Question

Explain how it's important for anthropologists to have an holistic perspective (different from other disciplines that study humans) and how thy use the biocultural model when interpreting the fossil record of our past. Give specific examples of how biology has affected culture and also how culture affected biology.

Answer 1

In anthropology, the holistic approach tries to integrate all that is known about human beings and their activities. From a holistic perspective, attempts to divide reality into mind and matter isolate and pin down certain aspects of a process that, by very nature, resists isolation and dissection.

Anthropologists consider the past, through archaeology, to see how human groups lived hundreds or thousands of years ago and what was important to them."Instead of looking for the underlying biological roots of human behaviour, biocultural anthropology attempts to understand how culture affects our biological capacities and limitations."

Social learning may lead to the spread of behaviour to other individuals, which is what defines cultural transmission, and the establishment of traditions that come to characterize whole groups, subgroups, or populations. For example, a monkey may learn from others that a particular tree is in fruit or that a snake is in a particular bush, which shapes its behaviour Culture influences how polluted the environment is, which impacts biology. Culture influences which drugs are likely to be used, which influences biology. It influences how many children people have and what age.