Human Variation & Race Blog

1. Select only ONE of the following environmental stresses: (a) heat, (b) high levels of solar radiation, (c) cold, or (d) high altitude. Discuss specifically how this environmental stress negatively impacts the survival of humans by disturbing homeostasis. (5 pts)

The environmental stress i'd like to discuss is high altitude. It negatively impacts the survival of humans because it can be extremely hot during the day with extreme colds at night. Also, winds are very strong and humidity is very low so it increases the chances of rapid dehydration. The most dramatic disturbance would be the fact that air pressure is low, meaning there is less oxygen in the air making it hard for people to breath properly. This is called hypoxia, or oxygen deprivation. It causes lack of appetite, vomiting, headache, distorted vision, fatigue, along with memorizing and thinking clearly. In very sever cases individuals begin to have pneumonia like symptoms due to hemorrhaging in the lungs.

2. Identify 4 ways in which humans have adapted to this stress, choosing one specific adaptation from each of the different types of adaptations listed above (short term, facultative, developmental and cultural). Include images of the adaptations. (5 pts each/ 20 pts total)

Humans have facultative adapted to the stress of high altitude by increasing the oxygen carrying blood cells. Another adaption would be the over production of hemoglobin in the blood. Also, people increase their lung expansion capability. Increasing breathing rate helps with these adaptions, meaning taking in more frequent breathes. This allows broader capillaries and arteries that in return give a larger amount of oxygen to the muscles. The EPAS1 gene is particularly important in adapting to environments with consistently low oxygen pressure. In higher levels of altitude climbers must use oxygen masks in order to maintain functional breathing.


3. What are the benefits of studying human variation from this perspective across environmental clines? Can information from explorations like this be useful to help us in any way? Offer one example of how this information can be used in a productive way. (5 pts)

The benefits from studying human variation across this environmental cline shows how people have adapted differently due to different environmental changes. It shows that not only in the past did the hominids adapt to their environment but so have modern humans adapted over time to their surroundings. I think this information can be very beneficial to us because it allows us to find the genetic and non genetic coding that allows us to adapt to the way we live and the environment around us. It enables us to look into all of the forms that our bodies are being pushed to make changes that will benefit our survival. For example this information about high altitudes effecting lung capacity enables boxers to train at a higher state. Their lungs are being forced to work overtime to supply their bodies with as much oxygen as they need. When the boxers come down to the normal altitude level their lungs have acclimatized to the higher level so they have more room to expand and give a boxer a higher endurance during a fight.

4. How would you use race to understand the variation of the adaptations you listed in #2? Explain why the study of environmental influences on adaptations is a better way to understand human variation than by the use of race. (10 pts)

Race would be used to understand the variation of the adaptions because Tibetan and Nepalese people have become adapted to their altitudes after thousands of years of living in the areas. They have acquired genes to fix the problems, that other individuals who are used to lower level altitudes such as "high altitude sickness" attain. The study of environmental influences on adaption are a better way to understand human variation because the environment effects individuals differently. The race has adapted over a long period of time where as in a shorter period of time an individual can adapt to the higher altitude by taking small steps, or even using an oxygen mask in order to help them breath better. Plus, the environment is always changing and so is the modern human. Our bodies are able to adapt if put under a large amount of stress at a time and even short amounts of stress. Race is not a factor with how human bodies adapt to their surroundings.

Language Experiment & Post.

Part 1:
I found this experiment to be difficult because I wasn't sure how to express myself and have a conversation with my husband. Not being able to talk or use my hands was difficult. But when I talk I use facial expressions a lot, so not being able to talk I just emphasized my facial expressions hoping that my husband would understand what I felt about what he was telling me.

No, my husband did not alter the way he conversed with me just because I couldn't talk back. I found it funny that I couldn't talk because I am so talkative. So I would laugh. My husband would find it frustrating that I couldn't communicate back to him. When I would laugh he found it even more difficult to communicate with me because he didn't know why I was laughing and felt that I was laughing at him. So I would have to shake my head no that I wasn't laughing at me. The 15 minutes went by fast because he was trying to guess what I was saying with my facial expressions after he would talk to me.

If two different cultures where meeting for the first time, I think the culture that is able to talk, communicate, and understand the other party is at the advantage. The other side that is not able to communicate back is at the disadvantage. The speaking party might see the the nonspeaking party as not competent or even inferior. Individuals in our culture that have difficulty communicating our spoken language are immigrants that move here from their countries. Individuals who interact with these immigrants often are rude and don't have any patients towards them. But there are also individuals who are accommodating but these people speak the immigrants language. But that's still not always the case.

Part 2:
No, I was not able to last the full 15 minutes with just talking and no other form of communication. It was difficult for me because I do use a lot of facial expressions. Not being able to really fully express how I feel when talking to my best friend was really hard. She wasn't able to understand how I fully felt about things, because I was talking neutral with out any facial expressions or hand motions.

She wasn't able to read my body language because I couldn't interact with her to the full extent of which I usually would. She kept asking me more and more questions to try to understand more about what we where talking about and to understand how I felt. I finally got frustrated and started using facial expressions. Which didn't allow me to complete the full 15 minutes.

