The Alternative Introduction to Biological Anthropology

Preface ; 1. What Is Anthropology, What Is Biological Anthropology, and Should I Be Getting Science Credit for This? (On the Philosophy of Science) ; What is Anthropology? ; The Subfields of Anthropology ; The Anthropology of Science ; The Normative View of Science: Scientific Method ; The Social Matrix of Science ; Relativizing Science ; The Origins of Anthropology ; The Origins of Physical Anthropology ; Biological Anthropology Today ; References and Further Reading ; 2. Where Did Our Scientific Ideas about Ourselves Come From? (On the History of Science) ; The Beginnings of a New View of Nature ; The Scientific Revolution ; The Decline of Degeneration ; The Anatomy of a <"Pygmie>" ; Biblical Fallibility, or at Least Incompleteness ; Monogenism ; Cause and Effect ; The Great Chain of Being ; Buffon's Objection to the Nested Hierarchy ; Extinction ; Natural Theology ; Uniformitarian Geology ; Adam's World ; Human Evolution ; References and Further Reading ; 3. Can You Tell If You Are a Darwinist? (On Theories of Evolution) ; Darwin's Argument ; Where People Fit In ; The Sacrifice ; Implications for Pattern ; Implications for Species ; Implications for Biological History ; Implications for Relating Humans to Other Animals ; Phylogeny: The Core of Darwinism ; Other Darwinisms ; Social Darwinism ; Neo-Darwinism ; The <"Synthetic Theory>" ; Evolution at the Molecular Level ; Punctuated Equilibria ; Sociobiology ; Universal Darwinism ; Atheistic Darwinism ; References and Further Reading ; 4. Why Do I Look Like the Cable Guy, Daddy? (On Issues of Human Heredity) ; Ten Non-Mendelian Laws ; The Chromosome Theory ; Linkage ; Crossing-Over ; Polygenic Inheritance ; Environmental Influence on Phenotypes ; Unit Characters ; Properties of Heterozygotes ; Pleiotropy ; Imprinting ; Extra-nuclear Inheritance ; The Molecular Genomic Basis of Heredity ; The Alpha-Globin Gene Cluster ; Mutation ; Meanings of the Gene and Genetics ; References and Further Reading ; 5. Are We Here? If So, Why? (On Issues of Microevolution) ; Do Things Exist for a Reason? ; Principal Abstraction: The Gene Pool ; Gene Flow ; Inbreeding ; Natural Selection ; Genetic Drift ; Sickle-Cell ; Why Is the Gene Pool the Way It Is? ; Adaptation or Founder Effect? ; Another Point Illustrated by Sickle-Cell and Phenylketonuria ; Sickle-Cell, Tay-Sachs, and Genetic Screening ; Kinship as a Biocultural Construction ; Genetic History and the Diversity Project ; Who Owns the Body? ; References and Further Reading ; 6. Building Better Monkeys, or at Least Different Ones (On Systematics) ; Speciation ; Specific Mate Recognition Systems ; Genetic Systems Producing Incompatibility ; Species as Individuals ; Levels and Rates of Evolution ; Developmental Genetics ; Allometric Growth ; Extinction ; Classification ; Systematics and Phylogeny ; Classical and Cladistic Taxonomy ; Phylogenetics ; Limitations of the Phylogenetic Method ; References and Further Reading ; 7. Is That an Ape in Your Genes, or Are You Just Glad to See Me? (On the Place of Humans in the Natural Order) ; Primate Classification ; Problems of Uniformitarianism ; Genetic and Anatomical Data ; The Mammals ; Our Place in Primate Systematics ; The Living Apes ; The Trichotomy ; Cladism, Reductionism, and the Rise of the Hominins ; What Does It Mean to Be 98% Genetically Chimpanzee? ; References and Further Reading ; 8. Apes Run around Naked, Live in Trees, and Fling their Poo. Do You? (On the Relevance of apes to Understanding Humans) ; What Primates Can and Can't Tell Us ; Primate Fieldwork ; Primates in Groups ; Social Behavior and Ecology ; Food ; Sexual Activity and Parenthood ; Models for Human Evolution ; Baboons in the Sixties, Chimps in the Nineties ; Looking Elsewhere for Clues about Human Evolution ; The Ape Mind ; Culture ; Conservation ; References and Further Reading ; 9. Being and Becoming (On the Relevance of Humans to Understanding Humans) ; Human Nature ; The Most Fundamental Human Adaptation: Bipedalism ; Why Be Bipedal? ; The Second Fundamental Human Adaptation: The Teeth ; Why Reduce the Canines? ; The Third Fundamental Human Adaptation: The Brain ; Why Be Big-Brained? ; Social and Life-History Novelties ; Physiological and Sexual Novelties ; What Does It Take to Make a Scenario of Human Evolution Valuable? ; Cultural Evolution ; References and Further Reading ; 10. If History is Humanities, and Evolution is Science, What Is Paleoanthropology? (On the Assumptions of a Diachronic Science) ; Scientific Inferences across Time ; Skeletal Biology ; Sexual Dimorphism ; Ontogeny ; Geographic Variation ; Paleopathology ; Sources of Morphological Variation ; Lumping and Splitting ; Fossilization ; Other Considerations ; Rights and Responsibilities in Paleoanthropology ; Kinds of Evidence ; Superposition and Association ; Dating ; Doing the Best We Can with Lost Data ; Making Sense of Human Ancestry ; Classifying the Living Apes and Fossil Ancestors ; References and Further Reading ; 11. The Dental and the Mental (On Making Sense of the Early Diversification of the Human Lineage) ; The Shadow of Piltdown Man ; A Hominid Origin ; Discovery of the Australopithecines ; Australopithecus: Basal Bipeds ; Paranthropus-The Dental Adaptation ; Early Homo: The Mental Adaptation ; The Beginning of Cultural Evolution ; References and Further Reading ; 12. What to Do When Confronted by a Neandertal (On Continuity and Discontinuity) ; The Human Lineage ; The Mental and Social Life of Homo erectus ; Homo sapiens, the Wise Species ; Neandertal Life ; Anatomically Modern People ; The Emergence of Art ; The Political Nature of Ancestry ; Testing Paleontological Models Genetically ; References and Further Reading ; 13. Just How Different is Different? (On Race) ; Race ; Patterns of Contemporary Human Variation ; Why Do We See Races? ; Race as a Biocultural Category ; Asking Scientific Questions about Human Diversity ; Race Is to Ethnicity as Sex Is to Gender, But Not Quite ; What Is Innate? ; Patterns of Human Genetic and Behavioral Variation ; References and Further Reading ; 14. Nature/Culture, or How Science Consistently Manages to Give Little Answers to Big Questions (On the Non-reductive Core of Anthropology) ; Adaptability and the Human Condition ; Folk Theories of Heredity ; The State of the Species ; The Anthropology of Science ; Bioethics ; NAGPRA: Who Owns the Bones? ; Origin Myths, Scientific and Otherwise ; Biocultural Studies, or Cyborg Anthropology ; References and Further Reading ; Index