Week 8 assignment

Week 8: Human variation and Race blog 

1.I chose high solar radiation for the environmental stress. Our bodies create a pigment called melanin that is essential to our ability to shield ourselves from the solar radiation, which is produced in the epidermis. But melanin doesn’t block out all radiation, some short wave radiation is vital to because it helps the body produce vitamin D. Too much solar radiation may cause the breakdown of folate in the body, which can cause anemia. Folate is from folic acid within our food. This can affect pregnant women because the lack of folate can increase their risk of miscarriages and babies with neural tube defects. Folate is needed for DNA replication in dividing cells and its absence can have a negative impact on many body processes, for instance, the production of sperm cells. It can also cause mutations in our DNA and can increase chances of cancer. 

2. A) There isn't any short term adaptation to high levels of solar radiation. 

    B) A facultative adaptation to high levels of solar radiation is our ability to tan. This adaptation occurs when we have prolonged exposure to the sun. This is most apparent during the summer seasons because the sun's rays hit the earth at a steeper angle, which increases the amount of energy being absorbed by the earth.  The prolonged exposure will gradually turn an individual into a tanner skin tone due to the increased production of melanin, which will help protect the individual from overexposure to solar radiation. This adaptation is not permanent because for instance during the winter an individual will have a lighter skin tone because of the decreased exposure to solar radiation. 

    C)The long-term adaptation is the actual change of DNA of a population of individuals in response to the long-term stress to produce a phenotypic change through evolutionary forces. An example of a long-term adaptation is the skin color of people from African, they have evolved to have darker skin color due to the increased production of melanin and more exposure to solar radiation than people who are from Europe. The darker skin color is more helpful because it protects us from the suns radiation. Places in Europe where there is less solar radiation, caused the population to have a lighter skin color because they weren't exposed to as much solar radiation as people in Africa which results in a decreased production of melanin. 

   D)The cultural adaptation to high levels of solar radiation is wearing clothing that covers up the skin, using sunscreen, and looking for places that have shade like an umbrella or a canopy. 

3. The benefits of studying human variations are essential to our understanding of how populations change due to environmental stresses. Solar radiation, for example, is something that affects everyone, but it is more apparent in people who live in the southern hemisphere. Knowing this we can deduce why some people have darker skin color and why others have fairly light skin colors. I think that it can be useful to us because through this we can further our research into cancers that involve exposure to solar radiation and how we can possibly find a cure for it. 

4. I don’t really think race has anything to do with the variation of high solar radiation because it affects us all. Darker skin colors are directly the result of long exposure to solar radiation, which can happen to any individual no matter the race. Using environmental influences on adaptation is a better way to understand human variation rather than race because we are genetically similar, the changes in populations arise from different environmental stresses that we have encountered or will encounter in the future. 

Week 7 assignment

Brian Roe  

Anthropology 101  

3/21/2017  

Week 7 Language Blog   

For this assignment, I carried out a conversation with my mom about different controversial topics ranging from global warming to politics. When I was communicating with my mom she noticed that my hands were used in order to direct her to what I wanted to talk about and to also help focus on what I was trying to say. She also focused in on my facial expressions like how my eyebrows would raise when she talked about something or if I would smile or frown during a topic. My experience of this assignment was interesting to say the least, only having the option to use body language and minimal sounds without language was not as hard as I had expected. I thought that we wouldn’t be able to have any form of communication but through my body language my mom was able to ask me about my viewpoints or my ideas on the topic and I would answer with body language to let her know that I was engaged in the conversation. But having complex conversations was impossible because there is only so much you can say with facial expressions and body language. Yes, my mom changed the way the conversation headed by asking simple questions that could be answered with yes and no answers, which could be interpreted with body language or my facial expressions.  

My partner was definitely the controller of the conversation throughout part 1 of this assignment. It was usually my partner who initiated a change in topics, but I had the ability also to change the subject if I wanted to just by pointing something out or averting my eyes to a different part of the web page. I think that the balance was tipped toward my partner because it always almost as if it was her duty to initiate the conversation, but I had the ability to change the topic.   

The culture that uses spoken language will have the advantage when expressing complex ideas because spoken languages words have power to them, also through speech, you can incorporate many things like emotions or different tones. It also allows you the ability to convey your thoughts to a wider audience just by raising your voice. The speaking culture will probably think that the nonverbal communicating culture is inferior to them or isn't as sophisticated. Today there is a deaf culture, which is consisted of people who don’t use verbal forms of communications. Almost all other cultures use verbal communication.  

