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Chapter 3 Human Biocultural and Social Evolution - Compress
Chapter 3 Human Biocultural and Social Evolution - Compress
OBJECTIVES:
T LEARN!
Evolution
1. Convergent Evolution
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- For example, flying insects, birds and bats have all evolved the ability to fly,
but independently of each other.
2. Co-evolution
- When two species or groups of species have evolved alongside each other
where one adapts to changes in the other.
- For example, flowering plants and pollinating insects such as bees.
3. Adaptive Radiation
- When a species splits into a number of new forms when a change in the
environment makes new resources available or creates new environmental
challenges.
- For example, finches on the Galapagos Islands have developed different
shaped beaks to take advantage of the different kinds of food available on
different islands.
**Biological Evolution
**Natural Selection
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**Human evolution
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- We are now the only living members of what many zoologists refer to as the
human tribe, Hominini, but there is abundant fossil evidence to indicate that
we were preceded for millions of years by other hominins, such
as Ardipithecus, Australopithecus, and other species of Homo, and that our
species also lived for a time contemporaneously with at least one other
member of our genus, H. neanderthalensis (the Neanderthals).
The primary resource for detailing the path of human evolution will always
be fossil specimens. Certainly, the trove of fossils from Africa and Eurasia indicates
that, unlike today, more than one species of our family has lived at the same time for
most of human history. The nature of specific fossil specimens and species can be
accurately described, as can the location where they were found and the period of time
when they lived.
**Cultural Evolution
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**Sociocultural Evolution
**Sociocultural Development
The members of this society study culture change using the concepts and
methods pioneered by Darwin in the nineteenth century and subsequent evolutionary
theorists. In this conception, culture constitutes a system of inherited variation that
changes over time in response to various directional and non-directional processes.
Societies can be thought of as a population of individuals that we can characterize in
terms of the frequency of the cultural variants individuals express in the population at
any point in time or as patterns of cultural variation among individuals within groups.
Primates, like humans, are mammals. Around ten to twelve million years ago, the
ancestral primate lineage split through speciation from one common ancestor into two
major groups. Members of one group were the early version of what we know today as
the great apes (gorillas, chimpanzees, and bonobos in Africa, orangutans in Asia). They
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mostly remained in forest with an arboreal lifestyle, meaning they live in trees. Great
apes are also quadrupeds which means they move around with four legs on the ground.
The other group evolved in a different way. They became terrestrial, meaning
they live on land and not in trees. From being quadrupeds, they evolved to bipeds,
meaning they move around on their two back legs. In addition, the size of their brain
increased. This is the group that, through evolution, gave rise to the modern current
humans.
Homo - is the genus (group of species) that includes modern humans, like us, and our
most closely related extinct ancestors. Organisms that belong to the same species
produce viable offspring.
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**A comparison of the skulls of Homo sapiens (Human) (left) vs. Homo
neanderthalensis (Neanderthal) (right).
Homo sapiens
In much earlier times, there was a theory that there were several races of humans,
based mostly on skin color, but this theory was not supported by science. Current
studies of DNA show that more than seven billion people who live on earth today are
not of different races. There is only one human species on earth today, named Homo
sapiens.
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Neolithic Age
- The Neolithic Age is sometimes called the New Stone Age. Neolithic
humans used stone tools like their earlier Stone Age ancestors, who
eked out a marginal existence in small bands of hunter-
gatherers during the last Ice Age.
- Australian archaeologist V. Gordon Childe coined the term <Neolithic
Revolution= in 1935 to describe the radical and important period of
change in which humans began cultivating plants, breeding animals
for food and forming permanent settlements. The advent of agriculture
separated Neolithic people from their Paleolithic a ncestors.
There was no single factor that led humans to begin farming roughly 12,000
years ago. The causes of the Neolithic Revolution may have varied from region
to region.
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- The Earth entered a warming trend around 14,00 0 years ago at the
end of the last Ice Age. Some scientists theorize that climate changes
drove the Agricultural Revolution.
