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Class notes the human journey: introduction to archaeology and biological anthropology(ARCH112)
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Introduction to Anthropology and the Historical Development ofEvolutionary Thought
Anthropology is the study of humankind. It is a discipline that examines all past and present
aspects of humanity. Anthropology encompasses a wide range of topics including human
biological evolution and cultural development through time. Anthropology is concerned with the
entire scope of the human experience from the earliest human ancestors to contemporary
societies. Anthropology is a broad field of study, and because of its all-encompassing nature, is
described as holistic in its approach to the study of humankind. This refers to the fact that
anthropology studies all aspects of humankind and all its interrelated parts.
Anthropology and its Subdisciplines
Anthropology is divided into four fields of study, or subdisciplines, including linguistic
anthropology, cultural anthropology, archaeology, and biological anthropology (see Figure
1-1). This course focuses primarily on archaeology and biological anthropology, but all the
disciplines are interrelated.
Cultural anthropology is the study of the cultural practices of contemporary groups of people.
Cultural anthropologists observe and compare cultural practices amongst living people. Cultural
anthropologists participate in ethnography and ethnology. Cultural anthropologists may live
with, observe, and write about a group of people for extended periods of time. They do this to
understand a society’s cultural practices, social roles, values, and beliefs. This type of participant
observation is called ethnography. Ethnographers focus on the detailed description of a particular
society, whereas ethnology is the comparative study of cultures.
Linguistic Anthropology
Linguistic anthropology is the study of language. Linguistic anthropologists study many
aspects of human communication including the historical development of language, the
relationship between language groups, and how language use and structure changes over
time.
,Archaeology
Archaeology is the study of the human past through the analysis of material remains that
people leave behind. Archaeologists reconstruct ancient life-ways by analyzing both the
objects that people have used and traces of human activity left on the landscape. The kinds
of objects that archaeologists analyze include tools, food waste, plant remains, and human
bones. These types of objects can be used to reconstruct the daily lives of people and
identify culture change over time. Archaeology that focuses on the period before written
records is called prehistoric archaeology. Most of this course covers the period before the
development of writing. A specialty within the field of archaeology is historical
archaeology. Historical archaeologists make interpretations based on the combination of
material remains and documentary sources.
Biological Anthropology
Biological anthropology (also called physical anthropology) takes a biological perspective
in the approach to the study of both humans and the nonhuman primates. It is a wide-
ranging field of study encompassing the past and present biological aspects of humankind.
One emphasis of biological anthropology is human origins and the reconstruction of human
evolutionary history, but biological anthropology also examines topics such as modern
human variation. There are many specialties within biological anthropology. Some that are
particularly relevant to this course include primatology, bioarchaeology and
paleoanthropology.
Primatology is the study of the nonhuman primates. The nonhuman primates are human’s
closest relatives, and by studying them, primatologists recognize many shared behaviors
and physical characteristics. Jane Goodall is a primatologist famous for her studies of
chimpanzee behavior in the Gombe Stream National Park of Tanzania.
Bioarchaeology is the study of human remains from archaeological sites. Bioarchaeologists
analyze human remains to learn details about an individual such as age at death, sex, diet, health
status, and geographic origin.
Paleoanthropology is the field of study that focuses on the evolutionary history of the human
species. Paleoanthropologists study humans, pre-humans and the nonhuman primates to learn
about human evolution. Paleoanthropologists search for, reconstruct, and analyze fossils to
reconstruct human evolution.
Toward an Understanding of the Age of the Earth
Modern dating methods have established that the earth is 4.55 billion years old.
Historically, the immense age of the earth was not understood, and most Europeans in the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries believed in both a young earth and the unchanging
nature of organisms. Religious scholars interpreted Judeo-Christian texts and reconstructed
genealogical chronologies to assign an age of about 6,000 years old for the earth and
humankind. In part, through the analysis of biblical texts, Irish Archbishop James Ussher
(1581-1656) concluded that the earth was created on October 23, 4004 BC (Gould 1991).
This precise date for the creation of the earth and humankind was widely accepted at the
time.
, In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, some scientists began to question these firmly
held beliefs, and based on scientific discoveries, suggest a much older age for the earth and
its lifeforms. Early naturalists who studied the earth’s layers began to recognize fossils of
organisms no longer in existence. They proposed explanations for the disappearance of past
life forms and for the formation of geological features. Several key individuals who
contributed to the early understanding of the age of the earth are described below along
with a brief description of their contributions.
