Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Understanding Culture,
Society and Politics
Telefax: ___________________________
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Let Us Learn!
This module is intended for grade 11/12 senior high school students.
It is a self-paced learning activities for the senior high school students with
the supervision of guardian/parents or elder brother/sister. It composes of
different activities and assessment in order to analyze the social, cultural,
political and economical symbols and practices.
CONTENT STANDARDS
PERFORMANCE STANDARD
DURATION
• Week 4
5
Let Us Try!
http://ksvijayanthi.blogspot.com/2013/01/evolution-of-australopithecines-to-homo.html
References :
http://www.ecotao.com/holism/hu_austral.htm
www.gnolls.org/.../the-paleo-diet-for-australopithecines-approaching..
http://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/human-family-tree
http://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/human-fossils/species
http://www.columbia.edu/itc/anthropology/v1007/2002projects/web/australopithecus/austro.html
Guide Questions
2. What are the different activities that you observed in the picture?
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________.
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Let Us Study
Early Homo
At two million years ago, there was East African evidence for two
distinct hominin groups: early Homo and A. boisei, the hyper robust
australopithecines, which became extinct around 1.2 million years ago A.
boisei became increasingly specialized, dependent on tough, coarse, gritty,
fibrous savanna vegetation.
H. rudolfensis and H. habilis
On the basis of its brain size, it seemed to belong Homo. On the basis
of its back teeth, it seemed more like Australopithecus. Some
paleoanthropologist assigned 1470 to H. habilis while others saw it as an
unusual australopithecine. In 1986, it received its own species name, Homo
rudolfensis, from the lake near which it was found. The habilis skull has a
more marked brow ridge and a longer, flatter face. Some think that
rudolfensis lived earlier that and was ancestral to habilis. Some think that
one or the other gave rise to H. erectus. The only sure conclusion was that
several different kinds of hominin lived in Africa before and after the advent
of Homo.
H. habilis and H. erectus
Another important habilis discovery was made in 1986 by Tim White of
the University of California, Berkeley. Scientist had assumed that H. habilis
would be taller than tiny Lucy (A. afarensis) because of its small size and
apelike limb bones, its arms were longer and more apelike than expected.
The limb proportions suggested greater tree-climbing ability than later
hominins had. H. habilis may still have sought occasional refuge in the
trees.
Two recent hominin fossil unearthed from Ileret, Kenya were very
significant for two main reasons: they show that (1) H. habilis and H. erectus
overlapped in time rather than being ancestor and descendant, as had been
thought (2) sexual dimorphism in H. erectus was much greater than
expected.
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One of these fossils was the upper jawbone of a 1.44-million years old
H. habilis. The other was the almost complete but faceless skull of a 1.55-
million-year-old H. erectus. Their names come from their catalog numbers in
the Kenya National Museum-East Rudolph and their dates were determined
from volcanic ash deposits. These Ileret finds negated the conventional view
that habilis and then erectus evolved one after the other. Instead, they
apparently split from a common ancestor prior to 2m.y.a. They lived side by
side in Eastern Africa for perhaps half a million years.
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The Acheulian hand ax, shaped like a tear drop, represents a
predetermined shape based on a template in the mind of the toolmaker.
Evidence for such a mental template in the archaeological record suggests a
cognitive leap between earlier hominins and H. erectus.
The Acheulian tradition illustrates trends in the evolution of
technology: greater efficiency, manufacture of tools with predetermined
forms and for specific tasks, and an increasingly complex technology.
Archaic H. Sapiens
In Africa, which was center stage during the australopithecine period,
is joined by Asia and Europe during the H. erectus and H. sapiens periods of
hominin evolution. This doesn’t mean that H. sapiens evolved in Europe or
that most early H. sapiens lived in Europe. Indeed, the fossil evidence
suggests that H. sapiens, like H. erectus before it, originated in Africa. H.
Sapiens lived in Africa for more than 100,000 years before starting the
settlement of Europe around 50,000 before present. There were probably
many more humans in the tropics than in Europe during the ice ages.
The Neandertals
Neandertals were first discovered in Western Europe. The first one
was found in 1856 in a German valley called Neander Valley – tal is the
German word for a valley. There have been numerous subsequent
discoveries of Neandertals in Europe and the Middle East and of archaic
human fossils with similar features in Africa and Asia. The Kabwe skull
from Zambia is an archaic H.sapiens with a Neandertal-like brow ridge.
Archaic Chinese fossils with Neandertal-like features have been found at
Maba and Dali.
By 75,000 b.p after an interglacial interlude, Western Europe’s
hominins again faced extreme cold. To deal with this environment, they wore
clothes, made more elaborate tools and hunted reindeer, mammoths and
woolly rhinos. The Neandertals were stocky, with large trunks relative to
limb length-a phenotype that minimizes surface area and thus conserves
heat.