- In the Fertile Crescent, bounded on the west by the Mediterranean
Sea and on the east by the Persian Gulf, wild wheat and barley began
to grow as it got warmer. Pre-Neolithic people called Natufians
started building permanent houses in the region.
- Other scientists suggest that intellectual advances in the human brain
may have caused people to settle down. Religious artifacts and
artistic imagery 4 progenitors of human civilization 4 have been
uncovered at the earliest Neolithic settlements.
- The Neolithic Era began when some groups of humans gave up the
nomadic, hunter-gatherer lifestyle completely to begin farming. It may
have taken humans hundreds or even thousands of years to transition
fully from a lifestyle of subsisting on wild plants to keeping small
gardens and later tending large crop fields.
Neolithic Humans
- The archaeological site of Çatalhöyük in southern Turkey is one of the
best-preserved Neolithic settlements. Studying Çatalhöyük has given
researchers a better understanding of the transition from a nomadic
life of hunting and gathering to an agriculture lifestyle.
- Some of the earliest evidence of farming comes from the
archaeological site of Tell Abu Hureyra, a small village located along
the Euphrates River in modern Syria. The village was inhabited from
roughly 11,500 to 7,000 B.C.
Agricultural Inventions
1. Plant domestication
- Cereals such as emmer wheat,
einkorn wheat and barley were
among the first crops domesticated
by Neolithic farming communities in
the Fertile Crescent. These early
farmers also domesticated lentils,
chickpeas, peas and flax.
*Domestication - is the process by
which farmers select for desirable traits
by breeding successive generations of a
plant or animal.
2. Livestock
- The first livestock were domesticated from animals that Neolithic
humans hunted for meat. Domestic pigs were bred from wild boars,
for instance, while goats came from the Persian ibex.
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- The first farm animals also included sheep and cattle. These
originated in Mesopotamia between 10,000 and 13,000 years ago.
Water buffalo and yak were domesticated shortly after
in China, India and Tibet.
**Early Civilizations
Civilization - is a complex society that creates agricultural surpluses, allowing for
specialized labor, social hierarchy, and the establishment of cities.
The first civilizations appeared in major river valleys, where floodplains contained rich
soil and the rivers provided irrigation for crops and a means of transportation.
Foundational civilizations - developed urbanization and complexity without outside
influence and without building on a pre-existing civilization, though they did not all
develop simultaneously.
The earliest civilizations developed between 4000 and 3000 BCE, when the rise
of agriculture and trade allowed people to have surplus food and economic stability.
Many people no longer had to practice farming, allowing a diverse array of professions
and interests to flourish in a relatively confined area.
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Civilizations first appeared in Mesopotamia (what is now Iraq) and later in Egypt.
Civilizations thrived in the Indus Valley by about 2500 BCE, in China by about 1500
BCE and in Central America (what is now Mexico) by about 1200 BCE. Civilizations
ultimately developed on every continent except Antarctica.
1. Cities were at the center of all early civilizations. People from surrounding
areas came to cities to live, work, and trade. This meant that large
populations of individuals who did not know each other lived and
interacted with one another.
2. State - is an organized community that lives under a single political
structure. The political structures that states provided were an important
factor in the rise of civilizations because they made it possible to mobilize
large amounts of resources and labor and also tied larger communities
together by connecting them under a common political system.
3. Early civilizations were often unified by religion4a system of beliefs and
behaviors that deal with the meaning of existence. As more and more
people shared the same set of beliefs and practices, people who did not
know each other could find common ground and build mutual trust and
respect.
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The word Mesopotamia means <Land Between Two Rivers= (the Tigris and
Euphrates), where several city-states formed in what is now Iraq and Iran. Home to the
Sumerians, Babylonians, and Assyrians, the region was a vast and fertile flood plain
that encouraged agriculture and domestication of animals and helped to establish self-
supporting societies. The cultivation of grasses having seeds that could be ground into
flour led to a renewable4and tradable4food source that improved the health of the
collective. Similarly, ancient Egyptian society developed as a result of the rich soil of the
Nile flood plain. Regional cultures competed, fought, cooperated in trade, and evolved
independent artistic styles.
