5-1 Final Project Milestone Three: Impact of Culture and Environment and Deconstructing Race

For this milestone, you will explore human biological variation through two different lenses: disease and race. The first critical element of this assignment (Impact of Culture and Environment) will explore the relationship between disease, environment, and culture in modern humans. Because you are going to be talking about evolution in the context of your disease, it is key that the disease you choose meets the following criteria:

• It needs to have a genetic component.
• It needs to be more common in certain populations than others
• The environment needs to have some sort of an impact on selection for or against the disease.

If you are struggling to come up with ideas for disease to choose from, Chapter 14 of your textbook has quite a few!

The second critical element of this assignment (Deconstructing Race) will examine another facet of biological variation, discussing the ways in which we group human populations and the lack of biological validity to the concept of race.

Specifically, the following critical elements must be addressed:

1. Impact of Culture and Environment
1. Explain the biological aspects of a particular disease with respect to how it is connected to diversity in human genetics.
2. Analyze why certain populations or cultures have higher rates of your chosen disease than others, substantiating your explanation with research.
3. Analyze how environment (local climate, temperature, average rainfall, common infectious diseases) has impacted the diversity in human genetics related to the specific disease, substantiating your explanation with research. In other words, why might rates of your chosen disease be higher in populations that have adapted to certain conditions?
4. Explain the ethical implications that may arise if the museum uses the specific disease in the exhibit, and how cultural relativism can be used to mitigate these implications.
2. Deconstructing Race
1. Explain what anthropologists mean when they say that race is a social construct
2. Identify modern-day examples the museum could use in their display to illustrate how race is socially and culturally constructed.
3. Describe the difference between race and ethnicity. Why do biological anthropologists use ethnicity to describe groups of people but not race?
4. Identify examples from human genetics and biological anthropology that the museum could incorporate that will help reinforce the idea that race is a social construct rather than a biological reality.
5. Explain the relationship between biological anthropological views of race and cultural relativism. Why is it important that a biological anthropologist employ a cultural relativist perspective when studying the concept of race in different cultures?

What to Submit

Your assignment must be submitted as a 4- to 6-page Word document with double spacing, 12-point Times New Roman font, oneinch margins, and at least three sources cited in the most recent APA format.