•Anthropology is the study of mankind or human kind.
•The term Anthropology comes from the Greek wordAnthropos which means “man or human” and logoswhich means “the study of.”
•Anthropologists study various aspects about humans
•Anthropology are interested in where, when, and how did humansappear on earth.
•How and why they have changed since then.
•How and why modern human populations vary in certain physicalfeatures.
•How and why societies in the past and present have varied in theircustomary ideas and practices.
•Applied and practicing anthropologists put anthropological
methods, information, and results to use, in efforts to solvepractical problems.
•One different between anthropology and other disciplinesconcerned with humans is that anthropologists travel tostudy various groups of people or do archeological digs toanswer questions about mankind.
•Anthropology is concerned explicitly and directly with allvarieties of people throughout the world, as well aspeople from all periods. Beginning with the immediateancestors of humans.
•Anthropologists trace the development of humans untilthe present.
•In the past anthropologists only concentrated on non-western cultures, today Anthropologists focus on both.
•In addition to the worldwide and historical scope ofanthropology, another distinguished feature or itsdiscipline is its holistic, or multifaceted, approach to thestudy of human beings.
•Anthropologists don’t only study all varieties of peoplebut many aspects of the human experience as well.
•the history of the area in which they live,
•the physical environment,
•the organization of family life,
•the general features of their language,
•their political and economic systems,
•their religion,
•their diet, or
•their styles of art and dress.
•In the past, individual anthropologists tried to be holisticand cover all aspects of a subject. Today, so manyinformation has been accumulated, anthropologists startto focus more on one subject or areas.
•Physical Anthropology
•Cultural Anthropology
•Archeology
•Anthropological Linguistics
•Physical (Biological) Anthropology seek the answers totwo set of questions:
•Questions about the emergence of humans and their evolution (thefocus is called human paleontology, or Paleoanthropology).
•How and why contemporary human populations vary biologically(this focus called human variation).
•In order to reconstruct human evolution, humanpaleontologists search for and study fossils of humans,prehumans, and related animals.
•In addition to using fossil records anthropologists alsouse geological information on the succession of climates,environments, and plant and animal populations.
•When reconstructing the past of humans, paleontologistsare also interested in the behavior and evolution of ourclosest relatives, other primates, such as apes, monkeysand chimpanzees.
•Anthropologists, psychologists, and biologists whospecialize in the study of primates are calledPrimatologists.
•One especially popular subject of study is thechimpanzee, which bears a close resemblance to humanbehavior and physical appearance, has a similar bloodchemistry, and is susceptible to many of the samediseases.
•Koko the gorilla
•Koko gets new Kittens
•https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fffuQ6VIOyA
•From primates study anthropologists try to findcharacteristics that are distinctly humans, as opposite tothose that might be part of the primate heritage. Withthis information, they may be able to infer what ourprehistoric ancestors were like. The inference fromprimates are checked against fossil records.
•Physical anthropologists piece together pieces bits ofinformation obtained from different sources. Theyconstruct theories that explain the changes observed inthe fossil record and then attempt to evaluate theirtheories by checking one kind of evidence against theother.
•The second major focus of physical anthropology is thestudy of human variation, investigating how and whycontemporary human populations differ in biological orphysical characteristics.
•All living people belong to one species, Homo sapiens,for all can successfully interbreed. But there are muchvariations among human population.
•Anthropologists ask questions such as:
•Why are some peoples taller than others?
•How have human populations adapted physically to theirenvironmental conditions?
•Are some peoples, such as Inuit (Eskimos), better equipped thanother peoples to endure cold?
•Does darker skin pigmentation offer special protection against thetropical sun?
•To better understand the biological variations observableamong contemporary human populations, biologicalanthropologists use the principles, concepts, andtechniques of at least three other disciplines:
•Human genetics: the study of human traits, that are inherited.
•Population biology: the study of environmental effects on, and
interaction with, population characteristics.
•Epidemiology: the study of how and why diseases affectdifferent populations in different ways.
•Cultural anthropology are interested in how populationor societies vary in their cultural features.
•To an anthropologist, the term culture refers to thecustomary ways of thinking and behaving in a particularpopulation or society.
•Archeologists seek to
•Reconstruct the daily life and customs of peoples who lived in thepast.
•Trace cultural changes and to offer possible explanations of thosechanges.
•The different between an archeologist and a historian isthat a historian deals only with societies that left writtenrecords and limited to the last 5,000 years of humanhistory. Archeologists go much farther back in time.
•Archeologists try to reconstruct history from the remainsof human cultures.
•Most Archeologists deal with prehistory, the timebefore written records.
•To understand how and why life has changed throughtime in different parts of the world, archeologists collectartifacts.
•Linguistics or the study of languages is an older disciplinethan anthropology, but the earlier linguists concentratedon the study of languages that existed for a long time.
•Anthropological linguistics concentrate on the study oflanguages that has not yet been written.
•Because language must be heard in order to be studies, itdoes not leave any traces once its speakers have died.
•Linguists interests in reconstructing the history ofunwritten languages must begin in the present, withcomparisons of contemporary languages. On the basis ofthese comparisons, they draw inferences about the kindsof change in language that may have occurred in the pastand may account for similarities and differences observedin the present.