Branches
The nomenclature of the field is not exact: the relevant subdivision of the American Anthropological Association is the Biological Anthropology Section while the principal professional organization is the American Association of Physical Anthropologists. The term "biological anthropology" emerged with the rise of genetics and incorporates genetic markers as well as primate ethology.
- Paleoanthropology, the study of fossil evidence for human evolution, studying hominid fossil evidence and dating to determine matters such as the time and manner in which the mandible evolved, the effect of nature and environment on bipedality or the use of opposable thumb, with hominid classification and the individual naming of the proposed species and their place in primatology, the study of primates. Paleopathology studies the traces of disease and injury in ancient human skeletons.
- Human behavioral ecology, the study of behavioral adaptations (foraging, reproduction, ontogeny) from the evolutionary and ecologic perspectives, (see behavioral ecology). Human adaptation, the study of human adaptive responses (physiologic, developmental, genetic) to environmental stresses and variation.
- Human biology, an interdisciplinary field of biology, biological anthropology, nutrition and medicine, concentrates upon international, population-level perspectives on health, evolution, adaptation and population genetics.
- Human osteology, the study of human bones.
- Paleopathology, the study of disease in antiquity. This study focuses not only on pathogenic conditions observable in bones or mummified soft tissue, but also on nutritional disorders, variation in stature or the morphology of bones over time, evidence of physical trauma, or evidence of occupationally derived biomechanic stress.
- Forensic anthropology, the application of osteology, paleopathology, archaeology, and other anthropological techniques for the identification of modern human remains or the reconstruction of events surrounding a person's death.
Read more about this topic: Biological Anthropology
Famous quotes containing the word branches:
“Different persons growing up in the same language are like different bushes trimmed and trained to take the shape of identical elephants. The anatomical details of twigs and branches will fulfill the elephantine form differently from bush to bush, but the overall outward results are alike.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)
“There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root, and it may be that he who bestows the largest amount of time and money on the needy is doing the most by his mode of life to produce that misery which he strives in vain to relieve.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Bare woods, whose branches strain,
Deep caves and dreary main,—
Wail, for the world’s wrong.”
—Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)