Human Variation & Race

1) The environmental stress I have chosen is heat. Humans ability to maintain homeostasis relative to environmental heat is a rather difficult task. Heat at temperatures too high affect us in that it not only damages our skin, it also causes internal damage as well. As a natural reaction to heat, we sweat. However, if the weather is hot and dry then humidity will be low, causing sweat to readily evaporate. What it does externally is burn our skin.This mostly affects people with paler skin complexions and less melanin prepared to protect the skin. The burning will cause redness of the affected area, peeling of the skin that has been burned, and pain when the area is touched. 

2) Human have adapted heat stress is sweating, which is a short-term adaptation. Sweating is the release of a salty liquid from the body’s sweat glands and it helps keep their body cool. This process is also called perspiration. Sweating is an essential function that helps your body stay cool. Sweat is commonly found under the arms, on the feet, and on the palms of the hands. The slightest breeze of wind, will cool our skin when it meets our sweat. Also, it soaks into our clothing, giving us and even further amount of cooling.



The second way humans have adapted to heat is air conditioning. As far as behavioral adaptations

go, humans are smart enough to invent creative means of avoiding the heat. We seek out shade and cooler environments such as caves, tree cover, water, etc. When we feel ourselves becoming too hot. We drink more water. We limit our physical exertion to reduce water loss. You could even call air conditioning a highly advanced behavioral adaptation for avoiding the heat. Human beings are able to live in more varied climates and environments than any other animal because of our ingenuity and behavioral adaptations.

Darker skin and bipedalism are the two greatest developmental adaptations to heat which is development adaption. The darker skin complexions can withstand the heat more efficiently than people with pale skin. They can stand the heat longer and naturally it doesn't cause much or any harm to them. Bipedalism is everyone's adaptation to heat in that it brings us up from the ground where heat is immediately being extracted from and it allows us to expose a tremendously lower amount of our body to the sun. 

The fourth way humans have adapted to heat is by using swimming 

pool or oceans. As for cultural adaptations, we have incorporated large bodies of water to get into like pools or oceans. We now even have swamp coolers that can do the job for us if we live in a modern, enclosed house.

3) The benefits of studying human variation we learn how to cope with heat, how to avoid being damaged by it or possibly killed by it. Explorations like this are helpful in many ways. Any other hot place on our planet, it give us the power to keep our race (human) alive when under these conditions.

One example of how this information can be used in a productive way is to explain race in a environmental adaption. We have to accept that human adapted environment differently then the animals and we can cope with different environments in different ways. 

4) To help someone understand the variations of adaptations to heat based on race I would explain how black people have darkness in their skin that helps then withstand the heat and white people didn't develop the same way. However, they do tan during the summer time when it is most hot out in order to avoid damage by the sun (no offense to anyone). Well, when you use race to explain adaptation variations you separate people the single "human race" that we are and put them into sub-categories, as if to be totally different species. To clarify and explain that the only reason we have different phenotypic adaptations is that every environment is different brings us back to unity. When it's explained this way, it makes the listener understand the relation we have to our environment and that its the stresses we undergo over long periods of time that shape our adaptations, not the race that we are born into.

 

Language post

Part 1: 

In the experiment of limited communication, I found it to be quite difficult to express my thoughts fully. Initially, I thought that since I know how to communicate, as I do it everyday, this would be easy. When I tried to express myself through gestures, I began to realize that I'd have to emit a lot more effort than with speaking along. I also realized that in order for the group I was communicating with to understand what I was trying to tell them, they'd need some sort of background of my form of communication; which they didn't have.

The impressions that they had left me with were of confusion. They had only a slight idea of what I was trying to tell them, and even then they still had parts of information incorrect. They way they spoke to me at first was how they'd normally speak. After many failed efforts of being able to comprehend what I was communicating back to them, they began to speak at a more remedial level, hoping that my response would be more easily understandable.

If we were two different cultures meeting for the first time, the culture with the ability to speak and identify objects by a commonly used name, and incorporate body language into their communication would be able to communicate complex ideas. The first set of individuals that have a difficulty communicating spoken language in our own culture, are babies. When they communicate with adults, they use mostly body language; they point, grab our hands and pull us to their desires, they tap our legs and look into the direction they want us to go. However, when we speak to them, we don't use fully complex and incomprehensible terminology; we speak at a very basic and understandable level. We point to objects and address them by using "one word" phrases, we will often repeat the word to the child and press their hand against the object so that they can identify it in the future. 

Part 2:

When I started to speak with no tone emphasis and no other form of expression, it seemed possible. After a few minutes of speaking that way I wasn't able to continue; I started to slightly use some intonation. Being that I am very expressive when I speak, it came naturally when I started to speak normally. What made this the most difficult for me was, forcing myself out of my comfort zone. Sitting very still, not nodding my head to suit the expression of my words, holding my facial muscles still when they're naturally programmed to curve over my words and to keep my hands on my lap without implying seriousness or firmness of my points almost made me feel alien to my own body.

This experiment has shown me that in order to communicate an idea effectively, the possession of the ability to speak well and  the use of bodily gestures as emphasis for your words is required. We are beings who express ideas to one another because of the passion we have for them. Without the body gestures, our passion begins to wither. Words can only carry our message so far, it's the difference in tone and pitch, the movement of limbs and facial muscles that our corespondent's attention thrives off of.

Yes, some people do have difficulty reading body language. Though I believe it is rare, it's still possible. Being able to read body language also gives you the ability to comprehend invasive ideas. So being able to read body language really is a sign of being intelligent. If environmental conditions (for whatever reason) prohibited people from speaking face to face and we were only allowed to speak via telephone or email, then we'd have no benefit for being able to read body language. Body language is only effective to the interpreter when he/she is within visibility of the communicator.