Week 7: Language

          For part 1 at first, I thought that being asked to engage in a conversation for 15 minutes where I could not use any method of symbols language would not be very difficult because I thought I could convey meaning with my gestures. However, not being able to speak or use any version of symbolic language created a barrier, in which the communication between me and my friend was not successful. To test this task, I asked my 2 of my friends to participate with me and informed them the circumstances, in which I was not able to use symbolic language. We together thought 15 minutes of trying to communicate with me not being able to speak or write would be a breeze because we thought we could treat it like a normal conversation. The conversation began talking about Black Friday shopping plans and the deals that were going to be coming up at the shops, which ignited the conversation for my friends, but as for me I was trying to show my opinions about the stores' deals through emotions and by using my body, and we sort of progressed through the conversation. However, the more my friends started talking more about what they want to shop for and what is the plan we are going to execute for shopping, I had a very limited say because I could not necessarily communicate what I felt we should do. Seeing my difficulty, my friends tried asking more questions that were simpler to respond with a gesture than a game of charades put on by my attempt to communicate. During the conversation, my friends tried to include me as much as they could, but since I was not contributing much to the conversation, it felt as if they were becoming tired of guessing what I wanted to say. However, since we were trying to actual attempt to make decisions for our shopping on Black Friday, my friends started asking very basic questions in order to try to get my opinion, so we could decide our plan and actually drive the conversation somewhere. They started listed stores, in which I simply smiled or nodded if I liked or made a face with discontent for the stores I did not want to go to. Overall, we did end up creating some sort of conversation with the altered basic questioning of my friends, but not being able to speak or communicate with writing made it harder for me to express to my friends exactly my desires for our plans for shopping.
      Due to the lack of being able to speak or use symbolic language, my friends had total domination of the conversation, and they were the ones changing topics from what we want to buy to where we would like to go and what we want to do afterwords. It was very difficult for me to ask question, due to fact that I could not speak, so my friends asked most of the questions and mostly they both responded while I was just showing emotions or gestures as my responses. At times, I did feel excluded from the conversation because when talking about one subject, my friends would just talk on and on about what each other was saying. I was not contributing much to the conversation, so I feel that my friends felt that and at times I felt they were talking to each other. In the conversation we had, I felt that my friends had more power because they were the ones initiating and guiding the conversation. Lastly, I felt like I had no power within the conversation because I was not able to effectively guide it with questions and more complex opinions, which instead I was only able to make basic gestures to get my ideas or opinions across; I truly wanted to reply and contribute, but I felt there was a difficult barrier of communication without language.
     In addition, I feel that my friends as the culture that uses spoken language has the advantage of communicating their complex ideas within their population and society because they could actually express their opinions in a more understandable and effective manner. I think in a sense, the speaking culture may feel more at power and judge in a way the other culture who does not use symbolic language. In other words, the speaking culture may feel more superior because they have the advantage of expressing more complexity in concepts, whereas this other culture may be more simple in expressing necessary ideas. The only modern situation I can recall is the Deaf culture, who is not able to listen in order to communicate effectively, and in our society some of those people are not treated fairly to those who have those abilities. Sometimes we may treat these people differently, not regard their ideas, but we forget that just because we have an advantage does not make us superior, which is what some cultures have done, but in the we are all people with the potential to succeed.
    During part 2, I had a totally different outlook before I even had started; I thought it would be very difficult to speak without any emotional expressions or body language because I am very prone to talk with my hands or change my tone for certain expressions to express my thoughts. In this conversation, I started the conversation with talking about the Christmas movies I was planning to watch, and what recipes we can bake during the upcoming winter break. My friends happily responded to my questions about the movies upcoming and what they were planning on watching, but it was the hardest thing not get excited and not to show any facial movements. I really wanted to smile or exclaim how much I loved this one movie or express disgust when talking about this horrible cake recipe, but for me I think that limited my true opinion with what I say to complete my idea. This assignment was very difficult because I really like to smile or use my head to nod or show approval when talking about different ideas, but I was not able to do any of that to actually show how I feel about what I say. My friends did not truly understand what I truly meant with what I saying, and they could not tell if I was feeling very excited or truly disgusted with some of the ideas I was trying to express. In response, they tried to understand as much as they could with my words and relied less on my face because I could not express my emotions. They tried to create more subject that evoked less emotion and they tried to truly study my words to understand how I truly feel. Lastly, they had much difficulty as well in understanding my emotions because it was like I was monotone, and they were becoming disinterested because  they felt as if there was no life in me as I was not expression emotions or intonations.
      With the results from this experiment, it is safe to say that non-speech language aids conjointly with spoken language to create our ability to communicate effectively. I think this is very important the use of body language and changing our tone and changing our facial expression show how strong or candid we feel about what we are saying. For instance, if one were to say "Wow, that is so good." without any emotion or intonations, then we would not believe them and we would not feel the same excitement as if someone were to exclaim with a smile "Wow that is so good!" showing how tone and facial expressions can aid to effective communication. Humans receive the actual expression of how the person actually feels and an insight into their emotions when they "read" a person's body language. With body language, they can gain insight into excitement, anger, disgust, or plain candidness. Thus, it is very important to use non-speech language techniques in order to create a frank and effective communication within individuals.
     Being able to read body language is very important and adaptively beneficial because it may alert one of someone's feelings and may contribute to stress in order for the means of arrival. For instance, if one were to just inform the group about a danger with a monotone voice and no emotions, then the group cannot react and may not even be able to realize the urgency of the situation, but with a worried/frightened tone and trembling hands can stress the urgency to act fast to avoid the danger and survive. Reading body language can also give insight to the motives and more emotions of an individual, so if one is able to detect that the body language one is using, then they can deem if that person is harmful to them or if he or she is being frank. By understanding the body language, one can escape dangerous and stressful situations leading them to  survive and reproduce successfully.
     There are some people in this world that do have difficulty reading body language as it may be an ability gained from experience. However, I feel that from a young age we depend on body language to communicate our concerns because we see babies do that all the time. In our society, practically everyone reads body language to understand what each other is saying. However, children with autism have a difficulty with reading body language because they have a hard time making eye contact with the person they are speaking with. I think a situation where it might be beneficial not to read someone's body language would be when they are saying something, but feeling otherwise or known as telling a lie. For instance, if someone is telling you about a boy you like, but you get so hung up with the their tone and facial expressions that you do think they hate that boy, in which is a facade, so listening to their words would have been much better. Although there may be cases as this, people mostly depend on both speaking and body language for effective means of communication.

