Anthropology

1) How does the long childhood of humans make our social behaviors possible?
2) How do biocultural behaviors affect the forces of Natural Selection?
3) How does isotopic analysis show where a person lived in their childhood, and how can it show if they moved in the years before their death?
4) Was Turkana Boy well-adapted to his environment? How?
5) How did Ardi demonstrate the flaws in a simply Savanna Hypothesis?

On the Final, these will be potential Essay choices, and you should answer two of the three offered:

1) Explain and describe the differences between anatomically modern humans and Neanderthals. What traits did they have that were like us, and which

were different? Include both morphology and behavior (see page 370-380 in your textbook, also powerpoints)

2) Describe the life and death of Otzi, the Iceman from the Alps. How do we know how he died from his physical remains? What would we know if we only

had his bones and no soft tissue?

3) Describe the pattern of development from H. habilis to H. sapiens. What trends do you see? How is the connection between culture and biology

apparent and growing stronger with each species? (be sure to consider brain size, tool ‘quality’, and the increasing social behaviors)

4) Explain the process by which variation is introduced into a population, how natural selection works with that variation, and then explain how this

enables speciation to occur (consider the bonobos and chimpanzees as a study aid)

5) Choose either a hominid or a Great Ape. Describe how they demonstrate the principle of natural selection, taking into account their environment,

their morphology, and their bio-cultural complex of behaviors, if any

Find a Ted Talk or NPR Podcast covering a subject related to language and culture/society. It can be about language and changing demographics, language acquisition, the nature of sign language –there are literally thousands of talks and podcasts to choose from. Write a 1-2 page paper connecting the topic of the talk/podcast to concepts we have learned about in class. In what ways do you understand this talk/podcast differently because of what we have learned about this semester? Justify your answer using (citing) readings, module content and lecture material.

*****concepts learned in class come from this textbook: Ahearn, Laura. 2012.Living Language. Wiley-Blackwell. ISBN 978-1-4051-2441-6 *****