Portraying the Nature of Humans
Contents
1. Introduction
1.1 Humans and the natural
1.1.1 Defining nature
1.1.2 Ecology
1.1.3 Human nature
1.2 The Science of the Study of Humans
1.2.1 Anthropology
1.2.3 Applications
1.2.3 Primatology
1.2.4 primate ecology, Evolution and behavior
1.3 Main Disciplines supporting Approaches to the study of Humans
1.3.1 Evolution
1.3.2 Biochemistry
1.3.3 Geology
1.3.4 The Fossil Record
- Anthropology
2.1 Culture
2.1.1 Why study Culture?
2.1.2 Cultural variations
2.1.3 Ethnocentrism and Cultural relativism
2.1.4 Race and Ethnicity
2.1.5 Kinship
2.1.6 Religion
2.1.7 Adaptive strategies and the political life
2.1.8 Globalization
2.1.9 Ethnography and Ethnology
2.2 Language
2.2.1 The origin of language
2.2.2 Descriptive and historical linguistics
2.2.3 Language and thought
2.2.4 Language loss
2.2.5 Language in the digital age
2.3 Archaeology
2.3.1 Ancient civilizations
2.3.2 American archaeology
2.3.3 Modern scientific archaeology
2.3.4 Culture and Context
2.3.5 Excavation
2.3.6 Classification and Taxonomy
2.3.7 Interpretation of culture history
2.3.8 Middle Range theory
2.3.9 Bioarcheology
2.3.10 Managing the Past
2.4 Biology
2.4.1 Human biological adaptations
2.4.2 Biological explanations for culture
2.4.3 Biological explanations for language
2.4.4 Human biological variation
2.4.5 Are we still evolving?
2.5 Academic and Applied Anthropology
2.5.1 The scientific method
2.5.2 The role of academic anthropology
2.5.3 The role of applied anthropology
- Primatology
3.1 Mammals and Primates
3.1.1 vertebrates and mammals
3.1.2 primate classification
3.2 Primate Characteristics
3.2.1 Skeleton
3.2.2 Sense of touch
3.2.3 Sense of smell
3.2.4 Vision
3.3 Primate origins
3.3.1 The timeline of primate origins
3.3.2 The evidence for the origin of primates
3.4 Primate Behavior
3.4.1 Primate sociality
3.4.2 aggressive and hedonic behaviors
3.5 Primate Culture
3.5.1 Tool use
3.5.2 Language abilities
3.6 Humans as Primates
3.6.1 Shared derived features
3.6.2 Features unique to humans
- Evolution and Ecology
4.1 Forerunners
4.1.1 Ancient Greek thoughts on evolution
4.1.2 The scientific revolution
4.1.3 Jean Baptiste De Lamarck
4.2 Charles Lyell and Robert Malthus
4.2.1 The age of the earth
4.2.3 principles of populations
4.3 Charles Darwin
4.3.1 The Origin of Species
4.3.2 The Descent of Man
4.4 Gregor Mendel
4.4.1 The basis of particulate inheritance
4.4.2 The science of heredity
4.5 The Synthetic Theory
4.5.1 Inheritance and Evolution
4.5.2 The progress of evolutionary theory
4.6 Ecology
4.6.1 The science of the environment
4.6.2 Ecological succession
4.6.3 Ecological biomes
4.7 Human Evolutionary Ecology
4.7.1 The human econiche
4.7.2 Conservation
- Biochemistry
5.1 DNA
5.1.1 The double helix
5.1.2 Protein synthesis
5.2 Genomics
5.2.1 DNA sequencing
5.2.3 Comparative genomics
5.3 Paleoproteinomics
5.3.1 Ancient proteins
5.3.1 A novel sequencing approach
5.4 Human Biochemistry
5.4.1 Sequencing the human genome
5.4.2 Variations in human genomics
5.4.3 Applications
- Geology
6.1 Uniformitarianism
6.1.1 The basics of the earth sciences
6.1.2 Formation of the layers of the earth
6.2 The Fossil Record for Human Evolution
6.1.1 The Cenozoic
6.1.2 The earliest Hominins
6.1.3 Homo habilis and Homo erectus
6.1.4 Archaic Homo sapiens
6.1.5 Modern Homo sapiens
6.2 Plate Tectonics
6.2.1 The formation of the earth’s crust
6.2.2 The mid-oceanic ridges
6.2.3 The continental plates
6.2.4 Evidence for the positions of the plates
6.3 Dating
6.3.1 Relative dating
6.3.1 Absolute dating
- Concluding Remarks
7.1 Evolutionary Theory and Religious Thought
7.1.1 The disconnect between evolution and religion
7.1.2 Religious fundamentalism
7.2 Science and Religion
7.3 Challenges for the Future
