Human Variation and Race

1. Everyone’s body function depends on blood circulation and many chemical reactions that occur when they body is at a temperature of 98.6 degrees. The body has natural ways of gaining or losing heat to maintain that normal temperature. Heat for anybody can bring illnesses, injuries, and death.  When heat stresses the body it makes the body weaker. Some of the stresses we face when working in a hot area are temperature, humidity, radiant heat, and wind speed. To ward off any danger our body must defend itself through breathing, sweating, changing the blood flow, and constantly staying hydrated. If someone sweats a lot and does not drink enough fluids, heat exhaustion can happen and if not cared for can lead to heat stroke. Heat stroke is the most serious heat-related illness. It occurs when the body becomes unable to control its temperature. The body's temperature rises rapidly, the sweating mechanism fails, and the body is unable to cool down. Body temperature can rise to over 100 degrees in a short time frame. When you sweat, more blood goes toward your body surface for cooling and less is available to serve your muscles, brain and other internal organs. Prolonged sweating draws a lot of water from the bloodstream, reducing its capacity to deliver nutrients, clear out wastes, lubricate joints and cool you later.

 

2. Short Term- An example of short-term adaption is sweating. Sweating allows our body to return to its normal temperature in order to avoid heat stroke. Also, hydrating will help bring the sweating down.

  

Facultative- A facultative adaption example is vasodilatation, which is the dilatation of blood vessels, which decreases blood pressure. When we are too hot, blood vessels supplying blood to the skin can swell or dilate.  This allows warm blood to flow near the surface of the skin, which can result to red skin color when people get very hot.

 

Development- A developmental adaption example would be weight. Someone who weighs 300 pounds will sweat much easily than someone who weighs 150 pounds. This is because the more body fat equals more pumping of your heart, which has to do in order to get blood to all the parts of your body. The more activity the body has, the higher the temperature, which is why people sweat much easily.

 

Cultural- Cultural adaptation can vary because in some religions or cultures, people are not allowed to wear tank tops, or short shorts to help with the cooling. But without short clothing, people can always use a fan.

3.  The benefits of studying human variation from this perspective across environmental areas are that it can help us to better understand each other.  I have many friends that have a different skin colors for a reason as I can learn from it and understand why. Another benefit can show others and me where we got to, where we are, and where we are headed in the future.

4. Race is not a word that describes a person’s environmental influences.  Culture can only define environmental influences, whether it is mine, or others. Culture upbringings allows for variation where race just separates people.  Studying the environmental influences can better help us to understand each other, where we come from, and they way we grew up.  

Conversation Post

Part A- This part was the easier part of the assignment. I did not realize how much I liked to talk until I was unable to! With me not being able to speaking, that forced my partner to do all the talking. She was the one asking all the questions and changing the topic whenever needed to. It got very hard when she was asking complex questions. So what she did instead was she made those hard questions into much easier questions to answer; she tried using yes or no questions. My partner was definitely in control of the whole conversation and held the power. She was the one who asked the questions, changed the topics when necessary, and changed the way we communicated by asking certain types of questions. In cultures where there is no talking, they would be treated differently and held to a lower standard than those who speak. Also, it would make people who speak not want to interact with the other culture. For example, people who are deaf use sing language. However, so many people do not know sign language, which makes it very difficult with people who speak communicate with them. People speak to each other every day, but we do not value how fortunate we are to be able to do so.

Part B- This part was by far the hardest part of the assignment. Not being able to have any body movements showed that there was almost no point to the conversation because my partner was the one doing all the work. My partner asked all the questions and did not get any answers she needed out of me due to the lack of body motion. This made her very frustrated and mad at me! Body language is extremely necessary to use in a conversation. Without it there is no way to have emotion or to show reaction without it. Conversations become very boring and robotic.

People who may experience difficulty with body language are people with autism. They are in a world that is centered around themselves and when someone makes gesture or hand motion, it is lost to them. Most autistic children have a hard time making eye contact during conversation. When someone who does not have autism is speaking to someone who does, not having eye contact would be difficult to see if you are making sense to them because their attention could be somewhere else.

The benefit of possessing the ability to read body language is such an advantage to life. For example, if you are on a date with someone, you can tell I that person is having a good time or not by their facial expressions and by their body language. Many conversations that lead to relationships begin because interest in communicated or some sort of body language, like a smile, a wink, a nod, etc. Another example would be if you are working at a convenient store. If a robber were to come in holding a gun, you can tell if they have done this before or not by their body language. If they are shaky, continuously looking around, sweating, and the look of being scared in their eyes. Being able to read body language is a huge advantage.

For the most part, most people can read body language because it is something we do every day. I think a situation where not reading body language would be okay is if you travel to another country. There are so many different cultures out there that live and act in so many different ways. If I were to travel to Europe, they may act differently than I do here in America. You do not want to confuse yourself. Another example would be playing poker. When playing card games, you want to try and trick others by giving them false body language and false facial expressions. In this case, not being able to read body language would be a good thing because you may be telling yourself different things that can confuse yourself.

