patterns of diversity across the entirety of Europe. More in-depth analyses investigate the evolutionary effects of settlement and colonization on overall genetic diversity of populations. Finally, considering data from the entire control region sequence, an effort is made to estimate patterns of mitochondrial diversity and compare their import to that of the Y chromosome.
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Brown, Elizabeth Anne. "Metabolic Adaptations in Modern Human Populations: Evidence, Theory, and Investigation." Thesis, Harvard University, 2015. http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:17463979.
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Diverse climates, infectious agents, and subsistence patterns drove humans to adapt metabolically to different environments since the migration out of Africa 100,000 years ago. In this dissertation, I review current literature on the genetic underpinnings, and the molecular and physiological manifestations of these metabolic adaptations in diverse human populations. Then, I develop a theory regarding pregnancy as a critical period in life history that mediated recent selection on human metabolism. Finally, I investigate the function and evidence for selection of derived genetic variants at increased frequency in East Asian populations. I find multiple standing variants that increase expression of the gene IVD and increase the efficiency of leucine catabolism, which lie on positively selected haplotypes in East Asians. I use this research process as a model for how to develop and study novel hypotheses of human metabolic adaptation. Such adaptations often impact health in the modern environment, so more evolutionary research will provide useful guidance to the medical community in how to treat people from diverse ethnicities.Human Evolutionary Biology
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Kleckner, Jon Geoffrey. "A multivariate test of evolutionary stasis in Homo sapiens." PDXScholar, 1989. https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/open_access_etds/3871.
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In the past, efforts to prove or disprove stasis in hominids have relied upon univariate tests such as Students's t-test. Severe methodological and interpretive problems arise from the misapplication of univariate statistics to questions concerning variation in shape through time. These are questions best addressed using the multivariate approach of morphometrics. Eighteen cranial dimensions drawn from 33 mid and late Pleistocene Homo sapiens were examined using principal component analysis (PCA). PCA divided the sample into two distinct morphologies. Archaic Homo sapiens of the mid Pleistocene clustered with Wurm I neanderthals and apart from post Gottweig early anatomically modern Homo sapiens. ANOVA and Cluster analysis confirm the groups represent two different morphologies rather than a single spectrum of morphological change. These results support stasis rather than phyletic gradualism during this period of hominid evolution.
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Kempf, Erica N. "The Reflection of an Ape." Miami University Honors Theses / OhioLINK, 2006. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=muhonors1163975618.
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Ruth, Aidan Alifair. "The influence of posture and brain size on foramen magnum position in bats." [Kent, Ohio] : Kent State University, 2010. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc%5Fnum=kent1270059009.
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Thesis (M.A.)--Kent State University, 2010.Title from PDF t.p. (viewed Apr. 28, 2010). Advisor: C. Owen Lovejoy. Keywords: foramen magnum; human evolution; locomotion; bats. Includes bibliographical references (p. 36-42).
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Miller, E. Elizabeth. "The Effect of Natural Running on Human Foot Strength." University of Cincinnati / OhioLINK, 2012. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1353087830.
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Heitkamp, Lauren. "The Role of the Gluteus Maximus on Trunk Stability in Human Endurance Running." University of Cincinnati / OhioLINK, 2016. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1460446576.
Full textBooks on the topic "Human biology - Physical anthropology - Human evolution"
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E, Mann Alan, ed. Human biology and behavior: An anthropological perspective. 5th ed. Glenview, Ill: Scott, Foresman, 1990.
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E, Mann Alan, ed. Human biology and behavior: An anthropological perspective. 4th ed. Boston: Little, Brown, 1985.
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Human biological diversity: An introduction to human biology. New York: Prentice Hall, 2010.
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Brown, Daniel E. Human biological diversity: An introduction to human biology. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2010.
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Bogin, Barry. Patterns of human growth. 2nd ed. Cambridge, U.K: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
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V, Tobias Phillip. Images of humanity: The selected writings of Phillip V. Tobias. Rivonia: Ashanti Pub., 1991.
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Bogin, Barry. Patterns of human growth. Cambridge [England]: Cambridge University Press, 1988.
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Bogin, Barry. Patterns of human growth. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
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Thin on the ground: Neandertal biology, archeology and ecology. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, 2014.
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Sara, Stinson, ed. Human biology: An evolutionary and biocultural perspective. New York: Wiley, 2000.
Find full textBook chapters on the topic "Human biology - Physical anthropology - Human evolution"
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Smith, Justin E. H. "Race and Its Discontents in the Enlightenment." In Nature, Human Nature, and Human Difference. Princeton University Press, 2015. http://dx.doi.org/10.23943/princeton/9780691153643.003.0010.
