Human Variation & Race

Oxygen is one of the essential elements for human survival. The environmental stress of high altitude impacts human survival, which disturbs homeostasis due to the lower air pressure in those regions. Pressure in high altitudes are much less when compared to pressure at sea level. When one is at sea level, oxygen enters much easier through lungs, making their way to vascular systems (blood streams). At high elevations, oxygen doesn’t enter our lungs as easily, which means one gets less of it in their blood stream. This high-elevation condition is called hypoxia, also known as oxygen deprivation. Hypoxia defuses physical activities, and some of the symptoms include; headache, fatigue, lack of appetite, vomiting, distorted vision, and difficulty with memorizing and thinking clearly. In some cases, symptoms could be more serious; developing pneumonia-like symptoms and accumulation of fluid around the brain. These pulmonary and cerebral complications are usually deadly if there is no return normal air pressures. Furthermore, the added stress on the lungs, heart and arteries increases the risk of heart failure (Palomar).

Humans in high altitudes could adapt to these higher regions in four ways; short-term adaptation, facultative adaptation, developmental adaptations, and cultural adaptation.

Hiking a mountain is a short-term adaptation. The goal is to climb on a mountain – reaching high elevation – and returning down to the original elevation. The human body responds quickly to this type of change in environment. Since the atmospheric pressure is less in elevated regions, it becomes difficult for some to breath, which causes physical inability to move at a normal pace. It is a temporary response of the body, until it returns to the original-lowered elevation.

If one were to visit the country of Bolivia, they would be faced with a considerable environmental stress of nearly 17,000 feet above sea level. The facultative adaptation would consist of the body responding to a prolonged stress of adjusting to the extreme climate. This process is called acclimatization; where red blood cells and capillaries are produced to carry more oxygen, and the lungs increase in size to facilitate the osmosis oxygen and carbon dioxide (Palomar). The increase of red blood cells are phenotypic expressions of the human genes that turn on and off as a response to such environmental stress. Acclimatization is a slow process, but never reaches the mental and physical fitness from its original lower altitudes. Acclimatization is fully successful, when one returns home – t o their original elevation.

Developmental adaptation are traits found in the DNA of people. Let’s continue to consider the people of Bolivia, who live in an estimated elevation of 17,000 feet above sea level. They are a population more successful in adjusting to long-term environmental stresses of high elevations. The reason they have adapted to such climate, is due to their long ancestral history in that region. The ancestors of Bolivians have lived in such altitudes for at least 2, 700 years (Palomar). The main solutions for Bolivians have been their body’s capability of producing extra hemoglobin in their blood and excess lung expansion. These two capabilities increase oxygen carried by the blood.

Being a native to Bolivia, I’ve been told that the consumption of coca leaves helps with symptoms of altitude sickness. This would be considered a cultural adaptation by Bolivian natives, as it has been a long tradition with some of the populace of the country. This adaptation may be genetically influenced if generations upon generations have consumed the leaf. The idea is to chew on coca leaves and retaining it in the mouth, swallowing its juices. Ingesting the juices is supposed to stimulate your body, making you feel less tired.

There is a benefit to studying human variations from this perspective across environmental clines, because it shows how humans are physiologically different based on the different environmental stresses that each live in. For example, when we look at skin color, we see that this is due to the continuous stress of solar radiation. Where darker skin tones show that more protection against radiation is needed and the lighter skin is in need of UV protection.

We tend to think of race as an isolated way to describe someone. This sort of description pins a person to a certain region where they may have come from. To some it becomes a tier system to identify another human. But It seems that a better way to understand our physical differences is by observing our variations and adaptations to the world; specifically, how we are influenced by our physical environments. The fact that certain people could adapt to clines such as high altitudes, shows how the body could adapt for short of long term of time. One would think that Bolivian people are a race of people that could live well in high altitude climate, but it really narrows down to how well their bodies adapt to their clines. Perhaps many foreign visitors to Bolivia would not adapt quickly or at all, but those that have lived there for generations, are able to sustain in such environment.

Language Assignment Experiment

The participants in this language assignment experiments are conversations between my wife, and both my ten and eight-year-old daughters. I’ve decided to use random topics of conversations. This way everyone could speak about anything they feel is important to them and makes it easier for all individuals to share. From there the idea was to continue conversing on one topic or branch out to various ones. This is how the experiment went.

