S292 GLOSSARY
For starters
| Human | Members of the genus Homo |
| Hominid | Membersof the family Hominidae (humans and australopithecines) |
| Hominoid | Members of the superfamily Hominoidea (hominoids and apes) |
| Anthropoid | Members of the suborder Anthropoidea (monkeys, apes and hominids) |
| Ape | Members of the family Pongidae (great apes) and the family Hylobatidae (gibbons) |
| Australpothecine | Members of the extinct hominid genera Australopithecus, Paranthropus and Ardipithecus |
| Anatomically modern humans | Members of the hominid species Homo sapiens |
Hominines, oids, ides?!?!?
Click HERE and all will be revealed!
Unit 1 - Man's Place in Nature
| Anthropocentric | centred around anthropoid | |
| Catastrophism | the theory that the Earth's geological features were formed by a series of catastrophic events, such as floods, during Earth's history | |
| Chain of being | continuum. God's natural hierarchy (humans being very near the top; 2nd to the angels) | |
| Natural philosophy | whereby science and religion exist in close harmony - all being God's work | |
| Uniformitarianism | of Hutton and Lyall. Theory that the Earth's geological features are the product of small changes over long periods of time |
Unit 2 - Human Evolution as Narrative
| Bipedality | upright walking on the two hind legs |
| Culture/civilization | the sum total of human behaviour, including technological, mythological, aesthetic and institutional activities |
| Encephalization | the process of brain enlargement |
| Narrative | of story telling |
| Palaeoanthropology | the study of the physical and behavioural aspects of humans in prehistory |
| Terrestriality | mode of locomotion in which the animal remains confined to the ground |
Unit 3 - Historical Views
| Ecological niche | role in the ecosystem played by a species |
| Hominine | collective term for all human-related species |
| Phylogenic tree | branching ancestral relations among species |
| Single species hypothesis | hypothesis suggesting that only one species of hominine existed at any one time |
Unit 4 - Modern Evolutionary Theory
| Adaptation | process by which a species changes through natural selection, becoming well suited to its environment. |
| Adaptive landscape | graphical description of the average fitness of a population compared with the relative frequencies of genotypes in it. Combinations of alleles that confer high fitness will be seen as peaks on the landscape; those conferring lower fitness as valleys |
| Adaptive radiation | proliferation of variants following the appearance of evolutionary innovation; typically occurs with establishment of new clade. |
| Alleles | alternative form of a gene (eg different eye colour); all genetic loci comprise two alleles, whose effects may differ depending on whether they are identical or different. One form of a gene that can exist at a single gene locus. Often there are just two alleles, one frequently dominant to the other. Sometimes there are several alleles, only two of which are present in an individual, eg those responsible for the ABO blood group system of humans |
| Allopatric speciation | speciation via geographically separated populations. The divergence of two or more populations into separate species after they have become separated geographically |
| Anagenesis | evolution by gradual change within a lineage |
| Analogy | shared ancestry eg. the anatomical similarities between the two distant species of wolf reflect convergent evolution or analogy |
| Clade | a group of species containing the common ancestor of a group and all its ancestors |
| Cladogenesis | evolution by lineage splitting |
| Convergent (or parallel) evolution | result of natural selection producing similar adaptations in separate lineages. |
| Differential reproductive success | "natural selection is differential reproductive success with heritable favourable traits, bestowing a survival advantage on those individuals that possess them" |
| Ecological niches | the role in the ecosystem played by a species |
| Founder effect | the formation of a new population when a sub population becomes isolated from the parent population. It is associated with a loss of genetic variation and sometimes promotes speciation The phenomonen whereby the frequency of a particular character in a population is largely determined by the frequency of that character in the small original (or founding) population rather than by the subsequent operation of natural selection |
| Genotype | the genetic profile of an individual - the specific composition of alleles of a single gene or the entire complement of genes of an organism |
| Heterozygous | the presence of two different alleles at a genetic locus term describing a gene that has different alleles in the homologous chromosomes of a diploid set, usually one dominant and one recessive (eg Gg) but not always (eg the AB genotype of the ABO blood group system) |
| Homology | a character shared by a set of species and present in their common ancestor (compare analogy) |
| Homozygous | presence of two identical alleles at a locus |
