Wayne County Community College District’s Ant 153 introduces students to physical anthropology one of the following four subfields of anthropology:
1)PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY, the focus of this class, discovers the truth of the biological theory and facts of human evolutionary origins and human physical diversity ; it does this based on especially _fossil_ evidence and the evolutionary theories of Charles Darwin and modern biology. However, the ideas ( especially language and culture) of the three other subfields listed below are important in understanding the unique characteristics of _human_ evolution.
2)ARCHAEOLOGY and 3) ETHNOLOGY explore the development of culture through the Truly Civilized Stone Age and so-called Civilization, examining artifacts, material culture, fossil remains, etc. and examining theories about Modes of Making a Living from cooperative/egalitarian foraging and horticulture to large scale domestication of plants and animals with private property, greed, economic classes, the state and male supremacy. ETHNOLOGY OR SOCIO-CULTURAL-HISTORICAL ANTHROPOLOGY , also gives an understanding of diverse customs , histories, traditions and religions , economic classes, nations and “race” in the present historical era of capitalism and globalism.Wayne County Community College District’s Ant 153 introduces students to physical anthropology one of the following four subfields of anthropology:
1)PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY, the focus of this class, discovers the truth of the biological theory and facts of human evolutionary origins and human physical diversity ; it does this based on especially _fossil_ evidence and the evolutionary theories of Charles Darwin and modern biology. However, the ideas ( especially language and culture) of the three other subfields listed below are important in understanding the unique characteristics of _human_ evolution.
2)ARCHAEOLOGY and 3) ETHNOLOGY explore the development of culture through the Truly Civilized Stone Age and so-called Civilization, examining artifacts, material culture, fossil remains, etc. and examining theories about Modes of Making a Living from cooperative/egalitarian foraging and horticulture to large scale domestication of plants and animals with private property, greed, economic classes, the state and male supremacy. ETHNOLOGY OR SOCIO-CULTURAL-HISTORICAL ANTHROPOLOGY , also gives an understanding of diverse customs , histories, traditions and religions , economic classes, nations and “race” in the present historical era of capitalism and globalism.
4)LINGUISTIC ANTHROPOLOGY investigates language or symbolic communication, like culture, an exclusive human capacity enabling us to share knowledge and experience with people remote from us in time and space; and like culture , shaping our worldviews and perception and interpretation of events.
Anthropology is the study of human beings in all times and places; study that is historical, systematic and objective, that is to say scientific, based on logical consideration and testing of material evidence, and natural theories ; from 100's of thousands of years ago to the present; from Detroit to the other ends of the Earth. This is in contrast with understanding humans based on whims, superstition, untested intuition , uncritical faith or unquestioned authority or supernatural beings. It is an understanding of human societies and individuals biologically and historically, that is as they have changed and developed ,evolved ,over time and many generations of individual selves. It seeks to be truly holistic in approach and scope , looking for the _whole_ truth, nothing but the truth. It welcomes contributions to its understanding of people from all the other academic disciplines, natural sciences, social sciences and humanities. It even considers respectfully and sympathetically systems of thought and belief from cultures very different than our own.
Symbolic Communication
Anthropology's special contribution to scientific understanding of humanity is the concepts of _language and culture_, or the symbolic nature of human behavior, communication and social organization. As mentioned above, language and culture make human evolution unique in comparison with the evolution of other species.
Culture is behavior ruled by a mental system of shared customs, traditions, values, ideas and material products of a particular group of people. Culture and language , or symbolic communication , are unique and exclusive characteristics of human beings, the species Homo sapiens . No other animal species has them, despite the exaggerated claims of some primatologists for chimps and gorillas.
What is symbolic communication ? What is a symbol or symbolic sign in the technical linguistic and anthropological sense ? It using something to represent something it is not. Almost all words are symbolic signs. Here is my name : CHARLES BROWN. Those marks on the paper are not me; But they are used to represent me. This is using something to represent something that it is not. The technical term is that there is an arbitrary relation between the sign and the thing signified.
The opposite of a symbolic sign is an indexical sign . The relationship between an indexical sign and what it signifies is not arbitrary (conventional, traditional) but necessary. The classical example is smoke and fire. Smoke is an indexical sign of fire.
The fact that a symbolic sign is not what it signifies , give humans the power to talk , communicate with each other about things and the experiences of people that are not immediately present but DISPLACED IN TIME OR SPACE from them ! And cultural/linguistic learning is learning from the experience of other people, including learning from people who are now dead, learning about experiences that are not ours ; that are displaced from the immediate objects of our senses.
So, signing or symboling , in the forms of both language and culture, is our species’ unique activity. And, importantly , also, most of human _learning_ is through symbols, culture, not as much by imitating, like other species. Not by "monkey-see, monkey do" imitation. Most of our learning ( as opposed to inborn or genetically based knowledge) is through culture and language, not from individual experience.
