How Our Anatomy Affects Human Culture and Behavior

¶ … Anatomy Affects Human Culture and Behavior The human anatomy plays an extremely important part in human culture and behavior. One of the indisputable facets about human anatomy that helps to distinguish it from that of other living creatures is the structure and build of our lungs and respiratory systems. Our respiratory systems are considerably different from those of amphibians and from conventional sea-dwelling creatures such as fish and whales.

Because of the way our bodies are designed to intake oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide (Johnson), we are land dwellers whereas the other mentioned species have anatomies that make them adaptive to water. Sea creatures have certain aspects of their anatomies that make it essential for them to stay within water to derive oxygen for living. People, however, are the exact opposite and need fresh air -- which is impossible to procure underwater.

What is significant about these facts is that these anatomical constructs have substantially impacted the way humans interact with one another. Due to the restraints of the human anatomy which pertain to the respiratory system, people have placed a premium on land. One can analyze the annals of history as they pertain to anthropology and see how through the time since the advent of mankind and civilization, people have routinely valued, fought over, and sought to protect land.

If people had a different anatomical structure and could breathe and exist underwater, for example, many of the wars that have been fought over territory and the great deal of emphasis people put on land would not have taken place. Culturally, the emphasis on land is of inestimable worth for the simple fact that a people's land helps to define that group's culture. People are routinely grouped into different nationalities, each of which has different land and substantially different cultural practices.

These cultural practices encompass varying areas of food, clothing, speech, and other customs that are indigenous to certain groups of people. The implication in analyzing this aspect of culture is that if people had a different type of anatomy, they would also have different areas of cultural emphasis. Another fairly important aspect of human anatomy that is intrinsically related to human behavior is cognition. From an anatomical perspective, humans have large brains. The brains in people are certainly larger than that of most animals, with some notable exceptions.

However, the size and the intricacy of the human brain plays a very crucial aspect in the sort of intellectual capacity that people have been endowed with. Because people have large brains (certainly as compared to most of the other animal and insect kingdom), they are imbued with an intellectual capacity that enables them to transcend mere physical desire and its needs and to pursue various facets of intellectual pursuits.

In fact, one of the theories regarding the large size of human brains posits the viewpoint that, "the evolution of the human brain was driven by our increasingly complex social relationships" (Balter). Due in part to the size of their brains, many animals simply live from one instinct to the next -- looking to feed, pass waste, obtain shelter, etc. Humans, however, have brain sizes that are large enough and developed.