| Macroevolution | evolution at the scale of important innovations (origin of new species and trends among groups of related species) |
| Modern synthesis | a consensus, encompassing three principle tenets (1) evolution proceeds in a gradual manner, with accumulation of small changes over long periods of time (2) this change results from natural selection, with the differential reproductive success founded on favourable traits. (3) these processes explain not only changes within the species but also higher-level processes, such as the origin of new species, producing the great diversity of life, extant and extinct |
| Mutation | a change in genetic sequence |
| Natural Selection | the process by which favoured variants in a population thrive |
| Neo Darwinism | the modern version of Darwin's Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection |
| Neoteny | slowdown in embryological development |
| Phenotype | the physical characters of an organism. The sum of all the characters that an organism possesses; or one particular character, eg, the purple-grain phenotype of maize. The phenotype is determined by the interaction of the genotype and the environment |
| Phyletic graduation | mode of evolution dominated by gradual change within a lineage |
| Punctuated equilibrium | a mode of evolution characterized by periods of stasis interspersed with brief episodes of rapid change |
| Recessive | an allele is recessive if two identical alleles are required at the locus to express its phenotype |
| Speciation | the evolutionary splitting of a lineage to produce two daughter species. Process by which a new species arises by the splitting of one species to give rise to two or more species |
| Survival of the fittest | principle of natural selection (Darwin did not use this term) |
| Sympatric speciation | speciation in a subpopulation whose range overlaps with that of the parental population |
| Trait | unit of phenotype |
Unit 5 - Physical context of evolution
| Biome | a characteristic ecological environment, such as temporate forest, grassland savannah |
| Biomic generalists | species that can live in a wide range of environments, such as temperate forest, scrub and savanna |
| Biomic specialists | species restricted to one environment only |
| Biota | the animal and plant life that characterizes a particular region |
| Cenozoic | youngest era of the Panerozoic, consisting of Neogene and palaeogen Periods (Tertiary sub-Era) and Quaternary period. Spans from 65 mya to present day |
| Eurybiomic | ability of a species to utilize food resources from several different biomes |
| Geological periods | subdivision of the last 590 my into 11 period beginning with the Cambrian at 590 mya and ending with Quartenary, dating from 2 mya. |
| Habitat hypothesis | (Elisabeth Yrba) species' responses to climate change represent the principal engine of evolutionary change |
| Milankovich Cycle | regular cycles of long-term global climate change with periodicities of about 10,000, 41,000 and 23,000 years |
| Red Queen hypothesis | "run faster and faster in order to stay in the same place" |
| Stenobiomic | a mode of subsistence in which a species is restricted to one biome for obtaining food resources |
| Vicariance | creation of allopatric populations from once continuous populations, either by formation of physical barriers or dispersal of populations across such barriers. Mechanism for evolutionary change proposed by Elisabeth Vrba's habitat hypothesis |
Unit 6 - Extinction and patterns of evolution
| Cambrian explosion | the brief (in geological terms) moment during which many different forms of multicellular organisms evolved, a little more than half a billion years ago |
| Catastrophism | the theory that the Earth's geological features were formed by a series of catastrophic events, such as floods, during Earth's history |
| Mass extinction events | in the history of life during which at least 50 percent of the Earth's species became extinct in a geologically brief time: Late Ordovician - 12% Late Devonian - 14% Late Permian - 52% Late Triassic - 12% Late Cretaceous - 11% |
| Phyla | major body plans |
| Tetrapods | a four-footed animal |
| Uniformitarianism | theory that the Earth's geological features are the product of small changes over long periods of time |
Unit 7 - Dating methods
| Absolute dating | techniques that provide information about age by a physical measurement of the material at the site in question, such as radiometric dating |
| Carbon 14 dating | an absolute dating method, based on the decay of the radioactive isotope of carbon, carbon-14 |
| Electron spin resonance | a technique of absolute dating that is based on natural radiation in the soil affecting the state of electrons in a target material, such as teeth |
| Faunal correlation techniques | a method of relative dating based on species reaching a similar evolutionary stage at the same time in history in different geographical localities |
| Palaeomagnetism | magnetism induced in volcanic rocks as they cool, recording the direction of the Earth's prevailing magnetic field at the time |
| Radiometric dating | absolute dating, based on the known decay rate of radioisotopes |
