Anthropology

Max Müller, Emile Durkheim, some neo-Darwinist theories describe that after animism, it was polytheism which came in to practice and then evolved polytheism in most of the cases (which include most of the great traditions or major religious trends). For example, comparative religion often shows that Judaism underwent a process of evolution from animism to polytheism to henotheism (the transitional stages from polytheism to monotheism) to monotheism. However, it is not applicable to Buddhism, as it is neither considered as monotheism nor polytheism, rather a philosophy and a religion … at least to most of the followers of Buddhism. In addition, it becomes confusing when we move to Sumerian and Egyptian evidences of religious artifacts.

There are several sorts of evidence that point to contemporary Homo sapiens evolving from archaic ones.

Well firstly, apart from a high diversity of the hominid fossil record, there is the obvious phenotypic resemblance that humans and apes share. Between humans and the apes, there needed to be some form more progressive than apes- a sort of missing link. Modern science recognizes that our ancestor was a life form that differed from contemporary gorillas and chimps. Humans are not descended from gorillas or chimps. Rather, humans and the African apes share a common ancestor- a creature that was like the apes in some ways, and like humans in others. Over time, all three species have evolved and must have diverged from one another. To add, DNA analysis of humans, chimps and gorillas have offered us a precise answer: Human ancestors almost certainly diverged from those of chimps and gorillas late in the Miocene epoch, between 7-5 million years ago.

You have 4 primary groups in Mexico. Members of the indigenous population (Indios or Indians), Mestizo or people of mixed Indian and European blood, "Pure bloods" or Spaniard families who can trace themselves back to the conquistadores and 4, the relatively modern Europeans and others who have made Mexico home. Each of these groups has their own identity, ideology, behavior, and position in the socio-economic framework of Mexico.

In terms of Identity and ideology, these show up as very distinct separation between the classes where Indio and Mestizo are the lower and working classes. They are highly adaptable and are open to change except in religious belief and the conservative ideologies, which come from associated values. However, these people are highly entrapanureial and do what is needed to survive a harsh economic landscape. Most of the wealth is held by the upper classes, which include the modern Europeans and higher class old Spanish families. There is a clear distinction between these folks too however and the identity and ideology here is very rigid as is the behavior and opennes to change, they do not. There is a growing middle class. Most are from old Spanish decent but many are up and coming Indios and Mestizos too. These people have had the benefit of education and given opportunities to grow. Here the identity, ideology, and flexibility are the strongest as is the openness to change.

The main argument for treating these hominins as separate species is that each differs from the others in terms of skeletal morphology.

Some of these morphologies are thought to arise from genetically programmed differences in growth. Thus, morphological differences are treated as proxies for genetic differences.

Most of these fossil taxa also have non-overlapping distributions in time and space. This further suggests they were reproductively isolated from each other.

This combination of morphogenetic difference and inferred reproductive isolation are basic criteria for identifying a species.

Now, you are correct to be skeptical. We do not know the specific genetic underpinnings of many aspects of skeletal growth. Nor are we ever likely to know the precise geographic and chronological range of all hominin species.

Treating these hominin morphological taxa as biological species is in essence, accepting a hypothesis that cannot be proven conclusively wrong.

This is a difficult issue to sort out. One problem, of course, is that we have neither artistic evidence nor soft-tissue evidence for either pre-Celtic (Iron Age) or Celtic populations themselves. The second problem is that such characteristics as skin color, hair form, skull shape, stature, etc. can change rapidly among small populations. This was famously demonstrated in studies of immigrants to the USA in the early 20th Century. Therefore, it is difficult to tell if any changes we see in the archaeological record (mostly changes in skeletal morphology) are the result of indigenous evolution or if there is significant gene flow from immigrant populations.

A subsidiary issue is that Bronze Age cultures seem to have practiced a fair amount of cremation, so bone preservation is weak for that period.

There is tremendous variation in size and shape of human bones (some more so than others). For example, if you exercise a lot, many microscopic cracks will form in your bones and bone cells will grow into the cracks to repair them. As a result, someone who exercises a lot will have much thicker bone than someone who does not exercise. Diet, diseases, parasites, evolutionary responses to temperature, and many other factors also influence the dimensions of human bones.

It is true that the sizes of bones in a population will cluster around certain average values. This is because some aspects of bone growth are under strong genetic control. However, any such values are statistical approximations, not fixed limits of bone dimensions.

FWIW: What the doctor has meant to say is that one cannot blame obesity on a person being "big boned". Bones simply do not make up that much of one's weight to tip the scale, as it were, between normal weight and obesity.

Both hypotheses are supported by the genetic and skeletal evidence, -bearing in mind that both regions have undergone some variable degree of immigration and genetic lineage extinction over the last 2000 or so years. People have sometimes questioned the link between ancient peoples and modern populations living in the same region because of perceived differences between what they look like "in the flesh" and artistic self-representation in the archaeological record. In considering such evidence, one has to be aware that all such ancient portraits are subjective impressions. For example, both the Ancient Greeks and Ancient Egyptians had very formal, stylized ways of rendering the human body. (Classical Greek sculptures, for example, exaggerated the forehead in a way that is anatomically impossible.)

The answer depends on how you define "Negro Race" and "native/indigenous".

