Chapter 1 Flashcards
(39 cards)
Anthropology
The study of all aspects of the human experience
Four types: Archaeology, Biological Anthropology, Cultural Anthropology, and Linguistic Anthropology
Primates
The mammalian order to which humans belong
Archaeology
The study of the patterns of behavior and the material record of humans who lived in the past
Biological Anthropology
The study of the biological and biocultural facets of humans and their relatives
Cultural Anthropology
The study of the human culture; the patterns of behavior we exhibit in our families, relationships, religions, laws, moral codes, etc.
Ethnography
The focused study of a culture or aspects of a culture
Ethnology
The comparative study of many cultures
Linguistic Anthropology
The study of language, its structure, function, and evolution
Paleoanthropology
The study of fossil humans and human relatives
Fossil
Material evidence of past life on this planet
Ecology
Interrelationships between living organisms and their environments
Theory
A set of supported hypotheses
Paradigm
Predominant ways of thinking about ideas
The Fact of Evolution (observable, verifiable truth)
That life on this planet has changed over time
The Theory of Evolution
A set of hypotheses that explain how the change occurs
Great Chain of Being
An important idea of Greek and Roman Philosophy.
The notion that all forms of life on the planet can be ranked in order from the most important to the least important
-Supports the belief that higher ranked forms are better than lower ranked forms and that humans are superior to other life forms
Essentialism
Each organism has a true, ideal form and that all living representatives of that organism are slight deviations from the ideal type
-Answers are self-evident
John Ray
An English naturalist, classified plants and animals on the basis of similarities and differences
Robert Hooke
Believed that fossils represented extinct organisms and proposed that extinctions occurred because of changes in the earth
Nicolas Steno
Founded stratigraphy, the study of the rock and soil layers of the earth
-Proposed that the strata of the earth represented a chronological history of a constantly changing planet
Catastrophism
- The belief that great castrophes regularly wipe out much of life on earth
- Believed humans were all descendants of survivors of the Great Flood
Stratigraphy
The study of the layering of the earth’s sediments
taxanomy
Naming and classification of organisms based on morphological similarities and differences
Carolus Linnaeus
A swedish naturalist and Father of Taxonomy
- Invented a two name system to identify and group different forms (binomial nomenclature)
- Believed in fixity of nature: No new species could arise from other
- Binomial nomenclature destroyed notions of great chain of being