The front teeth show heavy wear, suggesting that they were used for
varied purposes, including chewing animal hides to make soft winter
clothing out of them. The massive Neandertal face showed the stresses of
constantly using the front teeth for holding and pulling.
Homo Floresiensis
In 2004 news reports trumpeted the discovery of bones and tools of a
group of tiny humans who inhabited Flores, an Indonesian island 370 miles
of east of Bali, until fairly recent times. Early in hominin evolution, it wasn’t
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unusual for different species, even genera, of hominins, to live at the same
time. But until the 2003-2004 discoveries on Flores, few scientists imagined
that a different human species had survived through 12,000 b.p., and
possibly even later. These tiny people lived, hunted and gathered on Flores
from about 95,000 b.p until at least 13,000 b.p. One of their most
surprising features is the very small skull, about 360 cm3 – slightly smaller
than the chimpanzee average.
A skull and several skeletons of these miniature people were found in
limestone cave on Flores by a team of Australian and Indonesian
archaeologist, who assigned them to a new human species, H. floresiensis
(Additional specimens have been found and described subsequently;
Gugliotta2005; Roach 2007).
The discovery of H. floresiensis, described as a downsized version of H.
erectus, shows that archaic humans survived much later than had been
thought. Before modern people reached Flores, which is very isolated, the
island was inhabited only by a select group of animals that had managed to
reach it. These animals, including H. floresiensis, faced unusual
evolutionary forces that pushed some toward gigantism and some toward
dwarfism.
As reported in 2009, an analysis of the lower limbs and especially an
almost complete left foot and parts of the right shows that H. Floresiensis
walked upright, but possessed apelike features (Wilford 2009). The big toe,
for example was stubby, like a chimp’s. The feet were large, more than seven
and a half inches long, out of proportions, similar to those of some African
apes, have never before been seen in hominins. The feet were flat. The
navicular bone, which helps form the arch in modern human feet, was more
like one in the great apes. Without a strong arch H. Floresiensis could have
walked but not run like humans. William Jungers, the anthropologist who
led the analytic team, raised the possibility that the ancestor of
H.floresiensis was not H. erectus, as originally had been assumed, but
possibly another, more primitive, hominin ancestor(Wilford, 2009).
Modern Humans
Anatomically modern humans (AMHs) evolved from an archaic H.
sapiens African ancestor. Eventually, AMHs spread to other areas, including
Western Europe, where they replaced or interbred with, the Neandertals,
whose robust traits eventually disappeared. The skull have been found at
Skhull, a site on Mount Carmel in Israel. Another group of modern-looking
and similarly dated (92,000 bp) skull comes from the Israeli site of Qafzeh.
All these skulls have a modern shape; their brain cases are higher, shorter
and rounder than Neandertal skulls. There is more filled-out forehead
region, which rises more vertically above the brows.
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The first Filipino.The discovery of the Tabon skull fragment in Palawan in
1962 provided the latest fossil evidence for the wide distribution of
prehistoric men in southeast Asia during the Pleistocene period. By Carbon-
14 techniques apparently associated carbon remains are dated about
22,000 years. The recovered frontal bone shows somewhat prominent
eyebrow ridge and a slightly sloping forehead.
Philippine Pleistocene tools. In the Philippines, the earliest surviving tools
of ancient man consist of big, crudely worked choppers. The materials used
for making these implements were flint, quartz and chalcedony. In spite of
their typological similarity to some dated tools found in Indonesia and
neighboring countries, the Phil. Tools have not been dated with certainty.
First, most of the tools were surface finds brought to Manila by ditch
diggers, farmers and mining prospectors. Only rarely was controlled
excavation of any kind made or any steps taken to do in situ analysis of the
geological-artifactual association. Second, the archeological work carried out
in the Rizal, Bulacan and Batangas areas was almost entirely exploration
and survey work, in which different sites were examined with almost no
systematic digging. Surface finds were gathered and around them was built
a reconstruction of Filipino prehistory and culture. The most significant
contemporary archeological work bearing on early man in the Philippines is
that being carried on in Palawan by the National Museum team, headed by
Robert B. Fox and Alfredo Evangelista.
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of Indo-China. Older scholars call these tools protoneoliths. They are found
mostly in Bataan, Rizal and Bulacan provinces.
A later type of implement dating from this period includes tools with
oval cross-section, whose bodies and blades are ground and polished. The
technique of grinding, however, was cruder than that used during the Late
New Stone Age. Axes and adzes of oval form with pointed or blunt butts
began to appear in the Philippines during the period between 6,000 and 7,
000 years ago and persisted as the ideal type of tool for nearly two centuries.