. Just to further explain the concept of arbitrariness, it refers to the relationship between the signifier and the signified. So, if the sounds d-o-g are used to refer to things that are dogs, we see that those sounds do not "imitate" or are not naturally related to dogs. The arbitrariness of a sign refers to the fact that in a sign something is used to represent something that it is not. Two _different_ things are arbitrarily identified, treated as the _same_.
These 2 capacities of Culture and language, symbolic communication, provided the human species with an enormous adaptive and Darwinian selective advantage compared to other animal species in the hundreds of thousands of years that the human species came to be and inhabit the whole globe, again to a greater extent than other animal species. (See attachment “ CULTURALLY INHERITED ADAPTATIONS GIVE THE HUMAN SPECIES HIGH DARWINIAN FITNESS, BECAUSE CULTURAL ADAPTATIONS ARE CAUSED BY THE ADAPTIVE PROBLEM THAT THEY SOLVE”). This is because it made humans extremely interconnected both with living other humans, so that human labor and methods of physical survival are very _social_, not individualistic; and perhaps more importantly, _connected to dead generations of the species through , again, language and culture, as in ancestor veneration : myths, legends, stories, customs, historical accounts of past generations' experiences. Two (or a thousand ) heads are better than one in the struggles for survival and snuggles for reproduction . By sharing the experiences , discoveries, knowledge of many generations past and those of fellow living people, humans had and have a big Darwinian or natural selective advantage especially in the Stone Age in prehistoric times over the course of 100's of thousands of years and, starting going back about 2.5 million of years with the species Homo habilis (See Chapter 14 of the text). Again , this enormous social networking within living generations and between living and dead generations is encapsulated in the concepts of culture and language and symbolic communication , the _differentia specifica_ of the human species.
Anthropology as the study of humankind in all times and places, systematically and objectively, a very good definition. More candidly anthropologists believe that we have a profound understanding of the truth about human societies and Individuals biologically, historically and scientifically.
There is but one science, the science of history. Anthropology is the life science of human beings; the natural and cultural history of the species Homo sapiens. Studying "all" of something , the whole or holistically, systematically and objectively is scientific study and knowledge , because the truth must be the whole truth. So, to say anthropology is open to evidence of human endeavor from wherever it might be is to declare anthropology has a scientific approach to knowledge of the truth about human beings . We follow the motto of the poet Terrance: Nothing human is alien to anthropology , so to speak.
Originally , anthropology specialized among the academic disciplines in studying human beings in times and places remote from the present and the West-Europe , traveling far in time and space , expanding the representative quality and quantity of the sample of the social sciences, such as they were , of evidence on human activity and behavior , bodily motion. Anthropology aimed in part to expand the sample of data Western academe had on humans in a scientific endeavor to represent more fully the whole of humanity , "all" of the object of study, that is humans in _all_ times and _all_ places, not just the history of Europe - a correct scientific mission.
Another main and unique contribution of anthropology in expanding the sample of human life studied by modern science, including natural history, is the study of early humans and humans' immediate ancestor species in the evolutionary origin of the species _homo sapiens_. This evidence and sample represent at a minimum 200,000 years of human society and as much as 2.5 million years when the whole of the genus _homo_ is considered human society, that the human species originates with _Homo habilis_ and _Homo erectus_ (Chapter 14).
“_Sapiens_" means "wise" In Latin. Homo sapiens (Latin: "wise being" ) What is culture, language or _symbolic_ communication ? For anthropology, culture, language or symbolic communication are the unique species characteristic of _Homo sapiens_. In a sense, "culture" is another word for "wisdom", from the notion that humans are the species _homo wise_. It is humans socially learned practices, customs, language, traditions, beliefs, religion, spirituality _passed down through many generations_ that make us "wise" in so many ways, certainly clever and winners _as a species_ ( not just as a few "fit" Individuals) in the struggles and snuggles to survive as a species. That is we are successful relative to other species in the Darwinian struggles to increase the species population.
Since the advent about 6,000 years ago of so-called civilization, as you have no doubt heard it referred to, sometimes, it's not so clear how wise our culture makes us. Therein lies the central drama of the history of the human species. Nonetheless, clearly in the Stone Age, our having culture was a highly adaptive advantage over species that did not have culture such as stone tools or controlling fire. These cultural behaviors guided by symbolic or imaginary thinking and communication, etc, raised our species fitness, the growth of our population. This is evidenced by _Homo sapiens_ expanding in population and therefore migrating to an expanded area of living space across the earth, out of what is now named Africa to the other continents. Stone Age foraging and kinship organized societies were the mode of life for the vast majority of time of human species ' existence, 99% or more. The first human societies had an extraordinarily high survival need to be able to rely on each other at levels of solidarity that we cannot even imagine. The intensity of the network of social connections of the members of a band of 25 to 150 people living in the ecological food chain locations of 100’s of thousands of years ago, would almost constitute a new level of organic organization and integrity above individual bodies or selves. Ancient kinship /family/culture /symbolic communication systems from around 2.5 million years ago ( the beginning of the Truly Civilized Stone Age) were almost super-organic bodies; the human social group was a harmonious , multi-individual Body, quasi-organism. The Individual human bodies, Selves, were very frail and weak in contrast with the bodies of the field of predators for which they were prey.