Characteristics of Civilization
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All civilizations have certain characteristics. These include: (1) large population
centers; (2) monumental architecture and unique art styles; (3) shared communication
strategies; (4) systems for administering territories; (5) a complex division of labor; and
(6) the division of people into social and economic classes.
1. Urban Areas
Large population centers, or urban areas, allow civilizations to develop, although people
who live outside these urban centers are still part of that region’s civilization. Rural
residents of civilizations may include farmers, fishers, and traders, who regularly sell
their goods and services to urban residents.
2. Monuments
All civilizations work to preserve their legacy by building large monuments and
structures
3. Shared Communication
Shared communication may include spoken language; alphabets; numeric systems;
signs, ideas, and symbols; and illustration and representation. Shared communication
allows the infrastructure necessary for technology, trade, cultural exchange,
and government to be developed and shared throughout the civilization.
5. Division of Labor
Civilizations are marked by complex divisions of labor. This means that different people
perform specialized tasks.
6. Class Structure
The last element that is key to the development of civilizations is the division of people
into classes. This is a complex idea that can be broken down into two parts: income and
type of work performed. Changing classes has traditionally been difficult and happens
over generations.
Development of Civilization
Civilizations expand through trade, conflict, and exploration. Usually, all three elements
must be present for a civilization to grow and remain stable for a long period of time.
1. Trade
2. Conflict
3. Exploration and Innovation
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Fall of Civilizations
Many civilizations have flourished and then failed or fallen apart. There are many
reasons for this, but many historians point to three patterns in the fall of civilizations:
internal change, external pressure, and environmental collapse. The fall of civilizations
is never the result of a single event or pattern.
1. Internal Change
Population dynamics are the most pervasive forces of internal change to a civilization. A
sudden population shift or a shift in demographics may force a civilization’s
infrastructure to break down.
Populations may grow, due to migration or a period of unusual health. Populations may
shrink, due to disease, extreme weather, or other environmental factors.
Finally, populations may redefine themselves. As civilizations grow, cities may grow
larger and become more culturally distinct from rural, agricultural areas. Large empires
may extend across such large regions that languages, cultures, and customs
may dilute the identity of the empire’s residents.
2. External Pressure
The clearest example of external pressure on a civilization is foreign invasion or
sustained warfare. Protecting a civilization’s borders can be extremely expensive and
demand a strong military at the expense of developing or maintaining other aspects of a
civilization.
External pressure can lead to the relatively abrupt end of a civilization (and, often, the
adoption of another). The fall of the Aztec Empire with the arrival of
European conquistadores is such an example.
External pressures can also lead to the gradual diminishing of a civilization. The <fall= of
what we often think of as Ancient Egypt is a good example of how external pressures
can redefine a civilization over hundreds of years. Egypt had faced
longstanding, intermittent conflict on its borders, with competing civilizations such as the
Nubians (to the south), the Assyrians (in the Middle East), and the Libyans (to the west).
Later, Egypt encountered the civilizations of Ancient Greece and Rome, and eventually
became part of the Roman Empire.
Ancient Egypt also faced external pressures not directly associated with armed conflict.
The powerful forces of Christianity and Islam influenced the eradication of
both hieroglyphics, the writing system of Ancient Egypt, and its polytheistic religion.
3. Environmental Collapse
Some anthropologists think that both natural disasters and misuse of the environment
contributed to the decline of many civilizations.
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Natural hazards such as drought, floods, and tsunamis, become natural disasters as
they impact civilizations.
Democratization
- Is the transition to a more democratic political regime and it is the process
whereby a country adopts such a regime.
- Democratization takes time because it requires the development of new
institutions and widespread trust in them, which almost never happens
quickly.
Democracy
- A system of government in which all people of a state or polity are involved in
making decisions about its affair, typically by voting to elect representatives to
a parliament or similar assembly.
- To be considered democratic, a country must choose its leaders through fair
and competitive elections, ensure basic civil liberties, and respect the rule of
law.
It became very popular and many countries now have transitioned into a democratic
political system because of four causes:
1. Wealth or Money
2. Social Equity
3. Culture
4. Foreign Interventions
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