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adzes. The manufacture of these tools provides an example of the sawing
technique, since the cutting out of the butt is initiated by a deeply sawn
groove.
It is probable that agriculture started to become the primary source of
livelihood during the Late New Stone Age, although it was still supplemented
by hunting and fishing. The recovery of teeth and bones of domesticated
pigs indicates that these were introduced at this time. The first cultivation of
upland rice and millet was contemporaneous with the introduction of
domesticated animals.
The different cultural complexes encountered in the Philippines were
introduced ready-made into this country by groups of people migrating from
the Asian mainland; second, that these migrating people constituted
independent groups, each of whom had diagnostic racial and physical
characteristics and arrived in the islands at specific time periods, third, that
prehistoric tool traditions in the Philippines can be correlated with physical
types and cultures of living groups. There undoubtedly many groups of
people that reached the Philippines during prehistoric times. It is doubtful,
however, that the immigrants arrived in the periodic and deliberate fashion
postulated.
In the past. Archaeological artifacts have been correlated with the
sociocultural tradition of the living population in order to support the
assumption that there was such a homogenous people. However, the
process is tenuous and the conclusions reached are somewhat overdrawn. It
is worth noting how meager were the extra-Philippine materials available to
our early scholars in their attempts to establish a wider range of comparison
and to indicate the origin of Filipino prehistoric cultures.
The second point we wish to emphasize is that we now know it is
unrealistic to assert that the characteristics of any migration would still be
present and definably today after several thousands of years of racial and
cultural development. A case in point may be the Apayao and the Cagayan
Valley Ibanag, who, according to one authority, “form our outstanding
Indonesian generally considered the purest survivors of the original Neolithic
people.
Cultural/Social/Political/Economic Evolutionism
Elizabeth Prine Pauls defined “cultural evolution” as the development
of one or more cultures from simpler to more complex forms. For 50 years
now, evolutionary biology has inspired cultural evolution. Even Charles
Darwin himself has suggested the parallelism of the evolution of species and
the evolution of languages and culture, saying that both are products of a
gradual, intergenerational process of change.
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According to Linquist, at the heart of Darwin’s principle of natural
selection are two principles that transformed prior conceptions about the
nature of biological diversity. First, is that all earthly life forms share a
common ancestor and are thereby related by descent; and second is that
adaptiveness-the functional suitability of a species to its environment-arises
automatically out of the intergenerational re-occurrence of variation,
heritability and differential fitness. These principles heavily influenced
cultural evolution as you can see below:
1.The principle of cultural descent: all human cultures share a common
ancestor and are related by descent.
2. The principle of cultural selection: cultures adapt to local ecological and
social conditions by a process of variation, heritability and differential
fitness that is akin to natural selection.
During the very days of humans, human beings only had the energy of
their bodies to utilize and control. Cultural progress was made possible only
by improvements in the means of which the energy is expended and
technology is developed-the more energy used, the more developed culture
will be. Thus, in the very early stages of human evolution, when only the
energy of the human being’s body is expended, cultural development was
gradual, finite and limited.
However, it was when agriculture was developed that cultural
progress became extremely rapid. According to White, it was in agriculture
where humans were able to harness, control and put to work for himself the
powerful forces of nature. In summary, the more complex the use of
technology, the more advanced culture becomes.
According to Subedi, Structural Functionalism interprets society as a
system. It sees the society as a whole through its interrelated parts and
elements such as norms, customs, traditions, institutions etc. Therefore,
each part needs the others to function. Malinowski’s version of
functionalism assumes that all cultural traits serve the needs of individuals
in society. According to him, culture is composed of many different elements
such as food acquisition, family relationships and housing. Therefore,
culture exists to satisfy the basic biological, psychological and social needs
of individuals. For example, cultural traits that satisfy the basic need for
food give rise to the secondary, or derived, need for cooperation in food
collection or production. This gives rise to forms of political organization and
social control.
Food Production. Food production was acquired at different times in
prehistory. Knowing which are edible, the early humans were able to grow
and cultivate these plant and animal species, thereby making these
minorities a majority in the areas where they live. Thus, domestication and
production of food required that these early humans settle, which marked
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the shift from hunter-gatherer mode to settling mode. Animal domestication
was more than just eating their meat: mammals such as cows, goats, sheep
etc. were grown for their milk, which was also transformed into other
products such as butter, cheese and yogurt. Food production resulted in
denser human populations, more sedentary lifestyles and the existence of
turfs and territories. Mothers who settled down were enabled to have more
children than mothers who are part of the hunter-gatherer group. This
“luxury” that sedentary peoples can afford made them amenable to having
one children in their lifetime thereby creating large families.
