Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The Comparative Approach in Evolutionary Anthropology and Biology
    The Comparative Approach in Evolutionary Anthropology and Biology
    The Comparative Approach in Evolutionary Anthropology and Biology
    Ebook373 pages9 hours

    The Comparative Approach in Evolutionary Anthropology and Biology

    By Charles L. Nunn

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Comparison is fundamental to evolutionary anthropology. When scientists study chimpanzee cognition, for example, they compare chimp performance on cognitive tasks to the performance of human children on the same tasks. And when new fossils are found, such as those of the tiny humans of Flores, scientists compare these remains to other fossils and contemporary humans. Comparison provides a way to draw general inferences about the evolution of traits and therefore has long been the cornerstone of efforts to understand biological and cultural diversity. Individual studies of fossilized remains, living species, or human populations are the essential units of analysis in a comparative study; bringing these elements into a broader comparative framework allows the puzzle pieces to fall into place, creating a means of testing adaptive hypotheses and generating new ones.
     
    With this book, Charles L. Nunn intends to ensure that evolutionary anthropologists and organismal biologists have the tools to realize the potential of comparative research. Nunn provides a wide-ranging investigation of the comparative foundations of evolutionary anthropology in past and present research, including studies of animal behavior, biodiversity, linguistic evolution, allometry, and cross-cultural variation. He also points the way to the future, exploring the new phylogeny-based comparative approaches and offering a how-to manual for scientists who wish to incorporate these new methods into their research.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherUniversity of Chicago Press
    Release dateJul 5, 2011
    ISBN9780226090009
    The Comparative Approach in Evolutionary Anthropology and Biology

    Related to The Comparative Approach in Evolutionary Anthropology and Biology

    Related ebooks

    Anthropology For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Why Is Biomedical Research So Conservative?: Funding, incentives, and skepticism of theory make some scientists play it safe.

      Jun 16, 2016

      How do scientists decide what research to do? One would like to think that they take a suitably scientific approach to this question by thinking about important problems that need to be solved, and asking which of these problems could be solved given

      8 min read

    • Article

      Etched In DNA: Decoding The Secrets Of The Past

      Dec 30, 2019

      What does it mean to be human? Ancient DNA helps paleoanthropologists probe deeper into our ancestral past.

      3 min read

    • Article

      Is the Dinosaur Family Tree Becoming a Dinosaur?

      Nov 2, 2017

      The division of dinosaurs into two groups, a taxonomy that dates back to the Victorian era, is looking increasingly shaky to some paleontologists in light of a wealth of new fossil discoveries.

      5 min read

    • Article

      The Beauty Of Science

      Jan 29, 2023

      The Beauty Of Science
      9 min read

    • Article

      Combing Through Evidence

      Sep 15, 2023

      Combing Through Evidence
      4 min read

    • Article

      What Counts as Science?: The arXiv preprint service is trying to answer an age-old question.

      Oct 27, 2016

      xxx.lanl.gov. The address was cryptic, with a tantalizing whiff of government secrets, or worse. The server itself was exactly the opposite. Government, yes—it was hosted by Los Alamos National Laboratory—but openly accessible in a way that, in those

      9 min read

    • Article

      Did Prehistoric Climate Change Help Make Us Human?

      Oct 23, 2020

      A sudden shift in how our ancient ancestors produced tools may be linked to a rapidly changing climate, say scientists.

      4 min read

    • Article

      Sex And Gender In Biology Textbooks Don’t Mesh With Science

      Feb 23, 2024

      A study of how biology textbooks in the US instruct students about sex and gender finds that these concepts are frequently described in ways that are at odds with scientific research. The teaching of science has long generated controversy in the Unit

      3 min read

    • Article

      Commentary: We Rely On Science. Why Is It Letting Us Down When We Need It Most?

      Aug 19, 2020

      Science is suffering from a replication crisis. Too many landmark studies can't be repeated in independent labs, a process crucial to separating flukes and errors from solid results. The consequences are hard to overstate: Public policy, medical trea

      3 min read

    • Article

      E.O. Wilson Saw the World in a Wholly New Way

      Jan 5, 2022

      I first met Edward O. Wilson in 1971 when I was a student in an ecology course at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. Wilson, a famous Harvard professor, was sitting in on the student project reports. After I reported my ex

      12 min read

    • Article

      With Prof Brain Greene

      Dec 31, 2016

      Theoretical physicist Brian Greene has spent his life understanding the gravity of the smallest questions of our Universe. A world leader in superstring theory, Prof Greene is the Director of the Institute for Strings, Cosmology, and Astroparticle Ph

      6 min read

    • Article

      Wikipedia And The Wisdom Of Polarized Crowds

      Mar 14, 2019

      In 2013, James Evans, a University of Chicago sociologist and computational scientist, launched a study to see if science forged a bridge across the political divide. Did conservatives and liberals at least agree on biology and physics and economics?

      8 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for The Comparative Approach in Evolutionary Anthropology and Biology

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      The Comparative Approach in Evolutionary Anthropology and Biology - Charles L. Nunn

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1