Part 2  

Through this part of the assignment, we used the same topics as before and I had the same partner. Being able to use verbal communication with these controversial topics allowed us to have a sophisticated debate about our thoughts and our feeling toward different topics. My partner was more open to question my ideas and why I think the way I do and I was able to do the same. Our conversations were never dull and sometimes it even got off course because of the differing ideas that we had.  I think that this part of the assignment was easier, but I noticed that it felt almost awkward not being able to use my hands in order to talk, I noticed how much I depend on using hand motions in order to convey my own ideas. I thought it was really difficult not being able to make any facial movements or even move my head because I wanted to face my partner and talk with her but my position was so that I was looking straight ahead. I used my peripheral vision in order to glimpse her facial expressions and also how she reacted to the topics. My partner said that it wasn’t a big issue with the lack of body language, but she said that I was almost robot like without the use of body language or emotions. My partner didn’t have trouble with understanding what was being said, but she wasn’t able to read my emotions or how I truly felt about the topic.   

This shows that body language is equally important as verbal language. Body language helps us read people's emotions and maybe their comfortability about a topic. They are able to read a lot of things through people's body language like their emotions, how interested they are if they are focused, and what they might be thinking as the conversation goes on.  

The advantage to reading body language is the ability to see if someone poses a threat to you or not. This helps with survival because through body language you can see if someone feels comfortable around you or is not someone who wants to be around you. If someone doesn’t want to be around you, their body posture will probably be stiff and rigid while someone who is comfortable will be laid back and be very open about body language.   

I think that some people might have a hard time reading body language. I researched people who are not able to read body language and I came across a medical condition called social-emotional agnosia and this condition is basically the inability to read body language, facial expressions, or voice intonation. A situation of a benefit of not reading someone's body language, in my opinion, is if they are sad or angry. I just feel like these two traits can turn others to become depressed or have negative thoughts just by your body language.  

Piltdown man

The Piltdown Hoax was an archaeological find that was located near Piltdown village in Sussex, England. This discovery was found in Pleistocene gravel beds by a laborer who later gave it to an archaeologist named Charles Dawson in 1912. This fossil would have provided us with a new branch of the evolutionary tree and might have given us a view of an early common ancestor or a species that branched off from the evolutionary tree. The fossil would have provided us with mankind's earliest ancestor and a connection between humans and apes. This discovery proved that Darwin’s Theory of Evolution was right. This also gave scientists the idea that our earliest ancestors weren’t actually from Africa but from England. Even though it was considered a crown jewel within the Natural History Museum, many people still had their doubts still. The hoax was uncovered within the museum by a man named Kenneth Oakley, who used a chemical test in order to help authenticate and date the fossil but to his surprise, the Piltdown man was younger than expected. Then a separate test was taken place within the mineral department to estimate the nitrogen content and they found that the fossil wasn’t as old, the skull was stained, and the teeth were filed down. After the hoax, many scientists who built their careers upon this discovery lost their credibility as scientists and this was also embarrassing for the British sciences.

The fault within this hoax has to be greed and the desire to become famous. Charles Dawson created this hoax in order to get his name out there within the scientific community in Britain and gain recognition and credibility as an archaeologist. He was considered one of the foremost amateur antiquarians during his time. This allowed him to present things to the Royal Society, Antiquarian Society, and British Museum directly. These presentations gave him credibility as an archaeologist and a scientist. I think that this negatively impacted the scientific process because without even analyzing the skull or doing research to date it, people believed that this was our earliest common ancestor without proof but the testimony of several people.

The positives of the scientific process that proved this to be a fraud were observations as well as experimentation. Without the chemical test, the age of the skull wouldn’t have been reached.  Without the microscope, scientists wouldn’t have been able to see the grind marks on the teeth.

I think that it is possible to take out the human factor within science so that something like this doesn’t happen again because we are able to make mistakes as well as skew data but with machinery, we can have precise and true date. I personally wouldn’t take away the human factor because without our intuition and creativeness we wouldn’t be living the way we are in society and constantly making new breakthroughs in technology.

I learned that you should never take the words of others as factual until you researched and determined if what they are saying is either true or false. Even though what they are saying might be true it is always important to do extra research and come to a conclusion by yourself.