Anthropology Response Paper 2 - Essay Example

Moreover, man moved into the stage of homohabilis where he used acheulian tools dated about 1.7 million years back. Homo Habilis moved to this stage after gradual improvement over some time. At this stage, they were making more sophisticated stone tools which were sharper and had straight at the edge, and an example is the hand axe. At this stage, the brain size of man is said to have increased and improved in intelligence. However, it is wrong to infer cultural ability from brain size because at this stage, culture was not so much developed given that man had an enlarged brain size.

Eventually man advanced to another stage and was given the name Homo erectus, and throughout his geographic range, research has shown that there was progressive improvement over time. The late Homo erectus was found to have complex mental tablets, which guided him in making complex cultural artifacts. When the implements became useful, the reliance on tools increased. Eventually man moved to new subsistence and economic patterns, which improved the means and sources of obtaining food. According to paleoneurology, some insights concerning human evolution have been revealed.

This study argues that the cranium is unique because it from the growing brain tissue and not cultural ability. This is the same case with bones that aid movement. This study is influenced by neuroscience and has no substantial knowledge on the current functionality of the brain. Essay two Race has been defined by anthropologists under six different groups namely; Ausraloid, mongoloid, Caucasoid, Polynesians, Negroid, and Native Americans. Anthropologists argue that all these members share similar physical characteristics, and they originated from a common point in the world.

Biological anthropologists have described the biological variations of man and came to a conclusion that there are three major explanations of variations in human beings. These are natural selection that describes variations in hereditary traits, Gene flow that occur because people from a certain population mate with another from a different population, and genetic draft; which is a phenomena that occur when people move one geographical region to another. Today, anthropologists have realized that the racial human map is very different from human genes and that differentiation that exists is political.

People are different because of varied environments, which their ancestors inhabited. For example, misunderstanding the concepts brings about power politics and even violence (Haviland, Prins & McBride 298). People receiving direct overhead sunlight like Africans tends to be darker than those from oblique sunlight regions. This is because melanin protects the skin from ultraviolet radiation and people with more melanin live longer than those with less melanin. The advantage with those with less melanin, like Asians and Europeans, is that they absorb more vitamin D from the sun as compared to their colleagues with more melanin because of poor penetration of sun into their skin.

This distinction is significant because we need to understand that race is not a biological definition describing the DNA structure of a person and it is fixed; hence one cannot change it. Race is not considered a valid way of describing human beings. Hence anthropologists h