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This chapter surveys some of the more important developments in the history of the concept of race in eighteenth-century Germany. It reveals an inconsistency between the desire to make taxonomic distinctions and a hesitance to posit any real ontological divisions within the human species. This inconsistency was well represented in the physical-anthropological work of Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, who was, in many respects, the most important eighteenth-century theorist of human difference. Johann Gottfried Herder, a contemporary of Blumenbach's, was intensely interested in human diversity, but saw this diversity as entirely based in culture rather than biology, and saw cultural difference as an entirely neutral matter, rather than as a continuum of higher and lower. Herder constitutes an important link between early modern universalism, on the one hand, and on the other the ideally value-neutral project of cultural anthropology as it would begin to emerge in the nineteenth century.
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Gontier, Nathalie. "The evolution of the symbolic sciences." In The Oxford Handbook of Human Symbolic Evolution, C43.S1—C43.S16. Oxford University Press, 2023. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198813781.013.43.
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Abstract Aspects of human symbolic evolution are studied by scholars active in a variety of fields and disciplines in the life and the behavioral sciences as well as the scientific-philosophical, sociological, anthropological, and linguistic sciences. These fields and disciplines all take on an evolutionary approach to the study of human symbolism, but scholars disagree in their theoretical and methodological attitudes. Theoretically, symbolism is defined differentially as knowledge, behavior, cognition, culture, language, or social group living. Methodologically, the diverse symbolic evolution sciences establish their teachings upon diverging evolutionary biological schools and paradigms. This chapter reviews past and current research fields in human symbolic evolution for how they differentially implement tenets of the major evolution schools that were discussed in the previous chapter. Traditional evolutionary epistemology and biosemiotics bring in a mesoevolutionary outlook by drawing on early Darwinism and evolutionary developmental biology movements that emphasize the role of the organism in evolution. Communication studies instead originally take on a microevolutionary perspective by investigating how units of information are transmitted across generations through time. Only later do they integrate studies on meaning-making at the organismal level. Sociobiology complements a microevolutionary with a macroevolutionary outlook by implementing population genetic approaches, typical of the Modern Synthesis, into studies on individual and group behavior. The new symbolic evolutionary sciences build upon these traditions and include disciplines such as evolutionary psychology, evolutionary linguistics, evolutionary anthropology, evolutionary archaeology, evolutionary sociology, and evolutionary economics. Originally centered on implementing Darwinian selection theory, these fields are now including ecological and evolutionary developmental biology as well as reticulate evolutionary paradigms. As diverse in outlook and scope as they are, no discipline holds a privileged position over the other and all have made valuable contributions to our understanding of human symbolic evolution.
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Dalgaard, Carl-Johan, and Holger Strulik. "Human Physiological Development and Economic Growth." In Demographic Change and Long-Run Development. The MIT Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/9780262036627.003.0006.
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This chapter elaborates on the microeconomics of the income–health nexus and incorporates fertility decisions. It examines the trade-off between the number of offspring and the health investments in those offspring, as reflected by body size, thereby providing a new interpretation of the quantity–quality trade-off in a health context. A key insight from this study is that demographic change is essential to understanding the preindustrial growth record as well as the (relative) timing of the take-off to sustained growth. The major motivation for this effort is existing evidence, which largely is found in the fields of biology and physical anthropology, that humans (and other mammals) face a fundamental trade-off between size of offspring and number of offspring.
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Brian Langerhans, R., and Elizabeth M. A. Kern. "Urbanization and Evolution in Aquatic Environments." In Urban Evolutionary Biology, 157–74. Oxford University Press, 2020. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198836841.003.0011.
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Human impacts on freshwater and marine ecosystems have long been of special concern due to water’s essential role in ecosystem functioning and human civilization. Urban development causes a large number of changes in all types of aquatic environments, from small ephemeral pools to rivers to great lakes to expansive coastal habitats. These changes can strongly influence evolution of life in the water by altering selection, gene flow, and genetic drift. Yet our understanding of the evolutionary consequences of urbanization on aquatic organisms is still in early stages. This chapter reviews the impacts of urbanization on aquatic taxa, examining the evolutionary consequences (known or likely) of four major types of urban-induced changes to ecosystems: biotic interactions, physical environment, temperature, and pollution. By drawing connections between literature on ecological and evolutionary impacts in aquatic urban environments, the chapter concludes that (1) several anthropogenic factors seem to commonly drive evolutionary and phenotypic change (organic-compound pollution, altered temperature, and hydrologic shifts), (2) predictability of evolutionary changes are often taxa specific, and may commonly depend on the focal ‘scale’ (e.g., whole-organism performance, morphology, or gene), and (3) there are a few key ‘frontier topics’ (altered biotic interactions, artificial light, sound pollution, and fragmentation) where additional research on phenotypic evolution would be particularly informative.
