Human Variation and Race

The environmental stress I chose is cold climate. By disturbing homeostasis, this environmental stress negatively impacts the survival of humans. It does this by making it uncomfortable for people, and causing harm to their health. Shivering is the first method of trying to maintain homeostasis, but also is uncomfortable. The cooling of body parts can result in cold injuries, including nonfreezing injuries, freezing injuries, and even hypothermia. Vasoconstriction, the narrowing of blood vessels, also occurs which is your body’s natural response to keeping your body warm, but can also cause harm if permanent.

Short Term Adaptation

A short term adaptation that humans use in response to a cold climate is shivering. When your body temperature starts to drop, your body starts to shake uncontrollably to warm it back up. The muscles have spasms which help to generate heat for a short period of time.

Facultative Adaptation

A facultative adaptation that humans use in response to a cold climate is vasoconstriction. Vasoconstriction is the narrowing of blood vessels in the human body. When blood vessels constrict, the flow of blood is restricted, thus retaining body heat.

Developmental Adaptation

A developmental adaptation that humans use in response to a cold climate is body shape and size. Populations that live in cold climates have a tendency to be more round and stout which helps them to keep in their body heat. When more fat is distributed around their mid section, it keeps the vital organs warmer and fat is used as energy to do that.

Cultural Adaptation

A cultural adaptation that humans use in response to a cold climate is clothing. Populations that live in cold climates wear heavy, insulated jackets, pants, hats, scarves, and gloves to keep warm. This is one of the most important and most effective tools in keeping warm.

There are many benefits to studying human variation from this perspective. For example, knowing how different people adapt to cold climates helps us to understand more about them. We can learn how they adapt physically but we can also learn how they adapt emotionally and this is very important. Some people adapt to cold climates better than others, but that is due to evolving in a way to live and survive in that climate. If everyone lived in a cold climate, everyone would be able to adapt to that environment over time. Information from explorations like these can be very useful to us. For example, knowing how vasoconstriction works to keep our body warm will help scientists and those specialized in making clothing designed specifically for cold climates, make clothing that works as efficiently as vasoconstriction does in our bodies when we are cold.

From the adaptations I listed above, you can learn so much about race. Race is defined as, “a local geographic or global human population distinguished as a more or less distinct group by genetically transmitted physical characteristics”. When a group of people have to adapt to their surroundings physically so they can better survive, they become a race. However, it is better to study environmental influences to understand human variation than by the use of race because the differences in the environment directly affect physical change and the way people live. Race is just the group of people that are affected. It is hard to judge human variation by looking at race alone.

Language Post

Conversation with no Symbolic Language

I found this extremely hard! It was really hard to take part in a conversation where you could not speak, only using hand gestures, noises, etc. I did this assignment with my mom and she pretty much had to do all the talking, asking all the questions. I would shake my head or nod my head or shrug my shoulders but it was hard to ask her anything. It was more of a one way conversation where she had to do all the work. After my mom realized I wasn’t asking the questions, and I was only answering the ones she asked me, she asked me only “yes/no” questions so I could answer them with a gesture. It made it much easier on me when she started asking me questions that I could answer by the shaking or nodding of my head.

            The culture that uses the symbolic language would have an advantage over the culture that does not. I’m sure the speaking culture would think it would be odd to speak to a culture that does not use the symbolic culture because, like I said earlier about my mom, it was difficult for her to carry on a conversation with me because there was only so much I could say to her and only so much I could respond to her questions. Even though American Sign Language is a symbolic language, it is not a spoken language and it very difficult to communicate without using words in our society today. When people who realize that individuals cannot use the spoken language, they will almost always change their way of communicating with them by using hand motions and body gestures. That is the same with a different language. When I am at work and someone does not speak English, I have to change the way I speak to them, by pointing or waving, for example.

Conversation with only a Symbolic Language

            I could not last the entire 15 minutes while only using the spoken language without any physical embellishments. I think the fact that I could not change the tone in my voice when I’d say I was excited or happy about something was the hardest. I even had a very hard time not raising my eyebrows or smiling while I talked. My partner in this conversation changed the way she talked as well, after a while talking in the same monotone voice that I was. She eventually just started talking in the same way that I was on her own and probably without knowing she was doing it.

            This experiment really showed me how important it is to be able to express emotion in your voice, use hand, body, and facial expressions and body movements. You really don’t realize how much you use non-spoken language until you cannot use them anymore and it is a lot harder than you think! People who are blind or have difficulty seeing have a hard time determining others’ non-spoken language and that affect the way they communicate with each other. Body language is one of the most important aspects to communication and language. For example, when you cannot see or hear the person communicating to you, you can take what they say the wrong way. This happens a lot through text message or email where you don’t know exactly how they say things and can read it in the wrong way. Language is the most effective if you are able to use spoken language and non-spoken language.