Georges Cuvier (1769-1832)
Georges Cuvier was a French naturalist credited with establishing the modern discipline of
paleontology. Cuvier was a proponent of a theory called catastrophism. Catastrophism
suggests that the earth’s geological features are the result of a series of sudden, catastrophic
events. Many proponents of the theory suggested that divine catastrophes such as Noah’s
flood, which is described in biblical accounts, were the types of disasters that would lead to
extinction (Park 2012). A significant contribution of Cuvier’s, is his recognition of the
concept of extinction. Cuvier identified evidence of extinction in the fossil record through
careful analysis of geological strata and comparison of living and fossil animal forms. Even
though Cuvier recognized that extinction occurred, he did not believe that the appearance
of new fossil forms was the result of evolution. Instead, to catastrophists such as Cuvier,
the appearance of new forms of fossils in more recent strata demonstrated migrations from
other areas or even more recent creation events. According to catastrophists extinction
occurred suddenly, and new life forms appear suddenly.
Catastrophism suggests that sudden catastrophic events shaped the earth’s features. This
theory contrasts sharply from the theory of uniformitarianism which was supported by
scientists including Buffon, Hutton, and Lyell.
Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon (1707-1788)
Some early naturalists examined the layers of the earth and recognized that the earth’s
features were not the result of sudden catastrophes but formed by slow and steady
change. One such naturalist was Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon. He recognized
that natural processes were responsible for the formation of the earth. Buffon took a
scientific approach to the study of the earth and conducted methodical experiments to infer
its age. He was one of the first to recognize the changing nature of organisms and assert
that the earth was much more ancient than 4004 BC as previously reported by Ussher
(Wetherington 2012).
James Hutton (1726-1797)
In 1788, Scottish geologist, James Hutton published an influential work called The
History of the Earth. For his contributions to the discipline, Hutton is recognized as “the
founder of modern geology” (Mathez 2000). He identified processes involved in altering
the earth, and introduced a theory known as uniformitarianism to explain the
formation of geological features.
The theory of uniformitarianism suggests that the earth’s features are the result of
long term processes such as erosion and deposition. These processes which are
responsible for the formation of the earth’s geological features operate in the present as
they did in the past.
, Hutton described his concepts in a 1795 publication called “Theory of the Earth.” From his
examination of geological features, Hutton recognized evidence of continuous, natural
processes and suggested it would have taken an enormous expanse of time for these
processes to result in the appearance of the earth today. When discussing the vast age of the
earth, Hutton (2004[1795]) concluded, “The result, therefore, of our present enquiry is, that
we find no vestige of a beginning, no prospect of an end.”
Charles Lyell (1797-1875)
Charles Lyell was a Scottish geologist. He is recognized for his contributions to the field
of modern geology. Lyell was influenced by the earlier work of James Hutton. He is
credited with expanding upon the theory of uniformitarianism and providing
abundant evidence to lend support to the theory (Wetherington 2012). Lyell presented
this evidence in a three-volume work called Principles of Geology which was published
between 1830 and 1833. He measured processes such as silt deposition and erosion to
determine how long it would have taken for certain geological features to form. He
demonstrated that these natural processes contributed in the past to the geological
landscape of the present. Lyell recognized that for slow acting processes to produce
geological change earth would have to be much older than previously believed.
Toward an understanding of the great age of humankind
Archaeological discoveries in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries contributed to a
realization that humankind must be far more ancient than the 6,000 years that religious
scholars such as James Ussher had suggested. Two people who published early accounts of
discoveries of ancient stone tools in a context that reflected the great antiquity of
humankind are John Frere and Jacques Boucher de Perthes.
John Frere (1740-1807)
In 1797, an Englishman named John Frere discovered stone handaxes in a quarry at
Hoxne, England (see Figure 1-10). His findings were published in 1800. Frere noted that
these ancient stone tools were deeply buried, 12 feet beneath the earth’s surface, and bones
of extinct, large animals were found in the layers above them. Frere recognized, based on
their position within the earth’s stratigraphic layers and their association with extinct
animals, that these stone tools must be very ancient.
Jacques Boucher de Perthes (1788-1868)
In 1847, Jacques Boucher de Perthes also published archeological evidence for the
association of ancient human artifacts with extinct animals. Chipped stone tools and
skeletal elements of extinct animals were found together in ancient gravels. In his
publication, he declared that humanity had clearly been along longer than the year 4004 BC
that had previously been declared by Ussher. This would have been a controversial
statement at the time, but as other respected scientists of the time also concluded that the
scientific evidence supported the vast age of the earth and humankind, this became the
generally held view within the scientific community.
Development of a Theory of Evolution
In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, some scholars began to question long-held
beliefs of the unchanging nature of organisms and propose the concept of evolutionary
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