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Wokler, Robert, and Christopher Brooke. "Perfectible Apes in Decadent Cultures: Rousseau’s Anthropology Revisited1." In Rousseau, the Age of Enlightenment, and Their Legacies, edited by Bryan Garsten. Princeton University Press, 2012. http://dx.doi.org/10.23943/princeton/9780691147888.003.0001.
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The diffusion of Rousseau's influence over the past two centuries has been so wide and so substantial that hardly a subject or movement appears to have escaped his clutches. Rousseau perceived a historical connection between the animal and cultural features of humanity, and between our physical evolution and social development, which led him to construct a comprehensive anthropological theory remarkably original in his own day and remains worthy of critical investigation now. This chapter sketches the leading features of that theory in the intellectual context, which at once most clearly establishes their meaning and elucidates their significance as well. For Rousseau, our physical evolution is based on a set of conjectures to the effect that the human race may have descended from apes.
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Cartelli, Antonio. "Towards a New Model for Knowledge Construction and Evolution." In Encyclopedia of Information Communication Technology, 767–74. IGI Global, 2009. http://dx.doi.org/10.4018/978-1-59904-845-1.ch101.
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The 20th century has marked the transformation of the philosophical definition of knowledge into a new and different one. The new idea of knowledge mostly depends on the experiences and theories from human and social sciences like psychology, pedagogy, anthropology, sociology, and so forth. But many contributions to its specification are also due to biology, neurophysiology, telecommunication, cybernetics, and other scientific disciplines. In other words knowledge is today a complex matter and its analysis and definition depends on the observation fields one can use for its analysis.
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Hawkins, Michael C. "Measuring Moros." In Semi-Civilized, 65–87. Cornell University Press, 2020. http://dx.doi.org/10.7591/cornell/9781501748219.003.0004.
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This chapter examines the role of Moro bodies in the quantification of humanity at the St. Louis World's Fair. Although Moro bodies were routinely quantified in a variety of contexts, the real measure of the Moros' physical prowess was to be established in a grand athletic spectacle known as “Anthropology Days.” With the 1904 Olympics as a backdrop, anthropologist William J. McGee hoped the Anthropology Days would provide an undeniable comparison between “savage” and “civilized” athletes, thus diminishing emphasis on biological development and endorsing culture and technology as the primary measure of human difference. Ultimately, the Moros' role in the quantification of humanity served an important double function. The “semi-civilized” Moros allowed for notions of Caucasian superiority while simultaneously offering an analogy of physical and cultural improvement for all people, thus affirming the efficacy of colonial tutelage and universal human potential. In this way, the Moros were embedded firmly within the central arch of human evolution rather than on its extremes. Unlike “savage” live exhibits or indeed the exceptional Olympic athletes, Moros were more akin to average American patrons.
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Armelagos, George J., and Dennis P. Van Gerven. "Life and Death on the Nile." In Life and Death on the Nile. University Press of Florida, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.5744/florida/9780813054452.003.0001.
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Physical anthropology in Nubia has contributed to three intellectual movements, each of which was a result of archaeological surveys associated with the construction of successively higher dams at Aswan in Egypt. The analysis of human remains excavated by the first survey was guided by the then strongly held belief that the capacity for cultural achievement was determined by the racial attributes of Nubian populations. The role of the physical anthropologist was to establish the racial types associated with the rise and fall of Nubian civilizations. The second survey resulted in a critical reaction to racial determinism in which racial attributes were viewed as independent of cultural achievement. The third produced the third intellectual shift and informs the theoretical basis of this volume. Known as the biocultural perspective, the focus is on the interaction between the biology of human populations and the cultural and natural environments in which they exist.
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Gillieson, David. "Karst in Southeast Asia." In The Physical Geography of Southeast Asia. Oxford University Press, 2005. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780199248025.003.0021.
