Anthropology Assignment

The journey of knowing one’s self always starts with questioning one’s existence. Increasing the
scope of this statement and considering the case of human beings, it is important to know the
beginnings of the human race as it is helpful in understanding the human beings, their behaviors,
and potential. A glimpse into the anthropology would showcase that all the creators, be it a
human or an ape, have been descended from a single cell. A single cell which transformed itself
into multiple organisms that further got developed with the passage of time.

Taking from this perspective, all the living organisms of the world are linked to one another. The
simple, humble, and the common ancestors of the humans, animals, and all other living beings
were the unicellular organisms. However, grouping these diverse set of human ancestors and
relatives is quite a difficult task. Various scholars have proposed their theories in this regard. The
‘biological eight taxonomic ranks’ is a simple approach is to divide the organism on the basis of
their complexity in anatomy.

The organisms with similar anatomy are grouped together in one group. This is the
categorization of the human ancestors. Then, the human relatives or those animals which are
close humans in terms of their anatomy, physiology, psychology, and general behavior, are
grouped together in a sub-group. Those organisms which can breed together are put into a single
species. However, it is not very simple and often raises complications in dividing the ancestors
and relatives of humans into species. There are multiple reasons for this but lack of sufficient
data to trace the history of the organisms is one of the most complicated aspects.

With the passage of time, the organisms evolved. For example, we know that there is a close link
between the primates and the human beings, but we don’t know if there were other similar
organisms which were close to humans. In the last century, technological advancements have
provided a way to tackle this issue but with the lack of data, it will always be a hard task to group
the organisms into species.

Genetic coding is an important factor in grouping the organisms into species. However, often the
DNA of many organisms is same and it is hard to put a distinguishing label or characters to it.
The history is teemed with putting inappropriate organisms into the species to which they were
highly irrelevant. For example, the monkeys and apes were initially regarded in the same species.
After the technological advancements and DNA mapping technologies, these have put into a new
and unique species.

Another important factor is the availability of sufficient resources to carry out the relevant
research. Unfortunately, the anthropologists, archaeologists, and similar professionals don’t have
enough resource to carry out their research. Sometimes, they provide an incomplete picture of
their research and hence this factor has impacted a lot in this very matter.
The most interesting aspect in the debate of dividing the ancestors and relatives of humans into
species is that how much weight should be given to the nearest relatives and the ancestors. For
some scientists, humans, primates, and similar organisms should be grouped together as they
share so many features. However, others argue about it and they believe that it is good to make
as much groups as possible because it helps in the educational and research purposes. This is an
unending debate which has been there from the beginning of classification of the organisms.

In short, it is important to understand the beginning of the human life as it helps in many other
matters. However, it is not without its specific difficulties and issues. Perhaps, the knowledge of
evolution of human as well as all the other organisms is very vast and we are still in the early
stages of acquiring it.