Human Variation And Race

Environmental Stress of the Cold

The environmental stress of cold climates negatively impact the survival of humans by disturbing homeostasis. When the winter season strikes humans go though the stages of increase in metabolic rate, shivering, and vasoconstriction. If these stages do not occur  humans will experience hypothermia or even lead to death with all the sicknesses that may occur in the cold temperatures.


Adaptations
Short-term adaptation:
 Shivering is a short-term adaptation that humans use in cold environments. Shivering generates body heat and muscle heat in a short period of time. When the temperature of your body is dropping your body starts to shake uncontrollably to heat it back up. When it comes to muscle heat, muscles start to spasm to generate some sort of heat in a short period of time.




Facultative adaptation: 
Vasoconstriction is a facultative adaptation which humans also use in cold climates. Vasocontriction is the narrowing of blood vessels, as by the action of a nerve. When blood vessels narrow down the flow of blood is restricted which retain body heat.
Developmental adaptations:

A developmental adaptation that humans develop is large compact bodies which have fat insulation around all vital organs.  By having fat around their vital organs it keeps body warmth and also gives energy. By having fat organs work ten times harder which causes the energy to turn into body warmth which, in the cold climates is very helpful. If there is no fat insulation in the body it is harder to keep warm especially when you have no fat insulation. 

Cultural adaptations:

A cultural adaptation is insulated clothing. People who live in colder climates like in the picture (Eskimos) wear insulated heavy jackets, pants, gloves, hoodies or hats, scarves, and boots. There clothing must be insulated to compact the heat in and keep the cold out. 

Benefits of Studying Human Variation

The benefit of studying human variation from this perspective across environmental 

clines is to know how humans have the ability to adapt to a certain climate and how certain people who live in different climates can adapt to one climate better than others. For example, people who live in Alaska or even the North Pole , can adapt to colder temperatures rather then us Californians and vise versa. Information from explorations like this can be useful for use humans when we move or decide to go on a little vacation to these different climate weathers. For example if was to take a litte trip from Los Angeles  to Salt Lake City, Utah in the winter I better be ready for low temperatures meaning a lot of insulated clothing to keep me from having hypothermia, pneumonia, or even frostbite. 

Race

In my opinion I don't think race has much to do with adaptation of humans. But if I was to use race in some sort of way to have a better understanding of the variation of adaptation I would use the short-term adaptation and cultural adaptations because, it gives a better understanding on how the people for example in the Sahara desert adapt to their climate compared to the people of Alaska adapt to their climate.  The study of environmental influences on adaptations is a better way to understand human variation rather then by the use of race because, race really doesn't really matter to the adaptation of climate. For example, If I was to move from California to Iceland i would just need to adapt to cooler climates by using the four adaptations human use for their stress environment weather if its short-term,  facultative, developmental, or cultural adaptation it helps to adapt to that environment.  

Language Blog

   I found this experiment quite easy because, when I talk I use a lot of hand gestures and facial expressions as it is, so it made the conversation on my part quite easy. But on another hand trying to understand my partner was very difficult.
   My partner had a easy time understanding me but, when it came to trying to communicate with me with hand gestures and facial expressions she had a difficult time showing what she wanted to say. Trying to understand her on my part was misunderstood but when it came down to what were both trying to say she understood me quite well and I only understood a quarter of what she was hand gesturing. 
   Even though me and my partner both come from the same culture which would be easy to explain with hand gestures, I think with hand gestures and facial expression it would be much easier to the explain the Chinese and Jewish cultures. The attitude that the speaking culture might have on the culture that does not use symbolic language might be either in a way that their talking about us and have a angry reaction or have a little understanding and have no reaction but watch and seek what their trying to say. Individuals in our culture that have difficulty communicating with spoken languages but, usually get understood by the other communicators with spoken languages. Individuals in our culture won't understand the spoken languages but, the spoken language individual will try to have some sort of effective communication to our culture.


   This experiment was not as difficult as the first one but, not making any physical embellishments made it difficult for me because when I speak I always use some kind of expression. 
  My partners reaction toward my communication was a blank emotion and kind of awkward because she also uses hand gestures and facial emotion and just keeping her expressions blank made it awkward for her.
  In this experiment it shows that "signs" are very effective in our language because body language and spoken words are what makes our word even more effective to people and makes it easier to understand. Non-speech language techniques in our ability to communicate is very effective it shows our expression what we might be talking about show the effective or importance of things it gives a little bit more of a push to our words.
  I think there are a lot of people who can't read body language but that might be because they might not quite understand emotion or importance of certain words.A process of adapting to the understanding of body language is looking at their facial expression and the pitch of their voice which can determine a expression or emotion. I can't describe one environmental condition were there is not a benefit out of  body language, body language benefits a lot. Body language  can advance you in many ways for example speeches or even in your comprehension where you have to respond back in a effective way. Either way language it self is very important it's a way that advances our world everyday.

