(a) Attributes of culture (b) Harappan maritime trade (c) Critical perspective on avoidance and joking relationship (d) Lethal…

(a) Attributes of Culture E.B. Tylor (1871) defined culture as "that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom" and other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society. Its main attributes are:

• Learned: culture is acquired through enculturation and socialisation, not inherited biologically; a child of any ancestry learns the culture it is raised in.
• Shared: it is held in common by a group and gives it identity, though individuals, genders and castes share it unevenly.
• Symbolic: it rests on symbols, above all language, whose meanings are arbitrary and agreed (Leslie White); the sacred cow or the mangalsutra carry meanings beyond their material form.
• Transmitted and cumulative: it passes from generation to generation and accumulates, which Kroeber called the "superorganic".
• Integrated: its parts form a system (Malinowski's functionalism), so a change in technology, for example the tractor, affects labour, family and ritual.
• Adaptive: it is humanity's main means of adapting to environments, for example the transhumance of the Gaddis or the Toda buffalo economy of the Nilgiris.
• Dynamic: it changes through innovation, diffusion and acculturation, while tending towards continuity.
• Material and non-material: it includes artefacts as well as ideas and norms (Ogburn's cultural lag describes the gap between them).
• Normative and relative: it defines right and wrong for its members, and must be understood in its own terms (Boas's cultural relativism) rather than judged ethnocentrically.

(b) Harappan Maritime Trade Mature Harappan cities (about 2600–1900 BCE) traded by sea with the Persian Gulf and Mesopotamia.

• Coastal sites: Lothal in Gujarat, with a large brick basin interpreted by S.R. Rao as a dockyard (some scholars see it as a reservoir), a warehouse and bead workshops; Sutkagen-dor and Sotka Koh on the Makran coast; Balakot near Karachi; and Kuntasi and Dholavira in Kutch.
• Mesopotamian texts: they name a land called Meluhha, generally identified with the Indus region. Sargon of Akkad (about 2300 BCE) boasted that ships from Meluhha, Magan and Dilmun moored at his capital Agade, and later texts list Meluhhan carnelian, ivory, timber, gold and a "Meluhha village" in Mesopotamia.
• Archaeological finds abroad: Indus seals, cubical chert weights and long etched carnelian beads at Ur, Kish and Susa; Indus pottery and objects at Ras al-Jinz and other sites in Oman (Magan); and Indus-style weights and seals in Bahrain and Failaka (Dilmun).
• Finds in India: a Persian Gulf-type circular seal at Lothal, and boat depictions on seals and terracotta models.
• Goods: exports included carnelian and agate beads, shell, ivory, timber, cotton, copper objects and perhaps grain; imports included copper from Oman, tin, silver and possibly wool. Lapis lazuli came overland from Badakhshan through the Harappan outpost at Shortughai.
• Organisation: standardised weights and seals suggest organised merchant groups (Kenoyer, Possehl), and Dilmun acted as an entrepôt. The trade declined after about 1900 BCE with de-urbanisation, as references to Meluhha fade from Mesopotamian texts.

(c) Critical Perspective on Avoidance and Joking Relationships Avoidance relationships require restraint, respect and physical or verbal distance between certain kin, typically affines, such as a son-in-law and mother-in-law. Joking relationships allow, or even require, teasing, obscenity and familiarity, for example with a wife's younger sister or between grandparents and grandchildren.

• Radcliffe-Brown (1940, 1949): both arise where a relationship combines conjunction and disjunction, as when marriage links a man to his wife's kin, whose interests diverge from his. Such a relationship could produce conflict, and society stabilises it either through extreme respect (avoidance) or through "permitted disrespect" (joking).
• Indian examples: in North Indian Hindu kinship (described by Irawati Karve), a wife jokes freely with her husband's younger brother (devar) but avoids and veils before his elder brother (jeth) and father-in-law, and joking with the wife's sisters (sali) is common.

