Anthropology – the study of differences and similarities, both biological and cultural, in human populations.

Archaeology – the branch of Anthropology that seeks to reconstruct the daily life and customs of peoples who lived in the past and to trace and explain cultural changes.

Biological Anthropology – the study of humans as biological organisms, dealing with the emergence and evolution of humans and with contemporary biological variations among human populations; also known as Physical Anthropology.

Cultural Anthropology – the study of cultural variation and universals.

Linguistic Anthropology – the anthropological study of languages.

Primatology – the study of the primates, usually the non-human primates.

Ethnography – a description of a culture's customary behaviors, beliefs, and attitudes.

Participant observation – living among the people being studied: observing, questioning, and (when possible) taking part in the important events of the group. Writing or otherwise recording notes on observations, questions asked and answered, and things to check out later are parts of participant-observation.

Animalia – the kingdom where all animals belong. Animals are organisms that could not produce their own food.

Metazoa – subkingdom of multi-celled animals.

Chordata – a phylum of metazoans consisting of animals with a centrally located nervous system.

Vertebrata – subphylum of chordates consisting of animals that have backbones.

Tetrapoda – superclass of vertebrates that have four limbs.

Mammalia – class of vertebrates consisting of warm-blooded animals. Mammals have body hair and the females among them have mammary glands that are used to feed the young.

Eutheria – subclass of placenta-bearing mammals.

Unguiculata – cohort of mammals that have nails or claws.

Primata – a mammalian order that is divided into two suborders: prosimians and anthropoids.

Prosimian – literally "pre-monkeys", one of the two suborders of primates; includes lemurs, lorises, and galagos.

Anthropoidea – suborder of primates that includes monkeys, apes, and humans.

Catarrhines – Old World primates; the group of anthropoids with narrow noses and nostrils that face downward.

Platyrrhines – New world monkeys; the group of anthropoids that have broad flat-bridged noses, with nostrils facing downward.

Hominoidea – the superfamily of catarrhines that includes both apes and humans.

Hylobates –the family of hominoids that includes gibbons and siamangs, often referred to as the Lesser Apes.

Hominidae – the family of hominoids consisting of humans and great apes and their direct ancestors.

Pongidae – hominoids whose members include both the living and extinct apes.

Homininae - the subfamily of hominids consisting of gorillas, chimpanzees, and humans and their direct ancestors.

Hominini - the tribe of humans and chimpanzees and their direct ancestors.

Chimpanzee – a Hominoid that is the closest to humans genetically.

Hominina - the subtribe of humans and their direct ancestors.

Australopithecus – genus of Pliocene and Pleistocene hominids.

Homo – genus to which modern humans and their ancestors belong.

Bipedalism – locomotion in which an animal walks on its two hind legs.

Clavicle – collar bone.

Coccyx – man's hidden tail, consisting of the four last caudal vertebrae at the bottom of the spinal column.

Dental formula – a formula for expressing man's dentition, usually written as 2.1.2.3/2.1.2.3 x 2 = 32, indicating that a normal mouth has 32 teeth, consisting of two incisors, one canine, two premolars, and three molars on each side of the upper and lower jaws.

Endothermic – warm-blooded; with a constant body temperature.

Foramen magnum – hole in the base of the skull through which the spinal cord passes en route to the brain.

Incisors – the front teeth; used for holding or seizing food and preparing it for chewing by other teeth.

Notochord – rod or cartilage which serves to stiffen and support the body.

Saggital crest – a bone protrusion found on the median antero-posterior plane of the skull of primates, especially gorillas, from which muscle connecting to the jaws are attached.

Saggital suture – sutures found on the median antero-posterior plane of the skull of humans.

Sexual dimorphism – a marked difference in size and appearance between males and females of a species.

Stereoscopic vision – the use of both eyes to view the same visual field with depth perception.

Vision – the ability to sense energy in part of the electromagnetic spectrum, the entire range of wave-lengths of electromagnetic radiation, from the shortest gamma rays to the longest radio waves.

Ardipithecus ramidus – the earliest known hominid.

