Anthropological Queries

Cold weather is an environmental stress that negatively impacts the survival of humans by disturbing homeostasis. Homeostasis is the process our bodies undergo to maintain a stable internal environment despite outside environmental factors. When someone is subjected to cold weather, they may notice their skin getting goosebumps or their jaw quivering a bit. These are natural responses to the cold and are actually the result of homeostasis at work, attempting to warm up the cold person. Because cold weather disturbs homeostasis however, it actually impacts the survival of humans. I mean think about it: our normal body temperatures are supposed to stay somewhere in the range of 95ºF-107ºF with the ends of that spectrum signaling something is seriously wrong with a person. When someone gets cold, blood flow to their skin decreases and the body begins sending signals for certain warming activities like shivering and goosebumps. Staying cold for too long is obviously not good for us be

Language is such a pivotal part of how we communicate with others and is a uniquely human trait. We often take our communication abilities for granted, not realizing how helpful they really are in our everyday lives. To demonstrate this, I conducted a bit of an experiment where I held two separate conversations with a small group of people at my work. For the first conversation, I was only able to communicate using nonverbal cues, I was not able to speak or use sign language of any form- just hand movements, body language, and basic social cues. For the second conversation, I was only able to communicate using verbal language. This meant I could speak, but could not use any other form of communication like hand movements, body language, voice variation, etc. I then spoke with my co-workers about what it was like for them to communicate with me when my communication options were limited. I compared their thoughts with my own and concluded the following: My first conversati

What you should know about the Piltdown Hoax: It all started in 1912 when Charles Dawson, an amateur archaeologist, was working in gravel pits near Piltdown Village in Sussex, England. Dawson came across what he referred to as a human-like skull of which he thought might connect the ancestry of humans and apes. He decided to reach out to the Keeper of Geology at the Natural History Museum of the time, Arthur Smith Woodward. Dawson and Smith Woodward joined forces with Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a French priest/paleontologist and discovered more findings of artifacts relating to the human-like skull Dawson previously found on his own. Among these artifacts were teeth, a jawbone, more skull fragments, and even primitive tools. Smith Woodward reconstructed the skull fragments and Dawson joined him in attending a Geological Society meeting in which they proposed to other scientists that they had found evidence of a 500,000 year old human ancestor. This was a major proposition as i