| Radiopotassium/argon dating | an absolute dating method using decay of potassium-40 (K-40) as a 'clock'. K-40 decays to the gas, argon-40 (Ar-40). If the relative proportions of K-40 and Ar-40 in a volcanic rock are measured, the age of the rock can be calculated because the half-life of K-40 is known to be 1193 million years. The K-40:Ar-40 decay system is useful because during a volcanic eruption any Ar-40, a gas, that is present, will be lost. This resets the 'clock' to zero thereby permitting accurate dating |
| Relative dating | techniques that provide information about a site by referring to what is known at other sites or other sources of information, such as faunal correlation |
| Stratigraphic layer | distinct layer within the stratigraphic column characterized by specific rock type and also possibly by typical fossils where the rock is sedimentary |
| Thermoluminescence dating | a method of absolute dating based on the influences exerted by natural radiation in the ground on electrons within a target material |
Unit 8 - Systematics: morphological and molecular
| Autapomorphy | a derived character not shared with other species |
| Binomen | the specific name part of the species name, eg Homo (genus) sapien (binomen) |
| Character state | the presence of absence of a particular character, as in cladistic analysis |
| Cladistics | the school of evolutionary biology that seeks relationships among species based on the polarity (primitive or derived) of characters |
| Cladogram | a diagrammatic representation of species relationships |
| Classification | arrangement of organisms into hierarchical groups |
| Derived character | a character acquired by some members of an evolutionary group that serves to unite them in a taxonomic sense and distinguish them from other species in the group |
| Evolutionary systematics | a system of classification that emphasizes evolutionary history |
| Gel electrophoresis | electrical properties of proteins |
| Gene tree | the history of a particular gene in related lineages |
| Genetic distance | a measure of evolutionary separation between lineages |
| Homoplasies | similar characters produced by convergent evolution (parallel) |
| Molecular evolutionary clock | the concept that the accumulation of genetic differences between lineages after splitting can be used to determine the temporal history of the lineages |
| Molecular systematics | the use of molecular biological data for classification and systematics |
| Monophyletic group | the set of species containing a common ancestor and all its descendants |
| Outgroup comparison | looking down hierarchy at more distantly related species |
| Paraphyletic group | set of species containing an ancestral species and some, but not all, of its descendants |
| Parsimony technique | a phylogenetic reconstruction in which the phylogeny of a group of species is inferred to be the branching pattern requiring the smallest number of evolutionary changes |
| Phenetic classification | a method of classification in which species are grouped together on the basis of morphological similarities |
| Phylogeny | a branching diagram showing the ancestral relations among species |
| Polarity | the assessment of a character as either primitive or derived |
| Polymorphism | the situation in which a population contains more than one allele at a genetic locus |
| Polyphyletic group | a set of species deriving from more than one common ancestor |
| Primitive characters | a character that was present in a common ancestor of a group and is therefore shared by all members of that group |
| Species tree | the population history of lineages that derive from a common ancestor |
| Symplesiomorphy | a shared primitive character |
| Synapomorphy | a shared derived character |
| Systematics | the theory and practise of biological classification |
| Taxon | any named group, such as species, genus or family |
Unit 9 - Science of Burial
| Taphonomy | the study of the processes by which bones become fossilized |
Unit 10 - Primate heritage
| Adapidae | family of extinct, lemur-like primates that lived during the Eocene epoch and died out in late Miocene epoch. |
| Adaptive radiation | the proliferation of variants following the appearance of an evolutionary innovation; it typically occurs with the establishment of a new clade |
| Arboreal | tree-living |
| Arboreal hypothesis | theory of primate origin, proposing that the characteristic features of primates derive from adaptations for life in trees |
| Brachiation | mode of locomotion through trees using the arms for hanging and swinging (eg as in gibbons) |
| Omomyidae | family of early true primates considered ancestral to tarsiers |
| Placental mammals | (Eutheria) - subclass of class Mammalia in which embryos are nourised in the uterus via placentae and are born at a relatively advanced stage. All neonates suckle milk for a period before progressing to adult food. Primates are an order within the subclass Eutheria |
| Plesiadapiformes | group of fossil primates living in the Palaeocene and early Eocene, 65 to 55 mya. Their link with later primates is doubtful |
