Anthropology is the study of humanity Homo is the genus that includes modern humans and species closely related to them. The genus is estimated to be about 2.3 to 2.4 million years old, evolving from australopithecine ancestors with the appearance of Homo habilis. Specifically, H. habilis is assumed to be the direct descendant of Australopithecus garhi which lived about 2.5 million. Anthropology has origins in the natural sciences In science, the term natural science refers to a naturalistic approach to the study of the universe, which is understood as obeying rules or laws of natural origin, the humanities The humanities are academic disciplines which study the human condition, using methods that are primarily analytic, critical, or speculative, as distinguished from the mainly empirical approaches of the natural and social sciences, and the social sciences The social sciences are the fields of academic scholarship that explore aspects of human society. "Social science" is commonly used as an umbrella term to refer to a plurality of fields outside of the natural sciences. These include: anthropology, archaeology, economics, geography, history, linguistics, political science, international.[1] The term "anthropology", pronounced /ænθrɵˈpɒlədʒi/, is from the Greek Ancient Greek is the historical stage in the development of the Greek language spanning the Archaic , Classical (c. 5th–4th centuries BC), and Hellenistic (c. 3rd century BC – 6th century AD) periods of ancient Greece and the ancient world. It is predated in the 2nd millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek. Its Hellenistic phase is known as Koine (& anthrōpos (ἄνθρωπος), "human", and -logia (-λογία), "discourse" or "study", and was first used by François Péron François Auguste Péron was a French naturalist and explorer. He is credited with the first use of the term anthropology when discussing his encounters with Tasmanian Aborigines The Tasmanian Aborigines ( æbəˈrɪdʒɪni , Aboriginal name: Palawa) were the indigenous people of the island state of Tasmania, Australia.[2]
Anthropology's basic concerns are "What defines Homo sapiens Humans, known taxonomically as Homo sapiens , are the only living species in the Homo genus of bipedal primates in Hominidae, the great ape family. Anatomically modern humans originated in Africa about 200,000 years ago, reaching full behavioral modernity around 50,000 years ago?", "Who are the ancestors of modern Homo sapiens?", "What are humans' physical traits?", "How do humans 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.
In the United States, contemporary anthropology is typically divided into four sub-fields: cultural anthropology (also called "social anthropology"), archaeology, linguistic anthropology, and physical (or biological) anthropology.[3] The four-field approach to anthropology is reflected in many undergraduate textbooks[4] as well as anthropology programs (e.g. Michigan, Berkeley, Penn, etc.). At universities in the United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland[note 7] is a sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe. It is an island country, spanning an archipelago including Great Britain, the northeastern part of the island of Ireland, and many small islands. Northern Ireland is the only part of the UK with a land, and much of Europe Europe is one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally divided from Asia to its east by the water divide of the Ural Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian Sea, the Caucasus region (Specification of borders) and the Black Sea to the southeast. Europe is bordered by the Arctic Ocean and, these "sub-fields" are frequently housed in separate departments and are seen as distinct disciplines.[5]
The social and cultural sub-field has been heavily influenced by structuralist Structuralism is an intellectual movement that developed in France in the 1950s and 1960s, in which human culture is analysed semiotically and post-modern theories, as well as a shift toward the analysis of modern societies (an arena more typically in the remit of sociologists Sociology is the study of society. It is a social science—a term with which it is sometimes synonymous—that uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop and refine a body of knowledge about human social activity, often with the goal of applying such knowledge to the pursuit of social welfare. Subject matter). During the 1970s and 1980s there was an epistemological Epistemology or theory of knowledge is the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature and scope (limitations) of knowledge. It addresses the questions: shift away from the positivist Positivism refers to a set of epistemological perspectives and philosophies of science which hold that the scientific method is the best approach to uncovering the processes by which both physical and human events occur. Though the positivist approach has been a 'recurrent theme in the history of western thought from the Ancient Greeks to the traditions that had largely informed the discipline.[6] During this shift, enduring questions about the nature and production of knowledge came to occupy a central place in cultural and social anthropology. In contrast, archaeology, biological anthropology, and linguistic anthropology remained largely positivist. Due to this difference in epistemology Epistemology or theory of knowledge is the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature and scope (limitations) of knowledge. It addresses the questions:, anthropology as a discipline has lacked cohesion over the last several decades. This has even led to departments diverging, for example in the 1998–9 academic year at Stanford University, where the "scientists" and "non-scientists" divided into two departments: anthropology, and cultural & social anthropology;[7] these departments later reunified in the 2008–9 academic year.)[8]
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Overview
Anthropology is traditionally divided into four sub-fields, each with its own further branches: biological or physical anthropology Biological anthropology is the branch of anthropology that studies, in the context of other primates, the development of the human species. Biological anthropology incorporates bio-cultural studies of human diversity, in time and space; the ancestry of the human species; and the comparative anatomy, behavior, history, and ecology, of historic and, social anthropology Social anthropology is the branch of anthropology that studies how contemporary living human beings behave in social groups. Practitioners of social anthropology investigate, often through long-term, intensive field studies , the social organization of a particular person: customs, economic and political organization, law and conflict resolution, or cultural anthropology Cultural anthropology is one of four or five fields of anthropology . It is the branch of anthropology that examines culture as a meaningful scientific concept, archaeology Archaeology, or archeology , is the study of past human societies, primarily through the recovery and analysis of the material culture and environmental data which they have left behind, which includes artifacts, architecture, biofacts and cultural landscapes. Due to the fact that archaeology employs a wide range of different procedures, it can be and anthropological linguistics Linguistic anthropology is the interdisciplinary study of how language influences social life. It is a branch of anthropology that originated from the endeavor to document endangered languages, and has grown over the past 100 years to encompass almost any aspect of language structure and use.[3] These fields frequently overlap, but tend to use different methodologies and techniques.
