LEARNING OUTCOMES By the end of this section, you will be able to: Gender and Language In 2018, the word “mansplaining” was added to the Merriam-Webster dictionary. The word is defined as “what occurs when a man talks condescendingly to…
LEARNING OUTCOMES By the end of this section, you will be able to: The Performativity of Language: Speaking as Action Consider the following pairs of sentences. What are the differences between the two sentences in each case? In all the…
LEARNING OUTCOMES By the end of this section, you will be able to: While language is critical to individual human thought, its basic function is to communicate messages in human communities. That is, language is fundamentally social. Through social interaction,…
LEARNING OUTCOMES By the end of this section, you will be able to: As discussed in the previous section, certain cognitive abilities were crucial to the development of language in humans. And reciprocally, once language emerged, it shaped our thoughts…
LEARNING OUTCOMES By the end of this section, you will be able to do the following: There are some seven thousand languages spoken in the world today. Most people are proficient in at least one of them, possibly more. But…
Figure 6.1 Family members gather at a sweet potato festival in Gushegu in northern Ghana. This highly social event brought together families, farmers, chiefs, and community members to celebrate the harvest of sweet potatoes. (credit: Official photographer of the US Embassy in…
In this chapter we have explored our human journey as a member of the genus Homo, following a trail of adaptations and change that ultimately led to us. First on the scene were the australopithecines, who were already walking on two feet…
LEARNING OBJECTIVES By the end of this section, you will be able to: Mitochondrial Eve Begun in 1990 and concluding in 2003, the Human Genome Project was an ambitious international effort that sequenced about 99 percent of the human genome with an accuracy of…
LEARNING OBJECTIVES By the end of this section, you will be able to: Defining the Archaic Homo There is no universal consensus on what is included within the term “archaic Homo.” The term is used as an umbrella category encompassing all the…
LEARNING OBJECTIVES By the end of this section, you will be able to: The Toolmakers Archeologists use the word industry to describe a classification or assemblage of stone tools. The Oldowan tool industry is the oldest known stone tool industry. It dates from around…