In the first conversation, we all sat together in the living room where we could see each other’s faces. I explained the rules and we began. In this conversation I became solely the listener and was restricted from speaking. I sat quiet, and as soon as my wife initiated the first words if discussion, I accidentally spoke the words “OK”. This meant that we had to restart our first trial, and so we did. The topic was instant; based on the amount of time I gave my daughters to play Roblox – an online video game. They had a maximum of two hours of playtime, and they were suggesting I give them more time to play. Their play time usually consists of joining their cousin online, so that they can play together. One of their concerns was that their game time expires close to the time that their cousin arrives to play with them. In my mind I was thinking that they should get in touch with their cousin in advance to set a time where all three of them login to play, that way they maximize their time as a group. My wife expressed the same solution, so I knew we agreed. As the conversation progressed, my wife brought up the fact that I should have picked a better time to do this experiment. She thought that it would have been a better idea if I would have notified them in advance of this experiment, instead of presenting it to them spontaneously. It was very difficult not being allowed to respond to each of their concerns, so I had to do a lot of head-nodding to show agreement. I also provided plenty of eye contact and my hand gestures consisted of both uniting my hands together in a relaxed manner or letting them rest on my knees. As each one spoke, I directed my attention to them. In some instances, in the conversation, my wife referenced my kid’s concerns and I would turn to look at them.  As I did this, there were a few times where my younger daughter asked me why I was staring at her, and my older one asked why I was nodding head so much. Of course, this was awkward for them, since I did it without saying a word. Fighting the urge to respond was the most difficult thing to do, because body language could not answer their questions, and you could only do so many gestures to agree or disagree. Not being able to provide a reason for my reactions was by far a challenge.

The conversation was balanced between my wife and my kids, and not controlled by one specific person. As each had questions, others supplemented with their responses and concerns. Although my instructions gave them liberty to pick any topic, they only focused on one topic. I never felt very much included, since the topic of gaming time was the focus. I’m the one who supervises their gaming time since I have the mobile app to supervise their Chromebooks, so I never felt excluded from the conversation. In fact, I remained very attentive since I was fighting the urge to verbally respond. This means that I had very little power in this conversation, because I was limited in conveying how I felt. As they had more to say, I felt I was losing power by not being able to respond in a complete way.

Of course, having a spoken language is a great communicative advantage. A culture that shares a spoken language has greater advantage over one that doesn’t. With spoken language one could convey more complex ideas. Take my trial in this experiment as an example. I was very limited in body language and face expressions. In my conversation alone, I was able to nod in agreement, raise my eyebrows to show interest, make eye contact, and use hand gestures. But those actions were insufficient to answer any questions or concerns that my family presented to me. The communication that I was able to demonstrate was just not enough to the group that was able to speak. If my family was representing a speaking culture, and I was representing a non-speaking one, there is a chance that I may eventually be excluded because I don’t posses the skills to speak their language. In the experiment it was easy to understand them, but if I truly did not posses a language skill, I am sure it would be the equivalent of listening to a group speak a foreign language. This is exactly how we could compare the difference in a modern scenario; where you have two different groups that speak completely different languages. If we present two groups that speaks different languages, the only way that they will be able to understand each other is by using body language and gestures, and even that will bear minimal communication between the two.

As we continued with our experiment, it was my turn to speak to my family. Finally, I could address their concerns. I started out by speaking and using hand gestures, which I immediately realized I was not allowed to do. This is where it became difficult, because when I speak, I use a lot of hand movement to emphasize on things. So, having to speak without showing any emotion, hand gestures, face expressions, or head movement felt like I was not getting my point across. I had to make sure I spoke in a monotone voice throughout the entire time, because I was not allowed to alter the tone of voice. This is especially difficult when one tries to emphasize words. I answered all the questions and concerns that my family had from the first part of this experiment. I was finally able to word everything I wanted to say, but it felt extremely different due to the restrictions we had. Once we finished the second trial, I asked what they thought of the way I spoke and my non-movements. My wife immediately said I was extremely boring, and my kids thought I was resembling a statue-like posture. They also felt that my acknowledgements to their concerns seemed ingenuine and somewhat careless. They understood everything I was saying, but because I sounded so bland, they were under the impression that I was not being honest. But my intentions were to communicate my response to their concerns, but the way I sounded and the way I was sitting presented an inorganic feeling.