Week 5: Piltdown Hoax

     In 1912, in Piltdown Village of England, an amateur anthropologist, Charles Dawson, claimed to have found a piece of an ancient human skull. Dawson invited geologist, Arthur Smith Woodward to join him and also invited a French paleontologist, Father Pierre, to join him at Piltdown. At the grave pit, animal fossils were found that date back to around a million years old. He dug up a jaw bone and a skull, which looked as if it was an ape, and looked as if they had found the common ancestor or lineage between the humans and apes.
      This scientific find was significant because England had finally found fossils that could be the oldest human-like fossils of all. It was also significant because the fossils back up anatomist Arthur Keith's theory of human evolution that humans developed big brains before humans walked up right. Scientists now know that the opposite is true; up right walking is developed before the big brain. They had found more fossils in Piltdown, the original trio, so the controversies behind the find were not much voiced. It established nature at the time and it possibly proved Charles Darwin's evolutionary theory, and with the recognition of the first Englishman fossil, it was a significant scientific discovery at the time. After Charles Dawson's death in 1916, no more fossils were set to be found in Piltdown, but were found elsewhere in other parts of the world. Those fossils found in Asia, Africa, etc. after his death were dated hundred thousands of years after Piltdown man, which on the contrary deviated from looking human-like. It was kept on close guard, so it was not given many of the opportunities for a large study to find out the truth of the fossils and the linkages, until it was found to be a hoax through updated scientific processes later mentioned.
      Scientists and humans in general all have faults when it comes to curiosity and the desire to reach success. People have the tendency to do whatever it takes to fulfill this desire of success and their own personal satisfaction. The faults that negatively impacted this scientific process was jealousy and urge for fame and success, and competition. As humans, it is our motive to compete and outcompete others for resources and our needs, so it is possible that the drive to receive attention and outcompete others for success may have urged anthropologist Dawson to create this hoax in order to get some recognition for an "apparent" discovery, which in turn then was found out to be an hoax. People usually are jealous of others in society even to this day, so it is obvious scientist will display a sense of jealousy as well. Because the rest of the world was advancing in discoveries, the British anthropologist was jealous of this fact and since England did not have any major fossil discoveries, he felt enraged to create one is a possibility. In present society, these faults of jealousy, competition, and self-success desire does not seem inevitable because we see it in every aspect of society, whether it would be education or in families, all these faults affect us as humans and could have negatively impacted this scientific process turning it into a competitive game instead of an actual true advancement to the scientific world.
     Then a major turn point after World War II, gave scientists the technology to use fluorine to accurately date fossils. In 1949, scientists conducted a fluorine test on the Piltdown fossils, showing a shocking discovery that the fossils were pretty young dating up to one hundred thousand years old. Alas, in 1953, scientists launched the full scale analysis with better dating methods. The artifacts had been stained and were cut before of the fossil using  a steel knife. Kenneth Oakley applied a chemical test to authenticate to fossils, which also revealed the Piltdown man was much younger in age. When the scientists looked at Piltdown man's teeth using a microscope, they found that the teeth had been filed down, there had been scratch marks that had been scraped down for a particular desired shape. The jaw bone actually dated up to one hundred years, which was found to be a fossil of a female orangutan. Pieces were broken off from the jaw bone, which could have shown that jaw bone did not belong to the skull, so they had removed those pieces to make it much. The front canine tooth had been filed down and rubbed down to make it smaller, and the front part of the jaw is been broken off, to eliminate the telling signs that it actually is ape and not a human clone. Charles Dawson became a prime suspect and is now known to have forged thousands fossils and findings. It is believed that Martin Hinton may be involved as well because they had found stained artifacts in his trunk as well. However, the mystery of the suspect of the Piltdown man still remains today.
