Chapter One: Encountering the Past Flashcards
Define Archeology
A sub-discipline of anthropology (the study of humanity), concentrating on the cultural evolution of past human beings.
True or False: the accepted view of the world is one where the world is a static product of relatively recent, divine creation.
False, the accepted belief now is that the earth is the result of slow-acting, natural causes that continue to operate in the present with an ever changing history.
Define Archeological Site
A place or group of physical sites in which evidence of past activity is preserved.
Define Paleoanthropology
A branch of anthropology that deals with fossilized humans and their ancestors (hominids).
Define Anthropology
The study of people through holistic and integrative approaches; studying how the interrelated parts of society allow it to function.
Define Holistic
Comprehension of the parts of something as intimately interconnected and explicable only by reference to the whole.
Define Ethnographers
Anthropologists that study humans by living in particular societies and observing the behaviours of the people living in them.
Define Ethnology
The comparison of different cultures.
Define Anthropological Linguistics
The study of language and how it evolved and the historical relationships among the known languages.
Define Primatologists
Anthropologists who live among non human primates (prosimians, monkeys, apes, and humans are all primates) to gain insights into human ancestral lineage.
Define Forensic Anthropologist
The application of scientific procedures in the solution of a crime using knowledge of the human skeleton and associated trauma and pathology.
Paleoanthropologists and archeologists investigate the evolutionary history of humanity through what two avenues?
Biological evolution and cultural evolution through the use of bones and artifacts.
What do Archeologists rely on?
The material remains left by past peoples, including things that people made and used such as stone cutting tools and monuments.
What was the common belief of the 16th-17th century of the world’s age by Europeans?
The world was only a few thousand years old and was created by God and the world had not changed significantly since God first made it.
How old did John Lightfoot believe the world to be in 1642?
5,570 years old.
Who was James Ussher?
An Irish bishop who, in 1650, calculated the world to have been created in 4004 BC, October 23rd.
Who was John Ray?
A creationist from the late 17th century who believed the world around him reflected the conserved works of God, in the same condition as the day they were first made.
What belief arose in the late 17th to 18th centuries?
The belief that the world had dramatically changed since creation (from God) through a series of catastrophic, natural, processes that where set in motion by God when he originally created the world. This belief was held by catastrophists. They believed these changes could be understood through careful study.
What does Noah’s Flood support?
The catastrophism view of the world. Astronomer Edmund Halley proposed (in the late 17th century) that a comet caused the flood.
Who was Scottish scientist James Hutton?
One of the first oppositionists to catastrophism, expressed in his work “Theory of the Earth” (late 18th century), by saying that the operations of nature are equable and steady - not unpredictable and catastrophic. This lead to uniformitarianism, the thinking that the world was a machine built to readjust and recreate itself continually.
What was found across Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries?
Symmetrical stone axes, which were explained by many observers in the early 17th century to have been made/used by fairies and elves. Theories were restricted because people “could not” have been more than 6000 years old.
What was John Frere’s discovery?
Late 18th century (1797), he found stone axes buried 12 feet deep; below the bones of extinct animals in more recently deposited soil layers. Uniformitarian approach.
Define Stratigraphy
The study of rock layers and layering.
Who was Jacques Boucher de Perthes?
A French customs official with a passion for collecting artifacts, calling stone axes ‘antediluvian’ (from before the flood). Uniformitarian approach.
