Human Variation

1. The environmental stress of high altitudes doesn't have a major impact on the human population but it does has a negative impact on the disturbance on homeostasis. Specifically, humans that travel to high altitudes have to adjust to the lower pressure. The typical human body is use to the pressure at sea level, so when he reach a high altitude our body reacts to the lower oxygen levels making it difficult for the oxygen to enter our lungs and bloodstream. This results in something called hypoxia meaning we are depleted of oxygen resulting in numerous symptoms or sometimes death. Depending on your body, some may experience it at a higher altitude compared to others whom may experience only a couple miles up, like lowlanders. Another one is having to adjust to the rapid changes of temperature during the day and night.

2. Adaptions
Short term: An example would be an increase in lung capacity because lungs are able to undergo acclimatization to the higher altitudes. This leads to an increase in fitness of a human as it is short term and will only last a few days once returning to normal or lower altitudes. Many athletics undergo this process in order to increase their endurance as they are able to accumulate more oxygen in their lungs to go for longer distances.
 
Facultative: An example for this would be the increase in the production of hemoglobin in the blood allowing the lungs to expand and to increase the amount of oxygen that is in the bloodstream. In the process of this is it able to increase the size of capillaries and arteries to allow the flow of oxygen.
 
Developmental: This is a trait that has been developed over time by natural selection of indigenous ancestors. They have been able to adapt to the stress by being able to breathe faster allowing for more oxygen to enter the body. For example, the EPAS1 gene with is the gene that allows the acclimatization to lower air pressure.
 
Cultural: An example of this would be mountain climbers that climb to higher altitudes as a hobby and they have to be able to reach really high altitudes but not for a long period of time. They go through proper training and use oxygen tanks. This is also used by Olympic athletes as a training technique in order to increase their endurance.

3.  The benefits of studying human variations with the environmental stresses is that your are able to prepare yourself for the stresses and what they may endure. With the study of this you are able to see how certain stresses can effect our body. An example of this would be, if you were to travel to higher altitude, you would need to be able to train yourself and be able to adjust your lung capacity such as mountain climbers.

4. I would use race to understand variation of the adaptions by location and where those groups are located. For example, you see different races in certain environmental conditions and other on a different condition. I think the study of environmental influences are better to understand variation rather than race because certain things like the color of our skin, or body weight, or how we dress is dependent on how the environmental conditions we live in are. For example. those with a darker skin tone are more implicated to a sunnier environment where there are more  UV rays coming in.

Piltdown Hoax

The Piltdown hoax was described to the key to finding the connection between humans and apes, until it was found that it evidence had been tampered with. It began in 1912 in a little town called Piltdown in southeast England. An amateur archaeologist named Charles Dawson, discovered what looked to be human but more primitive looking and an ape-like jawbone. The teeth that were found looked to be more human than ape because of their shape which led them to believe they found an important fossil. Before the hoax was proven, these findings were very significant because they would provide the correlation between this primitive and possibly find the first ancestor of mankind. This discovery was very big to the scientific community. When Arthur Smith Woodward made the announcement regarding their findings, scientist applauded them because they provided their country, England, the opportunity that they had fossils on their land. Other scientist began to back up the Piltdown claim to support their own evidence. As the years went on, they began to find more fossils and bones that they hoped would silence the community in which they did, but some scientist kept their opposing opinions to themselves. These findings of Piltdown man were an importance key to studies of human evolution.

The discovery of the hoax began to unravel after World War II when new technologies were being invented to be able to test the fossils and examine them closely. Scientists were now able to determine the age of the fossil with a fluorine test and they found that the Piltdown fossils happened to fairly younger than they predicted. Finally, scientists began a large study to examine the fossils with their new technology. They discovered that the fossils had been stained and that the teeth on the jawbone had been shaved down to appear more human than more orangutan. After this discovery shocked the community, scientist began an investigation to determine the person who forged the fossils to prove their claim. There were many theories as to who’s idea it was, whether it had been Dawson or Woodward and what their actual motives were.

In this case, the human faults that come into play is that Dawson and Woodward purposely tampered with evidence to support the theory of human evolution. This fault placed a negative title and impacted the scientific process in a very bad way. This meant that it is hard to take the claim of a scientist without proper evidence because they could be wrong or have done something to the experiment like the Piltdown fossils. The positive aspects of the process is that other scientist took the fossils and examined them again to determine more information with the new technology they had which previous scientist didn’t have access to. For example, the use of the fluorine test provided them the correct age of the fossils because of they were thought to be primate fossils they would have been much older than they were found to be. I don’t think that it is impossible to completely remove the chance of human error because everything somehow involves the human mind. For example, if we were to use some technology that does not involve humans it was still conducted and built by humans. I believe that we can reduce the amount of human error by performing the experiment multiple times but we can never be eliminated it. In a perfect world, I think human error was be perfect if it was removed, but realistically I don’t think it would be a good idea because we can learn for our human errors and mistakes and apply it to future studies. The life lesson I can learn from this is to don’t always believe what people say unless there is scientific evidence to back up their claim but to keep and open mind.

Homologous and Analogous traits

1.  a. The human and the ape have many similar traits, but specifically that we contain the same shape and bones of our feet and have 5 toes on each foot. Both use the feet as a tool for walking.
b. The homologous trait for the humans is used for one main reason and that is for moving from various locations in a walking, jogging, or running manner. On the other hand, apes use their feet in various ways. For example, they may use their feet for walking but they also use their feet as the same function of an extra set of hands. They use their feet and are able to grasp food , while humans do not have that ability to grasp objects as well as apes are.
c. Generally, the common ancestor between the human and the ape would be more closely related to the ape or a chimpanzee. Studies have shown that the possible ancestor of the human and ape was possibly 7 million years ago.
d.

  

                       


2. a. The analogous trait I choose was the eye of a human and an octopus and they are not closely related to each other with relation to common ancestors. 
b.The human eye and the octopus eye are used for basically the same reason and that is for vision and sight. Although the structure between the two may be slightly different, the main function is similar to each other.
c. If I was to further investigate way far down the ancestry line between the human and the octopus, there is a high chance that I would find a common ancestor between these two because the majority of organisms have an eye as an organ. In the end, the majority of pairs begin with one common ancestor but that is not to be determined unless you were investigating pairs that existed a long time ago.
d.