Physical Anthropology: The Evolving Human provides students with an understanding of human evolution and diversity from a biological perspective. While new techniques and discoveries are continuing to alter our understanding of the human species and its place in the biological world, this course provides the student with essential tools to appreciate the key theoretical and methodological issues involved in this sub-discipline of anthropology.
Subjects: Anthropology
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Just the Facts Series – Prehistoric Man
The Prehistoric Man 3-part series takes viewers face-to-face with fascinating ancient creatures who looked something like apes but walked upright. We learn how they lived in their foraging societies, what their life may have been like, how they fashioned tools out of stone, wood and bone, and how scientists determine the age of the fossils that give us windows to their world. Moreover, we examine patterns that developed, which give us insight into human adaptation and evolution.
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Human Evolution in the Lower Paleolithic Age
Viewers are introduced to the first of our kind, humans in the genus Homo, and learn where they lived and how they survived and adapted. We meet the ancient species that predate modern humans, including an ancient people in Spain, dating back hundreds of thousands of years.
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Human Evolution in the Upper Paleolithic Age
Beginning in the late nineteenth century and throughout the twentieth century, geologists, archaeologists and paleoanthropologists have given the world evidence of the physical and cultural development of humans. Amazing discoveries continue into the twenty-first century, broadening our knowledge of our earliest ancestors and pushing the date of the first appearance of humans to millions of years before recorded history.
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Prehistoric Man – 3 Pack
The Prehistoric Man 3-part series takes viewers face-to-face with fascinating ancient creatures who looked something like apes but walked upright. We learn how they lived in their foraging societies, what their life may have been like, how they fashioned tools out of stone, wood and bone, and how scientists determine the age of the fossils that give us windows to their world. Moreover, we examine patterns that developed, which give us insight into human adaptation and evolution.
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Human Evolution
Viewers come face to face with fascinating ancient creatures who looked something like apes but walked upright. We’ll learn how they lived in their foraging societies how they fashioned tools out of stone, wood and bone and how scientists determine the age of the fossils that give us windows to their world.
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Premodern Humans
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.
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Origin & Dispersal of Modern Humans
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.
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Patterns of Variation
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.