"Western civilization did not invent anthropology. People have always been vitally interested in understanding their own behavior and the behavior of people in other, often competing groups. In this sense there are as many origins to the study of anthropology as there are people....
All science is an effort to describe and explain natural phenomena. The aim of anthropology is to describe and explain one particular natural phenomenon: Homo sapiens, the human species. (The name of the discipline is taken from the Greek anthropos, meaning "man.") Much of what anthropologists study in their investigation of the human species concerns their cultures. Broadly defined, culture is a system of shared beliefs, values, customs, behaviors, and artifacts which the members of a society use in coping with one another and with their world, and which are transmitted from one generation to generation through learning. Note that the definition includes not only patterns of behavior but also patterns of thought (shared meanings that the members attach to different phenomena), artifacts (tools, pottery, houses, machines, works of art), and the culturally transmitted skills and techniques used in making the artifacts.
Anthropological investigation involves both cross-cultural and evolutionary studies: how modern human peoples differ from and resemble one another physically and culturally, as well as how they evolved physically and culturally. In other words, anthropology takes as its subject all human peoples, across the globe and across time, in all their physical and cultural aspects, from how their teeth are shaped to how they get thier food, build their houses, and bring up their children."
[The following items are from National Geographic magazine, Vol. , No., ]
[The following items are from Archaeology magazine, January/February 200]
ARCHAEOLOGY NEWS
.
.
Get your own Free Home Page