Piltdown Hoax

1. The Piltdown Hoax was such a clever hoax it fooled scientists for more than 40 years. The Piltodown Hoax was a hoax in which bone fragments were presented as the fossilized remains of a jawbone from a previously unknown early human in 1912 by an amateur archaeologist, Charles Dawson. People wanted so badly to find the evidence for the connection between humans and apes. After this finding, Dawson invited England’s leading archaeologist, Arthur Smith Woodward, and French archaeologist, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, to Piltdown where the first discovery of the jawbone was made. These three men concluded that the jawbone that was discovered shows the connection between the apes and humans. Scientists believed that England also had human fossils like others and that England’s human ancestors might be the oldest out of any ancestors. For the next decade, people were obsessed with the model of Piltdown man and of human evolution even though there were no other Piltdown fossils discovered after Charles Dawson died.  However, there were ancient fossils of human ancestors found in other continents that conflicted with the Piltdown findings. But because scientists did not have the proper tools and knowledge, they were not able to explain the difference in Piltdown discoveries and the fossils from other continents. But that did not stop scientist’s years later for finding a way to figure out the truth about these fossils and concluded that someone forged the Piltdown Fossils.

2. The mistake here was England jumped to conclusions so fast because they wanted to prove so badly that human origins were from Britain and the search for the evidence connection between apes and humans was very intense, they stated that the fossil found could be the oldest human like fossil. It was said that the hoax started with Charles Dawson’s ambition and pride and it went on for so long because people would have believed anything that led them to finding the connection between apes and humans, they were willing to ignore the facts. Pride and respect was taken from England because of this hoax.

3. The positive aspects here were that scientists were able to prove that the fossil they found was rather young. By measuring the flouring content of fossils, scientists could roughly date them. So because of this, scientists used fluorine on the Piltdown fossils. The staining on the burn was superficial and the material was cut probably using a steel knife. Also, the jaw- bone dated back to less than 100 years and came from a female orangutan because they noticed that a canine tooth was cut down using a knife. It was very smart of them to test everything possible to know everything about these fossils and finally prove the truth.  

4. I do not think it is possible to remove human factor from science because everyone makes mistakes and everyone has their own theory on everything. Even though someone may be wrong does not mean that everything is a hoax. That is why it is important to always check every finding to find out the truth. If the person is wrong than so be it, but chances are they can be right. This hoax was different because no one bothers to fact check the findings until years later.

        

 5. What I learned from this historical event is that it is so important to fact check everything that comes to you. You should always put it the effort no mater how long it takes to fact check and thoroughly examine the truth for whatever is told. Also, it is important to put your pride aside when it comes to science because it is so easy to be wrong. Definitely fact- check the truth.

Homology/ Analogy Pictures

 

Analogy/Homology

Dolphin Flipper vs. Human Arm/ Hand

a. Two different species that posses the homologous trait are dolphins and humans. The dolphin flipper and the human arm/hand have similar structures.

b. The dolphin flippers act as stabilisers and are used for steering, while swimming, and can act as brakes, along with the tail. They are made of collagen- rich connective tissue, that are very similar to the bones inside a humans arm and hand. The joint that is comparable to the elbow is located at the body surface. The humerus has a large- globular head where it meets the scapula in the shoulder joint. Arteries in the flipers are surrounded by veins. So, some heat from the blood traveling through the arteries is transferred to the venous blood. This countercurrent heat exchange aids dolphins in conserving body heat. To shed excess body heat, circulation increases in veins near the surface of the flippers and decreases in veins returning to the body core.

The humerus articulates with the scapula at the shoulder and with the radius and ulna at the elbow. It is a long bone that is essential for movement and support of the arm. The brachial artery travels most of the bones length. The brachial artery branches into several arteries, distributing oxygenated blood from the lungs and heart. The hand exhibits great mobility and flexibility in the digits and in the whole organ. The complex abilities of the hand are part of what makes humans unique. The hand gives us a forceful grip and we use our hands the most out of anything else on our body.  The structures are different between dolphins and humans because the human’s arms are much longer than a dolphin’s flipper. Also, humans a more vertical and dolphins swim more horizontal.

c. The common ancestor of dolphins are Pakicetus. We know this because its legs are shorter, and its hands and feet are enlarged like paddles. Its tail is longer and more muscular, too. The ear region of the skull resembles fossil and modern whales, and the teeth and other features are similar to those of some fossil whales. Whales and dolphins come from the same common ancestor. The common ancestor of humans is the Chimpanzee. Shoulder shape tracks changes in early human behavior such as reduced climbing and increased tool use. Chimpanzees are the closest living relatives to humans.

d.               

Bird Wing vs. Bat Wing

a. Two different species that posses the analogous trait are birds and bats. I chose the wings on a bird versus the wings on a bat.

b. Bird and bat wings are analogous because they have separate evolutionary origins, but are superficially similar because they evolved to serve the same function. Bird wings and bat wings are analogous as flight structures: their structure and function have evolved by different routes from a flightless reptilian ancestor. A good portion of the flight surface in bats consists of a membrane stretched between the extended digits in the hand, whereas the digits of the bird are relatively small and do not support the flight surface. Birds have the same arm bones as humans and bats, but the bones are arranged in their wings very differently than the bones in bat wings. Bird and bat bones look small and delicate. This was thought to make both bird and bat bones lighter so they can fly.

c. The discovery that birds evolved from small carnivorous dinosaurs of the Late Jurassic.  The common ancestor of bats Laurasiatheria; which is a superorder of placental mammals. Because Laurasiatheria is defined by DNA sequence analysis, the group does not share any obvious anatomical features. So, this branches into categories. Bats are mammals in the order Chiroptera. They are the only mammals that can fly. In these categories also include carnivores. Bats and birds are not genetically related because the structure in their wings and the way they fly are fairly different. Birds have more gaps and feathers in their wings to help them glide through the air whereas bat wings don’t, so it seems as they are swimming through air.

d.