This part of the experiment shows how important body language and tone of voice is. The ability to speak a language is a powerful way to communicate and using body language and tone of voice only emphasizes this way of communication. Body language could help emphasize a word, a sentence and overall a message. It helps convey genuineness, importance and emphasis. In my experiment that’s exactly what the absence of body language revealed; lack of honesty on what I spoke. That is the information that my family realized was missing when I spoke to them when addressing their concerns of our conversation.

Possessing the ability to read body language is an adaptive benefit, and it is important when intaking information. Body language expresses many things like danger which can be shown through facial features. There could be instances where if we are not able to speak, our face expression could communicate danger and fear. These facial features could help communicate the urgency to survive in a scenario where they are in danger. Body language is something the eye observes, and our brain interprets. There must be certain individuals that cannot interpret body language, just as others can’t understand a foreign language. And as important as body language could be, there are scenarios where we cannot observe body language when listening to someone talking. A certain scenario might be someone speaking through audio alone, with no visual. This would be an example of not reading someone’s body language and solely relying on the information they are verbally providing. This could be listening to the news or an audio podcast on any given topic. The information is there being passed on, but we could not visually see the body language or gestures that would accompany the information. In this case the information is solely based on the verbal information.

The Piltdown Hoax

What was believed to be an incredible discovery that would have helped answer the question of where humans come from, turned out to be one of the greatest hoaxes in science history. The Piltdown “discoveries” occurred in the early 1900’s in Sussex, England. Charles Dawson – an amateur archeologist – was given a piece of skull, dug out by a laborer in the area. Dawson partnered with geologist Woodward and together excavated the Piltdown location, finding prehistoric animal remains, Stone Age tools and an ape-like jawbone (PBS). Dawson believed the jawbone and previously found skull piece were of the same fossil. Both men dubbed their finding as the Piltdown man, convincing everyone that it was one of the earliest humans that connected man and apes. It was also an attempt to establish the fact that humanity originated in England, and not Africa. The scientific community was ecstatic, because something of such significance aided proof to Darwin’s theory of evolution. Through these “discoveries”, paleontologists and anthropologists were given one of the earliest missing nodes of the human evolutionary tree.

Although Dawson was an enthusiastic scientist and ambitiously seeking credibility in the industry, he did have faults. Dishonesty and self-interest play a role in the Piltdown story. Dawson’s willingness to introduce falsified fossils as real evidence to the world is as dishonest as his ambition for science. Seeking recognition within prestigious groups at the expense of science for self-gain an extremely selfish act upon everyone. Negative actions such as these impact the scientific process, because it disrupts honest science. The time and hard work that good scientist had contributed was derailed by Dawson’s claims. Though there were doubters of his discoveries, it was unfortunate that there were no challenges to the credibility Piltdown Man at the time.

The positive aspects on the other hand, was the scientific process of fluorine analysis. This is the method that brought the truth of the Piltdown Man into light. This analysis process is a relative dating process that applies to bones. “The longer a bone lies in the earth, the more fluorine it will incorporate during fossilization process” (Germain 273). In the early 1950’s, this was the technique conducted by Professor Oakley, of the British Museum, to uncover the truth of Dawson’s discovered fossils. By finding the fluorine content of the fossils, he proved that the age of Piltdown Man was far younger then believed. A full-scale analysis found that the staining/color of the bones were superficial and that abrasions on the molars showed that they were filed down. It truly was an elaborate and deliberate attempt to forge human history.

There will always be a human factor in science, because humans are part of the process of science. Mistakes will be carried; inaccuracies will exist, and unfortunately dishonesty will be present. When faced with such adversaries, science must prevail through the rigorous work of honest scientists. And when there is concern of malpractice or suspicion of false information, one must stand up to those inaccuracies and challenge.

We could learn plenty from the Piltdown Man hoax.  It goes back to the saying “You can’t believe everything you see of hear”. More often than not, we must take that extra step to verify information that’s been passed down to us. For 40 years the Piltdown Man fossils were held as truth, and there was no one to challenge its validity, and those that tried were limited to do so. It teaches us that we should not take face value of anything. A great example is the information that’s passed on social media. Countless posts, memes, articles and photos circulate to misinform people. If we are not diligent to verify information, we are surely being duped as the people of Dawson’s era were.