Method
Principles and methods of growth
Growth is patterned biology under class, diet and care — Tanner’s class-gap heights are the Mains peg.
- Cephalocaudal (head → toe), proximodistal (centre → edge), continuity, sequentiality.
- Longitudinal: same children over years — rich, slow, drop-outs. Cross-sectional: many ages once — cheap, mixes cohorts.
- WHO multicentre (Brazil, Ghana, India, US, Norway, Oman): breastfed healthy children, birth to 5, global standards.
- Dunedin (New Zealand): semi-longitudinal health and behaviour across life.
Key points
Stages, puberty, menopause
- Prenatal stages through late fetal surfactant and term weight; then infancy, childhood, adolescent spurt, adulthood, senescence.
- Menarche to menopause is the fertile span. Age of menarche moves with nutrition, stress, genes (twin gaps), media and culture.
- Menopause effects: bone, skin, urogenital, mood. Kalasha bashali seclusion (Wayne Maggi, Our Women Are Free): isolation as sacred, not only oppression.
- Grandmother / mother hypotheses vs non-adaptive ‘we just outlive ovaries’ — pick one and steelman the other.
Case
Ageing and somatotype
- Senescence: DNA damage, cell death, noisy communication, inflammation.
- Kirkwood disposable-soma: energy to reproduction vs repair.
- Longevity cases: Okinawa (hara hachi bu, ikigai), Sardinia — social plus diet, not a miracle allele alone.
- Sheldon: endomorph–mesomorph–ectomorph as components, not three boxes of destiny. Heath–Carter numbers are the sports-anthro version.
Thinker
Fertility and population theories
- Fertility is not fecundity. Son preference, household form, women’s work, and coital frequency all move births.
- Malthus, An Essay on the Principle of Population: geometric people, arithmetic food, checks. It confuses fertility with fecundity; slums punch a hole in simple density stories.
- Spencer: individuation vs genesis — complexity trades against birth rates.
- Demographic transition: high-high → falling death → low-low → optional fifth decline (Japan, Korea, Germany).
WRAP Exams coaching notes for UPSC Anthropology optional. Pair with the official syllabus when you need every heading in order.