Week 8: Human Variation

1) Cold: Environments that are cold negatively impact homeostasis by putting more pressures on a human's body to survive. If a person is in an excessively cold environment for too long, unprotected, he/she can die from exposure, suffer from frostbite, or contract hypothermia. All of these conditions negatively impact a human's survivability and disturb homeostasis.

2) Short term: One short-term adaptation to the stress of the cold is one that any reader can recall for themselves: shivering. In order to increase body heat and keep a person active, we start to shiver as a reaction to the cold. Shivering is the exact opposite of sweating, with the benefit being to warm up a person.

Facultative: One facultative adaptation to the cold is vasoconstriction, which is the narrowing of blood vessels as a response to a cold environment in order to retain body heat.

Developmental: One developmental adaptation to the cold, specifically exhibited in Mongolian people is having short appendages, which creates a smaller body area and makes it easier to retain heat.

Cultural: One cultural adaptation to the cold, again exemplified by the Mongolian people, is a nomadic lifestyle. Specifically, herders migrate along with their herds of livestock (horses, sheep, goats) across Mongolia to less extreme (in regard to the cold) locales so their herds can graze and do not freeze to death. Also, the people themselves are not tied down to a specific environment, so they can retreat from the advancing cold to a degree.

3) The benefits to studying humanity in regard to clines rather than other classifications are that they are less biased to the organizer's beliefs, more accurate, more holistic, and give a wider view to humanity that can be seen as a spectrum of adaptations for specific niches. The information we gather from these kinds of explorations is helpful because it paints an accurate portrayal of human evolution and adaptation, rather than lumping people into categories over trivial distinctions, such as race. This information can be used in a productive way by anthropologists to aid other groups of people who fall under the same niche. Adaptations one group has developed may be applicable to another group.

4) Race is not a strong enough breakdown/organizational system to explain the adaptations I expounded on in question #2. These adaptations aren't race specific, they are environment specific. Race is a weak organizational system for characterizing the human race. The adaption perspective is much more holistic and unbiased, focused rather on what is actually the case rather than socio-political organization based on power and privilege.

Weeks 6 & 7: Language

Part 1:
A) I found this experiment to be very difficult. To give some context to my conversation, I tried explaining what I did for my birthday, the 24th, to a friend. Trying to explain that I watched a movie and ate out with friends is quite difficult without the ability to use a symbolic language.
B) My partner found the experiment amusing and altered his communication with me after only about a minute and a half of attempting normal conversation. The conversation evolved into an elaborate game of charades, with me doing quite a poor job. My partner spent most of the time trying to guess what I was trying to say rather than take part in a two-way conversation.
C) The culture that has the ability to use a symbolic language (and be understood by the culture that cannot use that type of language) definitely has the advantage in communicating complex ideas. The speaking culture could deem that the non-speaking culture is primitive or savage from their lack of a spoken language. People with speech impediments, mental disabilities, who are deaf or mute all have trouble communicating with spoken language. People generally try to simplify their ideas, speak louder, or speak slower when communicating with people who have trouble with spoken language. This barrier creates great difficulty for the non-speakers because they are inhabiting a world where spoken language is almost a necessity in day-to-day life.
Part 2:
A) To be honest, I had a few vocal intonation and head movement slips in the 15 minute period, so it was impossible for me to spend that amount of time without the aid of non-spoken language cues. The experiment was made difficult because, from my experience with the experiment, it's very hard to communicate without the aid of non-spoken language. Communication is more than just words coming out of your mouth and not being able to use non-spoken aspects of language was very difficult for me in the 15 minute period.
B) My partner, the same one I used for Part 1, made a comment that I feel is important, which was that he became bored during the conversation. He said without other parts of communication, it was hard to pay too much attention and the conversation ended up being monotonous and unexciting.
C) I feel that non-speech language techniques are essential to communication. Intonation, pointing, head movements, and gestures all put another dimension on communication. Language sets the foundation, with all the non-language aspects building upon it and making communication that much easier.
D) People who have Pragmatic language impairment (PLI) have, among a list of other characteristics, difficulty reading body language. One adaptive benefit, which may not be accesible to people with PLI is the ability to read another's mood or intentions without the need of being explicitly told. For example, a child who can see that a parent is angry by their facial expression can deduce that it would be a bad time to ask to go out for ice cream. When trying to consider an environmental conditions in which it would be beneficial to not read body language, nothing came to mind. Body language seems integral to any type of human communication; if it wasn't integral to communication, it wouldn't have developed the way it has over our history as a species.