DEFINITION AND

HISTORY OF
ANTHROPOLOGY

HOLY BLESS L. ADOLFO

Anthropology
In Greek
Anthropos- means human logos-the study of
Definition of Anthropology
• The study of human societies and cultures and their development and
human biological and physiological characteristics and their evolution.
• The study to see how human groups lived hundreds or thousands of years
ago and what was important to them.
• The study of various aspects of humans within past and present societies.
The Four Subfields of
anthropology

HOLY BLESS L. ADOLFO

 Archaeology
• Archaeologists study human culture by analysing the objects people have
made.
• They studied dug-up pottery tools, and they map the locations of houses,
trash pits, and burials in order to learn about the daily lives of a people.
• They also analyse bones and teeth to gain information on a people’s diet and
the diseases they suffered.
• Like other areas of anthropology, archaeologists are concerned with explaining
differences and similarities in human societies across space and time.
 Biological Anthropology
• Biological anthropologists seek to understand how humans adapt to different
environments, what causes disease and early death, and how humans evolved from other
animals. And also how biological development of a human occur.
• To do this, they study humans (living and dead), other primates such as monkeys and apes,
and human ancestors (fossils).
• They are also interested in how biology and culture work together to shape our lives.
• They are interested in explaining the similarities and differences that are found among
humans across the world.
 Sociocultural Anthropology
• Study about norms and values of a society.
• Sociocultural anthropologists explore how people in different places live and
understand the world around them.
• They want to know what people think is important and the rules they make about
how they should interact with one another. Even within one country or society,
people may disagree about how they should speak, dress, eat, or treat others.
• The best way to learn about diverse peoples and cultures is to spend time living
among them and to understand the perspectives, practices, and social organization of
other groups whose values and lifeways may be very different from their own.
 Linguistic Anthropology
• Linguistic anthropologists study the many ways people communicate across the globe.
• They are interested in how language is linked to how we see the world and how we relate to
each other.
• This can mean looking at how language works in all its different forms, and how it changes
over time. It also means looking at what we believe about language and communication, and
how we use language in our lives.
• This includes the ways we use language to build and share meaning, to form or change
identities, and to make or change relations of power. For linguistic anthropologists, language
and communication are keys to how we make society and culture
Famous Anthropologist

HOLY BLESS L. ADOLFO

 Herodotus
• He was an ancient Greek historian and
geographer from the Greek city of
Halicarnassus, part of the Persian
Empire.
• He is known for having written the
Histories – a detailed account of the
Greco-Persian Wars.
• Herodotus was the first writer to
perform systematic investigation of
historical events.
Franz Boas
• “Father of modern Anthropology”
and the “Father of American
Anthropology”
• Boas established the theory of
cultural relativism
• For Boas, the object of anthropology
was to understand the way in which
culture conditioned people to
understand and interact with the
world
Margaret Mead
• Mead was best known for her studies of the non-
literate peoples of Oceania, with regard to various
aspects of psychology and culture—the cultural
conditioning of sexual behaviour, natural character,
and culture change.
• She was most notable for her topics as women’s
rights, child rearing, sexual morality, nuclear
proliferation, race relations, drug abuse,
population control, environmental pollution, and
world hunger.
• One of the most famous and controversial
anthropologists of the 20th century ,who gained
popular and academic success following the
publication of her first book, coming of age in
Samoa, in 1928.
Zora Neale Hurston
• The short stories and novels of Zora
Neale Hurston was the only black
women student, before being
awarded a prestigious Guggenheim
fellowship and conducting fieldwork
throughout the Caribbean and
central America.
• Their eyes were watching god,
considered to be Hurston’s
masterpiece, was written while she
was conducting anthropological field
work in Haiti.
 HISTORY OF
ANTHROPOLOGY
Throughout history, the study of
anthropology has reflected our evolving
relationships with other people and
cultures. These relationships are deeply
connected to political, economic, and
social forces present at different points
in history.
 5 TH
CENTURY
The study of history was an important aspect of ancient
Greek and roman cultures, which focused on using reason
and inquiry to understand and create just societies.
Herodotus, a Greek historian, travelled through regions of
Libya, Ukraine, Egypt, and Syria during the 5th century b.c.e.
Herodotus to understand the origins of conflict between
Greeks and Persians he visited and detailed observations
are considered one of the world’s first exercises in
ethnography.
 15th century-16th century
The establishment of exchange routes was also an important development in expanding an
interest in societies and cultures. Zhang Qian, Zhang’s diplomacy and interest in central Asia
helped spur the development of the silk road, one of history’s greatest networks for trade,
communication, and exchange. The silk road provided a vital link between Asia, east Africa, and
eastern Europe for thousands of years.

