Human Variation and Race

Our body’s initial reaction during any sort of change is to maintain it’s own stability whether it be physical, mental, or emotional. However, in this post, I will be discussing the physical effects of cold weather and the effects it causes towards homeostasis.  Although the goal of homeostasis for everyone is to keep the body internally intact, everyone’s body is different and will respond differently to cold weather.  When the temperature of your surrounding environment begins to go down, your body initially reacts to adapt in order to survive. Cold weather has the ability to cause blood vessels to constrict.  Your homeostasis is then disarrayed and it is more difficult for your blood to flow to certain parts of your body. This slows down your body’s defenses and while your body is fighting to conserve it’s status of homeostasis, antibodies enter and as a result, we get sick. Unfortunately, a simple cold is not the isn’t the worst result of cold weather. Hypothermia, pneumonia, influenza, and other life threatening illnesses.

There are numerous ways that people have adapted to cold weather in order to help their homeostasis stay leveled. A short-term method that people keep themselves warm is by either bundling themselves up in jackets, wearing gloves, beanies, ear muffs, etc.

A facultative adaptation to fight the cold weather is by drinking hot tea which increases our blood flow which brings us to feel warm.

Other ways that people have adapted to cold weather are sleeping in family groups, participating in indoor activities, insulating their homes, or investing in heater systems in their homes or buying small portable heaters to place in their home.

Studying human variation from this perspective across environmental clines would only be beneficial for us.  We would be able to understand what would be occurring when we are in the common situation or our bodies adapting to cold weather and how to prevent from our homeostasis from being unbalanced which is more significant than more would assume. An example of how this would all be used in a productive way is if you know that you usually get sick very easily during the winter or when there is cold weather, you can stock up on hot tea, invest in a heater, be sure to wear a lot of jackets and warm clothes or just stay inside more often than go outside. Doing such simple things can save you from a cold or furthering your simple cold into a more dangerous illness.

In my opinion, I don’t believe that race is a factor in understanding the variation of adaptations previously listed. Race would not necessarily contribute to either the adaptations or one’s own status of their homeostasis.

Piltdown Man Hoax

The Piltdown Hoax first began in the year 1912 in a southern English town where an archaeologist by the name of Charles Dawson claimed to have found an ancient human head and jaw bone.  Along with Charles Dawson, was Arthur Smith Woodworth, and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin who were witnesses among Dawson's discoveries. These discoveries were very significant among scientists in the community because remains of primitive humans had been found in France, Germany, and Asia, but none in England. After World War II, scientists began measuring fluorine content which helped them put a date to the fossils they discovered. In 1953, scientists conducted a full scale analysis that showed that the fossils discovered by Charles Dawson were nothing what he claimed them to be. Through the full scale analysis, scientists learned that the staining on the bones were superficial. The jaw bone that Dawson found dated back less than 100 years ago from a female Orangutan. When the Piltdown Hoax was made public, it was assumed that Woodworth was not involved due to the fact that he continued to search for fossils after Dawson's death and found nothing. As for Pierre, he was silent when the hoax was exposed but he was not involved in the situation long enough to have known of the findings being fake.

In this scenario, the human faults that were committed was Dawson craving recognition and a title among the scientists during that time. Another fault that came into play was the fact that many people had suspicions regarding Dawson's findings but kept them to themselves which could have prevented 40 years of believing false information.

The positive aspects of the scientific process that were responsible was testing the fluorine content that allowed scientists to figure out when fossils dated back to. This was an essential part in discovering the truth about the Piltdown Man hoax. Unfortunately, it is not possible to remove the "human" factor from science to reduce the chance of errors because it is human nature for errors to occur. I would not want to remove the human factor from science because it is the human factor that has been a huge contributor that has brought science to the point that it is at today.

A lesson learned from this historical event is that regardless of the title of a person, the facts must always  be shown in order to verify. Those with a high title or that are known for having a high intelligence are human and humans can be motivated by emotions that can sometimes be unjust towards others but will work in their favor. Facts and evidence will always overpower a high status of a person.

Analogy/Homology

1.)
     Birds and bats both have very similar bone structure when it comes to their forelimbs. But even with similar bones making up their forelimbs, some of these bones are longer in bats than they are in birds or vice versa. The minor differences in the bone structure for both birds and bats also extend to the bats possessing stretched skin in this part of their body while birds use their feathers in order to fly.  The common ancestor might have possibly been a reptillian ancestor similar to a pterosaur because it's structure of it's forelimbs is almost identical.

Picture:
     Top: Pterosaur
     Middle: Bat
     Bottom: Bird

2.)
     Butterflies and birds are both more than capable of flying to their destination but the details regarding the function of their wings is analogous. For butterflies, their wings are kept rigid due to fluid pressure while the wings of birds are structured by bones inside their bodies. The function for both of these species is to fly from destination to destination but that's just about where the similarities stop.  There isn't a common ancestor between the two species. Butterflies derived from non flying insects while birds derived from non flying vertebrates where the only similarity would be that both their ancestors did not have the ability to fly.

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