Hi blog. Today, I’m writing a little bit of a wrap-up blog instead of my normal daily blogs.
I noticed that as we would drive through savannas and wildlife areas, the animals seemed to coexist very well with the tourist vehicles. I never noticed any animal to be bothered by the presence of tourists, most likely because they are so used to it. I thought it was also interesting the relationship that the local people (in both Kenya and Tanzania) have with cattle and other farm animals, especially since many were introduced to the African continent more recently and are not native. There is a thriving cattle industry in Africa, which would not have existed many thousands of years ago. One consistently sees farm animals being herded through towns in Africa, and the people and animals coexist quite well with each other. The animals we encountered in the wild were hunting, eating, and relaxing, among other things. They were living ordinary lives and following seasonal patterns (wet vs dry season patterns).
We were in Tanzania during the dry season. We visited a watering hole connected to a creek, but both bodies of water were dried up due to the dry season. One possible result of climate change could be that watering holes stay drier for longer, which would negatively impact population sizes since the animals follow the wet and dry season patterns in both behavior and population size. During the wet season, populations flourish, so alteration of the durations of the wet and dry seasons would change the population numbers of many animals and, consequently, the environment. I noticed while in Africa that there were many grazing patches in the national parks. The environment relies on the animals just as much as the animals rely on the environment, so a change to one would definitely influence the other just as much. When we visited Ngorongoro crater, we observed that only certain types of animals were present inside the crater because there are a few animals that are unable to get past the escarpment (including giraffes). I thought that was an interesting way that the geography of an area could affect exactly which types of animals were present in an environment.
One conclusion I can make from this trip is that the environment is probably the most important factor in shaping ecological communities. I saw how animals used the environment for food and resources, habitats, and camouflage, and if any of these features of the environment were to be altered or taken away, the effect on the ecological communities that are shaped as a result of these features would be detrimental.
The environment shapes the plant and animal communities in an area, which humans rely on for sustenance and resources. By understanding what an environment looked like and which communities/features were present in an environment, we can understand how humans functioned and used their environments to their benefits. We can also understand how humans evolved and when certain traits arrived and departed, such as locomotive traits. In areas with few trees, it is less likely that a human will use brachiation as opposed to humans in areas with dense trees. By determining the traits of an environment, we can understand human adaptations and evolution.
I very much enjoyed the entire experience and thought it was helpful in figuring out my future. I realized during this experience that I didn’t enjoy ecology as much as I thought I would, but my enjoyment for archaeology exceeded my expectations. By doing fieldwork and discussing methods for analyzing data, I realized that I would much rather be in a lab analyzing fossils and other finds instead of being in the field. The fieldwork, especially for archaeology/biological anthropology, was incredible but very labor-intensive. I liked that the course exposed us to all sorts of methods to use in and out of the field because it set my expectations for what a future in these subjects could look like.
The course was different from my expectations, but it was still a very interesting, useful course. I expected the course to focus entirely on paleoecologies and biological anthropology, but the course included many elements of current ecologies and recent archaeology. I didn’t expect to be going on safaris and discussing living animal biologies so much.
My absolute favorite part of this course was visiting dig sites and learning about biological anthropology. Participating in an excavation was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for me, and I will most likely never get to do something like that ever again. My least favorite part of this course was the sleep deprivation. During the first half of the trip, we had maybe around four hours of sleep every night, and everyone got ill in some way, most likely because our bodies were so weak from having had no sleep that they couldn’t fight of basic bacteria. Some of the activities ran so long that we would have dinner at 9 or 10 pm and then presentations until after midnight, which was too much. The scheduling should have allowed for us to heal our bodies and take a break every once in a while.
Here are three surprising facts I learned from this trip:
- Humans developed noses like we have today in order to increase the amount of warm air we were ingesting. We are endurance runners and can therefore outrun any four-legged creature in the long run, so we needed our noses to benefit this type of running as much as possible.
- How to analyze biomarkers in soil. One must extract and isolate organic molecules (most likely hydrocarbons) and then run basic laboratory tests on them (GC-MS) in order to determine their identities.
- I learned how to identify carnivore and hominid modifications to bones and the difference between green breakage and dry breakage. There are four major types of carnivore modifications to bones, and cut marks look very different under a magnifying glass than tooth scrapes on bones due to their shapes and how prone they are to produce micro striations.
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Missing everyone a little extra today,
Kacey
