Anthropology Exam 1
information from chapters 1-4 of text at Goucher College
Terms
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- cultural anthropology
- also known as social or sociocultural anthropology. The study of customary patterns in human behavior, thought, and feelings. It focuses on humans as culture-producing and culture-reproducing creatures
- hominoid
- the broad-shouldered tailless groups of primates that includes all living and extinct apes and humans
- sivapithecus
- the earliest ancestor of humans
- Lower Paleolithic
- the first part of the Old Stone Age spanning from about 200,000 or 250,000 to 2.6 million years ago
- Homo habilis
- "Handy Human;" the first fossil members of the genus Homo appearing 2.5 to 2.6 million years ago, with larger brains and smaller faces than australopithecines
- ethnocentrism
- the belief that the ways of one's own culture are the only proper ones
- 2.4 million years ago
- when culture emerged; when stone tools were invented
- Neanderthals
- a distinct group within the genus Homo inhabiting Europe and Southeast Asia from approximately 30,000 to 125,000 years ago
- Australopithecus
- the genus including several species of early bipeds from southern, eastern, and central Africa (Chad) living between about 1.1 and 4.3 million years ago, one of whom was directly ancestral to humans
- archaeology
- the study of human cultures through the recovery and analysis of material remains and environmental data
- Mousterian
- the tool industry found among Neanderthals in Europe and Southeast Asia, and their human contemporaries in northern Africa, during the Middle Paleolithic, generally dating from about 40,000 to 125,000 years ago
- Australopithecus africanus
- the closest relative to homo habilis, first human to use hand signs as language
- ethnography
- a detailed description of a particular culture primarily based on fieldwork
- primate order
- the order through which humans descended from primates
- Homo erectus
- "Upright Human;" a species within the genus Homo appearing just after 2 million years ago in Africa and ultimately spreading throughout the Old World
- Malinowski
- dealt with three different needs of society (food and sex are two)
- culture
- a society's shared and socially transmitted ideas, values and perceptions, which are used to make sense of experience and which generate behavior and and are reflected in that behavior
- four branches of anthropology
- archaeology, cultural, linguistic and physical
- physical anthropology
- also known as biological anthropology. The systematic study of humans as biological organisms
- primate
- the subgroup of mammals that includes lemurs, lorises, tarsiers, monkeys, apes, and humans
- cultural relativism
- the idea that one must suspend judgment of other people's practices in order to understand them in their own cultural terms
- symbol
- a sign, emblem, or other thing that is arbitrarily linked to something else and represents it in a meaningful way
- materialist perspective
- a theoretical approach stressing the primacy of infrastructure (material conditions) in cultural research and analysis
- Humans
- one of 192 species of primate, and one of over 4,000 species of mammal
- termite fishing
- the way chimpanzees exhibit their capacity to create tools
- .5 million years
- age of Homo sapiens
- ethnology
- the study and analysis if different cultures from a comparative or historical point of view, utilizing ethnographic accounts and developing anthropological theories that help explain why certain important differences or similarities occur among groups
- African Rift Valley
- where many of the most complete early hominoid fossils have been found; thought to be close to the origin of man
- lithic technology
- rock manufacturing (stone tools)
- 4 plus million years
- age of Australopithecus ramidus
- Oldowan
- the first stone industry, beginning between 2.5 and 2.6 million years ago at the start of the Lower Paleolithic
- bipedalism
- a special form of locomotion in which an organism walks upright on two feet - characteristic of humans and their ancestors
- Upper Paleolithic
- the lst part (10,000 to 40,000 years ago) of the Old Stone Age, featuring tool industries characterized by long slim blades and an explosion of creative symbolic forms
- enculturation
- the process by which a society's culture is transitted from one generation to the next and individuals become members of their society
- culture
- a society's shared and socially transmitted ideas, values and perceptions, which are used to make sense of experience and which generate behavior and are reflected in that behavior
- 1.8 million years
- age of Homo erectus
- society
- an organized group or groups of interdependent people who generally share a common territory, language, and culture and who act together for collective survival and well-being
- anthropology
- the study of humankind in all times and places
- 1.1 million years ago
- when A. boisei and A. robustus went extinct
- 4 plus million years
- how long man has been bipedal
- pluralistic society
- a society in which two or more ethnic groups or nationalities are politically organized into one territorial state but maintain their cultural differences
- forensic anthropology
- applied subfield of physical anthropology that specializes in the identification of human skeletal remains for legal purposes
- 3-4 million years
- age of Australopithecus afarensis