University General Course Catalog 2015-2016 
    
    Apr 20, 2024  
University General Course Catalog 2015-2016 ARCHIVED CATALOG: LINKS AND CONTENT ARE OUT OF DATE. CHECK WITH YOUR ADVISOR.

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ANTH 102 - Introduction to Physical Anthropology

(3 units)
Biological and evolutionary origins of humans, with consideration of population genetics, living primates, fossil records and human variation. Includes eight laboratory experiences.

Prerequisite(s): Completion of Core Curriculum Mathematics Requirement or SAT of 610 or ACT 27 OR Accuplacer EA 80 and CL 84 OR Corequisite. Corequisite(s): MATH 126  or MATH 127  or MATH 128  or MATH 176  or MATH 181 .

Units of Lecture: 3
Core Science Requirement B
Offered Every Fall and Spring
Student Learning Outcomes (if available):
Upon completion of this course:
1. Students will be able to explain the differences between evolutionary biology, based on scientific principles, and intelligent design or creation science, based on faith and belief systems.
2. Students will be able to explain how natural selections, genetic drift, and mutation have produced the biological differences among human populations (e.g., in skin color, eye color and form, blood group gene frequencies, body size, fingerprints, dental morphology, metabolic disorders, etc.).
3. Students will be able to analyze the primary types of environmental stressors that have affected human evolution, including climate (e.g., extreme temperatures), disease (e.g., malaria), nutrition (e.g., over reliance on one staple), and demography (e.g., issues of crowding and sanitation following emergence of food production and beginning of sedentary life style). Moreover, students will evaluate how human populations adapt through behavioral (cultural), physiological, and genetic means, and how these interact (biocultural approach).
4. Students will be able to explain how humans fall within the larger biological world (as primates, mammals, vertebrates, bilaterians), and describe what they owe to the rest of the animal kingdom that contributes to their current evolutionary form and what constitutes uniquely human traits both behaviorally and biologically.
5. Students will be able to explain how, above all other biological changes in hominid evolution, the one that set humans off in a new direction was the development of bipedal locomotion (ca. 5-6 mya) and that some of the hallmarks of humanity, including speech, art, and music, developed within the past 50,000 years.


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