Anthropology Course Assignment: Journey of Man Video Analysis

This assignment analyzes the 'Journey of Man' video, addressing three key questions. The first question explores the reasons behind the lighter skin pigmentation of early Europeans, attributing it to migration from Africa during the ice age, shifting sea lines, and the need to absorb more sunlight for Vitamin D synthesis in regions with less sunlight. The second question explains Spencer Wells' statement that 'Central Asia is its nursery' by examining genetic markers found in modern Europeans that originated in Central Asia, the region where early humans adapted to colder climates before migrating to Europe. The third question summarizes Wells' views on relationships and race, emphasizing the African origin of all humans and the scientific inaccuracies of outdated racial concepts. The assignment also includes references to support the arguments.

Running head: Anthropology
Anthropology
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Authors Note

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Response to question 1:
The early Europeans were lightly-pigmented as because according to the research, the
Africans who are referred to as the cradle of mankind travelled or rather migrated to different
parts of the world in the dawn of ice age where the sea lines shifted and the temperature as in
the global temperature dropped to a drastic degree and then again, the various aspects of
survival resources that is the resources that are required for daily survival were becoming
scarce in the parts of Africa where mankind, modern day human being originally originated
and they started to move out of Africa in search of food and other forms of landscapes that
supports life (Hublin et al., 2017). As per the anthropological researches, the various
resources that are required to support life such as daylight, water, food and proper weather
conditions were all getting scarce in the Africa as it was turning into a desert land due to
drastic shift in climatic conditions. The temperature across the world was dropping and sea
was shifting far away from the shores of Africa almost about 40 kilometres away and this was
the reason they started to travel away to different other parts of the world in search of the
resources. As a matter of fact, the second route that has been shown in the supportive video
on anthropological research has been elucidating the fact that the earliest of modern men
actually left Africa and they took the land route – the one through the middle east and this is
where, one group migrated to India and south east parts of Asia and other group shifted to the
land that is known as modern day Europe. More importantly, the human skin has the ability
to absorb sunlight to create vitamin D that is again important for the proper nutrition of the
bones. As the temperature fell further in the middle-east and the human beings that is the
modern day Homo sapiens were moving more deeper into Europe – their skin which were
already becoming paler and light pigmented in order to absorb more sunlight to make
Vitamin D – became even more lighter in complexion in order to absorb the maximum
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amount of daylight which less in these equatorial regions ( that is the modern day Europe)
than the tropical regions (that is Africa from where they have initially started their journey).
The physical adaptation that has encompassed morphological changes in the human beings
once they visited in the colder regions of Middle East Asia from they directed themselves
into modern day Europe, forms one of most central tenets history of human anthropology
study (Tinoco et al., 2016). Moreover, another fact that in the colder regions, the human
started to wear furry clothes and dresses which are more thicker than the ones they use to
wear in the parts of Africa and as most of the areas of the skin, started to be covered in the
dresses they started wearing to protect themselves from immense cold – also decreased the
melanin content of the skin as it was not exposed to sunlight and this resulted in European
ancestors having a more and more light pigmented skin (Relethford, 2017).
Response to question 2:
The scientist collect about blood samples from 2000 people living in an isolated land
in Kyrgyzstan and this was the main place where the genetics studied from the blood of these
men were studied and remarkably, it was found out that the persons living in the modern day
western Europe contains the same genetic markers that are present in them as well. The
research that was made around the people in the modern day Europeans reflected and
revealed the fact the central Asia markers were also found in their blood and the central Asia
was the region where the mankind comprising on the ancestors of modern day human kind
grew up, as if their nursery. By the statement, Spencer means Africa was the birthplace of
modern day human beings and the central Asia there they learned to adapt to the cold weather
situations, from where they migrated to Europe (Stanyon & Bigoni, 2017).
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Response to question 3:
The relationship lessons that every man and woman of this world is an African under
their skin and it took 2000 generations to multiply into many races.
Old-fashioned concepts of Race lessons: according to which mankind has different
origins are wrong scientifically and the cradle is Africa.
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References
Hublin, J. J., Ben-Ncer, A., Bailey, S. E., Freidline, S. E., Neubauer, S., Skinner, M. M., ... &
Gunz, P. (2017). New fossils from Jebel Irhoud, Morocco and the pan-African origin
of Homo sapiens. Nature, 546(7657), 289-292.
Relethford, J. H. (2017). Biological anthropology, population genetics, and race. In The
Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Race.
Stanyon, R., & Bigoni, F. (2017). The contribution of primatology to
anthropology. PARADIGMI.
Tinoco, R. L. R., Lima, L. N. C., Delwing, F., Francesquini Jr, L., & Daruge Jr, E. (2016).
Dental anthropology of a Brazilian sample: Frequency of nonmetric traits. Forensic
science international, 258, 102-e1.
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