How human were the Neandertals?

PLEASE READ 1 Essay Guidelines (ANTA01H3, Sec. 03) One of the goals in making you write an essay to is see how well you follow instructions. A part of your grade will depend, therefore, on how faithfully you follow these guidelines. In general it is a good idea to make reference to the (attached) Essay Evaluation Guide, which provides you with some indication of the criteria that we will be using to determine your grade. Layout and Length: Essays should be preceded with a cover page that includes (at least) the following: the course and section (ANTA01 Sec. 03), your name, your student number, the essay title, the instructor's name, and the date due. This cover page does not count towards the page or word limit. The acceptable length for essays in this course is 6-10 full pages, including everything apart from the cover page (e.g., references, tables, figures, etc.). 5% will be deducted for each page or part thereof under 6 pages or over 10 pages. All essays must be typed or word-processed, double-spaced with 1” margins and a font size of 12. All parts of the essay, including references, tables, and figure legends must be double-spaced. Content: Your essay should include clearly demarcated Introduction and Conclusions sections. As noted on the Essay Evaluation Guide, a percentage of your grade will be based directly on the content in these sections. The use of other subheadings is at your discretion. Subheadings can be a good way of clarifying the structure of your essay for both you and the reader. References: EVERYTHING YOU GET FROM ANYWHERE MUST ALWAYS BE REFERENCED!!! Come and talk me if you aren't sure what this means. References should be cited in the text by giving the name(s) of the author and year at the end of the section the reference applies to. If a paper has more than two authors, cite it by the first author name and then “et al.” Page numbers should not be given unless you are referencing a quotation. For papers with more than two authors, the names of all authors must be given in the references cited section. For example: The ear morphology of Ignacius graybullianus is supportive of a close relationship to euprimates, rather than dermopterans (Bloch and Silcox, 2001). Chronolestes simul is best considered a basal plesiadapoid, not a crown group carpolestid (Silcox et al., 2001). In the case of a quotation, the reference should be placed at the end of the quotation, with the addition of the relevant page numbers. For example: “The simple presence of an entotympanic is also unlikely to be a synapomorphy linking dermopterans and paromomyids to the exclusion of other archontans.” (Bloch and Silcox, 2001, p. 191) 2 Web pages should be referenced similarly, but including the author of the webpage (if provided), the date the page was most recently updated (if provided), and the name of the webpage. For example: All mammals have hair at some point in their development (Myers, Class Mammalia, Animal Diversity Web). DO NOT USE FOOTNOTES OR ENDNOTES—USE OF THESE REFERENCING METHODS WILL BE PENALIZED. Your paper must include a section entitled “References Cited”, which should include all the sources referenced in your essay, listed in alphabetical order by the first letter of the first authors' last name. Do not number the references listed in this section. Do not include papers unless they are explicitly referenced in the text. Follow these examples as to how references should be formatted in your References Cited section. Marks will be deducted for deviations from these styles. An article from a journal: Asfaw, B. 1987. The Belohdelie frontal: new evidence of early hominid cranial morphology from the Afar of Ethiopia. Journal of Human Evolution 16: 611-624. A book: Leakey, M.G. and Harris, J.M. 2002. Lothagam: The Dawn of Humanity. New York: Columbia University Press. An article in an edited volume: Oates, J.F. 1994. The natural history of African colobines. Pp. 75-128 in A.G. Davis and J.F. Oates, Eds. Colobine Monkeys: Their Ecology, Behaviour and Evolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. An abstract in an abstract volume: Baker, E.W., Malyango, A.A. and Harrison, T. 1998. Phylogenetic relationships and functional morphology of the distal humerus from Kanapoi, Kenya. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 26 (Suppl.): 66. An unpublished PhD dissertation: Kirkpatrick, R.C. 1996. Ecology and behavior of the Yunnan snub-nosed langur (Rhinocolobus bieti, Colobinae). Ph.D. Dissertation, University of California. 