The Cultural and Biological Adaptation
The Cultural and Biological Adaptation
Instructions
First topic:The cultural and biological adaptation.For instance, how the foragers,horticulture,and contemporary adapt culture.
,please refer to the video in the essay,Gun germs and steels(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwZ4s8Fsv94&feature=youtu.be).
Second topic: why anthropology can help us to understand social inequality by using holism? The reading material is attached.
The Cultural and Biological Adaptation
Over a long time, the inequality in terms of distribution of resource, infrastructural development, and general industrialization as well aspects of development have been left without any explanation. It has been difficult to formulate any theory to explain the difference in industrialization witnessed in the European countries, China, Japan, and America and the under industrialized Africa, Asia and Latin American countries. The Cultural and Biological Adaptation. Many thoughts have linked industrialization in these countries to the superiority in race and others even to necessity and dynamics of population during the era of industrial revolution. However, only one theory factors in early agriculture as and geographical positioning as a factor.
The documentary video on Guns Germs and steels tries to explain the inequality in development status regarding the infrastructural development across the world. The documentary ties its explanation to the perspective of early agriculture and its implication in both Papua New Guinea and the ancient Middle East. This documentary further explains the effect of geographical alignment of different parts of the world to the early agriculturally productive zones of the Middle East on a modern development. Professor Jared Diamond, an American biologist who moved to work in New Guinea, is challenged by a New Guinean native called Yale on why the Americans own more modernized equipment than the native New Guineans. It is in the process of attempting to get an appropriate answer to Yale’s question that Diamond does his research. The Cultural and Biological Adaptation.
Ian Kite, a Canadian archeologist, traces early agriculture back to a small ancient village in Jordan. His team discovers ancient granaries that were meant to store food. The people of this villages mainly depended on wild grains such as wild wheat and wild barley for food. When the supply of wild grains got lower, they started growing, selecting and breeding their plants. Wheat and barley supplied sufficient nutrition to sustain members of these ancient villages. They further domesticated wild animals such as the goats and the sheep, which provided milk, herds, and skins as well as meat. The animals provided a steady supply of supplementary food. Also, early technology ploughs were pulled by large domesticated mammals like the oxen and horses. Today, there are fourteen species of large mammal which have been domesticated by man around the world.
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Unlike the Middle East, the early agricultu re in New Guinea consisted of low food value crops such as arrow roots and bananas. The crops that New Guineans cultivated are low in protein and are done in small scales, associated with less involvement in technology. New Guineans also heavily depend on wild sago for food, which despite supplying low nutritive value, takes a long time to process to consume. Of all the domesticated animals, New Guineans only rear pigs. Pigs have the disadvantage of not being able to supply milk, hides or even muscle power that could help in dragging machines around. The only dependable muscle power available in New Guinea is human muscle power.
Following severe exploitation of the environment over a long time in the Fertile Crescent of the Middle East, the occupants of the villages moved with their animals to look for better conditions. They moved in almost the same latitudes, with remains of their cereal crops spreading them across the Saharan regions of Africa, Europe as well as North and South America. The Cultural and Biological Adaptation. Diamond argues that the availability of these high-value crops and animals in these regions, as well as their development, motivated faster civilization. For example in Egypt, with the arrival of wheat and barley as well as domesticated animals which could provide muscle power, early civilization was witnessed. He believes that the European and American civilization can be easily traced back to the crops and animals from the Fertile Crescent.
Understanding Social Inequality by Use of Holism
In anthropology, the concept of holism tends to ask questions regarding the way small parts of an idea finally patch up to form something that can be viewed. At the same time, it raises the questions on how the whole large part influences the small parts.
For example, a piece of comedy work would be funny if there is a wide common understanding among the audience. If there is divergent understanding, the same piece of work would be viewed as provocative by the other party.
While using the holistic question, anthropologists tend to connect one piece of a whole culture to the other. The interrelation is important any holistic study. A holistic study would put into consideration all the small parts of culture while trying to study something general about the lifestyle of the group or society in question. For example, a study was carried out in Newfoundland to deduce the role that culture plays to end up with inequality among different societies. While studying Care of Sled dogs as a larger perspective of their culture, the parts of the culture analyzed are the food preferences, transport systems, household structures as well the role of the children the in the care for sled dogs. It is deduced that keeping of sled dog is the reason people never eat flatfish in Newfoundland. The Cultural and Biological Adaptation.
A study of culture in a regional context through holism does not ignore the fact that communities might interrelate and borrow from each other. It is not assumed that the culture is isolated. For example, scholars think that the Mayans in Central America interacted with the Chinese through trade. Embeddedness of various aspects of culture, which means the overlapping of different cultural institutions such as religion, kinship, and leadership that others would consider distinct. The study of economic practices and habits of a community as an aspect of embeddedness through holism brings out the issue of power, culture and the comparative environment. The Economics of a community brings out the inequality. The question on economics does not necessarily include money since not all cultures recognize money. What is importantly considered is what goods and services are needed by the community, who produces the needed goods and services and the aspect of the distribution of these goods and services. The aspect of inequality heavily lies on the economics of different communities. The Cultural and Biological Adaptation.
