Introduction
Have you ever wondered "What exactly is Anthropology"? Well, Anthropology studies human life, at the intersection of the sciences and the humanities. Anthropology began as a quest for answers to some of the deepest issues in Western thought: "What is human nature"? "Is there one nature shared across humanity"? Or are there different human types? How much of our sameness or difference comes from our biology? Anthropology has usually emphasized shared human capacities, brought out in specific cultures. If you are a curious person, I would then recommend you to take an Anthropology course at some point in your academic life to further your human exploration and curiosity!
"Anthropology demands the open-mindedness with which one must look and listen, record in astonishment and wonder that which one would not have been able to guess."- Margaret Mead
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Natural SelectionThis was a favorite assignment of mine to do, the task of this assignment was to write about natural selection but the selected audience would have to be reading at a 6th grade level. I personally feel like if you are new to anthropology and you don't want a load of big words you don't understand thrown at you, you can look at this paper I wrote ( with explanations) and you can see how exactly evolution and natural selection work in a general summary.
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A short video on a female named Lucy whose bones were discovered and dating back to 3.2 million years ago. Lucy was a hominin species (Australopithecus afarensis) and was discovered in Afar Depression, Ethiopia.
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My Personal Reflection
I honestly did not even know that there was even a Anthropology aspect in the science field, I had always thought that the study of human evolution all derived from anatomy and human biology. But, I was somewhat right. Before taking this course, I felt like I was very open minded to learning new things and I always felt that I had a huge sense of curiosity about where did we come from and who were our ancestors. This course peaked my interest just a little bit more actually, to the point where I am even considering minoring in anthropology. Before taking this course, to me human evolution just seemed so linear like it was just a quick and constant thing. But, evolution is just so much more than that, you have hundreds of primate ancestors and different family trees of different types of primates who may of been involved in our human evolutionary process and THEN you also get to learn about the fact that we are still evolving till this day! I felt like I went into this classing knowing so little but left out of it wanting to know more and expand my knowledge about who we are and where will our evolution take us to the future. I don't think that I came into my anthropology class with a "This seems easy" type of attitude, I do believe that because I am so open minded that I just am so fascinated with the understanding of human anthropology. I know for a certain that I will continue to further my research of anthropology in the future, and I think once I am putting myself out onto a research field and getting to basically do what an archaeologist does but with human bones, I can approach the idea of human evolution at such a high level and can spread my knowledge and what I was taught to my peers, family, and those who may seek an interest in this subject. This was my funnest class of my first year at college and I am very excited to see if this will continue to ignite a tiny little passion from within me!