If you take a moment to think about it, there really aren't many young people who know what anthropology is.
For many of you that's probably why you're reading this blog, to actually get a sense of what the heck anthropology is--and why does it matter? And I mean really matter, not how your math teacher says that trigonometry will matter later in life when you're grocery shopping or doing taxes.
I've heard my peers discussing complex ideas such as quantum theory and philosophy among themselves, but never anthropology, and that just doesn't make sense to me.
Who wouldn't be interested in understanding why we, humans, are how we are physically and culturally? Before worrying about space, the environment, other organisms, or anything else, how don't people wonder about themselves first?
Well, I intend to discern if my development of a biological anthropology humanities independent research team (Bio Anthro HIRT) with my peers at school will spark a long-dormant interest in my classmates for a field that they may have not known about before.
Throughout this project, the team will examine and compare our own DNA, that of homo sapiens like Ötzi, to that of past hominin species (our distant ancestors such as neanderthals or australopithecus afarensis like good old Lucy) as well as hominids (everyone's favorite: chimps!). Realistically, this may be one of our later projects because of its complexity, but it'll be a goal we can reach in our second or third year of being a team.
Not only will we be examining DNA on our own (without just using Ancestry.com), but we'll also be doing a cultural study of the characteristics of these hominin/hominid species once again in comparison to modern humans.
Hopefully, we'll be able to visit museums to observe ancient tools from past hominin species and interview anthropologists. This will allow us to start uncovering why anthropology is an important study, not only regarding the past but also the present and future.
One of our first projects will be to study how periods of famine such as the Great Depression had a physical impact on the mitochondrial haplogroups H & U. Moreover, we'll be analyzing how these haplogroups may have helped some people do better during times of famine and instead have conditions such as obesity or diabetes during times of plenty.
In this way, this team would be an awesome combination of the sciences and humanities (which I tried to represent below with the image of the robot, the sciences, and man, the humanities, joining forces).
As the Bio Anthro HIRT team, having gauged enough interest to become official (fingers crossed), initiates and progresses its studies I'll keep you all posted every step of the way so it'll be as if you too are part of the team! If you have any suggestions or ideas that could improve my plans for this team, please drop them in the comments below! That's all for now, until next week!
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