Running Head: EVOLUTION OF MAN AND CULTURE

Evolution of Man and Culture Following the American Psychological Associations Guidelines Jess Dureza American Military University

Running Head: EVOLUTION OF MAN AND CULTURE

Evolution in terms of physical anthropology is basically how human beings came to be. It is the process of how we are physically shaped to be the way we are from tiny organisms that inhabited our planet billions of years ago, to primates, to so called cave-men, and lastly to the human beings walking on the earth today through natural selection.

Evolution is defined as, the idea that species change over time and have a common ancestry. (Park 2008. P 36)

There are many factors that shape the way human beings evolve. Just like any other living organism, we evolve through the process of natural selection. Natural selection is how an organism adapts and changes (or decent with modification) to a variety of factors for survival, a theory by the scientist Charles Darwin. With many evolutionary factors, there are many ways scientists can go about studying evolution. One very important approach is the study of human fossil distribution of our ancestors, human or not. Human distribution studies our ecology, geographic variation, and evolutions from primate to human and also how and why humans were able to inhabit every continent (besides Antarctica of course). It raises the questions of why there are land animals in secluded parts of the world like the Galapagos Islands or how monkeylike primates were able to island hop to volcanic rock islands, thus giving birth to a new species of primates through adaptive responses as stated in (Park Ch. 6, p 127).

Running Head: EVOLUTION OF MAN AND CULTURE In terms of more recent scientific evolutionary research, scientists from Ohio University uncovered fossils of both hominoids and cercopithecoids in the East African Rift from the

Oligocene era c.23-34 mya. This considerable discovery was important because the split between ape and monkey was thought to have happened at a later time frame in the Miocene era. What intrigued these scientists the most was that the Oligocene era was actually the time when Africa geographically split with Eurasia thus giving scientists an earlier time frame of the distribution of primate species from Africa and Eurasia. (OConnor, Gibson, Stevens 2013). I believe these scientists uncovered something very beneficial to the study evolution. This gives us a better timeframe of sequence of events in evolutionary history. It also shows how continental drift plays a big role in primate distribution and also the evolutionary split between humans and monkeys.

With any evolving human, our culture constantly evolves as well. Humans and culture come hand in hand, its what makes us human. By definition, culture is a set of learned behaviors and ideas that human beings acquire as members of society. (Park 2008, p67) This is what makes human beings such a unique evolutionary species because culture is a trait that no other organism but Homo sapiens have. In fact culture plays a vital role in natural selection. For an organism to survive, we must adapt, adhere, and fight to survive. What is interesting about humans is that we have morals, emotions, logical options, and technology. We have the ability to learn things and its what differentiates us when it comes to natural selection. (Wade 2010). Modern cultural anthropologists theorize that todays technology, change in food and sustenance, and are changing our genomes. Culture is very important to human evolution, especially modern culture. As stated by Wade (2010), Many genes involved in diet and metabolism and

Running Head: EVOLUTION OF MAN AND CULTURE presumably reflect the major shift in diet that occurred in the transition from foraging to agriculture that started about 10,000 years ago. This statement means that even with sudden change, the human body will naturally adapt to nutrition as our ancestors did during time when we went from hunter/gatherers to farmers. But culture can also hurt us as well with negative results. For example, vaccines have the ability to make us invulnerable to certain bacterias and diseases. But what happens when that disease keeps mutating to where a vaccine is deemed useless, the human body wont be able to adapt. Our immune system can only evolve so fast without drugs, thus slowly killing off populations of our species. A great quote stated Wades article about cultures affect on human evolution is Culture has become a force of natural selection, and if it should prove to be a major one, then human evolution may be accelerating as people adapt to pressures of their own creation. (Wade 2010)

Every subfield of Anthropology needs each other to fulfill the theory of evolution. Though somewhat different, cultural and physical anthropology thrive on each other. Without culture, we wouldnt have the tools needed to study fossils of our ancient ancestors. Eventually nature would take its course on human beings, but with culture we find ways to sustain and adapt to the elements (i.e. Clothes, Shelter, tools, food surplus etc).

Evolution is all around us whether we see it or not. It is a constant ever changing way of life for every organism on earth. I found it very interesting in Nicholas Wades article Human Culture plays a role in natural selection, that typically most people would think todays technology and culture we would evolve less but instead are actually evolving quicker than

Running Head: EVOLUTION OF MAN AND CULTURE expected. With that said, we evolving, just not as natural as other species or even our ancient ancestors.

Running Head: EVOLUTION OF MAN AND CULTURE REFERENCES

Park, M.A. (2008) Introducing Anthropology: An integrated approach. New York, New York: McGraw-Hill

Gibson A., Stevens N., & OConnor P. (2013). Scientists discover oldest evidence of split between Old World monkeys and apes. Retrieved from http://www.ohio.edu/research/communications/primatefossils.cfm

Wade N. (2010). Human Culture Plays a Role in Natural Selection. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/02/science/02evo.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0