Anthropology Exam 1 Shore 6-11

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Analogies

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Similarities arising as a result of similar selective forces; traits produced by convergent evolution.

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Anthropoids

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Members of Anthropoidea, one of the two suborders of primates; monkeys, apes, and humans are anthropoids.

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Arboreal

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Tree-dwelling; arboreal primates include gibbons, New World monkeys, and many Old World monkeys.

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Behavioral Ecology

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Study of the evolutionary basis of social behavior.

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Bipedal

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Two-footed; upright bipedalism is the characteristic human mode of locomotion.

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Brachiation

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Under-the-branch swinging; characteristic of gibbons, siamangs, and some New World monkeys

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Convergent Evolution

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Independent operation of similar selective forces; the process by which analogies are produced.
EX) wings of bats and birds

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Estrus

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Period of maximum sexual receptivity in female baboons, chimpanzees, and other primates, signaled by vaginal area swelling and coloration.

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Gibbons

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The smallest apes, natives of Asia; arboreal.

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Hominoids

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Members of the superfamily including humans and all the apes.

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Homologies

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Traits that organisms have jointly inherited from a common ancestor.

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Opposable thumb

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A thumb that can touch all the other fingers.

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Primatology

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The study of fossil and living apes, monkeys, and prosimians, including their behavior and social life.

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Prosimians

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The primate suborder that includes lemurs, lorises, and tarsiers.

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Sexual Dimorphism

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Marked differences in male and female anatomy and temperament.

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Taxonomy

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Classification scheme; assignment to categories (taxa; singular, taxon).

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Terrestrial

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Ground-dwelling; baboons, macaques, and humans are terrestrial primates; gorillas spend most of their time on the ground.

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Adapids

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Early (Eocene) primate family ancestral to lemurs and lorises.

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Arboreal Hypothesis

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Idea that the primates evolved by adapting to life high up in the trees, where visual abilities would have been favored over the sense of smell, and grasping hands and feet would have been used for movement along branches.

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Dryopithecus

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Zoological ape family living in Europe during the middle and late Miocene; probably includes the common ancestor of the lesser apes (gibbons and siamangs) and the great apes.

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Hominins

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Term used to describe all the human species that ever have existed, including the extinct ones, and excluding chimps and gorillas.

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Mixed Diet Hypothesis

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The idea that increased use of angiosperms (flowering plants) led to modern primate characteristics. Early primates would have relied on vision as they sought fruits, seeds, and flowers as well as insects.

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Omomyids

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Early (Eocene) primate family found in North America, Europe, and Asia; early omomyids may be ancestral to all anthropoids; later ones may be ancestral to tarsiers.

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Postcranium

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The area behind or below the head; the skeleton.

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Proconsul

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Early Miocene genus of the pliopithecoid superfamily; the most abundant and successful anthropoids of the early Miocene; the last common ancestor shared by the Old World monkeys and the apes.

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Sivapithecus

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Widespread fossil group first found in Pakistan; includes specimens formerly called “Ramapithecus” and fossil apes from Turkey, China, and Kenya; early Sivapithecus may contain the common ancestor of the orangutan and the African apes; late Sivapithecus is now seen as ancestral to the modern orang.

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A. afarensis

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Early form of Australopithecus, known from Hadar in Ethiopia (“Lucy”) and Laetoli in Tanzania; the Hadar remains date to 3.3–3.0 m.y.a.; the Laetoli remains are older, dating to 3.8–3.6 m.y.a.; despite its many apelike features, A. afarensis was an upright biped.

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Australopithecines

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Varied group of Pliocene– Pleistocene hominins. The term is derived from their former classification as members of a distinct subfamily, the Australopithecinae; now they are distinguished from Homo only at the genus level.

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Gracile

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Opposite of robust; “gracile” indicates that members of A. africanus were smaller and slighter, less robust, than were members of A. robustus

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Hominid

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A member of the taxonomic family that includes humans and the African apes and their immediate ancestors.