| Prosimians (strepsirhines) | primate belong to the suborder Prosimii, ie lemurs, lorises and tarsiers |
| Visual predation hypothesis | Matt Cartmill's hypothesis that the features of primates represent adaptation of a small arboreal mammal for stalking insect prey which are spotted visually and caught in the hands |
Unit 11 - Bodies, size and shape
| Allen's Rule | populations of a geographically widespread species living in warm regions will have longer extremities than those inhabiting cold climates |
| Bergmann's Rule | in a geographically widespread species, populations in warmer parts of the range will be smaller-bodied than those in colder parts of the range |
| Lucy | Australopithecus afarensis |
| Mbuti pygmies | a people of average height about 1.3 metres, living in moist humid forest in Africa |
| Neanderthals | humans living in Europe, part of Asia and the Middle East, between 15,000 and < 30,000 years ago. Currently regarded as side branch of the human evolutionary tree, not direct ancestors of modern humans. |
| Nilotic people | a tall, long-limbed people characterized by an average height of about 2 metres, living in an open environment in Africa |
| Polygyny | condition in which an individual male has more than one mate within a breeding season whilst females have a maximum of one mate |
| Robusticity | athletic build |
Unit 12 - Bodies, brains and energy
| Altricial strategy | of species producing extremely immature young that are unable to feed or care for themselves |
| Kleiber curve | the relationship between body weight and basal energy requirement for different animal species that shows that as body weight increases, the basal energy requirement per kilogram decreases |
| K-selection | the life history strategy in which species have a low potential reproductive output |
| Life history variables | features such as age at weaning, age at sexual maturity and longevity, which determine the nature of a species overall life. |
| Precocial strategy | of species that produce relatively mature young that can fend for themselves to a degree immediately at birth. |
| r-selection | the life history strategy in which a species has a hight potential reproductive output. |
Unit 13 - Bodies, behaviour and social structure
| 'Exploded' unimale polygyny | where a single male defends a group of females and their offspring but the females do not live as a group and, instead, are spread over a wide area |
| Dimorphic canines | much bigger canines, in much bigger (generally) males. (polygynous) |
| Monogamy | condition in which individuals have one mating partner over a certain time period such as one breeding season or a lifetime |
| Monomorphic canines | canines being the same size in both males and females of a species (monogamous) |
| Multimale polygyny | where several males cooperate and defend a group of widely distributed females and their offspring |
| Sexual dimorphism | the state in which some aspects of a species' anatomy consistently differs in size or form between males and females |
| Unimale polygyny | where a single male has control over a group of females and their offspring |
Unit 14 - Nonhuman models of early hominines
| Behavioural ecology model | the use of principles relating to social structures of apes living today in specific environments to reconstruct possible social structures in extinct hominine ancestors in changing ecological conditions |
| Phylogenical comparisons | technique by which modern primates are used to model the social organization of extinct hominines (Richard Wrangham) |
| Specific primate model | the modelling of the social organization of early hominines by comparison with specific living species of primate. Savannah babbon, chimp and bonobo useful for this approach |
Unit 15 - Ape and human relations: morphological and molecular views
| 'Ape' grade | suite of similar adaptations in apes. Term first used by Gaylord Simpson to distinguish ape grade from human grade and provide argument against classifying humans and apes in same family (yes, but what is it?!) |
| Axial skeleton | the vertebrae and ribs |
| Catarrhini | a primate infraorder consisting of Old World monkeys, apes and humans |
| Diastema | gap between the lateral incisor and the canine |
| Gene Tree | history of a particular gene in related lineages |
| Hominid | any member of the human family Hominidae, including Australopithecus and Homo species. |
| Hominoidea | all living and extinct species of humans and apes |
| Knuckle walking | a type of quadrupedal locomotion used by chimpanzees and gorillas, where some body weight is supported on back of knuckles, rather than palms or fingers. |
| Miocene | fourth epoch of the Tertiary period, about 23.3 to 5.2 mya |
| Mitochondria | organelles that occur in most eukaryote cells, varying in size and shape. Outer membrane + internal highly folded membrane within. The TCA cycle and the link reaction occur in the matrix. Electron transport and oxidative phosphorylation occur at the inner membrane. |
| Mitochondrial DNA (mt DNA) | a circular molecule of DNA within all mitochondria coding for some of the proteins within mitochondria |
