Talk:Biological anthropology

Comment

who identifies "cultural ecology" this way? All of the works I know of that use the term "cultural ecology" use it to refer to the work of Julian Steward and his students in the 1940s-1960s. (the research questions posited here seem very interesting, and also unsurprising either for physical anthropologists or cultural anthropologists. It is merely the appelation I question. What is described here sounds more like what I have heard called "human ecology.") SR

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The entry for primatology which links here claims that it is closely related to physical anthopology. Here primatology is claimed as a sub-disipline. It would be good to keep this in mind as the articles progress. Two16

Both are right, which is a comment on the scope of modern primatology. When primatology studies primates to discover how they are different from us, it's a subfield of anthropology. When primatology studies primates to discover how they are different from other "lower animals", it's a subfield of biology. This would go in the article but it may be hard to attribute.

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Its just a comment for editors to keep noted.

As these articles become worthy, we will need to bring them in line so that consistancy and clearness are maintained in a hyper linked enviroment. Right now the articles refer to each other and say different things. We will have to coordinate these two articles in the future and we might save ourselves a bit of work if we build with this in mind.

yes, they need coordination, but they don't need to 'agree', as it doesn't cause any insurmountable problems if physical anthropologists and biologists both wish to claim primatology as their own subfield.

The wikipedians would say disambiguate. But that is still in the future when the process of improving the articles has gone on: people will know more; natural divisions may appear; elegant solutions discovered. Whatever the case we will be better able to deal with it . Even if we require a disambiguation page. As for consistancy and clarity minimum requirement is probably that we never say P is not equal to P.

When you say "physical anthropologists and biologists both wish to claim primatology", I think you are anthropomorphising arbitrary categories and making fun of multidiciplinary scientists. ;-]

I'm not naive enough to ask which one is right. ;-} Two16

that wouldn't be very scientific - a scientist would ask what to test next. ;-)

Followers of Skinner gone bad might.  ;-0

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142 it's bad form for me to leave a meassage for you on an encyclopia talk page: it suposed to be used for improving the article.

You need to stop linking to so many empty pages.Don't highlight everything Find out what the wiki naming conventions do a search to see if there is something similar. If work has already been done, you will have more time to write brilliant prose All that red is hard on the eyes and we will have to untangle it. The mark up language has a way with pipes | that is elegant to use in prose.

A login is painless: choose handle authenticate pass word. Easy to sign post with three of ~ . A user page for you to use or not and most importantly for me your talk page: a place to leave messages there is a lot you will want to know. I can give you simple tips to improve your effectiveness at writing for this enviroment. 216.129.198.41 Two16

"Renowned Paleoanthropologists"?

I have stumbled across this page while trying to find useful things about Blumenbach's kind of anthropology. I can understand that biological anthropology redirects to physical anthropology, but why is there a list of "Renowned Paleoanthropologists" on this page? Could someone explain please? --KF 11:04, 12 Nov 2003 (UTC)

The list serves mostly to provide links. Paleoanthropology is one branch of physical anthropology. All Wikipeida articles are works in progress -- hopefully, somebody will one day begin a list of notable primatologists, population geneticists, and others who occupy sub-fields of physical anthropology, Slrubenstein

Thank you! --KF 23:28, 12 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Now that there's a page for paleoanthropology and -ists, why keep *all* of them here? Were they all important to physical anthropology as a whole? --Joy [shallot] 20:06, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Franz Boas

Isn't it Boas that has been discredited?! Didn't he interpret the measurements on skulls falsely on purpose? http://www.unl.edu/rhames/courses/current/boasskull.htm

No. Whoever told you this is B.S.ing you. No contemporary of his ever suggested -- and no one has ever found any evidence to suggest, that Boas was deliberatly deceptive. Moreover, his findings have been confirmed by recent scientists. In fact, the most recent research on this data uses more advanced statistical methods than what were available to Boas, and have discovered that the evidence for Boas's findings is even stronger than what Boas claimed in his articles. Sparks and Jantz (mentioned in Wade's article) were no doubt sincere in their belief that they proved Boas wrong, but shortly after they published their article, it became clear to everyone that they misread or at least misunderstood Boas's argument; that the methods they were using were inappropriate; that a correct use of statistical analysis supports Boas's research. As to Pinker's claim that Benedict, Mead, and Montegue were blank-slate antibiology coscial constructionists, well, he is just ignorant. They certainly believed that many human beliefs and practices were socially constructed, but none of them believed that the mind was a blank-slate, and all of them believed that biology is important. The difference between Pinker and anthropologists is NOT that Pinker "believes in" biology and anthropologists do not. The difference is that Pinker believes that human biology limits human creativity and variety, while anthropologists believe that human biology makes human creativity and variety possible. The fact is, the views of anthropologists are supported by scientific research, and Pinker's views are not. Slrubenstein | Talk

No. Read Boas and make up your own mind.Levalley (talk) 20:00, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

The difference is that Pinker believes that human biology limits human creativity and variety, while anthropologists believe that human biology makes human creativity and variety possible. The fact is, the views of anthropologists are supported by scientific research, and Pinker's views are not. False dichotomy much? Both sides can be right, and likely are: Biology makes creativity and variety possible, but it also puts limits on it. Just think of human height: Genes put a limit on height. Some people grow taller with the same form of nutrition than others do. Although I do not agree with everything Pinker says (to put it mildly – I consider Chomsky's language acquisition device ideas pure BS and resent the paradigm he has established, changing mainstream linguistics especially in the US from an empirical-based science into a largely dogmatic, esoteric field, using pseudo-mathematical formulas to pretend exactness and rigorousness, more religion than science), it would be silly to deny this. Of course, genes are not the only influence, they do not absolutely determine people. And of course, they also make some people's taller height possible in the first place. It's just a matter of perspective. But perhaps I'm misunderstanding the dispute. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 21:33, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

Population genetics is a branch of physical anthropology?

