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ANTHROPOLOGY 100
Biology and Evolution
EVOLUTION
● Change in the physical and genetic structure of
a population.
● Evolutionists believe that species arise from
others through a long and gradual process of
transformation, or descent with modification.
● Transfer of one species to another but this
transfer variation takes a very long period
● Environmental circumstances has an effect here
● Charles Darwin
PATH OF EVOLUTION
1. Archbishop James Ussher
○ an Irish scholar
○ According to him, creation of the
world was in 4004 B.C.
○ based his analysis of Genesis in Bible
○ He said that our world was made by
God
○ Based his story from the family tree
seen from the Bible
2. Dr. John Lightfoot
○ Bible scholar.
○ According to him, creation of
the world is on October 23,
4004 B.C. at 9 AM
○ Everything was based from
the bible and, at the time,
you cannot question the
bible
3. Carolus Linnaeus
○ Father of Taxonomy
○ Established Binomial Nomenclature in
his book Systems of Nature:
■ when expressing the scientific
name of an organism, you
mention the genus and the
species of the organism
○ The first to categorize humans as
animals
○ Placed humans together with the other
great apes: Homo Sapiens (wise
human)
○ Best known for developing Systema
Naturae (Systems of Nature):
■ classification of plants &
animals
■ first published in 1735
○ Firmly established the use of
binomial nomenclature (genus
and species)
○ Another innovation was to include
humans in the classification of
animals, placing them in the genus
Homo (human) and species sapiens
(wise).
4. Georges-Louis Leclerc (Comte de Buffon)
○ Count of Buffon
○ Natural History:
■ The ideas of evolution of
Charles Darwin were countered;
■ He believed in Darwin’s theory
that when organisms migrate,
they adapt. But he rejected that
one species could give rise to
another
○ Galapagos Finches:
■ For Darwin, they’re from South
America then migrated to
Galapagos island, and when
they have migrated, they have
changed and thus a new
species; For Buffon, finches
from South America changed
but they’re still the same finch
○ In his book, Natural History
■ first published in 1749,
■ Repeatedly stressed
importance of change in the
universe, and he underlined the
changing nature of species
○ Believed that when groups of organisms
migrated to new areas of the world,
each group would gradually change as
a result of adaptation to the
environment .
○ However, he rejected the idea that
one species could give rise to
another
5. Flood Theory
○ Noah’s Arc
○ How the church explained extinction
○ Unidentifiable animals that will be
discovered are the animals that died
during the great flood.
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ANTHROPOLOGY 100
Biology and Evolution

○ Those that survived, were the ones ● why humans do not

that were able to ride in the Noah’s arc have tail and yet we still
6. Erasmus Darwin have our tailbone
○ Some said that he was Charles Darwin’s (COCCYX)
first inspiration in his theory of evolution
○ Some of his ideas were in literary forms:
Zoonomia
○ The Temple of Nature: Evolution
○ Grandfather of Charles Darwin.
○ In his poetry book, Zoonomia,
■ he expressed his evolutionary
ideas in verses
7. Jean Baptiste Lamarck
○ Use or Disuse Theory:
8. George Cuvier
■ Our environment has an effect
○ First to introduce extinction
on us
○ He used mammoths and extinct bears
○ Use Theory:
and deers for his theory
■ Giraffe’s neck
○ Catastrophism:
■ According to Lamarck, Giraffes
■ Mass extinction of dinosaurs;
naturally have short necks but
after their extinction, they made
due to their need of reaching
way for survival of new species -
tree leaves, their necks grew
mammals
longer.
■ Permian extinction (Great
■ According to Darwin, there were
Dying):
many types of Giraffes. There
were short and long ones but
● massive volcanic
eruptions in Siberia;
those who were short were not
able to adapt ● let to global warming;
○ Disuse Theory: Why humans do not ● led to oxygen loss
have tails; we still have our tailbone especially in ocean
though; we do not have tails because where most organisms
we were living on trees but we became lived and died;
terrestrial and we do not need them ● 90-95% of living
anymore. organisms went extinct
○ Postulated a dynamic interaction because most of them
between organic forms and the were marine organisms;
environmental circumstances. ● after 10 million years,
■ Thus, as the environment the planet was
changed, an animal’s activity replenished
patterns would also change, ○ Introduced concept of extinction to
resulting in increased or explain disappearance of animals
decreased use of certain represented by fossils
body parts ○ Proposed a variation of a theory known
■ As a result of this use or disuse, as catastrophism:
body parts became altered. This ■ Earth’s geological features were
theory is known as use or result of sudden, worldwide
disuse theory: cataclysmic events