3 A web page: Wund, M. and Myers, P. 2005. Mammalia, Animal Diversity Web. Accessed August 10, 2010 http://animaldiversity(dot)ummz(dot)umich(dot)edu/site/accounts/information/Mammalia.html. If no author is provided for a web-page, substitute the name of the webpage for the author in your in-text referencing, and alphabetize with respect to that name in your references cited list. Suggested sources: The following journals can be good starting points for researching your presentation and position paper topics. All are available through the University Library Portal (http://www(dot)library(dot)utoronto(dot)ca/home/). Evolutionary Anthropology Journal of Human Evolution American Journal of Physical Anthropology American Journal of Human Biology Current Anthropology American Anthropologist Nature Science Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America It is recommended that you use peer reviewed journal articles as your main sources of information for your essay. Secondary and tertiary sources such as newspapers, encyclopaedias, and popular science magazines (e.g., Scientific American, National Geographic, New Scientist) tend to be less up to date, and less reliable. Journal articles are also useful for their reference lists, which can provide follow-up resources and new “leads” on relevant information. Alternatively, if you have an article that is particularly relevant to your topic, you can do a “cited reference search” in Web of Knowledge (http://simplelink(dot)library(dot)utoronto(dot)ca/url.cfm/54558) to see which other papers have cited your source. This can lead you to more recent perspectives on the topic in question. Notes on using the Internet to research your paper: The Internet can be a tremendous resource for the easy location of information on a huge range of topics. However, it is very important to remember that there is no quality control whatsoever about what is made into a web page. This contrasts with the many levels of evaluation that occur before any book or article is published. When using the Internet, it is important to be very critical of the source of particular assertions. Who is the author of the web page you are using? Is he or she an academic, a student, or a crank? Is the information properly cited? Are the citations to reputable sources (e.g., refereed publications), or questionable sources (e.g., other web pages)? In other words BUYER BEWARE. If you rely on a website as a key reference to your paper, and the information it contains is incorrect or out of date, it will hurt your essay grade. In general I would recommend that you use web pages only as starting points to provide you with places to look for more conventional reference sources. 4 Other formatting issues: Please note that there are sections of the Essay Evaluation Guide dedicated to style, spelling, and grammar—in other words, all of these count towards your grade. A particular formatting issue becomes apparent when working with taxonomic names. Please follow these conventions whenever taxonomic names are used: Genus names are both capitalized and italicized or underlined (e.g., Homo) The trivial or species name is italicized or underlined but not capitalized (e.g., sapiens) Other formal taxonomic groupings are capitalized but not italicized or underlined (e.g., Hominidae) Informal derivations of taxonomic group names are neither capitalized nor italicized or underlined (e.g., hominids) Why is this important? When you get this kind of thing wrong, it communicates to your reader that you are not well versed in the topic you are writing about, hurting your credibility. It is important to get in the habit of doing this correctly. Students formatting taxonomic names incorrectly can expect to receive a penalty. 5 Suggested Essay Topics References are provided for some topics to get you started on your research. It is expected that you move beyond the provided references. Physical Anthropology 1. You are a paleoanthropologist working in the Great Rift Valley of Africa, looking for hominins. If you could chose, what would be the ideal fossils for you to find to demonstrate that you had found a member of the human lineage? Why? Assume that you would not be able to find an entire skeleton, but only two or three key pieces. 2. Compare and contrast the behaviour of bonobos and common chimps. What do the similarities and differences suggest about the reconstruction of behaviour in our ancestors? Reference: Stanford, C.B. 1998. The social behavior of chimpanzees and bonobos. Current Anthropology 39: 399-420. 3. How human were the Neandertals? Reference: Trinkaus, E. and Shipman, P. 1993. The Neandertals: changing the image of mankind. New York: Knopf. 