about: the social science

Anthropology (/ˌænθɹəˈpɒlədʒi/, from the Greek lang: ἄνθρωπος, anthrōpos, "human", and -λογία, -logia, "discourse", first use in English: 1593) is the study of human beings, everywhere and throughout time. Modern human beings are defined as members of the species Homo sapiens, which arose in Africa around 200,000BP (Before Present) (see Omo remains).Fact: date=April 2009 Anthropology has its intellectual origins in both the natural sciences, and the humanities. Its basic questions concern, "What defines Homo sapiens?" "Who are the ancestors of modern Homo sapiens?" "What are our physical traits?" "How do we behave?" "Why are there variations and differences among different groups of humans?" "How has the evolutionary past of Homo sapiens influenced its social organization and culture?" and so forth. While specific modern anthropologists have a tendency to specialize in technical subfields, their data and ideas are routinely synthesized into larger works about the scope and progress of our species.

A brief overview of the discipline

One traditional approach to simplifying such a vast enterprise has been to divide anthropology into four fields, each with its own further branches: Biological anthropology, Cultural anthropology, Archaeology and Anthropological linguistics. Note how these fields are not strictly divided from each other in scope.

Briefly put, biological anthropology includes the study of human evolution, human evolutionary biology, Population Genetics, our nearest biological relatives, classification of ancient hominids, paleontology of humans, distribution human alleles, blood types and the human genome project. Primatology studies our nearest non-human relatives (human beings are primates), and some primatologists use field observation methods, written up in a manner quite similar to ethnography.Biological anthropology is used by other fields to shed light on how a particular folk got to where they are, how frequently they've encountered and married outsiders, whether a particular group is protein-deprived, and to understand the brain processes involved in the production of language. Other related fields or subfields include paleoanthropology, anthropometrics, nutritional anthropology, and forensic anthropology.

Cultural anthropology is often based on ethnography, a kind of writing used throughout anthropology to present data on a particular people or folk (from the Greek, ethnos/Έθνος), often based on participant observation research. Ethnology involves the systematic comparison of different cultures. Cultural anthropology is also called socio-cultural anthropology or social anthropology (especially in Great Britain). In some European countries, cultural anthropology is known as ethnology (a term coined and defined by Adam F. Kollár in 1783). The study of kinship and social organization is a central focus of cultural anthropology, as kinship is a human universal. Cultural anthropology also covers: economic and political organization, law and conflict resolution, patterns of consumption and exchange, material culture, technology, infrastructure, gender relations, ethnicity, childrearing and socialization, religion, myth, symbols, worldview, sports, music, nutrition, recreation, games, food, festivals, and language, which is also the object of study in linguistics. Note the way in which some of these topics overlap with topics in the other subfields.