ANT human origins exam 1

• "story tellers"
• theory- narrative in structure and language, thus theories are amended to literary anaylsis

• hero folk tale
• morphology of a folk tale
• 31 stages found in all tales

coming down from trees

walking on two legs

growth and brain size

culture, symbols, etc

• Landau 9 stages
• 1. initial situation/
• 2.hero intro
• 3.change/ growth
• 4.departure/ woodland-savanna
• 5.struggle;test/rapid enviroment
• 6.fairy godmother/ natural selection
• 7.transformation/ biped
• 8.tested again/ leaving africa
• 9.triumph/ modern humans

belief or perception of purposefulness in nature

progressive evo in a unfamiliar fashion

• pre req.
• 1. longer limbs
• 2.increase body and brain size
• 3. more meat (omnivore diet)
• 4.sophisticated stone tools

• Variety of species from one ancestor occurs when a variety of habitats are available.
• Human origin as a bush NOT tree

• organisms respond to environmental factors in response to felt needs.
• -> law of use and disuse
• acquired changes are passed on
• ex: giraffe who stretch his neck to reach the leaves at the top of the tree, eventually reaching them with a longer neck.-- trait passed to kids

• principle of geology
• unformitarianism-"the present is like the past"

• pop. continues to grow but food supply remains the same.
• - limits in food supply keep advances in pop. size in check.

• "on the tendencecy of varities to depart indefinitely from the original type"
• scooped darwin

• adaptation
• evolutionary change
• ---macro-evo
• ----micro-evo

• natural selection: four condi.
• -----1. inheritance
• ----2. reproduction
• -----3. variation
• -----4. competition
• ----------survival of the fittest- differential repro. success
• ----------sexual selection

• Gregor mendel: mechanism of inheritance
• mutationist school v.s the selectionist school
• the modern synthesis
• - genetic drift

moth study in U.K

• change in gene frequency over time
• drug- resistance TB in russia
• rough skinned newt
• Darwins finches
• human induced changes- big horn sheep and atlantic cod
• human skin color- folate and vitamin D
• tay-sachs and TB

• Reproductive isolation
• - donkeys and horse breed, have sterol offspring
• - interbreed of diff but similar species

the splitting of a lineage into isolated sub pop.

general, gradual change in a lineage

diversity of one species that gradually changes through time.

one population of one species became two species while in the same geographic region with no physical separation

speciation occured in different regions.The key with allopatric speciation is geographical separation

evolution *within* a gene pool of a population of interbreeding species-mates.

separated gene pools (reproductively isolated populations

• >evolutionary trends that affect
• periods with no change/ or little than periods with huge changes
• ------seen in genetic mutatuions

>slowly over time with little variations occuring

• 1) Inherited properties (historical constraints)
• 2) The biotic context
• 3) The physical context

• the red queen hyp.
• - have to run to stay in once place> AKA keep evolving to stay alive
• >predator- prey interactions
• -an adaptation in one species (predator) may cause selection pressures in another species (prey)

split by geography they eventually will not be able to interbreed.

• - geographic changes that causes areas of land to be dramatically different even though they are relatively close
• ex: Rain shadow and local habitat changes

• Habitat Hypothesis (Elisabeth Vrba)
• Vicariance (split)
• Turnover-pulse Hypothesis
• -survival and adaptation
• - eco goes through changes that can result in mass extinction

Potential for dispersal & Proneness to extinction

• Bipedality->encephalization (increase in brain)->
• sociality

• 1. direct methods date objects themselves . ex: bones
• 2. in direct methods are applied ro something assoc. with the fossil or artifact. ex: pottery

faunal correlations and paleomagnetism

1) Some action sets a clock to zero

2) Radioactive isotope (parent atom) decays at a steady rate

• 3) Product of radioactive decay accumulates (daughter atoms)
• *(age determined by determining the ratio of daughter atoms to parent atoms)

• Range + 200-50,000 years ago
• direct dating
• Limitations: Contamination, Calibration
• -dates organic material
• - c-14 naturally occurs but unstable isotope of c-12
• - the two isotopes occur in a constant proportion in nature, are absorbed by living things
• - once an organism dies, no new carbon is absorbed into it, c-14 then starts to decay

• Range 100,000 ya to 2 billion years
• indirect dating
• Limitations: Error estimates are large
• -relies on radioactive decay of isotopes found in indigenous rocks
• - usually decay of k-40 to Ar-40
• - when rock is heated all Ar-40 is released as gas (eruption), clock sets to zero
• - when cooling Ar-40 begins to gather b/c of potassium break down
• dates gather but comparing accumulated Ar-40 to remaining k-40