ANTHROPOLOGY 100
Biology and Evolution
■ also postulated series of
regional disasters that
destroyed most or all plant and
animal life within a region but
not worldwide. These areas of
destruction were subsequently
restocked with new forms that
migrated in from neighboring
unaffected regions
9. Charles Lyell
○ Father of modern geology
○ Principles of Geology:
■ Theory of uniformitarianism:
● Slow process of change
unlike Catastrophism
that is sudden,
dramatic, and extreme
geologic event
● Grand Canyon, Bohol
○ In his book, Principles of Geology:
■ argued that the geological
processes observed in the
present are the same as those
occurred in the past.
○ This theory is called uniformitarianism:
■ accounts for the variation in the
earth’s surface through the
gradual accumulation, over
extremely long periods of time,
of minute changes, brought
about by the same natural
processes, such as erosion, that
are immediately observable.
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10. Thomas Malthus
○ If population is kept unchecked, it would
put a lot of constraint with our planet
and resources
○ Wrote An Essay on the Principle of
Evolution, which inspires both Charles
Darwin and Alfred Wallace in separate
discoveries of the principle of natural
selection
○ In his essay, he pointed out that if not
kept in check by limited food supplies,
human populations could double in size
every 25 years. That is, population size
increases exponentially while food
supplies remain relatively stable.
○ Malthus focused on humans because
the ability to increase food supplies
artificially reduces constraints on
population growth and he was arguing
for population control
○ Unchecked population growth
inevitably brought famine and misery.
The only reason that humanity wasn’t
already in perpetual famine was
because its growth was continually
checked by forces such as plagues,
infanticide, and simply putting off
marriage until middle age.
○ Malthus argued that population growth
doomed any efforts to improve the plight
of the poor.
○ He was advocating extreme forms of
population measure: disasters,
epidemics, wars, etc.
○ Criticized because many disagree with
his objection to social reforms; ex: we’re
not supposed to help the poor because
it would allow them to have more
children. It’s immoral but it’s true
○ Extra money would allow the poor to
have more children, only hastening the
nation’s appointment with famine.
11. Alfred Russel Wallace
○ Aside from Charles Darwin, Wallace
also theorized evolution
○ he was writing with Darwin and Darwin
saw that Wallace’s ideas were similar
with his, (their ideas were both

ANTHROPOLOGY 100
Biology and Evolution
presented at the same time in Oxford in
a conference)
○ Theory of evolution is now also
acknowledged to him
○ A school teacher, English naturalist,
explorer, anthropologist, and into social
reforms.
○ He first did research in amazon jungle
then moved to Malay archipelago in
Indonesia
○ Allegedly supposed to go to the
Philippines but didn’t reach PH
○ He also dabbles and expresses some of
his ideas on social reforms in England
and some of them were so
unconventional that’s why he’s
unpopular
○ He became a social activist; he
critiqued the British culture/society
○ Independently uncovered the key to the
evolutionary theory process. In 1855,
Wallace published an article suggesting
that species were descended from
other species and that the appearance
of new species was influenced by
environmental factors
12. Charles Darwin
○ Blue-blooded
○ Comes from a very rich family in
England who owns a furniture company
○ Did not antagonize other people that’s
why he is idolized by other people and
he was popular (Unlike Wallace)
○ All species are capable of producing
off-spring
○ There’s genetic variation except for
identical twins
○ There’s competition between individuals
■ Survival of the fittest
○ Accumulation of new and physical traits
lead to change in genetic structure thus
new species
○ Geographical isolation leads to new
species:
■ Galapagos Tortoise, Galapagos
iguanas; each island has
different species of tortoise
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○ He kept his work so he would not offend
the church
○ When his work was first publicized,
people made a parody out of him
○ In his book, On the Origin of Species
by Means of Natural Selection, or the
Preservation of Favored Races in the
Struggle for Life, he identified the
basic processes of evolution as follows:
■ All species are capable of
producing offspring at a faster
rate than food supplies increase
■ There is a biological variation
within all species; except for
identical twins, no two
individuals are exactly alike
■ There is competition between
individuals
■ Individuals that possess
favorable variations or traits
have an advantage over
individuals that do not possess
them. By virtue of the favorable
characteristics, these
individuals are more likely to
survive to produce offspring
than are others
■ The environmental context
determines whether or not a
trait is beneficial
■ Traits are inherited and are
passed onto the next generation
■ Over long periods of geological
time, successful variations
accumulate in a population, so
that later generations may be
distinct from ancestral ones.
Thus, in time, a new species
may appear
■ Geographical isolation may
also lead to the formation of
new species. As populations of
a species become
geographically isolated from
one another, for whatever
reasons, they begin to adapt to
different environments.

