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| Anthropology is the study of humans, their cultures, behaviors, evolution, and societies, both past and present. |
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| Archaeology - how they explore past populations |
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| Archaeologists explore past populations by excavating and analyzing artifacts, structures, and remains to understand their culture, technology, and daily life. |
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| Osteology is the study of bones, including their structure, function, and analysis in archaeological and forensic contexts. |
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| Paleopathology is the study of ancient diseases and injuries in human and animal remains, mainly through skeletal analysis. |
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| Paleodemography is the study of ancient population characteristics, such as age, sex, mortality, and population size, using skeletal and archaeological evidence. |
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| Paleonutrition is the study of ancient diets and nutrition through skeletal remains, isotopic analysis, and archaeological evidence like food residues and tools. |
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| Evolution theory explains how species change over time through processes like natural selection, genetic drift, and mutation, leading to biodiversity. |
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| is the philosophical idea that all things have a fixed essence or set of characteristics that define them, often applied in biology to the idea that species are unchanging. |
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| The Great Chain of Being is a hierarchical concept from medieval philosophy that ranks all living and non-living things in a fixed order, from God and angels down to humans, animals, plants, and minerals. |
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| Taxonomy is the science of classifying and naming organisms based on shared characteristics, using a hierarchical system of categories such as kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, and species. |
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| Carl Linnaeus was a Swedish botanist who developed the binomial nomenclature system for naming species and laid the foundation for modern taxonomy. |
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| Catastrophism is the theory that Earth’s features were shaped by a series of sudden, violent events, such as natural disasters, rather than gradual processes. |
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| Georges Cuvier was a French naturalist and paleontologist who is known for establishing extinction as a scientific concept and supporting catastrophism to explain the sudden disappearance of species. |
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| Uniformitarianism is the principle that the processes shaping Earth’s geology today, such as erosion and volcanic activity, have worked in the same way throughout history, gradually shaping the planet over long periods of time. |
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| Charles Lyell was a British geologist who championed uniformitarianism, arguing that Earth's geological features were shaped by slow, continuous processes over time, challenging the idea of catastrophism. |
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| Transformational evolution |
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| Transformational evolution is the idea that species evolve through gradual, continuous changes in response to environmental pressures, leading to new forms over time. |
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| Jean-Baptiste Lamarck was a French biologist who proposed the theory of inheritance of acquired characteristics, suggesting that traits gained during an organism’s lifetime could be passed on to its offspring, influencing evolution. |
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| Charles Darwin proposed the theory of natural selection, which suggests that individuals with traits better suited to their environment are more likely to survive and reproduce, passing those traits on to future generations, leading to evolution over time. |
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| Thomas Malthus was an economist who proposed that populations grow exponentially, but resources grow at a slower, linear rate. He argued that competition for limited resources leads to survival of the fittest, influencing Darwin's ideas on natural selection. |
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| founder and bottle neck effect |
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Founder Effect: A type of genetic drift that occurs when a small group of individuals establishes a new population, leading to reduced genetic diversity in the new population compared to the original one.
Bottleneck Effect: A drastic reduction in the size of a population due to environmental events (e.g., natural disasters), leading to a loss of genetic diversity as the surviving population may not represent the genetic diversity of the original group. |
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| Karl Landsteiner was an Austrian immunologist who discovered the ABO blood group system, making blood transfusions safer and revolutionizing medicine. |
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| **4 subfields of anthropology** |
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Definition
- SOCIAL/CULTURE
- LINGUISTIC
- PHYSICAL / BIOLOGICAL
- ARCHAEOLOGY |
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relative dating methods
absolute dating
seriation |
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| go layer by layer when digging |
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assigns an age in years
date but often a margin of error |
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looking at the style of artifacts to see how they change over time
battle ship curve artifacts come back after a period of time like a rebirth |
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| telling age by tree rings |
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| Radioactive isotopes are unstable atoms that decay over time, releasing radiation. They are used in dating fossils (radiocarbon dating), medical imaging, and treatments. |
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| Radiocarbon dating is a method used to determine the age of organic materials by measuring the decay of carbon-14, a radioactive isotope, providing dates up to about 50,000 years old. |
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| Carbon isotopes are different forms of carbon atoms with varying numbers of neutrons. The most common are **carbon-12 (¹²C)**, **carbon-13 (¹³C)** (both stable), and **carbon-14 (¹⁴C)** (radioactive, used in radiocarbon dating). |
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| Nitrogen isotopes are different forms of nitrogen atoms with varying numbers of neutrons. The most common are **nitrogen-14 (¹⁴N)** (stable) and **nitrogen-15 (¹⁵N)** (stable). They are used in ecological and dietary studies to analyze trophic levels and past diets. |
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