If you follow the traditional definition, -people with dark skin, tightly curled hair, etc. and the definition of "indigenous" meaning likely to have originated in a particular place tens of thousands of years ago, your answer would be "all of the countries in Africa south of the Sahara as well as Sudan, Eritrea." It would also include some South Asian island-dwelling populations, like the Andamanese, for which there is some genetic evidence suggesting an ancient origin in Africa, but an origin about tens of thousands of years.

If your threshold for "indigeneity" were much shorter, say hundreds of years, you would have to include countries in the Americas, Arabia, and South Asia, as well as Europe, to which sub-Saharan African populations were forcibly transported over the last thousand years or so.

Race is a way of classifying people, usually in terms of superficial physical characteristics, skin color, hair texture, cranial features, etc.

Anthropologists do not really use race as a way of classifying people anymore for a couple of reasons: first, genetic studies show that there is more variation within most "racial" groups than between them. Second, most racial groupings are at least partly social/cultural, rather than strictly biological. Thirdly, racial classifications oversimplify a complex, multivariate, pattern of human biological variability. Lastly, racial classifications provide no predictive basis for inferring human behavior.

The concept of "race" probably arose as a function of naval technology. When people had to travel overland, or anchor their ships after short journeys, differences between the people one encountered were predictably relatively minor. Once ships could stay out longer (weeks, months) then each landfall resulted in encounters with people who looked and acted remarkably different from the last people encountered. The first mentions one finds of "race" as a way of classifying people coincide closely with improvements in naval technology after 1400-1600 AD.

They did indeed have fire long before Europeans arrived. Earliest traces of fire in the Arctic New World date to at least 10,000 years ago and much older in the parts of Siberia from which Eskimos (who prefer to be called Inuit, actually) migrated.

They did cook food, as indicated by numerous burned bones from Arctic archaeological sites. Presumably they also used it for heat, light, anti-predator defense, as well as to smoke meat and help dry/tan leather.

The arctic is very poor in vegetal resources, so the traditional Inuit diet was heavily meat-dependent. They did collect some plants, however, and often they would eat the partly digested stomach contents of herbivores that they killed.

The Inuit had many health problems when Europeans encountered them, the most virulent of which was probably tuberculosis. In general, though, their skeletons suggest people who were in excellent health, partly from a sound diet (few sugars, lots of fat from fish sources) and from regular exercise in the course of their daily foraging activities.

Ice ages are periods when there are extensive glaciers stretching away from the North and South Pole towards the equator? Because there are more continents closer to the North Pole, the glaciers tend to be more extensive in the north. There are also glaciers that form on mountains in tropical latitudes.

For about the last 900,000 years, Ice Ages have occurred about every 110,000 years. They are separated by warm periods, called interglacial, which are of shorter duration. The last Ice age lasted between about 70,000-13,000 years ago.

Ice Ages probably moved people around (away from the pole, towards the equator, and to lower elevations) but our species actually underwent a dramatic expansion of our geographic range during the last Ice Age. At 70,000 BP humans lived only in Africa, the Near East and possibly some parts of Southern Asia. By 13,000 years ago, we were present all over Europe, Asia, Australia, and the Americas.

Biblical belief and science are fundamentally different ways of thinking about reality. Biblical belief's standard of proof for its explanations is faith. The more you believe in something, the more satisfying the explanation. Science is standard of proof is evidence, usually organized in terms of hypotheses that are possible to prove wrong. Gravity, for example, is not affected by how strongly you believe in it.

When religion and science stick to their appropriate subjects (supernatural phenomena and empirical reality), there is no conflict. The trouble starts when religious standards of proof are applied to explanations of natural phenomena and when science tries to answer questions about supernatural beliefs. Because the Biblical account of Genesis, like the mythologies of most of the world's cultures, contains an account of the origins of the world (a natural phenomenon) this tends to be a flashpoint for controversy with scientific investigations of the origin of the world and humanity.

The evidence on Neanderthal religion is equivocal. Much of what was once considered evidence for this is now believed to be natural phenomena misinterpreted or over-interpreted by archaeologists.

Head Cult: some isolated finds of Neanderthal skulls (e.g., Monte Circeo) were once thought to indicate a religious belief. Now we think these reflect the separation of skulls from the rest of the skeleton by geological processes or animal scavengers.

Cave Bear Cult: Now thought to reflect geological mixing of cave bear bones and human artifacts.

Burial: Many Neanderthal bodies appear to have been buried, but this could as much is for hygienic reasons as for religious ones. Claims of "grave goods" usually involved animal bones and artifacts very similar to those in the surrounding sediments, which makes is possible that they were accidentally juxtaposed with the Neanderthal skeletons during burial.

This is a little outside my main area of expertise, but here is what I know. The disk features writing that is unique. Some of the symbols replicate ones from other Minoan (Bronze Age Cretan) script, but many of them are unique to this artifact. There are many published claims of "translations" of the disk, but no consensus among experts. (You can use Google to locate many of these, but much of what I found is "fringe scholarship", i.e., non-peer review.)

No other examples of this kind of inscribed disk are known and the original archaeological provenance of the original disk is unclear. The disk was found in 1903. That we have found no other examples of this kind of writing or medium in the countless excavations carried out on Crete suggests to me that this disk is a forgery. Somebody probably made it based on the limited published information about the Minoan civilization in the early 1900s and passed it off as having been found in a Minoan site.