Languages: English

This video lesson focuses on visual, verbal and musical art forms. Since art is created in response to social. religious, political, economic, and aesthetic stimuli, anthropologists use it as a guide to understanding the values and ideals of culture. Being able to put art within a cultural context enables anthropologists to observe cultural dynamics. That is why tattoos, hip hop and hula provide insight into past and present cultures. You will also be reintroduced to the Pacific Northwest Potlatch ceremony. This once again will highlight the integrated nature of all aspects of culture.

Throughout history, cultures have changed because of environmental conditions, internal pressures, or external forces. Change comes quickly, or it may occur slowly. In any event, anthropologists chronicle cultural change and offer explanations as to why it happens. Anthropologist Eugene Cooper has tracked cultural change as it is reflected in the craft of Chinese furniture-making during the 1970s and 1980s, and emphasizes that societies change with the use of new technologies. The key term, diffusion, is introduced and discussed within the context of the spread of the English language from the anthropologist to the group she or he studies. The video illuminates some of the benefits and problems that immigration poses for a culture. It focuses on the current migration of Mexicans and Central Americans to the United States. It illustrates why the Minutemen Civil Defense Corps was founded, and how their goals were formed in response to the perception that too many Mexican citizens were coming across the border into the United States illegally.

This program explores the phenomenon of globalization, its complex forms, and its impact on the cultures of the world, as well as the contributions that anthropology can make toward a better understanding of it. Wal-Mart?s operations in China are shown as an example of how giant global corporations use structural power to expand business and profit in developing countries. The collaboration of the Bolivian government with another U.S.-based global corporation, Bechtel, and the World Bank illustrates how such partnerships can act against the best interests of the people. Finally, a Bangladeshi immigrant to the United States is interviewed, giving a personal perspective on the record high levels of external and internal migration occurring worldwide

Economic systems are the means by which a society produces, distributes and consumes resources, and are intimately integrated with the other elements of the culture. In this lesson the economic systems of several societies are examined as examples of how reciprocity, redistribution, and market exchange play a central role in the distribution of goods. The Ju/?hoansi of southern Africa exemplify foraging cultures in which food is not produced but rather collected as it is needed and distributed immediately according to the process known as generalized reciprocity. The Yolmo of Nepal traditionally practiced pastoralism and subsistence farming, using an exchange system of balanced reciprocity combined with redistribution. A Ghanaian market run by women illustrates a traditional form of market exchange, and a Japanese fish market exemplifies the wholesale commercial market with international participants but face-to-face transactions according to Japanese cultural practices.

The key trait that makes a hominoid a hominin is evidence for bipedalism. In this video experts discuss the physical changes that must occur for the transition to bipedalism including the more forward positioning of the foramen magnum, the large hole through which the spinal cord passes into the skull, a pelvis that becomes more bowl-shaped rather than the long blade-like pelvis of a chimpanzee, a longer leg, and a foot with springy arches. Important discoveries are examined in the time period from four to one million years ago including East African discoveries such as Australopithecus anamensis and the famous ?Lucy? specimen. The history of discovery in South Africa is reviewed starting with the first Australopithecus, the Taung child, and the more rugged genus Paranthropus. Finally, you will learn about the first member of our genus, Homo habilis.

About 1.8 million years ago, a new species of Homo appears in East Africa, a species that will exist longer than any other hominin. This lesson focuses on that new species: Homo erectus, the first hominin to leave Africa. In this lesson, you will follow the migrations of this species. You will explore the history of what paleoanthropologists have discovered concerning this widespread hominin in Java and in China and learn how the recent discoveries in the Republic of Georgia have turned much of what we knew about Homo erectus on its head. Finally, you will learn about a new type of tool industry that lasts for more than a million years.

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 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

This lesson details the technological, artistic, and geographic expansion of the Cro-Magnons, the anatomically modern humans of Europe during the Upper Paleolithic era. The video details some of the major innovations, such as blade technique in which long, parallel-sided flakes are struck off the edges of a specially prepared core. It also details artistic endeavors of the Upper Paleolithic, beyond cave paintings, such as Venus figures. The geographic expansion during this time is also presented, highlighting the need for and development of a new technology used for their migration over open water. The video also illustrates the cognitive capacity of the Homo sapiens of the Upper Paleolithic, and how it allowed them to create technology that eased their daily survival.

This lesson explores how the accelerated rate of cultural change continued to drive human innovation in ways that transformed daily life for everyone. It illustrates the most radical cultural shift in the history of humankind that occurred in the Neolithic period (or New Stone Age), detailing the domestication of plants and animals and the shift to setting up permanent residences. The video concentrates on the Mayan civilization to explain the cultural changes that mark the differences between village life and urban settlements.

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. 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. The video defines polymorphisms and clearly explains how their presence in human genotypes causes differences in phenotypic variation.