Our ability to effectively communicate relies heavily on body language, communication, and being able to fully listen and respond to the person or group of people you're trying to talk to. People not only are listening to a person talk but they are watching their expressions and body to see how an individual is feeling at the same time. It's very important for people to be able to understand the unspoken language, as well as the spoken language because individuals will cross boundaries unknowingly or even offend others if they cannot read their body language.

There are people that have a disorders, and disabilities in reading body language such as asperger syndrome, and even individuals with ADHD have difficulty reading body language. These people are at great disadvantage and often have a very hard time interacting socially in public areas. It's a great ability to be able to read body language because in a serious situation when an individual cannot talk body language would be key. Body language could be the only way to communicate to others at times. I don't think that any situation were not being able to read body language can be beneficial. In my opinion body language is just as important as spoken language. In any situation I think being able to understand both spoken and unspoken language is really important just because they do go hand in hand and that's how people express themselves.

Piltdown Hoax

1. The Piltdown hoax happened in the early 1912's, in the southern English town of Piltdown. Charles Dawson, an amateur archaeologist found what he thought was the fossil of an ancient human skull. He than asked a leading geologist, Aurthor Smith Woodword from the Natural History Museum, to help him excavate the area for more fossils. Dawson also asked a french paleontologist, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. Although Dawson was the primary excavator, finding the skull fragment, and the jaw bone piece. His fellow scientist did help him to uncover more pieces of the skull. This finding had a huge impact on the scientific community because they where able find the connection between apes and humans. This also put England on the map. It showed that England like other countries had fossils of ancient primates but also one of the oldest to date. Woodword's statues allowed the finding to go undoubted by the scientific community. In the 1920's, fossils where being found in Asia and Africa that contradicted the Piltdown evidence that the large brain came before the upright walking. The fossils that where excavated in these two countries gave way to evidence that the skulls of ancient people where less human. These fossils did not coincide with the findings of Piltdown. In 1949 scientist measured the fluorine in the Piltdown skull to find that it was roughly 100,000 years old. In 1953 with better methods of dating, scientists relieved that the fossils where cut, stained and filed to fit the particular fossil outline. It was clear to see that the fossils where not real and had been forged. Scientists where stunned, and Dawson was the main suspect that was looked at to be the culprit of the fake fossils and Woodword had been fooled all along.

2. The human faults that come in to play in this scenario seem to be that these scientists are so eager to find fossils that show the rest of the world that England has remains from millions of years ago, that they do not even try to go forth with the scientific process to see if the remains are real or fabricated. It seems that ego gets in the way of falsification. People where so emotionally tied to the fact that the remains where in England that they did not see that it could possibly be staged. These human faults gravely effect the scientific process because if Aurthor Woodword had not been on the work site, than most likely other scientists would have tried to petition the realness of these fossils. They would have been more reluctant to accept these findings to be true. But since he was prominent and well known than people accepted his work without fact which compromises the scientific process.

3. The positive aspects in the scientific process that where responsible for revealing the skull to be fake was the fact that scientists repeatedly went back to the fossils to make sure that they where accurate. Scientists used the fluorine measurements to measure how far back the fossils dated to. This showed that the fossils where actually not as old as everyone has believed them to be. When further tests where being made it was clear to scientists that the fossils had been stained to look aged. Fossils had been cut to look a certain way with a knife. When looking at the jaw bone and teeth under a microscope they found that the teeth had been filed down and they could see scratch marks from the filing to prove it. Also, the jaw bone dated back from less than 100 years that came from a female orangutan. Pieces had also been removed or broken off so that the form of the jaw bone would not give way to the fact that it did not belong to the skull and in fact was to the orangutan. The scientific process of checking and rechecking work to make sure it is accurate comes into play in this scenario.

4.I don't believe there is a way to take the "human" factor out of science to take the chance of errors like this happening. Because being human allows us to have trial and error, and in this trial and error we find what is truth. If humans did not have this process than we would not know fact from fiction. The scientific process is a process of steps that asks questions and hypothesis and that is part of being human. We need to ask questions to learn and understand. The scientific process than allows a human to test these questions and see if they are to be true (fact), or not (false). Making mistakes is how humans correct the process, learn to make clearer judgments, and make sure it does not happen again. I wouldn't want to remove the "human" aspect from science because I feel that "humans" are the ones that have created science. We are the only ones that can come up with new ideas, ask new questions and make new hypothesis. If humans where to be replaced with a computer I don't believe that we as a species would be able to grow and learn from our mistakes and misjudgments.

5. I can take the life lesson from this historical event by realizing not everything you hear is true, and not everything someone says is true. I, myself, need to take the proper steps in making the decision that something is true or false. I can't believe everything just because some one tells me its true. I need to do research and find the facts in order to believe it to be so. I think doing research is a very important aspect of verifying sources. If research isn't made than how will I know if some thing has been proven to be true or false, already in the past. Also research allows me to make my own judgement if the conclusion hasn't been made already.