Human Variation & Race Blog

Heat negatively impacts the survival of humans by disturbing homeostasis because it can be expensive and dangerous in terms of water and sodium loss. There are two types of heat – arid and humid. Arid exists in the southwestern United States, Middle East, and in some parts of Africa and are characterized by high temperatures, wind, and low water vapor. Humid heat is increased water vapor and is found in regions with a great deal of vegetation and precipitation which can be found in the eastern and southern U.S., parts of Europe, and in the tropics. Increased water vapor inhibits the evaporation of sweat, which makes it easier for humans to adapt to dry heat. People who exercise in the dry heat may sometimes not be aware they are sweating because it evaporates as soon as it reaches the surface of the skin so while the rapid evaporation can cause one to become dehydrated which is important to drink plenty of water in the dry heat, even if one is not thirsty.

Humans have adapted to the following stress: short term, facultative, developmental and cultural in the following way:

Short term -  Sweating is a response to a person who overheats in an attempt to cool you off. The optimum body temperature is 37 Celsius where “sweating is responsible for 70 percent to 80 percent of the body's heat regulation”, according to the MBF website.  

"A common misunderstanding was that our skin's pigmentation, melanin, served as a facultative layer to provide a beneficial glow after and following sun exposure. The tanning response is, in reality, a physiological repair mechanism to instant UV damage of the skin cells (epidermis/dermis). Further, it was contemplated whether UVB alone was responsible for the long-term mutations seen in the epidermis. It has since been established from carcinogenic models that UVA plays a synergistic and complementary role to UVB, whereby the wavelengths determine the ability to penetrate the skin layers."  http://www.clinuvel.com/scenesse/technology-updates/technology-update-i

fake or natural tan?

It is said that the closer one is to the equator, chances are those people will have darker pigmentation whereas people living farther away from the equator, will have lighter pigmentation. A perfect example of this would be people living in some parts of South America such as Ecuador (darker pigmentation) or parts of Europe such as Ireland (lighter pigmentation)

Irish boy

Ecuadorian woman

Rich or poor, people find a way to culturally adapt to their environment. In this case, heat, one would assume that they could try to maintain themselves cool or comfortable when the weather isn't pleasant, basically, nothing over 90 degrees (which in my opinion is TOO hot!). People find a way to make due with what they have and in the event a particular person is on a tight budget and can't afford such luxury as, an example, air conditioner, they would most likely open a window or dress in a manner that is cool for them. I can go on and on with many examples however I won't. The point I am trying to get across is, as I mentioned, rich or poor, they will adapt and make due with what they have and make it work for themselves.

Language Blog

Today was a day like any other. However, for this particular experiment I chose to do it with my children and this is how it played out.

On any given day, I'd ask my son, Ryan, who is in Kindergarten questions such as: 'What did you learn in Math today?' 'What did you do in P.E.? etc. He'd tell me things like, 'well, I learned shapes and my numbers, an in P.E., we played soccer.' When it's my daughter's turn to tell me, she would fill me in on how space debris is bad for the earth. This is where I would get so thrilled to see them so excited about their day. However, as I signed them out and on the walk to the car, I let them in on this fun experiment I was doing for my Anthropology class. I explained that for 15 minutes, I would have to communicate with them without speaking. Naturally, they were curious on how I was going to do that. I told them I could communicate with them without talking. I could use movement like opening my eyes wide which would indicate excitement, or frown for a sad face, etc.

So the experiment began...it was so difficult not to verbally share in their enthusiasm about their day. Ryan expected me to respond to what he was telling me but instead, I gave him thumbs up with a big, cheesy smile when he informed me he colored a beautiful picture for me. And for my daughter, I made a sad face when she spoke about how she fell during recess.

I think my children found it quite amusing when I didn't talk back but rather used various facial expression to respond to them. They didn't alter their way of communicating with me at all. In fact, they probably got a kick out of it and we will probably incorporate this way of communicating some more.


If my children, for this example, represented people from another culture, I think my children, being that they have the ability to communicate verbally would have the advantage in communicating complex ideas because they can say exactly what they need to say and there would be no guessing. I, on the other hand, would have the disadvantage because I can make a sad face and the verbal person would want to know exactly why. There are only so many movements I can make and not get my exact point across. 

There might be some prejudices towards the culture using the symbolic language because perhaps the speaking culture expects the other person to respond verbally as opposed to symbolically.

I think individuals in our culture who may have difficulty communicating with spoken language could someone with a hearing impairment. Although they may be able to communicate with ASL (if they know it), I can imagine it would probably be a difficult thing to understand what a verbal person is trying to say.

After my 15 minutes of not using verbal communication with my children were up, and boy, I think they were happy to hear my voice again, I let them know the experiment wasn't over. I had to spend another 15 minutes of just using my voice to talk to them without any hand gestures or facial expressions. THIS WAS SO HARD FOR ME because I talk with my hands. We set the timer for 15 minutes and I only lasted 3 minutes of monotone communication. I thought this would be a breeze but it wasn't and I can safely say it was a quite difficult thing to do.

My children were waiting for me to laugh or giggle at their silliness or bust out with my 'hand talking'. I wish I could have taken pictures of the looks on their faces when all they hear was a monotone voice with absolutely no expression to it.

I think it's really important to be able to communicate not only with words but with your body and I do think there are people out there who have difficulty reading body language, perhaps someone who is blind because well, they can't see so that would be a disadvantage for them. It's a plus to be able to read body language and I will give an example. Let's say you are at work and you see a co-worker who isn't speaking but you can immediately see he/she is not having such a good day. You can then make a choice to approach the person or not - all depending if you want to take that chance or not.

An environmental condition where one may not be able to read body language could be when reading someone's email or text. There is no way of actually seeing what the person is doing on the other end but perhaps can feel if they are having a good day or not by how the email/text comes across.

I can say I really enjoyed this experiment. It was really interesting to know I can not last a very long time without using body movement to talk and my kids had fun being able to help mom out with her homework.