17.6: Review Questions

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How is the study of your ancestors biopolitical, not just biological? Does that make it less scientific or differently scientific?
What was gained by reducing organisms to genotypes and species to gene pools? What is gained by reintroducing bodies and species into evolutionary studies?
How do genetic or molecular studies complement anatomical studies of evolution?
How are you reducible to your ancestry? If you could meet your ancestors from the year 1700 (and you would have well over a thousand of them!), would their lives be meaningfully similar to yours? Would you even be able to communicate with them?
The molecular biologist François Jacob argued that evolution is more like a tinkerer than an engineer. In what ways do we seem like precisely engineered machinery, and in what ways do we seem like jerry-rigged or improvised contraptions?
How might biological anthropology contribute to future developments in evolutionary theory?

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