Student Resources to accompany Anthropology: What Does It Mean to Be Human? 5e
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The Video: "Agustín Fuentes"
Produced by the Boas Network
4:45 min, 2016
The mission of the Boas Network, which produced this short interview with our co-author Agustín Fuentes, is to communicate anthropology in an engaging manner in the public sphere. Their website (http://boasnetwork.com/) is a great resource for videos, news items, and other materials related to all four fields of anthropology. This particular video comes from a series produced in collaboration with the American Association of Physical Anthropology that profiles the ethnic and gender diversity of biological anthropologists.
Why this clip is important:
Fuentes has written extensively on many issues that interest biological anthropologists, including evolutionary theory and the biocultural synthesis. One of his research specialties is the study of primates. He is one of the leading figures in the field of ethnoprimatology, which studies the interface of human and ape communities. In this video clip, Fuentes describes how he got into the study of primates as an anthropology undergraduate, and why ethnoprimatology is important in the current global context. One of the useful aspects of this clip is how he places his research focus in the broader context of the field of biological anthropology, as well as how he describes some of the important background conditions that affect how and why anthropologists study primates. He explains that the field confronts many challenges in the study of human diversity, as well as in diversifying the community of scholars who study biological anthropology.
To think about and discuss:
The Video: "Are We Really 99% Chimp?"
Created by Henry Reich
3:17 min, 2015
Distributed by Minute Earth
Why this clip is important:
The video “Are We Really 99% Chimp?” asks how to make sense of claims about genetic relationship between species, challenging the potential for oversimplification when attempting to establish the quantity of genetic overlap by comparing the genomes. The video asserts that during the past 6-8 million years, chance mutations and natural selection in both human and chimp populations have led to quite different genetic “scrolls” and “text” (chromosomes and genetic sequences). When scientists compare the genomes, it is easier to tally small differences in the specific letters of DNA in the whole genome. Differences between large sequences are more difficult to quantify, leading to their elimination in the attempt to develop a quantification of genetic overlap. This has led to flawed claims about genetic overlap, because, as the video observes, 18% of chimp genome and 25% of human genome are eliminated from the comparison. The video also points out that exploring overlap in genomes doesn’t address the functionality of genes. As the video states, a few mutations may make a big difference in an animal’s traits, while many mutations can make little or no difference. The broader point here is that we must use great caution when making genetic comparisons between species.
To think about and discuss:
The Video: "Meet Anthropologist Dr. Jonathan Marks!"
Produced by the Boas Network
5:03 min, 2014
The mission of the Boas Network, which produced this short interview with Jonathan Marks, is to communicate anthropology in an engaging manner in the public sphere. Their website (http://boasnetwork.com/) is a great resource for videos, news items, and other materials related to all four fields of anthropology. This video comes from a series called “Meet the anthropologist of the week…” that profiles prominent individual anthropologists.
Why this clip is important:
Biological anthropologist Jonathan Marks is an innovative thinker who has pushed his subfield to study human biological diversity in more critical ways. He is one of the prominent proponents of the biocultural approaches toward human evolution, and in this clip he explains why the biocultural perspective is so important for differentiating human evolutionary processes from those of other species. His key point is that in biological anthropology the subject-object distinction taken for granted in other scientific fields melts away. From there, he argues that biological anthropology is not a science as we customarily understand the term, but a “different kind of science.” Understanding cultural processes, he argues, has to be at the center of biological anthropology. He also gives a very brief overview of the historical development of biological anthropology and concludes by sharing his thoughts on creationism vs. evolution.
To think about and discuss:
The Video: "Neanderthals Mated with Modern Humans Much Earlier Than Previously Thought"
Produced by the Boas Network
2:11 min; 2015
The mission of the Boas Network, which produced this short interview with Adam Siepel, is to communicate anthropology in an engaging manner in the public sphere. Their website (http://boasnetwork.com/) is a great resource for videos, news items, and other materials related to all four fields of anthropology. This video explains how an international research team, by using several different methods of DNA analysis, has found what they consider to be strong evidence of an interbreeding event between Neanderthals and modern humans that occurred tens of thousands of years earlier than any other such event previously documented.
Why this clip is important:
Dr. Siepel describes how access to the complete genome of archaic humans made this project possible. Thanks to that genome, we know there are bits of archaic human DNA in certain contemporary human populations, and Siepel indicates that some of this interbreeding with modern humans happened after they migrated out of Africa. Along with scientists in Germany, Siepel and his team analyzed and compared full genome sequences of archaic humans, some new partial genome sequences of archaics, as well as those of modern humans. Their findings supported the previously discovered interbreeding, but also something unexpected: an earlier event of interbreeding between archaic humans and modern humans coming out of Africa. That event is earlier than the other interbreeding events, taking place perhaps 100,000 years ago. These findings reinforce the idea that interbreeding was important to the evolution of modern humans and the extinct archaics.