Medieval scholars and explorers, who travelled the world to develop new trading partnerships,
continued to keep accounts of cultures they encountered. Marco polo, a venetian merchant,
wrote the first detailed descriptions of central Asia and china, where he traveled for 24 years.
Polo’s writings greatly elaborated Europe’s early understandings of Asia, its peoples, and
practices.

Ibn Battuta travelled much more extensively than Marco polo. Battuta was a Moroccan scholar
who regularly travelled throughout North Africa and the Middle East. His expeditions, as far
east as India and China, and as far south as Kenya, are recorded in his memoir, the rihla.
 18Th century
Many scholars argue that modern anthropology developed during the age of
enlightenment, a cultural movement of 18th century Europe that focused on
the power of reason to advance society and knowledge. Enlightenment
scholars aimed to understand human behaviour and society as phenomena
Europeans applied the principles of natural history to document the
inhabitants of newly colonized territories and other indigenous cultures they
met.
Colonial scholars studied these cultures as “human primitives,” inferior to
the advanced societies of Europe.
These studies justified the colonial agenda by describing foreign territories
and peoples as needing European reason and control. Today, we recognize
these studies as racist.
 19Th century
Colonial thought deeply affected the work of 19th-century anthropologists. They
followed two main theories in their studies: evolutionism and diffusionism.
Evolutionists argued that all societies develop in a predictable, universal sequence.
They placed non-eurocentric colonies into the “savagery” stage and only considered
European powers to be in the “civilizations” stage. Evolutionists believed that all
societies would reach the civilization stage when they adopted the traits of these
powers.
Diffusionists believed all societies stemmed from a set of “culture circles” that spread,
or diffused, their practices throughout the world. W.j. perry, a British anthropologist,
believed all aspects of world cultures—agriculture, domesticated animals, pottery,
civilization itself—developed from a single culture circle: Egypt.
Diffusionists and evolutionists both argued that all cultures could be compared to one
another. They also believed certain cultures (mostly their own) were superior to others.
 20Th century

These theories were sharply criticized by 20th-century

anthropologists who strived to understand particular
cultures in those cultures’ own terms, not in
comparison to European traditions. The theory of
cultural relativism, supported by pioneering German-
American anthropologist Franz Boas, argued that one
could only understand a person’s beliefs and behaviors
in the context of his or her own culture.
 ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY
New technologies and emerging fields of study enable
anthropologists to uncover and analyse more complex
information about peoples and cultures.
Archaeologists and biological anthropologists use CT
scanners, which combine a series of x-ray views taken
from different angles, to produce cross-sectional
images of the bones and soft tissues inside human
remains.
 Zahi Hawass
A former national geographic explorer-in-
residence, has used CT scans on ancient Egyptian
mummies to learn more about patterns of disease,
health, and mortality in ancient Egypt.
The field of genetics uses elements of
anthropology and biology. Genetics is the study of
how characteristics are passed down from one
generation to the next. Geneticists study DNA, a
chemical in every living cell of every organism. DNA
studies suggest all human beings descend from a
group of ancestors, some of whom began to
migrate out of Central Africa about 60,000 years
ago.
 Michael Wesch
A national geographic emerging explorer, is
studying how new media platforms and
digital technologies, such as facebook and
youtube, are changing how people
communicate and relate to one another. As
a “digital ethnographer,” Wesch’s findings
about our relationships to new media are
often presented as videos or interactive web
experiences that incorporate hundreds of
participant-observers. .
Anthropologists began to criticize the discipline’s
focus on cultures from the developing world.
These anthropologists turned to analyzing the
practices of everyday life in the developed world.

Anthropologists also apply their skills and tools to

understand how humans create new social
connections and cultural identities.