Test 2 -Anthropology 152

ANT 152

TEST 2

A) What is a symbolic sign ? What is an indexical sign ? What is an iconographic sign ? What is language ? What is culture , in the anthropological sense ? What is displacement, in the linguistic sense; and how was it key in raising the Darwinian fitness of the evolving Genus Homo species in the Stone Age ?

B) What are the principles of the Modern Synthesis of Evolutionary Theory ? What were the two parts of Darwin’s contribution to evolutionary theory ? What is the ultimate test of a species’ Darwinian fitness/adaptive success/ being selected for ?

C) What was LaMarck’s evolutionary hypothesis of Inheritance of Acquired Characteristics ? Though LaMarck’s hypothesis has been disproven for evolution of genotypes/phenotypes , how do culture and language give Genus Homo species a form of inheritance of culturally invented customs ? How thereby do Genus Homo species have a more efficient adaptive mechanism than all other species ? What does “random” mean in the concept of “ random genetic mutation” ?

D) What is the Mesolithic or Middle Stone Age ? What is the Neolithic or New Stone Age ? How does it differ from the Old Stone Age ?