What is the best way to track anthropological origin in man?

Question

What is the best way to track anthropological origin in man?

Answer 1

linguistics, tooth morphology, mitochondrial dna

Answer 2

I had two classes in Anthropology in College and I remember them saying that it is traced back by the skulls the found.

This would deal more with Archeology than Anthropology.

Anthropology deals with the study of how cultures lived. The best way to understand that is through the garbage heaps you would find in a settlement.

You may want to read the released book called

The Book of Urantia - It was kept secret for 10 years.

It is very interesting and describes the evolution of man and where each tribe and color of race originated and evolved.

Rev. TomCat

Answer 3

Currently, there are three main ways to build the evolutionary tree of man:

- language;

- genetics;

- archeology.

In each case, researchers define metrics to measure the distance between pairs of sampled populations (distance between genes, or between grammars, or between archaeological features).

The more the distance, the more far in the past the two populations probably separated. By probing all different pairs, you build an evolutionary tree for each of the three criteria.

The good news is that all of them yield to the same tree.

Probably, the most accurate metrics is the genetic one.

Answer 4

Language... As long as people are still speaking you can trace it back a pretty long ways. It's better then any other method. And definitely the most complete way of doing it.

Answer 5

There is DNA which can be used to compare modern humans and that DNA which is extractable from fossils (i.e from Neanderthal), and from looking at fossils.  The most useful fossils are skulls.  Other useful ones are hip bones such as that or Sahelanthropus, the 7 million year old fossil which showed sign's that it was two legged.

Answer 6

The fact is that all the answers above are correct, but the one thing that is left out is holism.  We cannot just put linguistics or culture or biology etc at the front of the origins question.  It is the combination of all these working together that gives us a full view.  These disciplines are like a well woven tapestry it takes all the pieces to create the big picture.  Taking one strand out destroys the perspective.