Post by Tiera on Apr 10, 2005 12:05:48 GMT -5
Greetings!
What do you think are the most common misconceptions that the general public has about anthropology in general or specifically about certain human populations ?
These pop up in my mind concerning anthropology:
1. culture (e.g. language), biometrics (e.g. DNA) and environmental factors (e.g. resources) are not dynamic variables when regarding populations and their origins.
2. everyone uses the same terminology in the same way when talking about anthropology.
3. names of linguistic groupings point to an origin of a population.
4. the frequency of a genetic marker can be used to deduce the movement of this marker across populations (notice: the frequency of a marker is NOT the same as its diversity).
5. modern national identities have been around for a VERY long time and can be used to denote populations in the past without scrutiny.
Regarding Finns
the following come to my mind:
1. Finns come from the Urals as they speak a language belonging to a group called the Uralic languages.
2. Uralic and Altaic languages are related. Similar postulations for Indo-European-Altaic or Indo-European-Uralic languages have never been made.
3. The tat-c change (=N3, Eu13, Eu14) has been shown to have happened in Asia (and travelled to Europe) rather than the other way around.
4. Hungarians and Finns understand each other better than e.g. Swedes and Pakistani.
Just to name a few. How about you?
What do you think are the most common misconceptions that the general public has about anthropology in general or specifically about certain human populations ?
These pop up in my mind concerning anthropology:
1. culture (e.g. language), biometrics (e.g. DNA) and environmental factors (e.g. resources) are not dynamic variables when regarding populations and their origins.
2. everyone uses the same terminology in the same way when talking about anthropology.
3. names of linguistic groupings point to an origin of a population.
4. the frequency of a genetic marker can be used to deduce the movement of this marker across populations (notice: the frequency of a marker is NOT the same as its diversity).
5. modern national identities have been around for a VERY long time and can be used to denote populations in the past without scrutiny.
Regarding Finns
the following come to my mind:1. Finns come from the Urals as they speak a language belonging to a group called the Uralic languages.
2. Uralic and Altaic languages are related. Similar postulations for Indo-European-Altaic or Indo-European-Uralic languages have never been made.
3. The tat-c change (=N3, Eu13, Eu14) has been shown to have happened in Asia (and travelled to Europe) rather than the other way around.
4. Hungarians and Finns understand each other better than e.g. Swedes and Pakistani.
Just to name a few. How about you?