To think about and discuss:
The Video: "Out of Eden," Episode One of Guns, Germs, and Steel documentary series
Lion TV
54:35 min; 2014
Based on Jared Diamond's Pulitzer Prize-winning book of the same name, Guns, Germs, and Steel traces humanity’s journey over the last 13,000 years – from the dawn of farming at the end of the last Ice Age to the realities of life in the twenty-first century. Inspired by a question put to him on the island of Papua New Guinea more than thirty years ago, Diamond embarks on a world-wide quest to understand the roots of global inequality.
In Episode One of this three-part series, Diamond learns that the act of transplanting a wild plant and placing it under human control totally transforms that plant's DNA. Characteristics that aid survival in the wild disappear in favor of qualities that suit human consumption. The plant becomes domesticated – and wholly dependent on human control for survival.
Only a handful of places in the world played host to this agricultural revolution. In most cases, plant domestication was a precursor to the development of advanced civilizations. Along with the Fertile Crescent in the Middle East, independent domestication of wild plants is believed to have occurred in Ancient China, in Central and Southern America, in sub-Tropical Africa, and in the highlands of Papua New Guinea.
Why this clip is important:
The transition from foraging to agriculture has long been one of the most intriguing puzzles for archaeologists. Although we call it the Neolithic Revolution, it was not a single event and it didn’t affect everybody around the globe in the same ways or at the same time. The first studies of the Neolithic Revolution were conducted in the Middle East, which this film clip also documents. It follows Canadian archaeologist Ian Kuijt, whose research project at Dhra in Jordan has uncovered an 11,000-year old granary, which may be the oldest food storage facility ever discovered. Its significance is that very early on people had figured out how to store food to protect it from pests and humidity. Kuijt describes the importance of domestication of wild plants as a watershed moment in human history, though he suggests that in its early phases, humans may have been driving the processes “unconsciously” and without realizing they were changing the very nature of the plants around them.
To think about and discuss:
The Film: RACE: Are We So Different?
American Anthropological Association
5:51 min Introduction to multi-part DVD; 2008
The American Anthropological Association produced this video for its public service project, RACE: Are We So Different? This statement describes the project:
We expect people to look different. And why not? Like a fingerprint, each person is unique. Every person represents a one-of-a-kind combination of their parents’, grandparents’, and family’s ancestry. And every person experiences life somewhat differently than others.
Differences… they’re a cause for joy and sorrow. We celebrate differences in personal identity, family background, country, and language. At the same time, differences among people have been the basis for discrimination and oppression.
Yet, are we so different? Current science tells us we share a common ancestry and the differences among people we see are natural variations, results of migration, marriage, and adaptation to different environments. How does this fit with the idea of race?
Looking through the eyes of history, science, and lived experience, the RACE Project explains differences among people and reveals the reality – and unreality – of race. The story of race is complex and may challenge how we think about race and human variation, about the differences and similarities among people. (http://www.understandingrace.org/about/index.html)
Why this clip is important:
This video, which provides a visual introduction to the AAA’s RACE: Are We So Different project, argues that race is a cultural construction that emerged during the period of European colonialism. It begins with the experience of the Virginia colony, where skin color and other physical differences did not initially matter in society. But the growth of slavery and, eventually, the rise of racial science and notions like the “one-drop rule” shaped and reinforced an unequal social order and its maintenance through racism, discrimination, and a worldview that understands that order to be rooted in nature. Today, knowledge about human ancestry demonstrates that race has no biological basis, but the idea persists in a worldview that ranks people on the basis of arbitrarily-chosen physical traits. The clip invites viewers to reexamine their own views on race in light of what anthropology knows about race – that race is a cultural creation.
To think about and discuss:
The Video: "The Evolution of Bacteria on a “Mega-Plate” Petri Dish"
Created by Michael Baym, Harvard University
1:55 min, 2016
Creative Commons license
Why this clip is important:
“The Evolution of Bacteria on a “Mega-Plate” Petri Dish” relates to dynamics of bacterial evolution and why human attempts to control bacteria with antibiotics contribute to the problem of antibiotic resistant bacteria. This video uses time-lapse video and a special template for microbial growth to monitor how mutations in E. coli bacteria allow them to resist increasingly strong applications of an antibiotic. (For an overview of the process and the creation of the video itself, see this article in The Atlantic: http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/09/stunning-videos-of-evolution-in-action/499136/). One of the things that has long made evolution difficult to study—and also subject to popular disbelief—is that it happens over many generations and is not easily observable in a direct way. In this case, mutation appears to be the key mechanism of evolution. Mutations are generally rare, but because bacteria populations are so large and have fast generation times (typically days, hours, or even minutes), evolution can happen very quickly.
To think about and discuss:
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