focus anthro

Charles Darwin particularly avoided specific mention of the origins of humans in his popular writings known as ‘On the Origin of Species’, which was first published in 1859. However, later in 1871, his work that is titled ‘Descent of Man’, he went on to talk about some physical human traits, particularly when looked at in context to the evolution of primates.

Common human traits

Darwin successfully identified the African origins of mankind and further emphasized that the variations in humans does not constitute a few additional categories of race. He gave adaptive clarifications in order to provide explanation regarding noticeable variations in some human traits such as color of the skin. However, a number of human traits appear to give no outwardly perceptible physical advantages whatsoever. He further developed the hypothesis for sexual selection in order to provide some viable explanation for their respective evolution. These are some of the generally acceptable reasons for which Darwin is popularly known as an outstanding anthropologist today.

Most biological anthropologists almost religiously divulge in Darwinism. As a regular routine, many of them apply majority of the principles related to descent of the human species, with some minor modifications with regard to a common ancestor in their respective research undertakings. They also commonly integrate geologic, geographic, genetic, and available fossil data in order to reconstruct a plausible history of the primates, which of course also includes us, as a species. As a result, many extensive studies have been vigorously conducted to compare the human DNA sequences with those of other primates. Prime objective of this research is to look for particular aspects in the human genome which may reveal natural selection that may specially have occurred somewhere along the progression of the human evolutionary lineage. Particular genes that may evidently contribute towards some adaptive evolutionary development, found in some relatively minor human traits, have been isolated and systematically identified.

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This entry was posted by admin on Mittwoch, April 13th, 2011 at 12:34 and is filed under Famous Anthropologists. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.