(a) Discuss historical particularism as a critical development to the classical evolutionism. 20 marks (b) Describe the…

(a) Historical Particularism as a Critical Development to Classical Evolutionism Classical evolutionism: 19th-century evolutionists such as E.B. Tylor (Primitive Culture, 1871), L.H. Morgan (Ancient Society, 1877) and J.G. Frazer held that all societies pass through the same fixed stages. Morgan's sequence ran from savagery through barbarism to civilisation, and Frazer's from magic through religion to science. Their assumptions were the psychic unity of mankind, independent invention of similar traits, and a comparative method that arranged customs from many societies into a ladder of progress, with Western society at the top. They relied mostly on travellers' and missionaries' accounts ("armchair anthropology").

Boas's critique: Franz Boas's paper "The Limitations of the Comparative Method of Anthropology" (1896) launched historical particularism.

• Similar traits need not have similar causes: masks or clans may arise in different ways in different places (convergence), so comparing them out of context proves nothing. Goldenweiser's "principle of limited possibilities" explains such convergence.
• Each culture has its own history: a culture is the product of its particular past, shaped by environment, contact and borrowing, so it must be studied historically before any generalisation is attempted.
• Diffusion matters: much of any culture is borrowed, so parallel stages are unlikely.
• Inductive method: intensive fieldwork and the use of native language texts, as in Boas's work among the Inuit of Baffin Island (1883–84) and the Kwakiutl of British Columbia, replaced armchair speculation.
• Cultural relativism: each culture must be understood in its own terms, not ranked on a scale from "primitive" to "civilised".
• Against racial determinism: Boas's study of immigrants' children (1911) showed that head form changed within a generation in a new environment, undermining racial typology and separating race, language and culture.

Development by his students: Robert Lowie (Primitive Society, 1920) rejected Morgan's stages point by point, calling civilisation a "thing of shreds and patches". Clark Wissler and A.L. Kroeber developed the culture area and age-area concepts, and Kroeber the "superorganic". Ruth Benedict and Margaret Mead founded the culture and personality school, and Edward Sapir linked language and culture.

Evaluation: particularism made fieldwork, relativism and historical care central to anthropology and discredited racist evolutionary schemes. Critics, however, called it atomistic, a collection of traits without theory, and unwilling to generalise; Marvin Harris criticised its "historical particularism" as anti-scientific. From the 1940s, Leslie White's universal evolution, Julian Steward's multilinear evolution and cultural ecology, and Sahlins and Service's specific and general evolution revived evolutionary questions on a sounder empirical basis.

(b) Food Production and Domestication at Mehrgarh Site: Mehrgarh lies on the Kachi plain at the foot of the Bolan Pass in Balochistan, Pakistan, on the western edge of the Indus plains. It was excavated by Jean-François Jarrige and Catherine Jarrige (1974–1986) and shows a continuous sequence from about 7000 BCE to about 2600 BCE.

Evidence of food production

• Period I (aceramic Neolithic, about 7000–5500 BCE): grain impressions and charred remains show domesticated six-row barley (hulled and naked, the dominant crop), einkorn, emmer and free-threshing (bread or durum) wheat, with jujube and dates.
• Tools and storage: sickles of flint blades set in bitumen, grinding stones, and compartmented mud-brick buildings interpreted as granaries.
• Cotton: mineralised cotton fibres preserved in a copper bead from about the 6th millennium BCE, and cotton seeds in Period II, are among the earliest evidence of cotton use in the world.
• Period II (about 5500 BCE onwards): pottery appears, with larger storage structures and craft specialisation.

Evidence of animal domestication

• From wild to domestic: in the earliest levels bones of wild animals (gazelle, swamp deer, nilgai, onager, wild sheep, goat, cattle and water buffalo) dominate; over Period I the share of domestic goat, sheep and cattle rises steeply, reaching the great majority of the fauna.
• Zebu: Richard Meadow's studies show a progressive reduction in the size of cattle and sheep, a hallmark of domestication. Zebu (Bos indicus) was domesticated locally in this region, not imported, as genetic studies also confirm.
• Burials: human burials contain whole young goats and ornaments of marine shell, lapis lazuli and turquoise, showing the value of livestock and long-distance exchange.

Significance

• Mehrgarh is the earliest known farming village in South Asia, showing that farming began here soon after its beginnings in West Asia.
• It combines West Asian crops (wheat, barley) and animals (sheep, goat) with local domestication of zebu cattle and early use of cotton, showing local innovation rather than simple diffusion.
• Its continuous sequence of copper working, pottery, bead-making and planned settlements leads to the Early Harappan and Harappan civilisation, so the roots of the Indus civilisation lie in the western borderlands.
• Drilled human molars from about 7000–5500 BP (Coppa et al., 2006) are the earliest evidence of dentistry, showing skilled bead-drilling technology.

(c) Lifestyle Diseases and their Impact on Human Health Lifestyle diseases are chronic non-communicable diseases (NCDs), such as type 2 diabetes, hypertension, coronary heart disease, stroke, obesity, some cancers and chronic lung disease, linked to diet, physical inactivity, tobacco, alcohol, stress and pollution.

Scale in India: NCDs account for about two-thirds of deaths. The ICMR-INDIAB study (2023) estimated diabetes prevalence at 11.4% (about 10 crore people), prediabetes at 15.3%, hypertension at 35.5% and generalised obesity at 28.6%, with higher rates in urban areas and richer states but rising fast in rural areas.

Anthropological explanations

• Epidemiological transition (Omran, 1971): as infectious diseases decline, degenerative and man-made diseases become the main causes of death. India now faces a double burden of both.
• Nutrition transition (Popkin): diets shift from coarse grains, pulses and vegetables to refined cereals, sugar, fats and processed foods, together with less physical labour.
• Evolutionary mismatch: human bodies evolved for active foraging and irregular food supply. Neel's "thrifty gene" hypothesis (1962) suggests genes that stored energy efficiently became harmful with plentiful food. The "thrifty phenotype" (Barker, Hales) links foetal undernutrition to later diabetes, and Yajnik's "thin-fat Indian baby" shows how low birth weight with high body fat predisposes Indians to diabetes at a younger age and lower body mass index.
• Tribal groups: populations entering the market economy, such as some North-East and Nilgiri tribes, show rising blood pressure and obesity as diets and work change.

Impact on health: premature death and disability (loss of DALYs), complications such as blindness, kidney failure, amputations and stroke, high out-of-pocket costs that push families into poverty, loss of productivity in working ages, and a heavy load on health systems.

Critical view: the term "lifestyle" can wrongly blame individual choice. Diets and activity are shaped by poverty, urban design, long working hours, food marketing (commercial determinants of health), air pollution and stress, while the poor increasingly carry the burden. Prevention therefore needs structural action as well as behaviour change. Examples are the National Programme for Prevention and Control of NCDs (screening of people over 30 for diabetes, hypertension and common cancers), FSSAI's 2% limit on industrial trans fats, Eat Right India, Fit India, tobacco control, and promotion of millets, alongside culturally sensitive health education.