UPHESC Assistant Professor Anthropology 2025 PYQs

Concept: Cephalic index = (maximum head breadth / maximum head length) × 100, used to classify head form.

1. Dolichocephalic < 75.9, Mesocephalic 76–80.9, Brachycephalic 81–85.4, Hyperbrachy ≥ 85.5.
2. Facial index – face form; Nasal index – nose form; Cormic index – trunk/stature ratio.

Short trick: Cephal = head.

Concept: Oraon clans are totemic: Kujur (a creeper/plant), Tirkey (a bird), Ekka (tortoise), Lakra (tiger), Minj (fish), Tigga (monkey), Kerketta (bird), etc.

1. The Kujur clan takes the Kunjar/Kujur plant as its totem and must not harm it.
2. S. C. Roy described these in The Oraons of Chota Nagpur.

Short trick: Kujur, Ekka, Tirkey, Lakra, Minj = Oraon surnames = totems.

Concept: Aegyptopithecus zeuxis (≈ 33–30 mya, Fayum, Egypt; described by Elwyn Simons) is regarded as the 'dawn ape', ancestral to the hominoid line (apes and man).

1. It is a catarrhine with 2.1.2.3 dentition and Y-5-like molar cusps foreshadowing Dryopithecus.
2. Lorises and lemurs are prosimians — not its line.

Short trick: Aegyptopithecus = dawn ape → Dryopithecus → apes.

Concept: Traditional political heads of Indian tribes.

1. Vasavo/Vasava – Bhil (Vasava is the Bhil headman/section) → IV.
2. Pedda – headman of a Maria Gond village → I.
3. Pedda Kapu – village headman of the Konda Reddis (Haimendorf) → II.
4. Gamang/Gamyung – Saora village chief → III.

Short trick: Saora Gomang, Reddi Pedda Kapu, Maria Pedda, Bhil Vasava.

Concept: Excavations by Édouard Piette at Mas d'Azil (1887) revealed the Azilian culture, filling the 'hiatus' between the Palaeolithic and Neolithic — after this the term Mesolithic came into regular use.

1. Azilian: painted pebbles, flat harpoons, microliths.
2. St. Acheul, Abbeville, Chelles – Lower Palaeolithic hand-axe sites.

Short trick: Mas d'Azil → Azilian → filled the gap → Mesolithic.

Concept: Sir William Jones (1786) showed the kinship of Sanskrit with Greek and Latin, praising Sanskrit as 'more perfect than the Greek'; this linguistic idea became the basis of the 'Aryan race' theory.

1. Later writers (Max Müller and others) turned the language family into a superior 'Aryan race'.
2. Tilak – The Arctic Home in the Vedas (Arctic origin), not superiority via Sanskrit.

Short trick: Jones 1786 – Sanskrit link – Aryan idea.

Concept: Raymond Firth (Primitive Polynesian Economy, 1939) held that economic principles of choice and maximisation apply to all societies — the Formalist position (with Herskovits, LeClair, Schneider).

1. Substantivists – Karl Polanyi, George Dalton, Marshall Sahlins.
2. Culture morphology – Leo Frobenius.

Short trick: Firth & Herskovits – Formalists; Polanyi & Dalton – Substantivists.

Concept: In the Mediterranean (Italian) stage sequence, the Versilian is the latest stage, at the end of the Würm glaciation and the transition to the post-glacial.

1. Order: Sicilian/Calabrian (early) → Milazzian → Tyrrhenian (Riss–Würm interglacial) → Monastirian → Versilian (late/post-Würm).
2. So among the four Alpine glaciations (Günz, Mindel, Riss, Würm), Versilian fauna relates to the Würm.

Short trick: Last stage (Versilian) ↔ last glaciation (Würm).

Concept: Arnold van Gennep coined 'rites of passage' (Les Rites de Passage, 1909).

1. Three phases: separation (pre-liminal), transition (liminal), incorporation (post-liminal).
2. Victor Turner later elaborated liminality and communitas; Mauss – The Gift.

Short trick: Van Gennep: Separation – Liminal – Incorporation.

Concept: 'Jhum' is the north-eastern name of slash-and-burn cultivation, practised by the Nagas and other NE tribes.

1. Baiga – Bewar; Bhuiya/Juang (Odisha) – Podu/Dahi; Maria/Gond – Penda; Kerala – Ponam.
2. So Jhum = Naga.

Short trick: Jhum – North-East; Bewar – Baiga; Podu – Odisha/Andhra.

