Human Variation and Race

Krystal Morrice

Anthropology Week 8 Blog Post

Human Variation and Race Blog

March 25^th, 2013

1.      As the article Adapting to Climate Extremes states, “more people die from heat than cold in the United States every year” (http://anthro.palomar.edu/adapt/adapt_2.htm). Heat causes people to sweat and when a person sweats they are looking the water and salt, daily minerals that are needed to stay alive and healthy, that their body has obtained. If this balance of water and sweat is not replaced in their body then the result can be fatality. High body temperatures often cause infections and deterioration of organs which can then lead to death.

2.      There are a few different ways that humans have adapted to living in areas with high heat temperatures.

a.      A short-term adaptation to living in high heat temperatures would be sweating out the heat. Like I talked about in question number one when a person’s body is high in temperature, it usually sweats to get rid of excess heat that the body is carrying.

b.      A facultative adaptation of living in extremely hot climates is, “vasodilation of peripheral blood vessels causes flushing, or reddening, of the skin because more blood is close to the surface.  That blood brings heat from the core body areas to the surface where it can be dissipated easily into the environment by radiation” (http://anthro.palomar.edu/adapt/adapt_2.htm). This is a facultative adaptation because it doesn’t require a change in the DNA, but rather an adjustment while the problem, such as high temperatures, occurs.

c.       According to Bermann’s Rule, people’s and animal’s body type differ depending on the climate that they live in. People who have more body mass and a shorter bigger mass usually live in a climate where it is cold because their bodies are able to produce more heat due to the fact that they have more cells in its body to produce heat. While animals and people that live in warmer climates are usually thinner with longer limbs. People of small body mass are better adapted to radiate heat off of their bodies due to the small body mass, which is why they are more likely to live in hotter regions. This can be thought of as developmental adaptations.

d.      There are many different cultural adaptations to adjusting to hot living climates. For instance, the invention of air conditioning, fans, spray bottles, and other cooling technologies have helped people and animals adapts to severe temperatures. Another thing that I found interesting while reading one of the articles was the invention of sports drinks to re-hydrate people and add the minerals and salt back to your body once you sweat it out. I was watching the history channel a few days ago with my dad, he is a huge history channel fan, and it was a show on the invention of Gatorade. I found it interesting that Gatorade was invented to re-hydrate sports teams, particularly a football team in this case. It was named Gatorade after the Florida Gators football team! That is probably a little bit off topic, but I found it interesting!

3.      Human variation is an interesting topic and I believe that information from different explorations and studies can be deemed extremely useful. Any research helps people understand why our bodies normally react a specific way, or, in the aspect of developmental adaptation, why we have specific genetics that help us live in certain environments. One way that knowing all if this information, if we are talking about the information I provided in question number two, is beneficial is the ideas in cultural adaptation. Knowing things like the fact that sports drinks hydrate you and that they are easy to make like explained in the article. “It is easy and inexpensive to create your own equivalent drink without the unnecessary food coloring and sugar that the commercial drinks often include to make them more appealing to customers.  Diluted lemonade with added salt can satisfactorily serve the same purpose” (http://anthro.palomar.edu/adapt/adapt_2.htm). Can help people know how to take care of themselves while they are living in hot temperature areas.

4.      The color of someone’s skin can have a lot to do with the type of environment they live in. The more often you’re around the sun and ultra violet lights, then the darker your skin probably is. There are benefits and disadvantages of being in the sun light. An advantage is that sun exposure creates healthy vitamins that your skin needs such as Vitamin D. The down-side to too much sun exposure is that it can also lead to diseases such as “rickets disease” or “osteoporosis”. The good thing about the vitamins’ needed to ensure a healthy immune system and skin type is that it is now possible to get these vitamins through ways such as taking oral vitamins or drinking milk!

Communication at its Finest!!

               “Primates have an advanced system of communication that includes; vocalization, hand gestures, and body language. Humans have evolved even further, we have achieved something that primates have not; spoken language” (http://science.howstuffworks.com). I had never realized how difficult it is to communicate without speaking verbally or even to communicate without gestures and emotion but only spoken language, but it is difficult. It is hard to believe that there was once a time when humans did not use spoken language. While doing the Language Assignment Experiment, I found that both the absence of spoken language and the absence of all body language and gestures hinder communication.

                The first part of the Language assignment was to spend 15 minutes taking part in a conversation without using spoken language. I found that this was difficult, but it wasn’t impossible. I was still able to communicate with body language and gestures such as nodding my head or making a certain face depending on if I agreed or disagreed with what they were saying. I did this assignment with both my parents and I filled them in on the assignment before-hand. If I could re-do the assignment, I would leave my participants in the dark about the guidelines to the assignment because I felt since my parents knew what I was doing; they didn’t react as naturally as they would have in a normal situation. I did notice that since I was not communicating verbally back to them, that they somewhat drifted away from talking to me and instead continued the conversation between themselves. It would be interesting to see how this conversation would have gone between two people from different cultures. As advanced as we have become with spoken language, I feel that the culture that is demonstrating the spoken language would have the upper hand. This is because we rely so heavily on spoken language, that one might not know how to react in a situation where the other culture does not use it. An example of two different cultures that might be on different communication levels is someone who is deaf and relies on American Sign language and gestures to communicate and someone who is able to hear and speak and uses verbal language freely. Some people might feel uncomfortable knowing that they can’t communicate in the way that they are used to, but I believe that body language, expression, gestures, and emotion are a huge part of communication. In fact, without all that it would be difficult to communicate on a daily basis.

