Anthropology Paper - Assignment Example

Linguistics helps to explain the connection between language and culture as well as social behavior by tracing origins, deviations and similarities of language groups. Ethnology is the examination of similarities and differences of current societies and it helps to understand contemporary issues from legal and political point of views through data collection, recording, researching and testing of theories (Ferraro & Andreatta, 2009). Chapter 2 discussed the attempts by early anthropologists to describe race biologically.

Describe the typological and population models. The typological model the 19th and 20th century explained the variation of human differences into racial types. The observation of traits like skin color, hair form, boy build, shape of head, shape of nose body stature and others were seen as markers of a ‘race’. Therefore particular traits would explain a group of people and hence the emergence of whites, blacks, darks and reds which was flawed (Scupin, 2003). The flaw in this model was corrected by the Population model through anatomical and physiological traits.

Thus, this model introduced population genetics which assumed that people who had close relationship in distance had similar appearance hence the explanation that their ancestors must have mated for along time hence the idea of breeding population. Describe the impact of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution on studies of divisions of humans. Darwin’s theory of evolution based its claim on variations of human beings. Origin of species suggested that in nature natural selection existed. The weak species got eliminated by the environment and other human factors to live the strong that were well suited for survival.

His theory led to greater racism and conflict in class as those considered less civilized races were seen not fit to exist with the civilized world. In the result, the civilized theorized through eugenics that it was inherited from their ancestors and therefore the savages ere not fit to live. The theory impacted view from economics, religion, politics, culture as well as others that wanted to advance the cause of racism hence more division in human kind. This spread all over the world with serious repercussions (Haycraft, 1895).

The scientific racialism experiment of the 18th and 19th century resulted in the concept of eugenics. Describe this term and its social consequences. Eugenics was introduced by Francis Galton a cousin of Charles Darwin. He that human beings could opt to choose only the best of their strong species through natural selection. According to him, the highest in the society comprised of the most favored and best while the lowest were poor savages (Downs & Bleibtreu. 1969).The term eugenics came to be associated with the views of those who proposed that population control should be based with the best of the society and eliminating those who were at the lowest.

It led to the rise of positive and negative eugenics and the poor people were considered not important in the society. Social consequences took the form of social conflict between those were rich and those who were perceived poor (Zirkle, 1959). Describe Franz Boas’ influence on the theories of scientific racialism. Franz Boas’ influence on scientific racialism was that of demolishing the deductive approach used to theorize about races. He felt that it was wrong for those theories to go