Is there a branch of physical anthropology called populaton genetics that is distinct from the subject in population genetics and the link is misguided, or is the inclusion of population genetics as a branch of physical anthropology a bit of a reach? Pete.Hurd 04:50, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

Population genetics is most definitely one of the major sub-fields physical anthropologists specialize in. I have Nelson and Germaine's 8th edition textbook for intro to physical anthropology. This is not a good document for describing what physical anthropologists actually do, but it is a good document for describing what physical anthropologists consider to be the fundamentals of their field for undergraduate teaching: the first chapter of course is the introduction, and when introducing physical anthropology it highlights (actually, bolds) the main elements: paleoanthropology (the study of human evolution), anthropometry (measuring phenotypic variation among current populations), genetics, primatology, and osteology (including paleopathology and linked to forensic anthropology). I'd say that "anthropometry" and "genetics" understood within a Darwinian/Mendelian model together are important elements of population genetics.

The actual chapters of the book are (2) the development of evolutionary theory, (3)the Biological Basis for Live, (4) Heredity and Evolution, (5) an overview of living primates, (6) fundamentals of primate behavior, (7) models for human evolution, (8) processes macroevolution: mammalian/primate evolutionary history, (9) paleoanthropology: reconstructing early hominid behavior and ecology, (10) hominid origins, (11) H. erectus and contemporaries, (12) Neandertales and other archaic H. sapiens (13) H. sapiens sapiens, (14) microevolution in Modern Human Populations, (15) Human variation and adaptation, (16) conclusion.

I'd say that chapters 4, 14, and 15 cover most of what is called population genetics. Chapter 14 has a section called "population genetics." As I said, this book is but one piece of evidence as to how physical anthropologists present themselves to undergraduate students. I think it would be more effective to look at the AAA's guide to departments and see how physical anthropologists identify their specializations, or see how journal articles are distributed among different journals and keywords, but I do not know if anyone has done that research and I don't have the resources or time to do it myself (plus it would violate NOR). Slrubenstein | Talk 15:09, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

Population genetics is a large field and calling it a branch of biological anthropology is very misleading, it is akin to calling mathematics a branch of physics--Goterpaws (talk) 15:53, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Human Biology

Should the term Human Biology be included in the entry?

Yes, absolutely.Levalley (talk) 20:00, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

additional definition

Here is a definition of Biol. Anth. from the University of Toronto website in support of the population genetics discussion.

"Physical or Biological Anthropology is the study of humans and non-human primates in their biological dimension. It examines the biological and social factors that have affected the evolution of humans and other primates, and that generate, maintain or change contemporary genetic and physiological variation. Biological anthropologists may focus their research on human genetics, the behaviour of non-human primates, primate palaeontology, medical Anthropology, forensics or evidence for ancient disease and nutrition."

help!

Anyone who has this page on their watchlist, can you go to Virago? A who is putting forward notions of racial and identifying them with a notion of gender-difference, and I are in a conflict. Fundamentally, I believe he is a racist' his claims about race contradict everything I have read by physical and cultural anthropologists and as far as I can tell, his claims about gender at best seriously distort the literature.

You can see the difference here [1]

On the talk page, start here [2], and then just read the whole debate.

Comments from others needed. Thanks, Slrubenstein | Talk 23:37, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

Biological Anthropology

I believe that this page should be moved to the title "Biological Anthropology" due to the greater use of the term in the field. The use of "biological" is a more accurate discripter, a it is the study of human biology using an evolutionary framework, with an emphasis on the interaction between biology and culture. I would like to know if anyone is against this. Digsdirt 04:54, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

No objection. Slrubenstein | Talk 08:43, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

Title capitalization

The "a" in "anthropology" in the title shouldn't be capitalized. Can someone move the article to "Biological anthropology"? Thanks. 24.11.177.133 06:43, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

request for comments

Would people who regularly watch this page please consider commenting here [3]? Thanks, Slrubenstein | Talk 13:25, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

There's me. I am of several minds about this article. First, it may remain stub-like because bio-anthropology is such a large field. However, like the main article on anthropology, it seems it deserve some fleshing-out, to wit, it should give an account of the major branches of biological anthropology commonly seen in any introductory textbook book (history of the field, taxonomic work, molecular genetics, population genetics, primatology, paleontological methods, the difference between paleontology and archaeology, tool traditions, early hominids, importance of bipedality, increase in brain size, early members of the genus Homo, controversies, Out of Africa vs. Mosaic hypothesis, major accomplishments in the field. The list of important bio-anthropologists is a start, but should be worked on. The subspecialties of each should be mentioned. Probably should put in alphabetical order. Anyway, lots of work needed there - I can think of about ten or twelve people just off the top of my head that aren't there, don't know if they have Wiki articles or not.Levalley (talk) 20:04, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

request for comments

On race and intelligence, please [4] Slrubenstein | Talk 13:10, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Merging of stub sections

Merging various orphaned and unreferenced stubs into this article is undertaken for the purpose of completeness and easy review. The material often mentions outdated theories and it is not intended to assert that these are valid - if necessary a "history" article can be split off. It is true that (above) the article "should give an account of the major branches of biological anthropology commonly seen in any introductory textbook book (history of the field, taxonomic work, molecular genetics, population genetics, primatology, paleontolog(y)...)". As a beginning historical material can be assembled and brief notes added. Redheylin (talk) 01:39, 10 August 2011 (UTC)