| Molecular clock | concept that the acumulation of genetic differences between lineages after splitting can be used to determine the temporal history of the lineages |
| Parsimony | a phylogenic reconstruction in which the phylogeny of a group of species is inferred to be the branching pattern requiring the smallest number of evolutionary changes. |
| Prognathic cranium | jutting forward of face and jaw (prognathism) |
| Species tree | population history of lineages that derive from a common ancestory |
Unit 16 - Origin of the Hominoidea
| Arboreal frugivory | eats fruit in the trees! |
| Intermembral index | a comparison of the length of the upper and lower limbs |
| Orthograde locomotion | in which the body remains more vertical relative to the ground |
| Pronograde locomotion | in which the body remains horizontal relative to the ground |
Unit 17 - Origin of bipedalism
| 'Man the provisioner' hypothesis | relates to males gathering food and taking it back to a home base to be shared with his female(s) and offspring. With the male providing food, females would be able to reproduce at shorter intervals giving them selective advantage over other large hominines. Selective advantage of bipedalism for the males also relates to the ability to carry things in the hands. |
| 'Woman the gatherer' hypothesis | states that females were gathering plant foods by means of digging sticks and carrying many small items of food. The selective advantage of bipedalism relates to the need to carry things in the hands |
| Heel strike | the stage in the striding gait of humans when the foot makes contact with the ground, first with the heel |
| Mosaic evolution | process by which different aspects of a species' morphology evolve at different rates |
| Stance phase | stage of the bipedal striding gait; fololwing heel strike, that leg remains extended and supports the body, the stance phase, while the other leg goes through the swing phase with the body continuing to move forward |
| Striding gait | the gait of human bipedalism |
| Swing phase | the phase in the striding gait of humans in which the leg pushes off using power from the great toe and flexes slightly as it swings under the body |
| Valgus angle | the angle subtended by the femur from the knee to the hip |
Unit 18 - Jaws and teeth
| Cusp | cone-shaped prominence on the surface of a tooth especially of a molar or premolar |
| Dental pattern | the organization and numbers of different types of teeth, incisors, canines, premolars and molars in the jaw |
| Tooth eruption pattern | sequence and timing of eruption of permanent teeth |
Unit 19 - The earliest known hominines
| Cranium | the skull minus the lower jaw |
| Sagittal crest | a bony crest at the top of the skull, running from the front to the back, and characteristic of larger robust australopithecines, eg, Australopithecus aethiopicus |
Unit 20 - the australopithecines
| Brain endocast | cranium filled with fossilized minerals (?) |
| Gracile skeletons | term implies a light and delicate build for a skeleton in contrast with a heavier more massive skeleton |
| Masseter muscle | one of the muscles involved in moving the lower jaw during chewing (below cheek bone) |
| Robust skeletons | relates to the 'robust' australopithecines, considered to have more massive skeleton than the delicately built 'gracile' australopithecines |
| Semicircular canals/vestibular system | parts of the inner ear that are involved in maintaining balance |
| Temporal muscle | one of the two muscles in the lower jaw used for chewing in primates (which is the forehead in the diagrams!) |
| Zygomatic arch | the bony arch of the cheek formed by connection of the zygomatic and temporal bones |
Unit 21 - Early Homo
| Lumpers | school of classification advocating interpreting anatomical differences as within species variation and incorporating variants into single species |
| Postorbital constriction | the narrowing of the skull immediately behind the forehead |
| Splitters | school of classification that uses each variant in anatomical structure to indicate a separate species |
Anatomy comparisons
| Australopithecus afarensis | Homo habilis | Homo rudolfensis |
| Brain ~380-450cm3 | Small brain case; brain ~ 500 cm3 | Fairly large brain case |
| Lower part of jaw is large and protruding | Small protruding face | Broad flat face |
| Patterns of wear on teeth indicate fruit eating | Patterns of wear on teeth indicate fruit eating | Patterns of wear on teeth indicate fruit eating |
| Diastema separates second incisor from canine | ||
| strong curved brow ridge | light brow ridge |
Unit 22 - Hominine relations
| Basicranium flexion | position of the canal through which the spinal cord enters the basicranium in humans (close to the centre and adaptations for upright posture, whereas in apes the canal is located near the back of the skull) |
| Functional complex | a grouping of anatomical traits into a functional package - eg, the grouping together of traits relating to chewing of food |
| Ontogeny | the process of growth and development of an individual from conception onward |