Critiques:

• Functionalism explains too little: it assumes that such customs exist because they reduce tension, but does not show that tension exists or explain why particular societies choose avoidance rather than joking.
• Static and ahistorical: it neglects meaning and change. In urban families, veiling and avoidance are relaxing.
• Other explanations: Freud saw mother-in-law avoidance as a defence against incestuous attraction; Tylor linked it to post-marital residence; Mary Douglas treated jokes as "anti-rites" that express the social structure they subvert.
• Gender and power: feminist anthropologists point out that the burden of avoidance (veiling, silence, restricted movement) falls mostly on young wives, so it expresses patriarchal hierarchy and the subordination of the incoming bride rather than a neutral balance, while joking can carry sexual harassment disguised as custom.
• Wider joking relationships: joking between clans or ethnic groups (for example in West Africa) shows the concept stretches beyond kinship. The relationships remain useful for seeing how kinship regulates behaviour, but they must be read with attention to power, meaning and change.

(d) Lethal and Sublethal Genes

• Lethal genes cause the death of the organism before it reaches reproductive age, often in the embryo, so their carriers leave no offspring. Most are recessive lethals, killing only homozygotes. Dominant lethals, which kill even heterozygotes, are removed in the first generation unless they act late.
• Classic example: the yellow coat allele A^Y in mice (Cuénot, 1905) is dominant for colour but recessive lethal. Crossing two yellow mice gives 2 yellow : 1 non-yellow instead of 3:1, because A^Y A^Y embryos die. The creeper fowl (Cp) and Dexter "bulldog" calves are similar livestock examples.
• Human examples: Tay-Sachs disease (a recessive lethal, commoner in Ashkenazi Jews), and β-thalassaemia major or sickle cell anaemia in the past or without treatment.
• Sublethal (semilethal) genes kill a proportion of carriers, more than half but not all, before reproduction, or greatly reduce viability. Subvital genes reduce viability less (under 50% mortality). Examples are haemophilia before modern treatment and sickle cell anaemia in untreated populations; medical care shifts genes from lethal towards sublethal or subvital.
• Population significance: lethal and sublethal genes keep a "genetic load" in populations. They are maintained by recurrent mutation, genetic drift in small isolated or endogamous groups, or heterozygote advantage. The sickle cell allele (HbS) persists in malarial areas because carriers (HbAS) resist falciparum malaria (balanced polymorphism, Allison); in India it is common among tribal groups of central and southern India. Inbreeding and consanguinity raise the chance of homozygosity, which is why genetic counselling matters in such communities.

(e) Haemoglobin in Health and Disease

• Health: haemoglobin is the iron-containing tetrameric protein of red cells that carries oxygen from lungs to tissues and part of the CO₂ back. Normal adult blood contains about 97% HbA (α₂β₂), 2–3.5% HbA₂ (α₂δ₂) and under 1% HbF (α₂γ₂). Normal levels are about 13–17 g/dL in men and 12–15 g/dL in women.
• Adaptation: populations differ in their responses to altitude. Andeans have higher haemoglobin, while Tibetans maintain relatively normal levels with better oxygen use, linked to EPAS1 gene variants, a classic case of genetic adaptation.

Haemoglobinopathies:

• Sickle cell (HbS): a single substitution (β⁶ glutamic acid → valine) makes deoxygenated HbS polymerise, so red cells sickle. Homozygotes suffer haemolytic anaemia, painful vaso-occlusive crises, infections and early death. In India the HbS gene is common among tribal communities of central, western and southern India (such as Gond, Bhil, Pawara, Baiga and Irula), with carrier rates often of 10–30%.
• β-thalassaemia: reduced β-chain synthesis. Carriers make up about 3–4% of Indians overall and more among Sindhis, Punjabis, Gujaratis (such as the Lohanas), Bengalis and some tribes. Thalassaemia major needs lifelong transfusion.
• HbE: common in the North-East (Assam, Tripura), where it is mild alone but severe with β-thalassaemia (HbE/β-thalassaemia). HbD Punjab is found in the north-west.
• Anthropological significance: the geographical overlap of HbS, HbE, thalassaemia and G6PD deficiency with historical malaria supports Haldane's malaria hypothesis of natural selection. Such markers have also been used to trace population affinities.
• Public health: nutritional anaemia remains widespread (NFHS-5, 2019–21: 57% of women aged 15–49 anaemic). Diagnosis uses the solubility test, electrophoresis and HPLC. India's National Sickle Cell Anaemia Elimination Mission (launched 2023) aims to screen about 7 crore people up to age 40 in tribal-dominated states, issue genetic status cards and provide counselling and care, aiming to end transmission by 2047.