Biological Profile: Ancestry COPY

Question 1

why is ancestry the most difficult to determine?

Answer 1

racial boundaries are dynamic

Question 2

what are the features that classify race?

Answer 2

skin color, hair texture, and nasal width

Question 3

biological concept of race

Answer 3

different populations of the same species, which are distinguished from one another by the possession of certain distinctive hereditary traits

Question 4

what are the two stances of race between forensic anthropologists?

Answer 4

• those who wish to separate individuals into biologically distinct races
• those who feel that racial boundaries are plastic and the human population cannot be separated into different racial categories

Question 5

what was the first division of racial groups?

Answer 5

• 18th century scientist Cardus Linnaeus separated people into 4 categories
• H. americanus: red-colored people that inhabited the Americas
• H. europus: white-colored people who inhabited Europe
• H. asiaticus: yellow-colored people who inhabited Asia
• H. afer: black-colored people who inhabited Africa

Question 6

Blemenbach’s 5 races

Answer 6

1. American
2. Caucasoid
3. Mongoloid
4. Ethiopian
5. Malay

Question 7

how does Blemenbach’s races have racist ideologies?

Answer 7

• claimed that caucasoids were direct decedents from adam and eve and everyone else devolved from Caucasoid
• system till exists today and is used to discriminate

Question 8

biological determinism

Answer 8

states the individuals are born with a specific set of genes determine their behavioral norms
-eugenics movement stemmed from this

Question 9

what are the current ideas on race?

Answer 9

• increased knowledge on genetics and human variation has caused scientists to change their views on race
• steady decline on whether race exists on a biological level
• racial categories are not biological but represent an individual’s social or ethnic affiliation

Question 10

ancestry

Answer 10

commonly used instead of race to refer to a group of individuals that are descended from the same ancestral populations

Question 11

why is race still used in forensic anthropology?

Answer 11

• to identify an individual, a biological profile must be established
• forensic anthropologists will continue to separate individuals as long as societies as a whole does the same
• uses ancestry to assist in identification

Question 12

what are the two methods to assess ancestral affiliations?

Answer 12

nonmetric and metric

Question 13

discrete/discontinuous traits

Answer 13

• scoring of nonmetric traits
• scored as complete/incomplete or present/absent
• scored on a ranked scale of 0, 1, 2, 3

Question 14

non-metric traits

Answer 14

• documented for large sample sizes
• clearly illustrated
• rigorously quantified
• scored as absent or present

Question 15

interorbital breadth

Answer 15

distance between the eyes

Question 16

nasal aperture

Answer 16

hole of nose, how wide/narrow

Question 17

inferior nasal aperture

Answer 17

bottom of nose where it meets the upper lip, it is a smooth curve or angle lip of bone

Question 18

nasal shape

Answer 18

• how bones of the nose are shaped

- can be round, triangular, or flat

Question 19

post-bregmatic depression

Answer 19

• small concavity on sagittal suture just past the bregma (dip in the middle of skull)
• either have it or don’t

Question 20

palate shape

Answer 20

• round
• U shaped
• V shaped

Question 21

midface pragmatism

Answer 21

does the middle of the face protrude away from the forehead, go inward or make a straight line

Question 22

African Ancestry

Answer 22

• Alveolar prognathism
• Receding zygomatics
• Nasal spine small
• Nasal aperture wide
• Nasal architecture round
• Interorbital breadth wide
• Orbits rectangular
• Molar crenulation

Question 23

European Ancestry

Answer 23

• “Pointed” face
• Midfacial prognathism (zygomatics recede)
• Carabelli’s cusp on protocone
• Nasal aperture narrow
• Nasal sill present
• Interorbital breadth minimal
• Nasal architecture steepled

Question 24

Asian/Native American Ancestry

Answer 24

• Orthognathic
• Flaring/forward-projecting zygomatics
• Incisor shoveling
• Nasal aperture moderate
• Interorbital breadth intermediate
• Orbits circular
• Nasal architecture tented

Question 25

ecotype

Answer 25

• an observable phenomena
• group of individuals sharing environmental adaptations
• not always a major subdivision between species

Question 26

what are the problems with defining biological race?

Answer 26

• environmental variation can lead to selection that yield local adaptations even in species with no subspecies
• not purely a biological concept (cultural)
• different racial groupings are produced depending on which adaptive trait is chosen to make group distinctions

Question 27

disadvantages of non-metric analysis

Answer 27

• interobserver error (assessment is objective)

- intraobserver error

Question 28

FORSDISC

Answer 28

• measure the remains and enter in data
• computes the likelihood of the skeleton belonging to a particular ancestral population
• compares skeleton to other references and samples of unknown individuals

Question 29

discriminate function analysis

Answer 29

• multivariate procedure -identify variables that distinguish between predefined groups
• limited by comparative samples

Question 30

post cranial measurements

Answer 30

• typically relies on metrics
• proportionality
• two types of measurements: Bregmann and Allen