Anthropology is the study of humans across all facets of life including culture, religion, social aspects, and how these few examples intertwine with each other. Anthropology is vast and stretches on all aspects of what it means to be human. A key component is to disregard one's own personal biases to accurately portray a human behavior or normalcies. The main goal of anthropology is to learn and understand the diversity of human nature as also to defeat the idea of
ethnocentrism, which is to have biases relating to one's own idea of normal and looking down upon those who differ.
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A Ghanaian woman trading clothing at a market as a source for second hand clothing that was imported from other countries like the United States. “Market Woman - Kejetia Market - Kumasi - Ghana - 03” by Adam Jones/flickr, CC BY 2.0
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Over the last few years, artificial intelligence has taken over many aspects of life, especially including creative outlets and expressions. In the article "Why AI Will Never Fully Capture Human Language" by Joseph Wilson, an experiment is made where an AI source was given a prompt to write a novel based on some friends going on a road trip. The outcome was an oddly written story with many words and phrases not connecting or making coherent sense. This is a major problem with AI writing methods, as it gets information from millions of sources from all over the internet. As AI has become more advanced, it has been able to create similar forms of human expression, but when relating to speech, it has always missed the mark. What makes human language so difficult to replicate is its lack of written language. Without a direct source to pull from, AI has trouble completing its designed task. Human language is also vastly different depending on region, background, and culture and what sets it apart from other languages is its ability to translate through facial expressions, tone of voice, and inflection. Spoken language is also a key component to many cultures, such as native tribes, that share experiences through story telling. AI may be able to produce a taste of human language, but it well never be able to satisfy the full flavor of the richness of spoken language.
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A group of people actively engaging in conversation that shows the layers of spoken language.
Aaron Guy Leroux/Flickr
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In 1996, two men discovered a human skull on the bank of a river in Washington. Eventually the entire skeleton was excavated and dated back 9000 years. The remains were purposefully buried and were assumed to placed by ancient native people. Anthropologists were able to study the well preserved remains and revealed that the skeleton belonged to a Kennewick man that was highly intelligent for the time and a proficient hunter of marine life. There were some disputes between the native people in the area and the scientists examining the body, as both claimed to have rights to the skeleton. After some time, the remains were kept in the ownership of the researchers, but the native people called for return of the remains to the burial site for cultural purposes. I believe the remains were a key role in the research of early humans, but after enough through examination, they should have been returned to the proper burial site for the rest of time, as respect to the native people.
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| The skeletal remains of the Kennewick man. |
For my field project I am interested in visiting the Bay County Library History Room. I am very familiar with this library and have frequented it often, usually as a quite place to complete school work. I am interested in observing and studying ancient artifacts of humans and their cultural purposes. I plan on making a blog about my studies, as I am most familiar with a writing medium.
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