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Homo habilis

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Term coined by L. S. B. and Mary Leakey; immediate ancestor of H. erectus; lived from about 2.8 to 1.6 m.y.a.

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Oldowan

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Earliest (2.0 to 2.5 m.y.a.) stone tools; first discovered in 1931 by L. S. B. and Mary Leakey at Olduvai Gorge.

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Robust

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Large, strong, sturdy; said of skull, skeleton, muscle, and teeth; opposite of gracile.

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Acheulian

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Derived from the French village of St. Acheul, where these tools were first identified; Lower Paleolithic tool tradition associated with H. erectus.

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Anatomically Modern Humans (AMHs)

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Including the Cro-Magnons of Europe (31,000 B.P.) and the older fossils from Skhul (100,000), Qafzeh (92,000), Herto, and other sites; continue through the present.

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Archaic H. Sapiens

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Early H. sapiens, consisting of the Neandertals of Europe and the Middle East, the Neandertal-like hominins of Africa and Asia, and the immediate ancestors of all these hominins; lived from about 300,000 to 28,000 B.P.

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Blade Tool

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The basic Upper Paleolithic tool type, hammered off a prepared core.

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Glacials

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The four or five major advances of continental ice sheets in northern Europe and North America.

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Interglacials

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Extended warm periods between such major glacials as Riss and Würm.

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Mesolithic

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Middle Stone Age, whose characteristic tool type was the microlith; broad-spectrum economy.

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Mousterian

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Middle Paleolithic tool-making tradition associated with Neandertals.

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Multiregional Evolution

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Theory that H. erectus gradually evolved into modern H. sapiens in all regions inhabited by humans (Africa, Europe, northern Asia, and Australasia). As the regional populations evolved, gene flow always connected them, and so they always belonged to the same species. This theory opposes replacement models such as the Eve theory.

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Neandertals

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An archaic H. sapiens group that lived in Europe and the Middle East between 300,000-30,000 B.P.

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Out of Africa Theory

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Theory that a small group of anatomically modern people arose recently, probably in Africa, from which they spread and replaced the native and more archaic populations of other inhabited areas.

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Pleistocene

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Epoch of Homo’s appearance and evolution; began 1.8 million years ago; divided into Lower, Middle, and Upper.

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Upper Paleolithic

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Blade-tool-making traditions associated with early AMHs; named from their location in upper, or more recent, layers of sedimentary deposits.

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Achieved Status

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Social status that comes through talents, choices, actions, and accomplishments, rather than ascription.

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Ascribed Status

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Social status (e.g., race or gender) that people have little or no choice about occupying.

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Assimilation

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The process of change that a minority group may experience when it moves to a country where another culture dominates; the minority is incorporated into the dominant culture to the point that it no longer exists as a separate cultural unit.

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Descent

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Rule assigning social identity on the basis of some aspect of one’s ancestry.

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Discrimination

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Policies and practices that harm a group and its members.

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Ethnic Group

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Group distinguished by cultural similarities (shared among members of that group) and differences (between that group and others); ethnic-group members share beliefs, customs, and norms, and, often, a common language, religion, history, geography, and kinship.

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Hypodescent

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Rule that automatically places the children of a union or mating between members of different socioeconomic groups in the less-privileged group.

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Multiculturalism

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The view of cultural diversity in a country as something good and desirable; a multicultural society socializes individuals not only into the dominant (national) culture but also into an ethnic culture.

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Nation

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Once a synonym for “ethnic group,” designating a single culture sharing a language, religion, history, territory, ancestry, and kinship; now usually a synonym for state or nation-state.

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Nation-state

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An autonomous political entity; a country like the United States or Canada

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Plural Society

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A society that combines ethnic contrasts and economic interdependence of the ethnic groups.

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Prejudice

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Devaluing (looking down on) a group because of its assumed behavior, values, capabilities, attitudes, or other attributes.

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Race

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An ethnic group assumed to have a biological basis.

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Refugees

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People who have been forced (involuntary refugees) or who have chosen (voluntary refugees) to flee a country, to escape persecution or war.

