| adaptation | A mode or strategy for survival. An
adaptation can be a physical characteristic; for example,
the thick fur of a polar bear is a physical
adaptation for life in the Arctic. Adaptation can
also be a cultural behavior; for instance, the material
culture of the Inuit people (Eskimos), including
harpoons, igloos, parkas, and dog sleds, are
their invented, cultural adaptations to life under
very cold environmental conditions.
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| adapted | The state of being biologically designed
or culturally prepared to survive in a given
environment.
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| anthropological linguistics | The subfield of anthropology
that studies language.
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| anthropology | The study of humanity. A broad social
science with varied foci on human biological
and cultural adaptations, human origins, biological
and cultural evolution, and modern cultures.
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| archaeological site | A place where people lived
and/or worked and where the material objects that
they made, used, lost, or discarded can yet be recovered
and analyzed.
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| archaeology | The study of humanity through the
analysis of the material remains of human behavior:
the study of the things that people made and
used in the past and that have fortuitously preserved.
Archaeologists often focus on human cultural
evolution.
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| artificial selection | The process used in the domestication
and refinement of plants and animals by
which human beings select which members of a
species will live and produce offspring. Humans
make such decisions on the basis of their needs or
desires concerning the form or behavior of the
species—for example, plants that produce larger
seeds, animals that produce woollier coats, or animals
that produce more milk.
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| catastrophist | A person who believes that the current
appearance of the earth can be explained best
as having resulted from a series of natural catastrophes
—for example, floods and volcanoes. Catastrophism
was quite popular prior to the nineteenth
century and lent support to the claim of a recent
age for the earth.
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| creationist | One who believes that the universe, the
earth, life, and humanity are the creation of an allpowerful
god.
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| culture | The invented, taught, and learned patterns
of behavior of human groups. The extrasomatic
(beyond the body or beyond the biological) means
of adaptation of a human group.
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| erosion | The disintegration and transportation of
geological material by wind, water, or ice.
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| ethnographer | A cultural anthropologist who lives
among a group of people or a cultural group and
interacts with them daily, often for an extended period
of time, observing their behavior.
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| ethnology | The comparative study of culture. Ethnologists
study human behavior cross-culturally,
looking for similarities and differences in how people
behave: how they raise their children, how they
treat elders, how they organize their labor, and so
forth.
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| evolution | The systematic change through time of
biological organisms or human cultural systems.
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| natural selection | The process proposed by Charles
Darwin for how species evolve: Those individuals
in a species that possess advantageous characteristics
are more likely to survive and pass on those
characteristics than are individuals that do not
possess them.
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| paleoanthropology | Anthropological study of the
evolution of our species. Paleoanthropologists
study the skeletal remains and cultures of ancient
hominids.
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| primate | A member of the taxonomic order Primates:
prosimians, monkeys, and apes. An animal
with grasping hands and feet, stereoscopic vision,
and a relatively large brain (in proportion to body
size).Most, but not all, primates have nails instead
of claws, tails, and an arboreal adaptation.
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| primatologist | A person who studies primates.
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| stratigraphic | Related to the geological
or cultural layer in which something has been found.
Stratigraphic layering represents a relative sequence
of geological time and/or cultural chronology.
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| stratigraphy | Related to the geological
or cultural layer in which something has been found.
Stratigraphic layering represents a relative sequence
of geological time and/or cultural chronology.
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| three-age system | Period of time in human history
when the iron metallurgy became the dominant
technology for producing metal tools.
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| uniformitarianism | The belief that the appearance
of the earth could be understood as resulting from
the slow action of known processes over a very
long period of time. This belief, first championed
in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries,
allowed for a great age of the earth.
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| weathering | The decomposition and disintegration
of rock, usually at or near the earth’s surface.
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2003 McGraw-Hill Higher Education