Australopithecus afarensis – a species of Australopithecus that lived 4 to 3 million years ago in East Africa and was definitely bipedal.

Australopithecus africanus – a species of Australopithecus that lived between about 3 to 2 million years ago.

Australopithecus boisei – an East African robust australopithecine species dating from 2.2 to 1.3 million years ago with somewhat large cranial capacity than A. africanus.

Australopithecus robustus – a robust australopithecine species found in South African caves dating from 1.8 to 1 million years ago.

Homo erectus – the first hominid species to be widely distributed in the Old World. The earliest finds are possibly 1.8 million years old. The brain, averaging 895-1040 cc, was larger than that found in any of the australopithecines or H. habilis but smaller than the average brain of modern humans.

Homo floresiensis – a newly discovered hominid species in the Flores islands of Indonesia that is believed to be contemporary of early Homo sapiens.

Homo habilis – early species belonging to our genus, Homo, with cranial capacities averaging 630-640 cc, about fifty percent of the brain capacity of modern humans. Dating from about 2 million years ago.

Homo sapiens – all living people belong to one biological species, Homo sapiens, which means that all human populations on earth can successfully interbreed. The first H. sapiens may have emerged by 200,000 years ago.

Homo sapiens neandertalensis – a variety of early Homo sapiens that spread only in Europe and Western Asia.

Homo sapiens sapiens – modern-looking humans, undisputed examples of which appeared about 50,000 years ago.

Fossil – organic remains.

Evolution – gradual process of change from a simple form to a more complex form.

Natural selection - process whereby those species that are better adapted to their environment survive longer and produce more offspring than the better adapted.

Synthetic theory of evolution - natural selection plus Mendelian genetics.

Gene – the chemical unit of heredity.

Mutation - chemical changes in the genes.

Gene flow - the passing on of genes from one gene pool to another gene pool through mating and reproduction.

Gene pool - the total sum of genes of a particular population.

Genetic drift - various random processes that affect gene frequencies in small, relatively isolated populations.

Sewall Wright Effect - synonymous with genetic drift.

Founder Effect - a variation of genetic drift.

Candelabra Theory – theory that states that all Homo sapiens evolved simultaneously from Homo erectus spread out in different parts of the world.

Noah's Ark Theory – theory that states that all Homo sapiens came from Africa.

Eve hypothesis – the hypothesis that all Homo sapiens could trace their ancestry from a single female from Africa approximately 150,000 years ago through an analysis of our mitochondrial DNA, which we inherit only from our maternal line.

Laetoli footprints – Australopithecine footprints embedded on volcanic ash found in Laetoli, Tanzania.

Actual pattern – synonymous with real pattern.

Alternative pattern – one of the categories of the patterns of culture occurring when culture allows various types of behavior in meeting a particular situation and there is no difference in terms of value or frequency of the manifested behavior.

Culture - that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, law, morals, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.Compulsory pattern – one of the five categories of the patterns of culture. In this pattern, culture allows only one type of behavior in a given situation.

Cultural patterns – socially defined limits within which individual variation takes place.

Ideal pattern – the patter of culture that members of a particular culture set as their standard.

Real pattern – the pattern of culture that actually takes place.

Cultural tradition – one of the five component parts of a cultural system. These are human activities and behavior that are continually practiced by a given group across several generations.

Preferred pattern – one of the five categories of the patterns of culture. This happens when one particular type of behavior is more valued than other responses in a particular setting.

Restricted pattern – one of the five categories of the patterns of culture. In this pattern, certain types of behavior are only acceptable to a particular segment of society.

Typical pattern – one of the five categories of the patterns of culture. There are many ways of meeting a specific situation but one type of behavior is more frequent than the rest.

Subculture – the shared customs of a subgroup within a society.

Society – a group of people who occupy a particular territory and speak a common language not generally understood by neighboring peoples. By this definition, societies do not necessarily correspond to nations.

Environment – the natural, biological, and social setting within which the members of a cultural system carry on their activities.

Artifact – material items that humans have manufactured or modified.

Material culture – one of the component parts of a cultural system; synonymous with artifact.