ANTHROPOLOGY 100
Biology and Evolution
■ Overtime, as populations
continue to respond to different
selective pressures, they may
become distinct species,
descended from a common
ancestor
13. Heredity
○ passing on of traits from parents
to offspring through asexual sexual
reproduction,
○ The offspring cells or organisms
acquire genetic information of their
parents.
○ Through heredity, variations
between individuals can accumulate
and cause species to evolve by
natural selection.
○ Genetics:
■ Study of heredity in Biology
○ Gene
■ Portion of the DNA molecule
containing a sequence of base
pairs that encodes a particular
protein.
■ Determines partially or wholly a
particular biological trait.
14. Gregor Mendel
○ Theorized about heredity using peas
○ Deduced the presence and activity of
genes by experimenting with garden
peas to determine how various traits are
passed from one generation to the
next.
○ Law of Inheritance:
○ Law of Segregation of Genes
■ States that every individual
organism contains two alleles
for each trait, and that these
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alleles separate during meiosis
such that each gamete contains
only one of the alleles.
■ An offspring thus receives a
pair of alleles for a trait by
inheriting homologous
chromosomes from the
parent organisms: one allele
for each trait from each
parent
■ Ex: allele from height came
from both parents
○ Law of Independent Assortment
■ states that alleles for
separate traits are passed
independently of one
another
■ That is, the biological selection
of an allele for one trait has
nothing to do with the selection
of an allele for any other trait.
■ Ex: allele for height has nothing
to do with allele for weight, hair,
intelligence, etc.
○ Law of Dominance
■ states that recessive alleles
will always be masked by
dominant alleles.
■ Therefore, a cross between a
homozygous dominant and a
homozygous recessive will
always express the dominant
phenotype, while still having a
heterozygous genotype.
■ Many recessive traits are
negative: disabilities,
deformities, illnesses, etc.
■ GENOTYPE
● alleles possessed
for a particular trait.
● Genetic makeup of
an organism.
■ PHENOTYPE
● Observable or testable
appearance of an
organism that may or
may not reflect a
particular genotype due

