Cuyamaca College Future of Human Evolution Anthropology Biological Changes Essay

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The topic of this week's forum is a broad one--humanity's future. You have learned how human evolution has been shaped by forces such as the physical environment, antagonistic and symbiotic relationships with other species, disease, and human cultural interactions. Now share your predictions for the future of human evolution. What biological changes in humans will occur over the next centuries? How might forces such as climate change, disease, genetic technology, and globalization affect us? Do you think our physical appearance will change substantially (are we going to grow ever-enormous brains for example)? Try to apply what you have learned about evolutionary and biocultural forces in making your predictions. You are free to be imaginative and speculate here--so long as you provide a rationale for your predictions!

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16.3 Human Health and Disease This lecture examines how human health, disease patterns and demography have been shaped by transformations of the human social environment. We will trace patterns of human health and disease through the major economic transitions in human history. The shift from foraging (hunting and gathering) to agriculture was arguably the most profound. During the past several hundred years we have transitioned very rapidly to an industrialized and now globalized society. As we'll see, these social changes had a profound impact on diverse aspects of our biology. This topic is covered extensively in Chapter 13 in your textbook, as it is your textbook author's specialization. Sources of data on health and disease in the past How do we learn about what human health was like in the past? We can do this several ways: studies of present day foragers, bioarchaeology and historical demography. 1. Hunter-gatherer studies 2004 Screenshot Survival One way is through studying living people who still practice traditional subsistence modes. There are no societies in the world today that subsist only on hunting and gathering. But there are some societies like the !Kung (also known as the Dobe Ju/'hoansi) of the Kalahari desert of Southern Africa who practiced hunting and gathering up into the 1960's. Or people like the Ache of the Amazon region who practice a combination of foraging and horticulture (small scale agriculture) in small isolated communities. Check out an example of anthropological research by Dr. Michael Gurven on the Tsimane e, a contemporary forager/horticulturalist population. However, the use of modern foragers as models for life in the past must be done cautiously, as these people are not living fossils. Moreover, groups like the !Kung attempting to maintain traditional subsistence practices have been forced into increasingly marginal lands where there are fewer resources. The wild game and plant foods that they used to rely on have been displaced to a large extent by the activities of modern industrial states. Bioarchaeology Another way is to study health and disease in the past by looking at skeletal remains from archaeological contexts. This approach is called bioarchaeology (you may recall it from the first week's lecture on specialties within physical anthropology). Bones and teeth can reveal something about the health, diet, disease history, and workload of past people. By looking at populations in different environments over time, bioarchaeologists can see how human health in the past was affected by cultural and environmental change. Screenshot Vertebral column showing advanced osteoarthritis a sign of heavy workload. Historical demography Historians known as historical demographers use written documents such as birth and death records and hospital records and census data to learn about trends in health, demography and disease. For some regions, like Western Europe, written documents provide a wealth of information about birth and death rates and how events like wars and plagues changed the makeup of populations at the time. Foragers (Hunter-gatherers) During most of human history, people lived in small groups and made a living as foragers. In most cases foraging was a very mobile lifestyle. Wild animals and plants are widely distributed and seasonally variable. Both men and women contribute to finding food. While men tend to do most of the hunting, and women the gathering, there is considerable overlap in many societies. Actually, the gathered foods usually provide the bulk of the calories in the forager diet. Because resources are typically widely scattered, populations are small. Small population sizes are maintained by low fertility rates (birthrates) among foragers. Births tend to be widely spaced (about 3-4 years apart) for several reasons. Mothers nurse their children for long periods, and breast feeding tends to suppress ovulation, although it certainly isn't a foolproof means of birth control! Extremely high mobility also leads to low body fat in forager women, which tends to inhibit regular ovulatory cycles (think about menstrual irregularity in some female athletes). Many forager societies also use cultural practices such as herbal medicine for birth control. Forager diet and health Finding food was a major concern for foragers. In many environments, food supplies fluctuated and starvation was a reality. Since energy-rich food such as fatty meat, honey and ripe fruit were valuable resources, individuals who could ingest more of these would be less likely to starve. Many human biologists think humans have evolved a taste for such fatty, sugary foods, a preference that would have served us well in the Stone Age (but not so well today). It would also be advantageous to to gorge yourself when food was available and then for your body to store that as fat for lean times (again, not so advantageous today)! Average life expectancy in pre-industrial societies was short and there was high infant mortality. Prior to the transition to agriculture, the most common causes of death were accidents, starvation, predation, and disease. However, highly infectious disease were not very common among foragers. This is because most hunter-gatherers lived in small groups and moved around a lot-not an ideal environment for infectious diseases to spread. Transition to agriculture Screenshot Transition to agriculture 人张小光 Around 11,000 years ago, some human groups in the Middle East began domesticating plants and animals and controlling them for their own use. Agriculture began later, but totally independently in Mexico and South America about 5000 years ago. The origins of settled village life came with farming. With the transition to agriculture can a demographic transition. For one thing farming village you could support a larger population on a smaller area. The carrying capacity of the land has increased. The agricultural lifestyle requires more labor input and a larger population: people who were sedentary rather than mobile. The farming lifestyle (less mobility, carbohydrate-rich diet) allowed woman to have children at more closely spaced intervals. In fact, it became advantageous to have a big family because this meant more labor. It also became possible to wean children at a younger age because there were cereal foods that could be made into mush to feed them. Health in Agricultural Populations Screenshot Health in Agricultural Populations With this shift from hunting and gathering to agriculture, came a shift in health patterns. People used to think that the shift to agriculture was a huge technological improvement, and people would obviously be healthier and better nourished than before. However, when bioarchaeologists began testing this idea, they actually found the opposite trend. Examining skeletons of populations before and after agricultural transition, they found that several indices of health declined after the transition to agriculture. For example, there is an increase in skeletal indicators of nutritional deficiency such as iron deficiency anemia (visible in photo below as the porous bone surface under the eyes). Dietary diversity declined as grains replaced meat and wild plant foods. Most farmers relied primarily on a single crop like corn or rice. Consequently, nutritional deficiencies became more common. Adult stature actually declined, meaning that early agriculturalists were shorter than hunter-gatherers. Dental health generally got worse. Bioarchaeolgists have found that agriculturalists have more dental caries (cavities) than foragers due to the high carbohydrate content of most agricultural diets. Screenshot
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Running head: ANTHROPOLOGY FUTURE OF HUMAN EVOLUTION

Human Evolution
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ANTHROPOLOGY FUTURE OF HUMAN EVOLUTION

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For millions of years ago, human evolution has been experienced. There are different
changes that have been experienced where human beings are believed to change. Over the
centuries to come, there are possibilities of a human being to evolve even if it would be for little
changes. Change in the size of jaw and teeth are some of the biological changes likely to occur
(Eisler, 2015). There is a possibility that the human jaw will be smaller than the current size. This
will have been highly contributed to by the food we consume (Eisler, 2015). Over centuries ago,
the human jaw was large, and there were significant gaps between their teeth. Shifting from
hunting and gathering to agriculture has led to a change of diets, which has resulted in a reduction
of jaw size, which is evident from the learning materials. Similarly, there are changes in diets as
days go by. This will lead to a change in jaw size, and their teeth are likely to be smaller.
Another biological change likely to...


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