Piltdown Hoax

The Piltdown Hoax was collected on December 18, 1912 at Piltdown, East Sussex, England. The Piltdown Hoax was founded by Charles Dawson. Dawson born the eldest of three sons, Dawson moved with his family to Hastings, Sussex when he was still very young. Charles initially studied as a lawyer following his father and pursued a hobby of collecting and studying fossils. The affects Dawsons had on the scientific community was good at first but everything was transferred to hatred when fraud was brought to the table. According to Dawson, workmen at the site had discovered the skull shortly before his visit and had broken it up in the belief that it was a fossilized "coconut".  After the findings he took them to Arthur Smith Woodward,  greatly interested by the finds, Woodward accompanied Dawson to the site where Dawson alone recovered more fragments of the skull and half of the lower jaw bone. Then after Woodward announced that a reconstruction of the fragments had been prepared that indicated that the skull was in many ways similar to that of a modern human's, except for the brain size which was about two-thirds that of a modern human's.

In November 1953 Kenneth Page Oakley, Sir Wilfrid Edward Le Gros Clark and Joseph Weiner proved that the Piltdown Man was a forgery and demonstrating that the fossil was a composite of three distinct species. It consisted of a human skull of medieval age, the 500-year-old lower jaw of a Sarawak, orangutan and chimpanzee fossil teeth. The focus on Charles Dawson as the main forger is supported by the accumulation of evidence regarding other archaeological hoaxes he dedicated or the two prior to the Piltdown discovery .

Positive aspects of the scientific process which were helpful to prove the fraud were specific tools that advanced the science community like a type of technology for dating sites and fossils, also tools that are used to find fossils are even more useful because the site might have had other evidence lingering around that was found to be proven fraud. Other tools that were used for the investigation were chemicals which showed the age of the fossils.

I don't think its possible to remove the “human” factor from science because humans are the ones who discover new things which cause the world to advance in everything. Without us humans the world would not advance and scientist would not have theories which would possibly be right or wrong. Even though humans do make mistakes or theorize wrong ideas it doesn't mean we will always be wrong it just means we all make mistakes and maybe someone out there can correct my mistake and make a better hypothesis out of my theory of what ever it might be.

By being informed of the  Piltdown Hoax I've learned that even if your desperate at times to be a big person in a discovery that can change the world do it the right way. What I'm trying to say is that your not the only person who has brains or is the biggest thing to the science community there are others and those people can creep up on you and prove that your discovery can be a fraud and change the whole perspective of your reputation. Even though Charles Dawson did committee fraud his discovery did open eyes to many people out there which later on discovered other early life fossils which changed our whole science world. Which brings me to my point with one mistake it opened up so many other doors which advance us in so many other things and ways.

Locomotor Patterns

Lemurs

Lemurs are small primates known as "prosimians," which, roughly translated, means "pre-primates". Many Lemurs live in Madagascar or in the neighboring islands. Most Lemurs live in trees, they spend most of their time at the top of the rain forest canopy or in the forest mid-level. Only one Lemur is mostly on ground and that's the ring tailed lemur like the one above which leap instead of climbing. Lemurs do not have prehensile tails but they do have long, wet noses. Their thumbs and big toes are opposable, but they mainly use their teeth and an extended "toilet claw" on the second toe of their hind feet for grooming.  The way the Lemur is fit for its environment is like a match made from heaven. By lemurs having the advantage of being in trees and ground they can move from place to place quickly by either swing from tree to tree or hop from place to place. 


Spider Monkey

Spider monkeys live in the tropical rain forests of Central and South America and occur as far north as Mexico.They have long, lanky arms and prehensile tails that enable them to move gracefully from branch to branch and tree to tree. Unlike the lemurs Spider monkeys do not have thumbs. There locomotor    trait is quadrupedal, using all four limbs for walking or running; suspensory locomotion used when hanging, climbing or moving through the trees and bipedalism, using only two limbs when leaping. With the Spider monkeys traits it can also use it for getting from placed to place quicker but also get away from predators too.


Baboon

There are five different species of baboons. All of them live in Africa or Arabia. Baboons generally prefer savanna and other semi-arid habitats, though a few live in tropical forests.  Baboons do not have prehensile tails. But they can climb trees to sleep, eat, or look out for trouble. They spend much of their time on the ground.Baboons locomotor pattern is quadrupedal they use their feet and hands for walking and climbing.Baboons are adapted to there environment by having the ability to climb even though they can not hang from trees.

Gibbon

Gibbons live in tropical rain forests in high canopy layers. These monkeys spend most of their time swinging in trees.They have strong, hook-shaped hands for grasping branches, comically outsize arms for reaching faraway limbs, and long, powerful legs for propelling and gasping. Their form of locomotion, is called brachiating, can move gibbons through the jungle at up to 35 miles an hour, bridging gaps as wide as 50 feet with a single swinging leap. Brachiating also gives gibbons the unique advantage of being able to swing out and grab fruits growing at the end of branches, which limits competition for their favorite foods. Gibbons  are perfectly adapted to life in the trees and rarely descend to the ground. 

Chimpanzee

Chimpanzees live in social communities of several dozen animals, and can habituate themselves to African rain forests, woodlands, and grasslands. Chimpanzees normally walk on all fours knuckles when they walk (can stand and walk upright). By swinging from branch to branch they can also move quite efficiently in the trees, where they do most of their eating. Chimpanzees usually sleep in the trees also. Locomotion patterns is quadrupedal.