Questions and Answers of Biological Anthropology

What are the four subfields of anthropology?
What is the difference between archaeology and biological anthropology? Why is biological anthropology a subfield of anthropology?
How is biological anthropology today fundamentally different from its origins as physical anthropology?
How is science different from other ways of understanding the world?
How did the earliest biblical scholars estimate Earth’s age?
Who was Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, and how did his ideas contrast with those of Darwin?
How did Darwin arrive at his theory of evolution by natural selection?
What is science, and how does differ from religion?
What are five different approaches to understanding the genetics of organisms?
What is the difference between prokaryotes and eukaryotes? What are some of the basic components of a eukaryotic cell?
How are DNA and RNA different from one another and what are their respective roles in protein synthesis?
How significant is the fact that there are approximately 40 million differences between the human and chimpanzee genomes?
What are genotypes and phenotypes and how are they related?
What did Mendel’s experiments on the garden pea show us about the nature of genetic transmission?
What is a neutral mutation?
What are quantitative and qualitative genetic variation?
For complex traits, how do developmental environments modify genotypes to produce phenotypes?
What are the five forces of evolution?
What is taxonomy?
What are the two primary modes of speciation?
What is an adaptation?
What are kin selection and inclusive fitness, and how do they relate to Darwinian principles?
What is a population?
Why do anthropologists generally reject using the term “race” today when they study human variation?
What is a polymorphism? How can they be used to reconstruct evolutionary relationships among populations?
How can adaptability be an adaptation?
What is heterozygous advantage?
What is the taxonomic group that contains all the primates?
How do we define a primate?
What is the difference between a strepsirhine and a haplorhine?
What are the main dietary components of most nonhuman primates?
What are the three settings in which nonhuman primates are studied?
Why do we say that male and female social animals have different reproductive agenda but the same underlying goal?
What is the difference between polygyny and polyandry?
What is petrifaction, and what conditions favor fossilization?
What are the principles of stratigraphy, and how are they important to the formulation of the geologic timescale?
How do relative and chronometric dating techniques differ? What are some of the different methods?
What are some methods used to reconstruct past climate, and how did that climate change from the Paleocene to present?
What does the anatomy of the Paleocene fossils suggest about what selective pressures may have led to the origin of Primates and how Eocene primates differed from the Paleocene groups?
How does the anatomy of early monkeys and apes differ, and what do the shifts in their relative abundance suggest about the selective pressures acting on each group?
What is a relative rate test, and how is it used to construct a primate phylogeny?
In what specific ways does the skeleton of a biped reflect its form of locomotion?
What is the CP3 honing complex, and how does it change during hominin evolution?
What species might be the earliest hominins, and what does their anatomy and environment tell us about the selective pressures that might have facilitated their evolution?
How does the genus Australopithecus differ from the earliest hominins, and how does anatomical variation across its species tell us about their adaptations?
In the australopithecine radiation, which species lived at the same time, and what evidence do we have indicating which species might be ancestral to which other species?
How does climate change in the Pliocene and Pleistocene, and what opportunities does that present?
What anatomical characters would you use to define genus Homo?
What are the anatomical and temporal differences between H. habilis and H. rudolfensis?
What do Oldowan tools look like, and what were they used for?
How does H. erectus differ from other early Homo?
Where does H. erectus go first when it leaves Africa, and how do populations of H. erectus differ from one another in space and time?
Why is H. erectus the first hominin to move out of the African continent and colonize the Old World?
What anatomical characters can we use to recognize the crania of recent humans?
How do archaic Homo sapiens differ from region to region and from recent human skeletons?
What kinds of tools and sites did archaic Homo sapiens have?
Based on anatomy and DNA, how do Neandertals differ from recent humans, and do you think they should be called their own species?
What kinds of tools and sites did Neandertals have, and how did their behavior differ from that of earlier hominins?
How are Neandertals, archaic H. sapiens, and recent H. sapiens related to each other?
What behavioral and anatomical characters signal the origin of Homo sapiens?
How do the predictions of the replacement model for modern human origins differ from those of the multiregional model?
Where and when do we first see early humans, and how do these worldwide populations compare?
How do Homo sapiens behavior and tools differ from earlier hominins?
What does ancient DNA evidence contribute to the debate over the origin of humans?
What do the three main lines of evidence suggest about models for modern human origins?
How does studying the skeleton contribute to understanding how past populations lived?
What is the cerebrum and how is it anatomically organized?
What is the relative significance of relative and absolute brain size in trying to understanding the evolution of brain and behavior?
How is the evolution of language reflected in the anatomy of the human brain and throat?
What are the four different approaches used to reconstruct the evolution of human behavior?
How do progesterone and testosterone levels in women and men respectively reflect some of the ecological circumstances of their lives?
How does sexual selection shape or not shape gender differences observed cross-culturally in humans?
How does biomedical anthropology differ from clinical approaches to disease?
What is the evolutionary significance of adolescence in human growth and development?
How has human behavior modified the distribution of infectious diseases?
What does it mean to eat “like a caveman,” and is that really something that people should be doing today?
What types of cases do forensic anthropologists work, and how does their approach differ from that of other forensic scientists?
How are sites discovered, recorded, and excavated? What is the chain of custody?
What determinations are included in an individual’s biological profile?
How can forensic anthropologists contribute to making an identification, and how is DNA evidence used in forensic anthropology? What is the difference between perimortem and postmortem trauma?
What role can forensic anthropologists play in resolving mass fatalities and war crimes?
Characterize the types of changes that led to the Industrial Revolution.
Compare high and low energy-using technologies.
What form does the division of labor take in industrial states? Where do you think the United States falls in this scheme?
Compare the principal tenets of capitalism and socialism. Would it be possible to create a functional economy that combined these two systems?
What is meant by the terms market economy and capitalism? What are the principal advantages and disadvantages of these systems for individual participants?
Using a specific example, describe what is meant by a multinational corporation. What are the processes by which a multinational corporation can affect the processes of both individual national
How has industrialization affected the family, kinship, marriage, and divorce?
What is the difference between a closed society and an open society? Is the United States a closed or an open society? What about Japan, the historic Soviet Union, and Great Britain?
What are some of the characteristics of Japanese industrial corporations?
Define the term feminism. What are the goals of feminists in industrialized states? Do you agree with these goals? Why or why not?
What are the processes by which industrialization affects the status of elderly individuals? How can we explain the higher status of the aged in societies like Japan and Russia?
How do political systems differ in industrial societies compared to preindustrial societies?
In your experience, has secularization had an impact on your religious beliefs and practices?
What do anthropologists mean by the term globalization?
What do you see in your everyday life that results from the process of globalization?
What are the strengths and weaknesses in the three economic models of globalization in this chapter? What would you adopt or reject regarding these models?
What are the weaknesses in the approaches of Benjamin Barber and Samuel Huntington to understanding globalization?
How has globalization influenced bands, tribes, and chiefdom societies? Do you see any positive aspects of globalization presently for these societies? What do you think will happen to these
Compare and contrast the effects of colonialism on Latin America, Africa, and the Caribbean.

Showing 1 - 100 of 223