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Social Race

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A group assumed to have a biological basis but actually perceived and defined in a social context, by a particular culture rather than by scientific criteria.

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Stratified

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Class-structured; stratified societies have marked differences in wealth, prestige, and power between social classes.

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Broad-spectrum Revolution

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Period beginning around 15,000 B.P. in the Middle East and 12,000 B.P. in Europe, during which a wider range, or broader spectrum, of plant and animal life was hunted, gathered, collected, caught, and fished; revolutionary because it led to food production.

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Clovis tradition

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Stone technology based on a projectile point that was fastened to the end of a hunting spear; it flourished between 12,000 and 11,000 B.P. in North America.

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Food Production

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Human control over the reproduction of plants and animals.

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Hilly Flanks

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Woodland zone that flanks the Tigris and Euphrates rivers to the north; zone of wild wheat and barley and of sedentism (settled, nonmigratory life) preceding food production.

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Manioc

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Cassava; a tuber plant domesticated in the South American lowlands.

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Mesoamerica

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Middle America, including Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize.

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Natufians

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Widespread Middle Eastern culture, dated to between 12,500 and 10,500 B.P.; subsisted on intensive wild cereal collecting and gazelle hunting and had year-round villages.

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Neolithic

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“New Stone Age,” coined to describe techniques of grinding and polishing stone tools; the first cultural period in a region in which the first signs of domestication are present.

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Sedentism

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Settled (sedentary) life; preceded food production in the Old World and followed it in the New World.

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Teocentli

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Or teosinte, a wild grass; apparent ancestor of maize.

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Aztec (capital?)

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Last independent state in the Valley of Mexico; capital was Tenochtitlan. Thrived between 1325 C.E. and the Spanish Conquest in 1520.

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Bronze

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An alloy of arsenic and copper or tin and copper.

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Chiefdom

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A ranked society in which relations among villages as well as among individuals are unequal, with smaller villages under the authority of leaders in larger villages; has a two-level settlement hierarchy.

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Cuneiform

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Early Mesopotamian writing that used a stylus (writing implement) to write wedge-shaped impressions on raw clay; from the Latin word for wedge.

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Egalitarian Society

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A type of society, most typically found among hunter-gatherers, that lacks status distinctions except for those based on age, gender, and individual qualities, talents, and achievements.

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Empire

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A mature, territorially large, and expansive, state; empires are typically multiethnic, multilinguistic, and more militaristic, with a better developed bureaucracy than earlier states.

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Halafian

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An early (7500–6500 B.P.) and widespread pottery style, first found in northern Syria; refers to a delicate ceramic style and to the period when the first chiefdoms emerged.

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Mesopotamia

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The area between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in what is now southern Iraq and southwestern Iran; location of the first cities and states.

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Metallurgy

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Knowledge of the properties of metals, including their extraction and processing and the manufacture of metal tools.

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Multivariate

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Involving multiple factors, causes, or variables

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Primary States

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States that arise on their own (through competition among chiefdoms), not through contact with other state societies.

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Ranked Society

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A type of society with hereditary inequality but not social stratification; individuals are ranked in terms of their genealogical closeness to the chief, but there is a continuum of status, with many individuals and kin groups ranked about equally.

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Settlement Hierarchy

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A ranked series of communities differing in size, function, and type of building; a three-level settlement hierarchy indicates state organization

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Smelting

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The high-temperature process by which pure metal is produced from an ore

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Teotihuacan

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100 to 700 C.E.; first state in the Valley of Mexico and earliest major Mesoamerican empire.

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Visual Predation Hypothesis

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Idea that the primates evolved in lower branches and undergrowth by developing visual and tactile abilities to aid in hunting and snaring insects.

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Social Darwinism

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The principles of natural selection could be used to account for the relative success of different kinds of cultures--those which were better adapted to the world survived.

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Levallois Technique

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Uniform flakes were chipped off a specially prepared core.

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Bands

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Hunter gatherers. Every family has its own leader. small nomadic groups

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Tribes

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Herding semi-nomadic culture with "big men" who rule.