(a) What is acclimatization? Discuss adaptive responses to high altitude and cold climate. (20 marks) (b) How are the cases of…

(a) Acclimatization; Adaptive Responses to High Altitude and Cold Acclimatization is a reversible physiological adjustment of an individual to a changed natural environment during life, over days to weeks. It differs from genetic adaptation, which is inherited and arises over generations, and from acclimation, which is adjustment to a single stress under laboratory conditions.

High altitude (hypobaric hypoxia): within hours, ventilation rises (hypoxic ventilatory response), heart rate and cardiac output increase, and erythropoietin begins raising red cell count and haemoglobin over weeks (erythrocytosis). Red-cell 2,3-BPG rises, helping oxygen release to tissues, and capillary density grows. Children raised at altitude (Andeans) develop larger chest and lung volumes. Groups differ: Andeans show high haemoglobin, while Tibetans and Sherpas keep haemoglobin only modestly raised, with high resting ventilation and good blood flow, linked to EPAS1 and EGLN1 variants (HIF pathway) that point to genetic adaptation. Ladakhi and Lahaul-Spiti groups show Himalayan patterns. Failure causes acute mountain sickness and oedema.

Cold: skin vasoconstriction conserves heat, with counter-current heat exchange between arteries and veins in the limbs. Intermittent cold-induced vasodilation (Lewis's hunting response) protects the fingers; the Inuit show it strongly. Shivering and non-shivering thermogenesis (brown fat) raise heat output, and the basal metabolic rate rises in the Inuit and Alacaluf. Body form follows Bergmann's rule (stocky bodies) and Allen's rule (short limbs), which are genetic, not acclimatization.

(b) Resolving Disputed Paternity: Recent Techniques Early methods used ABO, Rh, MN and serum-protein or HLA typing. They could only exclude a man, as many men share a blood group, and so could not prove paternity.

DNA profiling now settles most cases. Jeffreys (1985) introduced fingerprinting using VNTR/RFLP. Present practice uses PCR amplification of short tandem repeat (STR) loci, read by capillary electrophoresis. The child must inherit one allele at each locus from the father. A non-matching allele excludes him; if all match, a Paternity Index is computed per locus and multiplied into a Combined Paternity Index, giving a probability usually above 99.9%. Y-STR typing checks male-line relationship, mitochondrial DNA traces the maternal line, and SNP panels or next-generation sequencing serve degraded samples.

Samples (blood, buccal swab) need a strict chain of custody, and labs include the CFSL, State FSLs and CDFD Hyderabad. Under the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023, expert opinion is admissible under Section 39 (formerly Section 45, Evidence Act, 1872), and the presumption of legitimacy lies in Section 116 (formerly Section 112). Courts allow a DNA test only where needed, as in Goutam Kundu (1993) and Nandlal Wasudeo Badwaik (2014), weighing the child's privacy.

(c) Critical Evaluation of Lewis Morgan's Classification of Family In Systems of Consanguinity (1871) and Ancient Society (1877), Morgan proposed five successive family forms, each tied to a marriage form: consanguine (brother-sister group marriage), punaluan (group marriage of sisters to husbands), syndyasmian (pairing marriage), patriarchal (polygyny) and monogamous. He placed them within the stages of savagery, barbarism and civilization, and derived the sequence from kinship terminology, reading classificatory terms as survivals of group marriage.

Strengths: it was the first systematic comparative study of kinship; it showed kinship terminology as valid evidence, and it influenced Engels' Origin of the Family (1884).

Weaknesses: Boas and historical particularists rejected unilineal stages; Kroeber showed that terms reflect language and classification, not past marriage; Malinowski and the functionalists rejected survivals and stressed function in the present; Westermarck denied primitive promiscuity; Murdock showed the nuclear family in all 250 societies he studied; and there is no archaeological evidence of consanguine group marriage. The assumption that monogamy is the highest stage is ethnocentric.

Modern kinship study sees family forms as responses to ecology, economy and culture, as in Indian joint, nuclear, matrilineal and polyandrous families, not a ladder.