Unit 23 - Early tool technologies
| Core | the core of a stone or cobble left after removal of flakes in Oldowan stone tool technology |
| Flakes | shards removed from stone cores and appropriate for immediate use as cutting tools (Oldowan technology) and also for further refinement into bifaces (Acheulean technology) |
| Hammer stone | stone tool used for striking a core during percussion knapping |
| Oldowan technology | the stone-tool industry characterized by flakes and chopping tools produced by hard-hammer percussion of small cobbles; it began 2.50 million years ago and continued in parts of Africa and Asia until 20,000 years ago, where it is more properly called chopping-tool assemblages |
| Percussion stone knapping | the technique used by hominines to produce flakes reliably and precisely from stone cores. |
Archaeology (and tools)
| AFRICA | EURASIA | ||||
| Earlier Stone Age (ESA) | 2.6 mya | Mode I | Lower Palaeolithic | 2.0 mya | Mode 1 |
| 1.5 mya | Mode II | Mode II | |||
| Mode III | 200,000 years ago | Mode III | |||
| Middle Stone Age (MSA) | 300,000 mya | Mode III | Middle Palaeolithic | 40,000 years ago | Mode III |
| Later Stone Age (LSA) | 60,000 years ago | Mode IV | Upper Palaeolithic | Mode V | |
| Agricultural Revolution | |||||
Tools
| Mode I | Simple chopping tools made by knocking a few flakes off a small cobble |
| Mode II | Tools requiring more extensive conceptualization and preparation (eg bifacial handaxes) |
| Mode III | Large cores are preshaped by the removal of large flakes and then used as a source of more standardized flakes that are retouched to produce a large range of artifacts |
| Mode IV | Technology characterized by narrow stone blades struck from a prepared core |
| Mode V | Consists of microlith technology, which constitutes the production of small, delicate artifacts |
Unit 24 - The changing position of Homo erectus
| Provenance of a fossil | the location of a fossil or artifact in the prehistoric record |
Unit 25 - New technologies
| Acheulean | name applied to a type of stone-tool industry characterized by large bifaces including handaxes; it began approximately 1.5 mya and continued in Africa and parts of Eurasia until some 200,000 years ago |
Unit 26 - Hunter or scavenger?
| Kill sites | sites where carnivores have killed their prey |
| The central-place foraging hypothesis | |
| The home-base food sharing hypothesis | an interpretation of accumulations of stone tools and animal bones as a site to which early Homo hunter-gatherers brought meat and plant food to be shared out and eaten |
| The hunting hypothesis | the view that hunting was the primary human adaptation |
Unit 27 - The Neanderthal enigma
| Aurignacian technology | the first major Palaeolithic tool complex in Europe. This style was first discovered at Aurignac in the French Pyrenees, 1880. Aurignacian tools are charaterised by long, retouched blades, short, steep-sided scrapers and bone points with split bases. This type of tool manufacture began about 40,000 years ago in Europe and lasted several thousand years. |
| Chatelperrionian industry | the stone-tool industry apparently associated with late Neanderthals |
| Mousterian technology | stone tool technology associated with Neanderthals |
Unit 28 - The origin of modern humans: anatomical evidence
| Anatomically modern humans | the term usually used to describe the first members of Homo sapiens |
| Genetic drift | random changes in gene frequency in a population |
| Multiregional evolution hypothesis | the hypothesis that modern humans evolved in near concert in different parts of the Old World |
| Out-of-Africa hypothesis | the hypothesis that modern humans originated recently in Africa; based on fossil evidence |
| Regional continuity | a prediction of the multiregional evolution hypothesis that certain morphological features will be characteristic of particular geographical locations, and will be present from early Homo erectus times through the emergence of modern Homo sapiens |
Unit 29 - The origin of modern humans: genetic evidence
| Alu elements | specific sequences of DNA of ~300 base pairs in length that are inserted in large numbers into the nuclear genome and are usually not removed |
| Coalescence time | the time in a lineage's history at which all the variants of a particular gene converge into a single, ancestral form |
| Coalescent | an ancestral gene which gives rise to a lineage of variants |
| Garden of Eden hypothesis | another name for the hypothesis that modern humans arose as a small isolated population whose descendents spread throughout the Old World |
| Intermatch distributions | the use of genetic variation between pairs of modern populations to infer population events in the past |
| Microsatellites | short sequences of DNA that contain many repeats of two to five nucleotide segments |
| Mismatch distribution | the use of genetic variation in modern populations to infer population events in the past |
| Mitochondrial Eve hypothesis | the hypothesis, based on mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) evidence, that modern humans evolved recently in Africa |
