Field Note Collaborations for Week Two (repond to two peers below)

Weekly Study Field Notes

Field notes are a very important part of anthropological research. Anthropologists use their field notes to make records about what they are seeing and thinking while conducting research. For your collaboration you are being asked to make your own field notes, based on the assigned course materials. Each week, as you read the assigned material or watch an assigned video, you will create a new set of field notes in which you are expected to write down such things as important concepts, things that you might have questions about, or even things that you find surprising or interesting. Just like the notes that an anthropologist makes in the field, your notes must be clear and easy to read because you will be sharing them with your peers in the collaboration

Complete the following sections in the spaces below:

First and Last Name:

Ashley Hayes

Date:

October 13th, 2017

Title of Assigned Readings (including chapter numbers) or Videos:

Robson, D. (2014). The story in the stones. New Scientist, 221(2958), 34-39. Retrieved from https://library.ashford.edu/ezproxy.aspx?url=http%3A//search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true%2526AuthType=ip,cpid%2526custid=s8856897%2526db=a9h%2526AN=94708739%2526site=ehost-live

Reflections:

I have many thoughts about the article I read called The Story in the Stones by David Robson. The basic idea of the article was to discuss the findings of David Robson as he studies the works of toolmaker, Bruce Bradley. Bruce Bradley has spent his entire life practicing his ability to create tools used by our ancient ancestors. He makes tools out of the supplies which were readily accessible to the peoples within different historic times. He studies brain sizes of our ancestors and wonders how our species rose above the rest of all creatures to become the smarter creature on Earth. He states how our ancestors may have walked, but were not used to using tools and were still much like modern day chimps and apes (Robson, 2014). Bruce then tells Robson that “2.6 million years ago, with Australopithecus garhi” our ancestors began to use tools to accomplish daily tasks (Robson, 2014). “Rather than just using nature as they found it around them, they began to modify it, wielding one stone to chip the end off another and using the resulting sharp edge to butcher meat” (Robson, 2014). Our intelligence further and further developed as our brains grew larger throughout the timespan of millions of years, as our working memory bank grew and as we built ideas through gained knowledge from previous peoples and trial and error (Robson, 2014).

Emerging questions/analyses:

Is there a defining point when our ancestors who used no tools began to use tools? What I mean by this is when was the first most primitive tool used by ancient man discovered? Was it considered the tool used by Australopithecus garhi? Also, at what point can we see the human brain actually growing into the size similar to what we have today? Will our brains continue to grow larger with time?

Important concepts:

I think it is important to understand that even though our brains were actually smaller at one point in time we used the materials we had to make the best tools we could. Our ancestors built on previous knowledge and trial and error to create better, more useful tools as time passed. The human race keeps evolving and will continue to do so from now until the end of time. We have a driving force to expand our knowledge and to always know more about the universe in which we live.

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