Grade levels: Adult

Around 780,000 years ago a new species of Homo appears, perhaps descended from the hominins that lived in Spain and Italy between 900,000 and 800,000 years ago. This is time period, called the Middle Pleistocene, is marked by alternations of glaciations and interglacials. The new species is called Homo heidelbergensis. Around 125,000 Homo heidelbergensis gives rise to the Neandertals. The Neandertals are the main focus of this video lesson. You will see that the Neandertals were a robust people adapted for a cold, harsh environment. Their survival depended on more than just biology, however. A major factor to their survival was their stone tool culture, known as the Mousterian. In addition, the fact that they transported raw materials during their migrations to make future tools demonstrated forward planning.

The main question of physical anthropology since its origins in the 1770s was the origin of modern humans. At that time this was in reference to the different populations of humans. Today it refers to our origins as a species in evolutionary time. This video begins by introducing you to the three current models for human origins. Then a physical comparison is made between modern humans and Neandertals and you will see that it is in the brain case that we differ the most. You will journey to southern Ethiopia to see one of the earliest modern humans, discovered in 1967, but forgotten until recently. Associated with modern humans is a great advancement in technology that marks the Upper Paleolithic. The video ends with researchers discussing the advent of art and personal adornment and what this might have meant to the people of the Upper Paleolithic.

The video begins with comments on some instances of ethnic genocide that have occurred in the past in the Sudan, Rwanda, Bosnia, and Nazi Germany during World War II, and relates these occurrences to the concept of ?race,? a concept that is based on physical differences between groups. It defines the everyday usage of the word ?race? and includes its biological definition, which leads to the conclusion that the word and concept of ?race? cannot apply to Homo sapiens because, as is well understood, there are no subspecies of Homo sapiens. The video then briefly explains the historical context of how the concept of race emerged among European explorers during the sixteenth century. And, it explains that today anthropologists and scholars look beyond visible physical differences to explain human variation, that they analyze genetics and DNA, the cornerstone of genetic studies, to describe and understand human diversity.

Anthropology is the study of human culture and of human evolutionary biology. It is a very broad discipline and there are many different types of anthropologists. Cultural anthropology considers many aspects of human society and focuses on how it affects human behavior. Linguistic anthropologists study the interaction between culture and language, as well as the origins of human language. Archaeologists focus on the material remains of past peoples. The fourth subfield of anthropology is the topic of this course: physical anthropology. Physical anthropology itself has different areas. These include paleoanthropology, human variation, genetics, primatology, osteology, and forensic anthropology.

Evolutionary theory provides a foundation for the study of physical anthropology. In this video, experts guide students through the development of Charles Darwin?s theory of evolution by natural selection. It also brings some of the main contributors to evolutionary theory to life. The theory of evolution by natural selection is illustrated using examples from the Gal?pagos Islands, monarch butterflies, peppered moths, and a special segment on the Channel Islands fox.

The secrets of the cell are revealed to students. They will learn basic structure of the cell and the structure and function of DNA. DNA composition, genes, chromosome structure, mitosis, and meiosis are explained by experts in ways that will be easy for students to process. These principles are also illustrated in a modern context using analyses of ancient DNA from Neandertals, interviews with DNA crime lab experts, and an in-depth view of one woman?s experience living with a challenging genetic mutation.

We are all aware that we have inherited certain traits from our parents. How are these inherited characteristics expressed? How do evolutionary processes influence patterns of change in these characteristics? In this video, the mechanisms and patterns of inheritance are introduced. We begin with an overview of Mendel?s principles of inheritance. Modern plant breeders discuss how they still use these principles in the breeding of sweet peas and other plant. The video then introduces polygenic inheritance, mutation, genetic drift, and gene flow. The discovery and the distribution of the CCR5 mutation are discussed as well as gene flow and genetic drift in Chumash Indian populations.

A key question of macroevolution is, What distinguishes a species? This leads to taxonomy and discussion of the two main approaches to classification: evolutionary systematics and cladistics. Examples are given of homologies and analogies, and ancestral and derived traits, keys to classifying by these different approaches. Cladistics focuses only on derived traits. In the second segment, two different species concepts are mentioned?the biological species concept, which is the most commonly used definition, and the ecological species concept, which places emphasis on niche occupation and natural selection. The difficulty of recognizing a fossil species is explained by anthropologists Alfred Rosenberg and Jonathan Bloch. In the third segment, the immense time span involved with macroevolution is examined, continental drift and its effects are explained, and the characteristics of mammals are illustrated.