| Nuclear genome | the package of genetic material in the nucleus |
| Weak garden of Eden hypothesis | suggested by Jarpending and Rogers to explain the results of their mismatch distribution analysis of mtDNA. Their results indicate a small founding population of modern humans fragmented into separate populations. These groups are spread out to found the modern populations in Africa, Europe and Asia |
Unit 30 - The origin of modern humans: archeological evidence
No new
Unit 31- Evolution of the brain, intelligence and consciousness
| Broca's area | a region of the brain that connects with areas of the motor cortex that control muscles in the face and vocal tract. It translates the perceptual aspects of language, coded by Wernicke's area, into a grammatical structure and then into instructions for the motor cortex to produce appropriate sounds or writing movements. |
| Encephalization quotient | a measure of relative brain size (EQ) (in comparison to body size) |
| Lobes of the brain: | |
| Frontal | part of the brain's cerebral hemispheres that is anterior to the central sulcus |
| Parietal | part of the brain's cerebral cortex posterior to central sulcus; superior to the temporal lobe |
| Temporal | interior and lateral part of each cerebral hemisphere. Contains hippocampus |
| Occipital | most posterior of each of the brain's hemispheres and location of primary visual cortex |
| Cerebellum | cauliflower-like structure which forms largest part of the hindbrain - helps to control movement and posture |
| Lunate sulcus | in the human brain, a short groove lying in the margin between the occipital and temporal lobes |
| Man the hunter | view in teh 1960s that hunting was the primary adaptation in human evolution - this view linked to the advantage of bipedalism |
| Man the social animal | model proposed recently to explain the selective advantage of hominine brain expansion. For Homo, interactions within a social group are complex and important for survival and ability to produce offspring |
| Man the toolmaker | model proposed in the 1950s to explain the selective advantage of tripling the hominine brain size derived from ability to make more complex stone tools |
| Secondary altriciality | in Homo sapiens altriciality is considred to be secondary because other primates are precicial, typical for species with long gestation and large neonatal brain size. Altriciality is more typical of species with short gestation and small neonatal brain size. |
Unit 32 - The evolution of language
| Language centres of the brain | Angular gyrus, Arcuate fasciculus, Face area, Visual cortex, Sylvian fissure, Wernicke's area PLUS |
| Broca's area | region of the brain that connects with areas of the motor conrtex that controls muscles in the face and vocal tract. It translates the perceptual aspects of language, coded by Wernicke's area, into a grammatical structure and then into insturctions for the motor cortex to produce appropriate sounds or writing movements. |
Unit 33 - Art in prehistory
| Entoptic images | characteristic images experienced during trance-induced hallucination |
| Shamanistic art | art associated with hallucinations seen during trance experiences, which may be part of a ritual |
| The hunting magic hypothesis | Abbe Breuil's view that prehistoric art relates to ensuring successful hunts and propitiating the animal victims |
| Therianthropes | a chimera of human/animal typically seen during dppe trance and depicted in shamanistic art. |
Unit 34 - New Worlds
| Beringia Land Bridge | land bridge, crossing the Bering Strait, periodically linked Alaska and Siberia during the Pleistocene epoch when the sea was up to 200m below today's level. During the last ice age, Beringia allowed people to cross from Asia to the New World |
| Clovis people | name given to the people who colonized America about 12000 years ago |
| Cordilleran Ice Sheet | the ice sheet covering North West America during the last glaciation, about 12,000 years ago |
| Folsom cultures | the people who replaced the Clovis in America from about 10900 years ago |
| Laurentide Ice Sheet | the ice sheet covering the centre and east of America at the peak of the last glaciation, about 18,000 years ago |
| The Clovis Point | the typical fluted stone projectile point manufactured by the Clovis people |
| The homogeneity hypothesis | the view that the early colonists of Australia were anatomically homogenous and that the variability of modern aborigines resutls from genetic and cultural processes acting on a small founding population |
| The threee source languages | Amerind, Na-Dene, Aleut-Eskimo |
Unit 35 - the first villages
| !Kung project | project involving the study of socioenonomic life of the !Kung San Bushmen of the Kalahari |
| Demic expansion model | the theory that the spread of agriculture during the Neolithic was by means of population migration |
| Fertile Crescent | the area in the Near East where plant and animal domestication began about 10,000 years ago |
| Neolithic Transition | Agricultural Revolution beginning around 12 000 years ago |
Back to S292