ANTHROPOLOGY 100
Biology and Evolution
to the variable
expression of dominant
and recessive alleles.
● Physical trait; due to
modern tech, humans
can now alter their
physical traits: gluta,
nose surgery
○ Population
■ Units of evolution
■ Group of interbreeding
Individuals
○ Species
■ Group of populations whose
individuals can interbreed and
produce fertile offspring
ADDITIONAL NOTES
● When horse and donkeys reproduce, they can
create a Mule but the offspring is sterile
● Liger: Lion and Tiger; male liger is sterile but
female ligresses are fertile
● If dog and cat will mate, it would be odd since
they do not come from the same species; lions
and tigers may still come from same ancestors
as well as horses and donkeys
● Bestiality/Zoophilia: Humans mating with
animals; sexual disorder
○ Gene Pool
■ Total collection of genes in a
population at any one time but
remember, before the age of
colonization, people from Africa
only stay in Africa; most of the
black people are confined within
the African continent but this
changed during the age of
colonization since Africans were
forced to move out
○ Microevolution
■ a change in the relative
frequencies of alleles in a gene
pool
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■ To differentiate this with our idea
of evolution, microevolution
happens over a short period of
time
FOUR AGENTS OF MICROEVOLUTION
1. Mutation
○ changes alleles
○ a change in DNA
○ The chance alteration of genetic
material that produces new variation
○ Ex: Some "green genes" randomly
mutated to "brown genes"
(although since any particular
mutation is rare, this process
alone cannot account for a big
change in allele frequency over
one generation).
2. Gene Flow or Migration
○ Introduction of alleles from gene pool of
one population to another brought about
by transferring/migration of a member to
a different population and mated
3. Genetic Drift
○ Chance fluctuations of allele
frequencies in the gene pool of
population brought about by accidents
○ In each generation, some individuals
may, just by chance, leave behind a
few more descendents (and genes, of
course) than other individuals.
○ The genes of the next generation will be
the genes of the "lucky" individuals, not
necessarily the healthier or "better"
individuals.
4. Natural Selection and Adaptation
○ Survival of the fittest
○ The dead ones were the ones who were
unable to adapt
○ Ex: Green beetles were the first seen
while the brown ones can easily hide
○ refers to the evolutionary process
through which genetic variation at the
population level is shaped to fit local
environmental conditions.
○ Adaptation
■ series of beneficial
adjustments to the
environment.

ANTHROPOLOGY 100
Biology and Evolution
● Fitness
○ Survival rate;
○ Describes how good a particular
genotype is at leaving offspring in the
next generation relative to how good
other genotypes are at it.
○ If brown beetles consistently leave more
offspring than green beetles because of
their color, you'd say that the brown
beetles had a higher fitness.
○ Fitness is a relative thing.
○ A genotype's fitness depends on the
environment in which the organism
lives. The fittest genotype during an ice
age, for example, is probably not the
fittest genotype once the ice age is over.
○ Ex: During ice age, mammoths were
able to survive due to their fur
● Sex and Genetic Shuffling
○ Sex can introduce new gene
combinations into a population and is an
important source of genetic variation.
○ Parents’ mating can lead to genetic
variation;
○ Important in genetic variation;
○ It’s impossible for an offspring to be a
total copy of a certain parent
○ Ex: siblings are not genetically identical
to their parents or to each other (except
identical twins).
● Sexual Selection
○ a "special case" of natural selection
○ acts on an organism's ability to obtain
(often by any means necessary) or
successfully copulate with a mate
○ What an animal does to entice the
opposite sex
○ For humans, it’s different - it can be
cultural
● Artificial Selection
○ Long before Darwin and Wallace,
farmers and breeders were using the
idea of selection to cause major
changes in the features of their plants
and animals over the course of
decades.
○ Human intervention so we can have the
desirable characteristic
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○ Ex: cross breeding of dogs, plants, etc.
○ Farmers and breeders allowed only the
plants and animals with desirable
characteristics to reproduce, causing
the evolution of farm stock. This process
is called artificial selection
○ people (instead of nature) select which
organisms get to reproduce.
● Gene Editing
○ Type of genetic engineering in which
DNA is inserted, deleted, modified or
replaced in the genome of a living
organism.
○ Unlike early genetic engineering
techniques that randomly inserts
genetic material into a host genome,
genome editing targets the insertions
to site specific locations.
○ Artificial selection is just controlled
breeding but gene editing is genetic
engineering already
○ Crisper: machine that can insert,
delete, modify, replace a genetic trait
○ Designer baby: to design own baby;
■ Females can easily choose their
sperm donor of their choice
from sperm bank but designer
babies are very different and
artificial
○ Ex: Designer babies, Wild mustard
cultivation
● Cloning
○ process of taking genetic information
from one living thing and creating
identical copies of it.
○ The copied material is called a clone
○ Geneticists have cloned cells, tissues,
genes and entire animals
○ Very controversial;
○ Human cloning is still not allowed;
○ Rich people clone their dogs