Another “luxury” that was accorded with the sedentary people was the
ability to organize themselves politically: those who were able to produce
food were also able to stockpile food and those who had stockpiles gained
power by their potential to provide their neighbors food in times of need.
These political activities included the establishment of kingdom and
bureaucracies and waging of wars to gain more territory, people and
possessions.
The Importance of Writing. In the Western World, writing has always been
viewed as a hallmark of civilization. Europeans labeled those who were not
able to write as “barbarians” or “savages”. It is true that writing “brings
power to modern societies”: through writing, ideas and knowledge can be
transmitted, learned, relearned, refuted and proved. Due to the power that
knowledge brings, writing was naturally and consequently used as an agent
of conquest, along with weapons and political organization and machinery.
Commands from monarchs and powerful were conveyed in writing.
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Let Us Practice
A. Modified True or False. Write true if the statement is correct and false if
it is wrong and change the underlined word to make the statement correct.
Use separate sheet of paper.
_________5. The Acheulian hand ax, shaped like a tear drop, represents a
predetermined shape based on a template in the mind of the toolmaker.
__________2. Large stone adze made from the hinge of a giant clam.
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Let Us Practice More
Essay
A. Write your answer in the separate sheet of paper.
B. Analysis Chart
Homo sapiens
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Let Us Remember
By 4 million years ago, the apes began having an upright posture and
by 2.5 million years ago, increases in body and brain sizes culminated. The
species that underwent this phases of evolutions were called
“protohumans”-more specifically, the Australophitecus africanus, Homo
habilis and Homo erectus, respectively. During the same period, these
protohumans began using stone tools to make their hunting easier and
faster.
It was only half a million years ago when the human populations of
Africa and western Eurasia proceeded to diverge from each other and East
Asian populations in skeletal details. Europe and western Asia had the
Neanderthalensis. The Neandertals were first humans who cared for the sick
and buried their dead, as evidenced by their remains. They also had bigger
brains that the current species of human beings. However, despite having
bigger brains, their stone tools were still crude. These tools were aimed at
animals that were very easy to kill-not those animals that were larger and
dangerous. The lack of fishbones and fish hooks in the areas where their
remains were found showed that they were not yet able to catch fish.
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Let Us Assess
Question:
You will make a photo essay of human material remains and write its
significance to the social, cultural, political and economic practices and
symbols of human evolution.
_____________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________
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Let Us Enhance
https://ph.images.search.yahoo.com/y
Guide Question
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Let Us Reflect
A. Guide Question
How does evolution affect the social, cultural and political aspects of
human culture?
B. Visual Analysis
In the picture presented below. What are the different activities that
show the significance of cultural, social and economic symbols and
practices of our ancestors?
http://ksvijayanthi.blogspot.com/2013/01/evolution-of-australopithecines-to-homo.html
References :
http://www.ecotao.com/holism/hu_austral.htm
www.gnolls.org/.../the-paleo-diet-for-australopithecines-approaching..
http://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/human-family-tree
http://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/human-fossils/species
http://www.columbia.edu/itc/anthropology/v1007/2002projects/web/australopithecus/austro.html
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RUBRIC FOR EXPLANATION
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RUBRIC FOR PHOTO ESSAY
10 8 6 4
Content The Information Information Information
information clearly clearly clearly
has little or relates to the relates to relates to
nothing to do main topic, the main the main
topic or but no topic. It topic. With
simply details or provides at several
restates the examples are least 1 examples
main given. supporting and adds
concept. detail or new
example. concepts.
Relevance 100% 80% 60% 40%
connected/ connected/ connected/ connected/
related related related related
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Answer Key
Let Us Practice
A.
1.True
2. F-Paleolithic
3. True
4. True
5. True
B.
1. Bali
2. Tridacna gigas
3. Palawan
4. Bacsonian
5. Stepped adzes
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References
Book Source:
Basas (2016). Understanding Culture, Society and Politics 2016. JFS
Publishing Services.
Saloma, Czarina, Candelaria Anne Lan, Canuday Jose Jowel(2016).
Understanding Culture, Society and Politics Reader.DepEd
Bureau of Learning Resources. DepEd Complex Meralco
Avenue, Pasig City Philippines.
http://ksvijayanthi.blogspot.com/2013/01/evolution-of-australopithecines-
to-homo.html
References :
http://www.ecotao.com/holism/hu_austral.htm
www.gnolls.org/.../the-paleo-diet-for-australopithecines-approaching..
http://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/human-family-tree
http://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/human-fossils/species
http://www.columbia.edu/itc/anthropology/v1007/2002projects/web/aust
ralopithecus/austro.html
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