There is an inherent problem within African Acheulian and Middle Stone Age assemblages research: how to recognize culture and ethnicity and the period in which hominins evolved the cognitive ability to invent social solutions to perceived or real ecological and functional challenges. There also exists the challenge of establishing the relationships between the stone tool
Russia produced a number of notable evolutionists who contributed to research and theory in natural history, biology, and anthropology. Russian intellectuals widely accepted Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species (published in Russian translation in 1860) and the evolutionary force of natural selection, but reaction to it was shaped by various political leanings and ideological
The term evolution comes from the Latin word evolvere, which means to develop or to unfold. It is equivalent to the Sanskrit word vikas, which means more than growth. It describes a series of related changes in a system of some kind. It is a process in which hidden or latent characteristics of a thing
One must distinguish between the fact of organic evolution and those different interpretations of this process that are offered in the world literature. The arc of interpretations ranges from materialism, through vitalism and spiritualism, to mysticism. Furthermore, perspectives vary from population dynamics to cosmic history. The interpretation may give preference to science, philosophy, or theology.
The Abrahamic religions (that is, Christianity, Judaism, and Islam) all have fundamentalist schools and denominations that believe in the inerrancy of the Bible. Because of the belief in the infallibility of the Bible, the fundamentalists reject evolution and believe in the literal truth of the origin accounts as told in Genesis. The fundamentalist Christians, mainly
Several major models have been used to represent organic evolution on earth. These models include the arc, line, spiral, circle, pyramid, and tree or bush or coral of life forms throughout biological history. Aristotle (384-322 BCE), the father of biology, including morphology and taxonomy, taught that plants and animals represent a hierarchical line of eternally
Inspired by the scientific framework of organic evolution, paleoanthropologists continue to be very successful in discovering the diversified remains of fossil hominids at sites in eastern and southern Africa. This growing evidence represents the very long, branching, and complex process of human emergence from Pliocene apelike forms, through protohominids and then hominids, to the present
Theories of molecular evolution try to explain the natural history of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), which is the material carrier of genetic information. Evolutionarily relevant variations between organisms must be implemented in the biochemical structure of DNA sequences. Otherwise, those variations would not be genetically transmitted from an organism to its offspring, so they would disappear
Evolution, in the modern sense, refers to changes in the genetic composition of populations over time and is the result of natural selection and/or genetic drift acting on population variation. In this Darwinian paradigm, species may change or split into more than one species (speciation). All extant species are descendants of a common ancestor (descent
Cognitive thought processes that arise from consciousness are depicted as being an exclusive human characteristic. Reflected in the metaphysical views from Aristotle (384-322 BCE) to Rene Descartes (1596-1650), the philosophical implications for our species result in an unbridgeable chasm between our species and the rest of the animal kingdom. These geocentric and anthropocentric depictions of
This article critically examines the evolution and critiques of the Biopsychosocial Model model, offering a comprehensive overview of its historical development and theoretical foundations. Beginning with the early influences such as the biomedical and psychosocial models, the narrative explores the emergence of health psychology as a distinct field, emphasizing George L. Engel’s Biopsychosocial Model and the