    In my opinion, it is not really possible to remove the "human" factor from science to reduce such errors because as humans we make mistakes, so as much as we would want to remove possibilities of error, we cannot because that is in our nature. That is why we create certain methods to try to eliminate the error as much as we can and with a low percentage of error, we are able to claim a discovery or answer to our hypothesis. It is not possible in my opinion, to discover an idea with no sources of error because as we experiment we account for sources of error and we repeat experiments to lower that percent to be as accurate as we can get. Having personal opinions and ideas on a theory or concept drive the science to discovery as well, so as much as we try to eliminate that, we cannot because that is how we derive these major concepts that are claimed in science today. I would not want to remove the human factor from science because I think each person's opinions may drive the experiment and theory to another level and can increase the possibilities from an infinite amount of discoveries. Lastly, human factor is needed in order to create hypotheses and test ideas that have been generated by human thought in order for us to derive theories in the scientific field.
    With regards to this historical hoax event, I learned the valuable lesson that assuming evidence from unverified sources can lead to misleading information that can impact other discoveries and other concepts later on. In general, as a college student and high school student, this lesson can be applied to using research from unverified sites and articles that may mislead us with information on a particular issue and negatively affect our understanding on an particular issue. In regards to science and experimentation, due to this hoax event, we should not assume certain discoveries from unverified sources as an amateur anthropologist in this case, instead we should test to make sure those sources are verified and then test the evidence found so we could verify the discovery as a whole.

Analogy and Homology Week 3

 Homology:

 

 

   Humans and whales are primarily homologs and are more related than it may seem. 

     Humans or homo sapiens, being classified in genus homo and species sapiens, are reproductive mammals that does not necessarily have a specimen, but we recognize human beings as homo sapiens. Additionally, humans are nested in the primate category within also the great ape family. On the other hand, whales are marine aquatic mammals who nurse their young. Also, whales have a thick layer of fat on them called a blubber that insulates them and provides heat and warmth from the cold waters and temperatures. Most whales have teeth, such as the beluga or sperm whales, whereas some have special structures in their mouth called baleen to strain food, such as blue, gray, and bowhead whales. All in all, both these mammals may sound different but they have evolved with some of the same structures. 

     The flipper of a whale and an arm of human are closely related and have the same bones almost. However, if not evident in the photos below, both humans and whales have bones that are structurally the same, but they are sized differently. For instance, the humerus of a human is probably three times longer than a whale's humerus. Also, the shape of the bones of the whale have a slight tilt to match the shape of the flipper, while the human's bones are more longer and not as bent. Although they both have very similar bones, whales use there flippers and the limbs themselves for swimming and guiding themselves in the water. On the contrary, humans use their arms and their limbs in their arms to bend it and basically do anything we can possibly do, whether it would be writing notes, washing dishes, controlling the steering wheel while driving and etc. Due to evolution and habitual differences, the homologous trait of the similar limb in the arm exhibit different functions and have evolved to different sizes and alternate shapes in order to be compatible for that function; whales for swimming with their flippers and humans for using their arm on a daily basis. Lastly, in order for the whale to use its flipper to navigate through the waters and flap it, the shape of the limbs has evolved to provide that functions, whereas for humans the shape of the limbs has evolved to fit the function of being able to bend the arm in many ways to do daily tasks needed for humans and their survival. 