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Flying over the patchwork quilt of land uses that comprise Southeast Asia, one often sees extensive tracts of rugged topography with plateaux pitted with depressions, deep gorges, rivers arising at the bases of mountains, and towers arising from alluviated plains. These are the karst lands, formed on limestone bedrock and subject to the solutional erosion of that bedrock above and below ground. With a total area of about 400 000 km2, Southeast Asia contains some of the more extensive karst regions in the world. Many of these karst areas are of high relief with spectacular arrays of tower and cone karst. Many have now been inscribed on the World Heritage list in recognition of their unique geomorphology and biology. They are scattered throughout the islands of the Malay archipelago as well as the adjoining fringe of the Asian mainland. Karst is found in Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, Brunei, Indonesia, Cambodia, Viet Nam, Lao PDR, and Papua New Guinea. Geologically the carbonate rocks hosting karst range in age from Cambrian to Quaternary, a span of about 500 million years (Letouzey, Sage, and Muller 1988). Over that time limestone solution and other landscape processes have produced an array of karst landforms including towers, cones, plateaux, and dolines, underlain by extensive cave systems. There have also been strong external influences of tectonism, eustatic, and climatic change. Today human modification of karst processes and landforms is proceeding at a rapid pace. Despite their characterization as the ‘botanical hothouse extreme’ (Jennings 1985) the karstlands of Southeast Asia are most diverse, reflecting the influence of varied geology, uplift history, eustatic change, and climates past and present. Karst landscapes range in elevation from sea level to nearly 4000 m, and comprise extensive plateaux with dolines, tower karst, cone karst, and lowlying swampy terrain. The carbonate rocks on which they have formed range widely in age, and can be soft and impure or hard and crystalline. Many areas have been wholly or partially blanketed by volcanic ash during their evolution.
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Pasternak, Charles. "Biological Perspectives on Travel." In Why Travel?, 13–32. Policy Press, 2021. http://dx.doi.org/10.1332/policypress/9781529216363.003.0002.
Full textAbstract:
This chapter explores the links between travel and human biology from different biological perspectives, including evolutionary history and physiological and neurological biology. The chapter shows that our bipedal mode of travel is related to the evolution of other key human features such as large brains, dexterous hands and speech: in other words that our mode of travel is deeply linked to what makes us human. The author argues that, related to this, our sense of curiosity has driven humans to travel the world and beyond. The chapter also examines the physiological and neurological mechanisms involved in travel, and how these are linked to the way we perceive the world as well as the crucial importance of travel for mental and physical health.
Conference papers on the topic "Human biology - Physical anthropology - Human evolution"
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Tokumaru, Kumon. "The Three Stage Digital Evolution of Linguistic Humans." In GLOCAL Conference on Asian Linguistic Anthropology 2019. The GLOCAL Unit, SOAS University of London, 2019. http://dx.doi.org/10.47298/cala2019.12-2.
Full textAbstract:
Digital Linguistics (DL) is an interdisciplinary study that identifies human language as a digital evolution of mammal analog vocal sign communications, founded on the vertebrate spinal sign reflex mechanism [Tokumaru 2017 a/b, 2018 a/b/c/d]. Analog signs are unique with their physical sound waveforms but limited in number, whilst human digital word signs are infinite by permutation of their logical property, phonemes. The first digital evolution took place 66,000 years ago with South African Neolithic industries, Howiesons Poort, when linguistic humans acquired a hypertrophied mandibular bone to house a descended larynx for vowel accented syllables containing logical properties of phonemes and morae. Morae made each syllable distinctive in the time axis and enabled grammatical modulation by alternately transmitting conceptual and grammatical syllables. The sign reflex mechanism is an unconscious self-protection and life-support mechanism, operated by immune cell networks inside the ventricle system. DL identified cellular and molecular structures for the sign (=concept) device as a B lymphocyte (or, in other words, Mobile Ad-Hoc Networking Neuron), connects to sensory, conceptual and networking memories, which consist of its meanings [Table 1]. Its antibodies can network with antigens of CSF-Contacting Neurons at the brainstem reticular formation and of Microglia cells at the neocortex [Figure 1]. It is plausible that the 3D structure of the antigen molecule takes the shape of word sound waveform multiplexing intensity and pitch, and that specifically pairing the antibody molecule consists of three CDRs (Complementality Defining Regions) in the Antibody Variable Region network with the logic of dichotomy and dualism. As sign reflex deals with survival issues such as food, safety and reproduction, it is stubborn, passive and inflexible: It does not spontaneously look for something new, and it is not designed to revise itself. These characteristics are not desirable for the development of human intelligence, and thus are to be overcome. All the word, sensory and network memories in the brain must be acquired postnatally through individual learning and thought. The reason and intelligence of humans depend on how correctly and efficiently humans learn new words and acquire appropriate meanings for them.