Emily - Intro to Anthropology

Archaeology  is the study of the history of humans through found artifacts in burial sites or other ancient landmarks. Its role in anthropology is to study and understand past humans to better understand late and current trends of humans. Its main goal is to gather information and conduct research, while preserving the ancient landmark. With this information, anthropologists and archaeologists alike can paint an accurate picture of early life among humans. Some archaeologists acquire information without directly touching physical objects. This practice is called participant observation, where archaeologists can learn from an unfamiliar place or group of people by logging their observed characteristics and lifestyles. These archaeologists learn and observe by immersing themselves within a culture with respect, and the intention to learn without interference.  Methods: Cultural and Archaeological  An archaeologist (Stuart Butler) introducing himself to some citizens of Maas...

  Primates , which also include humans, have distinct differences among other mammals. Some of these differences include opposable thumbs and big toes for more movement, larger brain size, and the use of their enhanced sense of vision over their sense of smell. The study of primates is important to the understanding of humans, as they have many similar physical traits, but differing social traits. These differences are what anthropologists use to further understand human culture and how they interact with one another and the world around them. A hominin  is any species that is related to humans and includes some species of primates. They all share the same common trait, bipedal locomotion, which means being able to stand and move on two feet. Which is another similarity between humans and primates.  What is a primate? The skeleton's of gorillas (left) and humans (right), comparing their skeletal structure that is designed for bipedal locomotion.   Rice Universit...

 Biological Anthropology  is one of  the main subsects of anthropology. It differs from other parts of anthropology by focusing on the past of humans, instead of current trends. It encompasses how humans evolved overtime, links to early primate species, and the archeology of discovered remains such as bones. In order to better understand present humans, it is important to first understand humans of the past. To be able to organize these found differing traits and characteristics, scientists created the naming system of taxonomy . Taxonomy is used to group things that have similar traits such as gene structure or behavior. It is used a tool to display similarities and differences of both humans of the past and present in order to better understand humans as a whole.  Biological Evolution and Early Human Evidence The taxonomy system used to classify a monarch butterfly  Copyright Rice University/OpenStax, under CC By 4.0 license In order to understand present day...