          Generally speaking, the common ancestor of both humans and whales was most likely a four-legged insect-eater that lived hundred of thousands years after the dinosaurs were extinct. As you may imagine, this creature was small and scurrying, but by having these structures as they are studying now, this insect-eater is the most recent common ancestor for these two species. 

 

 Analogy: 

Who would have thought that us humans can have similar qualities with an octopus? 

  

        To begin with, as described before, humans are called homo sapiens and they are mammals and primates closely related to the primate and apes family. Humans are one of more than 200 species that belong to the order of Primates. The most common ancestor for homo sapiens is the neanderthals who are extinct. On the other hand, octopi are cephalopod mollusks that have two eyes, four pairs of arms, and are bilaterally symmetric. Most octopi live along the ocean floor in all of the world's oceans, especially in warmer tropical waters. If they are threatened, they will disperse an inky black fluid that darkens the water as a defense mechanism. They can also communicate with each other by changing colors. Now, how they have similar eyes if they are so different? 

        The analogous trait that humans share with octopi is the similarity in eye structures, but having no evolution with the similar structures in the eye. They both have a lens, retina, eyelid, cornea, pupil, iris, muscles, optic nerve, and optic ganglion. However, the only differences would be focusing and resolution due to the absence of the blind spot in the octopus, which humans have. On the contrary, both fill the function of providing great eyesight for both octopi and humans. Also, they both contain the Pax6 gene that directs the formation of the eye, and in order to create complex structures to fill different environments, the number of directions from the single gene evolved. Because they lived in related environment in a way, filled similar equal ecological tasks, through natural selection that type of structure was favored in different ancestors, thus displaying the evolution and similarities in both these eyes of both species. 

      Since the octopi and humans are very far from each other on the phylogenic tree, there has not yet been a common ancestor found that these two could share. The only hypothetical assumption of the last common ancestor these two may share is the urbilaterian, in which has bilateral symmetry, but also possesses the Pax6 gene that directs the formation of the eye, which may be where these two species evolved from. However, since they are very far from each other, this is an assumption, but it is the most probable ancestor with the similar genes that later evolved to create the complex eyes of humans, octopi, etc. 

Works Cited:

By Comparing the Traits of Species That Are Both Closely and Distantly Related to Each Other, We Can Begin to Understand Their Evolutionary History. "Evidence of Evolution: Homology Sometimes a Discussion of Evolution Needs to Consider How Evolution Does NOT Happen." BIL 160. N.p., n.d. Web. 03 Nov. 2016. <http://www.bio.miami.edu/dana/160/160S13_5.html>. 

Conversation_, By Malcolm Campbell_ The. "How Humans And Squid Evolved To Have The Same Eyes." Popular Science. N.p., n.d. Web. 04 Nov. 2016. <http://www.popsci.com/article/science/how-humans-and-squid-evolved-have-same-eyes>. 

"Difference between Homologous and Analogous Structures." Difference Between. N.p., 08 Oct. 2016. Web. 03 Nov. 2016. <http://www.differencebtw.com/difference-between-homologous-and-analogous-structures/>. 

"Octopus." Nationalgeographic.com. N.p., 01 Mar. 2014. Web. 04 Nov. 2016. <http://kids.nationalgeographic.com/animals/octopus/#octopus.jpg>. 

"The Search for the Urbilaterian Ancestor." Developmental Biology 10e Online:. N.p., n.d. Web. 03 Nov. 2016. <http://10e.devbio.com/article.php?id=305>. 

Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History. "Homo Sapiens | The Smithsonian Institution's Human Origins Program." Homo Sapiens | The Smithsonian Institution's Human Origins Program. N.p., 01 Mar. 2010. Web. 03 Nov. 2016. <http://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/human-fossils/species/homo-sapiens>. 

"Whale." WorldWildlife.org. World Wildlife Fund, n.d. Web. 04 Nov. 2016. <http://www.worldwildlife.org/species/whale>. 

"What Are Homologous Structures?" About.com Education. N.p., 02 Jan. 2016. Web. 04 Nov. 2016. <http://evolution.about.com/od/evidence/a/Homologous-Structures.htm>.