Taking Physical Anthropology has both contributed to my credit hours and changed the

way I look at the world on a daily basis. I go to work with my class of two-year-olds and

sometimes wonder what would happen if they were left their own devices rather than

having invested parents, or recognize behaviors in them and myself that our

chimpanzee cousins display. I think about what varieties of natural selection went into

what I have become, how it’s affected my physical and mental health, or even my

intelligence. I wonder how it’s affected my parents, my siblings, and consider how the

familial hierarchies around me have even come to be—but I also have some answers to

those weird questions when they cross my mind, and that’s invaluable.

There were quite a few misconceptions I held in regard to pre-modern humans and

even to early modern humans; For example, I thought that Neanderthals were

significantly farther removed from us than potentially one speciation, to the point where

they may even breed. I think this was the biggest “aha!” moment of the semester; it

clicked in my mind at that point that while I thought there was one vast missing link in

the history of our evolution before, there was only a matter of genome-sequencing and

comparison to be done to fill in some of the answers. In fact, it’s fascinating to know that

despite all the talk of missing links over however long I’ve been cognizant of the idea of

evolution, and much longer, that we’ve been so close to figuring out precisely where

those links meet the whole time.

I was also unaware there were so many kinds of pre-modern humans. In fact—and this

is kind of embarrassing—I’d only ever heard the word “Australopithicus” in a song title

by Modest Mouse, and somehow I doubt they even knew what it meant when they

decided to use it for the title. The fact that there were two different sorts (that we know

of), that we knew as much about them as to identify the shape of the dental arcades, it

was all new to me. I’d thought we were much further behind. Although my mother has

an associates in anthropology, she’d always been more interested in cultural

anthropology, so all I ever really knew about were ancient human civilizations and red-

haired mummies in plaid. Those who came before were a complete mystery to me, and

although I still have questions, the introduction I got to them in this class was more than

adequate to clear up that misunderstanding.

Something I very much appreciated about this course was the talk of cell division. I

know that probably seems silly; it’s not like it was the most interesting or even the most

pertinent point of the semester, and that topics similar to it should have been covered in

high school. I never understood the topic of cell division in high school, though, despite

the explanations I was given. Is difficult to grasp the concept of meiosis, especially, until

we took the time to learn about it in this class. Meiosis especially matters to me because

I hope to be a mother sometime in the next year, and now I know how the process

works from the absolute beginning. Again, maybe a bit silly, but I appreciate it all the

same.
Thanks, Professor Maughan, for everything you’ve done to educate I and my

classmates this semester. It’s been a pleasure to be your student and to get to discuss

a topic that you are obviously so passionate about. I hope you enjoy your summer.