4. The Piltdown hoax is one of the most famous, and infamous, incidents in the history of paleoanthropology, but the mystery of who was responsible remains unsolved. Whodunnit? Pick a suspect and present the evidence for and against that suspect being the perpetrator. Reference: The Piltdown plot website: http://www(dot)clarku(dot)edu/~piltdown/pp_map.html (note that this website has copies of many of the relevant historical documents available online—make sure you reference the original authors of these papers correctly. Ask me if you aren't sure what this means.) 5. Is there a biological justification for the concept of different human races? Reference: Brown, R.A. and Armelagos, G.J. 2001. Apportionment of racial diversity: A review. Evolutionary Anthropology 10: 34-40. 6. The discovery of Homo floresiensis in 2004 shocked the world, and the validity of the species continues to be debated. Review the history of the discovery, and consider whether LB1 represents a novel species, or simply a pathological modern human. Reference: Brown, P., Sutikna, T., Morwood, M.J., Soejono, R.P., Jatmiko, Wayhu Saptomo, E., Rokus Awe Due. 2004. A new small-bodied hominin from the Late Pleistocene of Flores, Indonesia. Nature 431: 1055-1061. Archaeology 1. What role did hunting play in the evolution and cultural development of humans? How accurate and well-supported is the notion of “Man the hunter”? Reference: Domínguez-Rodrigo, M. and Pickering, T.R. 2003. Early hominid hunting and scavenging: A zooarcheological review. Evolutionary Anthropology 12: 275-282. 6 2. Do changes in human material culture (i.e., tools, art, etc.) reflect changes in human cognitive abilities over time? Reference: Klein, R.G. 2000. Archeology and the evolution of human behavior. Evolutionary Anthropology 9: 17-36. 3. When did people first arrive in North America? Where did they come from? How did they get here? Chose one type of evidence that has a bearing on this question (e.g., stone tools, skeletal evidence, genetics etc.) and discuss what it contributes to the debate. Reference: Dillehay, T.D., Ramirez, C., Pino, M., Collins, M.B., Rossen, J., and Pino-Navarro, J.D. 2008. Monte Verde: Seaweed, Food, Medicine, and the Peopling of South America. Science 320: 784-786. 4. What do cave paintings mean? Chose a cave site, discuss the paintings found there, and assess hypotheses for what those paintings might have meant to the people who painted them. 5. Why did people first begin to farm? Discuss the evidence for the transition to farming in one geographic region, focussing on how the adoption of farming behaviour changed people's lives. Reference: Denham, T., Iriarte, J., Vrydaghs, L. 2007. Rethinking agriculture : archaeological and ethnoarchaeological perspectives. Walnut Creek, CA : Left Coast Press. (on reserve) 6. Traditionally anthropologists have highlighted seven features as characteristic of civilizations: 1. Food and labour surplus controlled by an elite; 2. Social stratification; 3. A formal government; 4. Specialization of labour; 5. Monumental public works; 6. Densely populated settlements; 7. A system of recordkeeping. Choose a human culture from the archaeological record that interests you and evaluate the archaeological evidence (or lack thereof) for these seven features. Your focus should be on the interpretation of material culture (e.g., artifacts, features), rather than on written records. Is that culture a civilization according to this definition? 7 Essay Evaluation Guide Introduction (10 points) Is the question being asked in the essay elucidated well? Does the student clearly outline how the subject will be approached? 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Body (50 points) Is the argument made clearly? Does the student present appropriate support for his/her ideas? 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 Conclusions (5 points) Do the conclusions follow clearly from the material presented in the body of the text? Are they well elucidated? 1 2 3 4 5 References (15 points) How completely has the student surveyed the subject? Is everything in the text properly referenced? Are the references appropriately formatted? 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 Style (10 points) Does the essay generally read well? Does one section flow into another in a clear and logical way? Does the student avoid run-on sentences, excessively long paragraphs, and too many long quotations? 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Spelling and Grammar (10 points) Are there any spelling and grammatical errors? Has the student formatted taxonomic names correctly? 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Total Score = /100 Signature of Grader