Concept: Burzahom is a Neolithic site near Srinagar, Kashmir (excavated by T. N. Khazanchi, 1960–71).

1. Features: pit dwellings, bone tools, dogs buried with masters, polished harvesters.
2. Gufkral is another Kashmir Neolithic site.

Short trick: Burzahom – pit houses – dog burial – Kashmir.

Concept: Dental formula (I.C.P.M per quadrant).

1. Old World monkeys, apes and man: 2.1.2.3 / 2.1.2.3 = 32 teeth → Statement I true.
2. Tarsius: 2.1.3.3 upper / 1.1.3.3 lower = 34 teeth (only one lower incisor) → Statement II false.
3. New World monkeys: 2.1.3.3 / 2.1.3.3 = 36.

Short trick: Catarrhines 2123; Platyrrhines 2133; Tarsier 2133/1133.

Concept: Voluntary agencies active in tribal welfare include the Bharatiya Adim Jati Sevak Sangh (founded 1948 by A. V. Thakkar 'Thakkar Bapa'), the Indian Red Cross Society and the Social Work and Research Centre (Barefoot College, Tilonia).

1. Rashtriya Mazdoor Sangh is a labour/trade-union body, not a tribal-welfare organisation.
2. So b, c, d.

Short trick: Thakkar Bapa's Adim Jati Sevak Sangh is the key name.

Concept: Dizygotic (fraternal) twinning results from double ovulation and varies with population, maternal age, parity and heredity.

1. I false – DZ twinning is highest in Negroids (Yoruba ≈ 45/1000) and lowest in Mongoloids.
2. II true – rises with maternal age (peaks ≈ 35–39, higher FSH).
3. III false – it increases with parity.
4. IV true – runs in families (maternal line).

Short trick: Africans highest, Mongoloids lowest; older mother, more births = more DZ twins.

Concept: Upper Palaeolithic (Franco-Cantabrian) cave art – Lascaux, Altamira, Chauvet.

1. a true – mainly large herbivores: bison, horse, deer, mammoth, aurochs.
2. b false – paintings lie deep inside dark caves, far from the entrance (hence magico-religious interpretations).
3. c true – figures are often painted one over another (superimposition).
4. d true – no ground line or consistent orientation; animals appear at any angle, even upside down.

Short trick: Deep, dark, big beasts, overlapping, no ground line.

Concept: Robert Ardrey (The Social Contract, 1970), drawing on Wynne-Edwards, argued that animals and primitive societies regulate their numbers (territory, infanticide, taboos) well before food becomes a limiting factor.

1. Doubleday – abundance of food lowers fertility.
2. Spencer – fertility falls as individuation rises.
3. De Castro – hunger (protein deficiency) raises fertility.

Short trick: Ardrey – territory & self-regulation, not food.

Concept: The Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to the Torres Strait (1898) was led by A. C. Haddon; Sidney H. Ray was its linguist.

1. Rivers – psychology & the genealogical method; Seligman – medicine/ethnography; Anthony Wilkin – photographer; also C. S. Myers and W. McDougall (psychology).

Short trick: Ray studied language (rays of speech!).

Concept: Evolutionist schemes of religion.

1. Lubbock: the earliest stage of man was atheism (absence of any belief) → I first.
2. Frazer: the age of magic preceded the age of religion → magic before religion.
3. Tylor: animism (belief in spirits) is the minimum definition of religion and leads to organised religion.
4. Atheism → Magic → Animism → Religion = I, III, II, IV.

Short trick: Nothing → Magic → Spirits → Gods.

Concept: Francis Galton introduced the twin method in 'The History of Twins' (1875) to separate nature from nurture.

1. Comparison of MZ vs DZ concordance estimates heritability.
2. Garrod – inborn errors of metabolism; Hooton – physical anthropology; Morton – genetic epidemiology.

Short trick: Galton – 'nature vs nurture' – twins (1875).

Concept: Work out each system separately.

1. ABO: mother OO × father AA or AO → child A or O (never AB) → option A out.
2. MN: mother NN × father MN → child N or MN (never M) → option D out.
3. Rh: mother Rh+ (DD or Dd) × father dd → child Rh+ always possible; Rh– possible if mother is Dd.
4. So both 'O, N, Rh+' and 'O, N, Rh–' could be conceived — two options are correct as printed.

Short trick: Mother O-N, father A-MN: child only A/O and N/MN.