Biological Anthropology Chapter 1 Summary

Chapter 1 was very straightforward; it explained the four fields in anthropology and the subfields of biological anthropology. I learned that cultural anthropology is sometimes called social anthropology. It studies the culture of different groups of people, which include things like gender roles, religion, and politics. Before I thought linguistic anthropology was just the study of a group of peoples language. I did not know that it covered how they made the language as well. Archaeology is what comes to my mind when I think of anthropology. I think of people in places like Egypt digging up bones. It covers much more than bones though; they are trying to find materials like tools used for cooking, cleaning, and the homes they lived in. Biological anthropology consists of things I learned in high school like genes, and extinct species related to from evolution. There are subfields of biological anthropology as well theirs human biology, forensic anthropology, primatology, and paleoanthropology. Chapter 1 also covered the scientific method, which I have been taught numerous times. You have your main four steps, observation, hypothesis, data collection and testing, and interpretation.

I learned that bacteria are only made up of one cell so they are called prokaryotes. While humans and plants are made up of many cells so we are called eukaryotes. We got a review of the different parts of the cells like the nuclear, mitochondria, and mitochondrial DNA. The chapter talked about chromosomes and the different types. Autosomes are the non-sex chromosomes so they make up most our body, like hair. While the sex chromosome determines if a fetus will be a boy or a girl. Girls will have XX chromosomes while boys have XY, our fathers DNA determines if we will be a boy or a