ANTA01H3 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Homo Sapiens, James Ussher, Carl Linnaeus
17 Oct 2016
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Anthropology chapter 2 notes: the development of evolutionary theory. Humans did not evolve from monkeys or chimpanzees, but rather the earliest human ancestors evolved from a species that lived 5-8 million years ago. That ancestral species was the last common ancestor that we share with chimpanzees. Charles darwin was the first person to explain the basic mechanics of the evolutionary process. Natural selection: refers to genetic change in the frequencies of certain traits in populations due to differential reproductive success between individuals. Wallace also found the same thing as darwin around the same time. Throughout the middle ages, people thought that nature never changed. Fixity of species: the notion that species, once created, can never change; an idea diametrically opposed to theories of biological evolution. The pla(cid:374) of the u(cid:374)i(cid:448)erse (cid:449)as thought to (cid:271)e god"s pla(cid:374) a(cid:374)d all a(cid:374)ato(cid:373)i(cid:272)al stru(cid:272)tures (cid:449)ere engineered to meet the purpose they required.
