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Course: Big History Project > Unit 6
Lesson 2: Ways of Knowing: Early Humans | 6.1WATCH: Intro to Anthropology
Anthropology, the holistic study of humankind, explores diverse cultures, human evolution, and our unique traits. Anthropologist Kathy Schick shares her experiences studying human beings from various angles, excavating early tools, and uncovering our fossil ancestors. This fascinating field offers insights into our species' past and present. Created by Big History Project.
Want to join the conversation?
- why did monkeys and or chimps not evolve like humans?(1 vote)
- They did. They evolved into the species they are today. We share a common ancestor with them from which we evolved.(14 votes)
- I understand that most people believe we evolved from monkeys. As a Christian, it is hard to listen to others talk about anthropology.
First of all, if we are relating to the field of physics, there is just enough gravity to hold up the universe and planets. Any less gravity and our world would collapse, and any more and it would expand and explode, so it only makes sense that there is a creator. A Big Bang couldn't have made the universe exist, the probability is not logical. A bang would cause an amount of gravity, not likely just the right amount. So, the explosion into existence would have caused an explosion to the end.
Also, if you look at how many names of rivers and lakes that are used in the bible, the bible describes where the bodies of water are, and the names of the rivers are still the same today (The Dead Sea, The Red Sea). And, if the bible were fake, then let me ask you this: If the bible were fake, how would people today be able to come up with a story written in an extinct version of old English?
We also have proof of Jesus' existence from early tools they used when Jesus was around. Scientists have found Pharoah's chariot from when Moses parted the Red Sea. Even statues of Baal, even leading up to the finding of Jesus' cup from the last dinner.
So, if this universe must have been created by God, then that same God created us.(1 vote)- I agree some good points, however you got a little confused at the beginning there, let me help you out on that.
"Most people believe we evolved from monkeys" that is false, A shocking amount of people believe this, but most I'd say believe in what the lessons actually state of which that we are apes, and other primates like monkeys evolved from a common ancestor from where all life split up into different categories over time. Let me know if I can clear anything up for you! @penny.g.caldwell(1 vote)
- i agree with yu and my name is Moses yall both made good point because God created the world by voice he said let there be light let there be water let there be the animals. and on the seventh day he rest. and Adam and Eve are the reason we are here they were the first people to ever exist. one of the videos it says there was a astroid and that killed the dinosours. but that is falso noah made the ark and took some of each animal on it but the dinosours were not able to get on. which mens no matrer how tall they are they wwould have died because the flood lasted 40 dys and 40 night correct me if i am wrong i believe(1 vote)
Video transcript
My name is Kathy Schick
and I am an anthropologist. What is anthropology? Sometimes it's been called
the holistic study of humankind, which is a lot of work. It's trying to look
at humans from all angles. And I got interested in this even long before I even knew
there was such a field. As a teenager in junior high
school and then high school, I became fascinated with
looking around the world at human beings
all around the world but living in different cultures
with different lifestyles, different beliefs and customs. And I wondered,
how did this happen? How does this work? I also became fascinated with
us as a species, that we were a very unusual
species in the animal world. We have this huge brain,
we walked on two feet, we had complex tools and
technology, elaborate culture. And I wondered how
did this really happen? How, when, and why? And then my very
first semester in college, I found the field
was called anthropology. This was what I had been
interested in for so long. Now, doing anthropology
has taken me to a lot of places
in the world over the years. I actually met my husband
on an archeological dig. And then while we
were in graduate school, we went off to Africa
right after we got married, more or less spent
our honeymoon in a tent. In fact, the first
two years of our marriage, we figured we spent about half
of it living in a tent with all of our belongings
in a little tin trunk at the foot of the bed. So, we've traveled a lot, lived in many places of the
world for months at a time and had quite a wide range
of experiences with people and also living
in unusual places like the African plains with
our nearest neighbors being antelope, crocodiles, and lions. So, it's been a very
exciting time. Now, when anthropologists
want to do their work, their research,
they often have to travel. Some people
might do it in the U.S., deal with particular groups here but as often,
it entails going overseas to other countries
and other continents and living with
different cultures, learning about
aspects of their culture, learning about
the physical people there, the adaptation, for instance, in high altitudes
and how people adapt-- their bodies have adapted
to high altitude, so studying the physical being. Also, studying the
languages and also studying the prehistory
through archeology. And when we do this, we often will
be studying the tools and we'll go and excavate these early tools
and try to understand how they made
and use their tools and how they
lived out their lives, their daily lives and adapted. Physical anthropologists may also study
human fossil ancestors such as these, so that you
will go out and excavate and sometimes
study in laboratories. And also, you'll find
not only our direct ancestors but also that there are other
species out there who are our cousins, long lost cousins. We're used to being
the sole species with only the chimpanzees being our closest
living relatives but we have much
closer cousin species many years ago
who also walked upright but had small brains
and a different adaptation. So, this is another
fascinating aspect of what anthropologists study. Now, if you think about it,
it's only been about a 150 years since Darwin wrote
"Origin of Species". And Neanderthals were only beginning to be found
short time before that. So, in that
short amount of time, a 150 years for a discipline, we have made huge, huge
accomplishments in anthropology,
especially in my field, paleoanthropology, which tries
to look at human evolution. And usually this entails
physical anthropologists, archeologists, and a wide
range of other people. Paleontologists who might
study carnivores or elephants, geologists of different sorts
living in big field camps and doing their
work sometimes for weeks or months at a time, sometimes in remote
places of Africa for instance, so you... often doing
a lot of travel and interfacing with a lot of other
scientists in this work. Now, all of these
fossils that we found, in a sense, you've heard of
probably missing links. In a sense, all of these
fossils that we found are found missing links. But remember, for each
missing link that we find, when we find the next one, then, you want to find the one
that's in between those. So, that is the challenge. Every year,
more expeditions go out. If you go into this field, you might be on one
of those expeditions to find new missing links that will fill in
even more exciting stories about human prehistory.