The dominance of the food chain that humans ultimately reached even in the Stone Age with relatively _frail_ individual bodies could only be reached by super-social , super internally-cooperative, super-intra-species harmony . This was only possible with symbolic communication both within a living generation and across generations. I infer that natural selection , in the classical Darwinian sense, elected hominin groups with policies and practices of "love thy neighbor as thyself " and "charity" over those that might have derived principles of "selfishness and greed", if there were any in the Stone Age before Civilization.
4)LINGUISTIC ANTHROPOLOGY investigates language or symbolic communication, like culture, an exclusive human capacity enabling us to share knowledge and experience with people remote from us in time and space; and like culture , shaping our worldviews and perception and interpretation of events.
Anthropology is the study of human beings in all times and places; study that is historical, systematic and objective, that is to say scientific, based on logical consideration and testing of material evidence, and natural theories ; from 100's of thousands of years ago to the present; from Detroit to the other ends of the Earth. This is in contrast with understanding humans based on whims, superstition, untested intuition , uncritical faith or unquestioned authority or supernatural beings. It is an understanding of human societies and individuals biologically and historically, that is as they have changed and developed ,evolved ,over time and many generations of individual selves. It seeks to be truly holistic in approach and scope , looking for the _whole_ truth, nothing but the truth. It welcomes contributions to its understanding of people from all the other academic disciplines, natural sciences, social sciences and humanities. It even considers respectfully and sympathetically systems of thought and belief from cultures very different than our own.
Symbolic Communication
Anthropology's special contribution to scientific understanding of humanity is the concepts of _language and culture_, or the symbolic nature of human behavior, communication and social organization. As mentioned above, language and culture make human evolution unique in comparison with the evolution of other species.
Culture is behavior ruled by a mental system of shared customs, traditions, values, ideas and material products of a particular group of people. Culture and language , or symbolic communication , are unique and exclusive characteristics of human beings, the species Homo sapiens . No other animal species has them, despite the exaggerated claims of some primatologists for chimps and gorillas.
What is symbolic communication ? What is a symbol or symbolic sign in the technical linguistic and anthropological sense ? It using something to represent something it is not. Almost all words are symbolic signs. Here is my name : CHARLES BROWN. Those marks on the paper are not me; But they are used to represent me. This is using something to represent something that it is not. The technical term is that there is an arbitrary relation between the sign and the thing signified.
The opposite of a symbolic sign is an indexical sign . The relationship between an indexical sign and what it signifies is not arbitrary (conventional, traditional) but necessary. The classical example is smoke and fire. Smoke is an indexical sign of fire.
The fact that a symbolic sign is not what it signifies , give humans the power to talk , communicate with each other about things and the experiences of people that are not immediately present but DISPLACED IN TIME OR SPACE from them ! And cultural/linguistic learning is learning from the experience of other people, including learning from people who are now dead, learning about experiences that are not ours ; that are displaced from the immediate objects of our senses.
So, signing or symboling , in the forms of both language and culture, is our species’ unique activity. And, importantly , also, most of human _learning_ is through symbols, culture, not as much by imitating, like other species. Not by "monkey-see, monkey do" imitation. Most of our learning ( as opposed to inborn or genetically based knowledge) is through culture and language, not from individual experience.
. Just to further explain the concept of arbitrariness, it refers to the relationship between the signifier and the signified. So, if the sounds d-o-g are used to refer to things that are dogs, we see that those sounds do not "imitate" or are not naturally related to dogs. The arbitrariness of a sign refers to the fact that in a sign something is used to represent something that it is not. Two _different_ things are arbitrarily identified, treated as the _same_.