                The second part of the Language assignment was to spend 15 minutes taking part in a conversation only using spoken language. To communicate without using physical embellishments, hand signals, vocal intonation, or body movement. This part of the assignment was difficult; in fact, I thought it was more difficult than the first part of the assignment. I was not able to complete the full 15 minutes; at least I couldn’t finish it while taking it seriously. It is difficult to express how you feel about something without using the different devises such as gestures or expression. This part was not easy for my parents to participate in either. They didn’t seem to take me as seriously when I spoke everything in a monotone expressionless robot tone. In fact, we ended the experiment early because we were laughing at how silly I sounded. The “use of signs” in language is a large majority of the communication process, in fact, without “non-speech language techniques”, I believe that communication would be extremely difficult.  There are a lot of different people in the world who have trouble reading other people’s body language whether it is someone who is autistic, naive, or just simply does not catch on easily to others gestures; there are plenty of people who just don’t understand. I believe that it is important to know how to speak with expression and body language but I am sure there are some situations when the use of body language is not necessary. One might believe that the use of body language and gestures is not necessary when they are communicating with someone who cannot physically see; someone who is blind. I don’t think that there is a benefit to this, just the fact that it may not be as necessary in this situation as it is in others. Humans have come a long way, and I believe communication such as spoken verbal language, and body language is one of our best achievements!

Works Cited

"HowStuffWorks "Science"." HowStuffWorks "Science". N.p., n.d. Web. 19 Mar. 2013. <http://science.howstuffworks.com>.

Riggio, Ph.D., Ronald E. . "Reading Body Language: It’s Not Easy, But You Can Improve ." Psychology Today. N.p., n.d. Web. 18 Mar. 2013. <http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/cutting-edge-leadership/201106/reading-body-language-it-s-not-easy-you-can-improve>.

The Piltdown Hoax

Krystal Morrice

Piltdown Hoax Blog

Anthropology Week 5

Tuesday March 5, 2013

The Piltdown hoax was discovered in 1953. It originally started in 1908 and went through 1913,

when the fossil remains of both a human and an ape were found in the same location of Piltdown. The

scientists, archeologists, and geology professor that originally found these remains believed that this

“species” that they found was the link between primate and humans. This was a huge discovery in its

time and unfortunately due to lack of technology and the fact that the “Piltdown Mans” remains were

locked away in a British Museum, it wasn’t discovered that it was phony until 1953. Instead of these

remains dating back to millions of years ago, they were only about 100 years old. The remains were also

hand stained and shaved down in certain areas to resemble a human rather than an ape. The hoax was

discovered when scientists were running in depth inspection of the fossils. After world war two the

invention of a new technology allowed scientists to measure the level of the fluorine content of the

fossils; this revealed how far back each fossil dated; proving that the Piltdown Man was not fossils from

the same species and most importantly that they weren’t from millions of years ago. So why would

these scientists forge the Piltdown man? It is still under investigation but the main suspects are Charles

Dawson, an amateur archeologist, Tielhard De Chardin, a theologian and scientist that worked at the

Museum the remains were stored at, W. J. Sollas, a professor of geology who helped Dawson and

Chardin dig up remains, Grafton Elliot Smith, the gentleman who wrote the paper about the find, and

Martin A. C. Hilton, a curator of zoology who’s suitcase was found with bones similar to those of the

Piltdown Man’s bones. People have ruled out a lot of these people and believe that it was Charles

Dawson since he was the first and last scientist to find the Piltdown remains. Even though investigations

point towards Dawson, it is possible that he had accomplices in his work.

It is hard to say why someone would do this, but probably fame or recognition had a lot to do

with it. It was upsetting when this hoax was revealed because scientists didn’t really think of the fact

that people could lie or make up remains or scientific research, but now that it has taken place many

scientists and researchers are careful and pay attention to ensure that they aren’t misled the way

everyone was deceived with the Piltdown Hoax. People make mistakes, so it is understandable that

people believed these scientists when they revealed the Piltdown man’s fossils. The evidence was right

in front of them, so why wouldn’t they believe it? Now that it is proven to be a fraud, people have

become more skeptical of science. This isn’t a bad thing though, it actually means that people will

question and test things more thoroughly when they are found which will then ensure that the finding

are indeed real.

At time goes on technology becomes greater. In fact, technology helped reveal the Piltdown

man as a fake. As I briefly talked about earlier, scientists used a new technology of measuring the

fluorine content in fossils to determine how old they are. Then again in 1953 scientists did a full scale

analysis with the use of new technology, microscopes, and new age detecting devices of the Piltdown

man remains. This new technology helped uncover a scientific hoax and I believe that humans also had a

part in uncovering the truth. It would not be a good idea to eliminate humans from science because, it is

humans who discover things, create hypothesis, test hypothesis, and sum up theories. Technology of

course is a huge factor in these processes, but the two go hand in hand when it comes to scientific

research.

The moral or lesson of the Piltdown hoax could be that you can’t always believe what people say

or what they publish. That sometimes ideas or findings need to be tested and examined by different

people and technologies to ensure the authenticity. The fact that the Piltdown man was a hoax doesn’t

mean that all science is a fraud, but rather that science is fallible and people make mistakes.