These 2 capacities of Culture and language, symbolic communication, provided the human species with an enormous adaptive and Darwinian selective advantage compared to other animal species in the hundreds of thousands of years that the human species came to be and inhabit the whole globe, again to a greater extent than other animal species. (See attachment “ CULTURALLY INHERITED ADAPTATIONS GIVE THE HUMAN SPECIES HIGH DARWINIAN FITNESS, BECAUSE CULTURAL ADAPTATIONS ARE CAUSED BY THE ADAPTIVE PROBLEM THAT THEY SOLVE”). This is because it made humans extremely interconnected both with living other humans, so that human labor and methods of physical survival are very _social_, not individualistic; and perhaps more importantly, _connected to dead generations of the species through , again, language and culture, as in ancestor veneration : myths, legends, stories, customs, historical accounts of past generations' experiences. Two (or a thousand ) heads are better than one in the struggles for survival and snuggles for reproduction . By sharing the experiences , discoveries, knowledge of many generations past and those of fellow living people, humans had and have a big Darwinian or natural selective advantage especially in the Stone Age in prehistoric times over the course of 100's of thousands of years and, starting going back about 2.5 million of years with the species Homo habilis (See Chapter 14 of the text). Again , this enormous social networking within living generations and between living and dead generations is encapsulated in the concepts of culture and language and symbolic communication , the _differentia specifica_ of the human species.
Anthropology as the study of humankind in all times and places, systematically and objectively, a very good definition. More candidly anthropologists believe that we have a profound understanding of the truth about human societies and Individuals biologically, historically and scientifically.
There is but one science, the science of history. Anthropology is the life science of human beings; the natural and cultural history of the species Homo sapiens. Studying "all" of something , the whole or holistically, systematically and objectively is scientific study and knowledge , because the truth must be the whole truth. So, to say anthropology is open to evidence of human endeavor from wherever it might be is to declare anthropology has a scientific approach to knowledge of the truth about human beings . We follow the motto of the poet Terrance: Nothing human is alien to anthropology , so to speak.
Originally , anthropology specialized among the academic disciplines in studying human beings in times and places remote from the present and the West-Europe , traveling far in time and space , expanding the representative quality and quantity of the sample of the social sciences, such as they were , of evidence on human activity and behavior , bodily motion. Anthropology aimed in part to expand the sample of data Western academe had on humans in a scientific endeavor to represent more fully the whole of humanity , "all" of the object of study, that is humans in _all_ times and _all_ places, not just the history of Europe - a correct scientific mission.
Another main and unique contribution of anthropology in expanding the sample of human life studied by modern science, including natural history, is the study of early humans and humans' immediate ancestor species in the evolutionary origin of the species _homo sapiens_. This evidence and sample represent at a minimum 200,000 years of human society and as much as 2.5 million years when the whole of the genus _homo_ is considered human society, that the human species originates with _Homo habilis_ and _Homo erectus_ (Chapter 14).
“_Sapiens_" means "wise" In Latin. Homo sapiens (Latin: "wise being" ) What is culture, language or _symbolic_ communication ? For anthropology, culture, language or symbolic communication are the unique species characteristic of _Homo sapiens_. In a sense, "culture" is another word for "wisdom", from the notion that humans are the species _homo wise_. It is humans socially learned practices, customs, language, traditions, beliefs, religion, spirituality _passed down through many generations_ that make us "wise" in so many ways, certainly clever and winners _as a species_ ( not just as a few "fit" Individuals) in the struggles and snuggles to survive as a species. That is we are successful relative to other species in the Darwinian struggles to increase the species population.
Since the advent about 6,000 years ago of so-called civilization, as you have no doubt heard it referred to, sometimes, it's not so clear how wise our culture makes us. Therein lies the central drama of the history of the human species. Nonetheless, clearly in the Stone Age, our having culture was a highly adaptive advantage over species that did not have culture such as stone tools or controlling fire. These cultural behaviors guided by symbolic or imaginary thinking and communication, etc, raised our species fitness, the growth of our population. This is evidenced by _Homo sapiens_ expanding in population and therefore migrating to an expanded area of living space across the earth, out of what is now named Africa to the other continents. Stone Age foraging and kinship organized societies were the mode of life for the vast majority of time of human species ' existence, 99% or more. The first human societies had an extraordinarily high survival need to be able to rely on each other at levels of solidarity that we cannot even imagine. The intensity of the network of social connections of the members of a band of 25 to 150 people living in the ecological food chain locations of 100’s of thousands of years ago, would almost constitute a new level of organic organization and integrity above individual bodies or selves. Ancient kinship /family/culture /symbolic communication systems from around 2.5 million years ago ( the beginning of the Truly Civilized Stone Age) were almost super-organic bodies; the human social group was a harmonious , multi-individual Body, quasi-organism. The Individual human bodies, Selves, were very frail and weak in contrast with the bodies of the field of predators for which they were prey.
The dominance of the food chain that humans ultimately reached even in the Stone Age with relatively _frail_ individual bodies could only be reached by super-social , super internally-cooperative, super-intra-species harmony . This was only possible with symbolic communication both within a living generation and across generations. I infer that natural selection , in the classical Darwinian sense, elected hominin groups with policies and practices of "love thy neighbor as thyself " and "charity" over those that might have derived principles of "selfishness and greed", if there were any in the Stone Age before Civilization.
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