Biological anthropology Biological anthropology is the branch of anthropology that studies, in the context of other primates, the development of the human species. Biological anthropology incorporates bio-cultural studies of human diversity, in time and space; the ancestry of the human species; and the comparative anatomy, behavior, history, and ecology, of historic and, or physical anthropology Biological anthropology is the branch of anthropology that studies, in the context of other primates, the development of the human species. Biological anthropology incorporates bio-cultural studies of human diversity, in time and space; the ancestry of the human species; and the comparative anatomy, behavior, history, and ecology, of historic and, focuses on the study of human populations using an evolutionary framework. Biological anthropologists have theorized about how the globe has become populated with humans (e.g. the "Out Of Africa In paleoanthropology, the recent African origin of modern humans is the mainstream model describing the origin and early dispersal of anatomically modern humans. The theory is called the Out-of-Africa model in the popular press, and academically the recent single-origin hypothesis (RSOH), Replacement Hypothesis, and Recent African Origin (RAO)" and "multi-regional evolution The multiregional hypothesis or orginally multiregional evolution is a model to account for the pattern of human evolution, proposed by Milford H. Wolpoff in 1988. The multiregional evolution holds that the evolution of humanity from the beginning of the Pleistocene 2.5 million years BP to the present day has been within a single, continuous human" debate), as well as tried to explain geographical human variation and race The term race or racial group usually refers to the categorization of humans into populations or ancestral groups on the basis of various sets of heritable characteristics. The physical features commonly seen as indicating race are salient visual traits such as skin color, cranial or facial features and hair texture. Conceptions of race, as well. Many biological anthropologists studying modern human populations identify their field as human ecology Human ecology is the interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary study of the relationship between humans and their natural, social, and built environments, itself linked to sociobiology Sociobiology is a synthesis of scientific disciplines which attempts to explain social behavior in animal species by considering the Darwinian advantages specific behaviors may have. It is often considered a branch of biology and sociology, but also draws from ethology, anthropology, evolution, zoology, archaeology, population genetics and other. Human ecology uses evolutionary theory to understand phenomena among contemporary human populations. Another large sector of biological anthropology is primatology Primatology is the study of primates. It is a diverse discipline and primatologists can be found in departments of biology, anthropology, psychology and many others. It is a branch of physical anthropology, which, in itself, studies the genus Homo, especially Homo sapiens. The fields cross over in the study of the hominids, which include all ape-, where anthropologists focus on understanding other primate populations. Methodologically, primatologists borrow heavily from field biology and ecology in their research.
Cultural anthropology Cultural anthropology is one of four or five fields of anthropology . It is the branch of anthropology that examines culture as a meaningful scientific concept is also called socio-cultural anthropology or social anthropology Social anthropology is the branch of anthropology that studies how contemporary living human beings behave in social groups. Practitioners of social anthropology investigate, often through long-term, intensive field studies , the social organization of a particular person: customs, economic and political organization, law and conflict resolution, (especially in the United Kingdom). It is the study of culture, and is mainly based on ethnography Ethnography is a research strategy often used in the social sciences, particularly in anthropology and in some branches of sociology. It is often employed for gathering empirical data on human societies/cultures. Data collection is often done through participant observation, interviews, questionnaires, etc. Ethnography aims to describe the nature. Ethnography can refer to both a methodology and a product of research, namely a monograph or book. Ethnography is a grounded, inductive method that heavily relies on participant-observation.Ethnology Ethnology is the branch of anthropology that compares and analyzes the origins, distribution, technology, religion, language, and social structure of the ethnic, racial, and/or national divisions of humanity involves the systematic comparison of different cultures. The process of participant-observation can be especially helpful to understanding a culture from an emic point of view; which would otherwise be unattainable by simply reading from a book. In some European countries, all cultural anthropology is known as ethnology Ethnology is the branch of anthropology that compares and analyzes the origins, distribution, technology, religion, language, and social structure of the ethnic, racial, and/or national divisions of humanity (a term coined and defined by Adam F. Kollár Adam František Kollár − Adam Franz Kollár in older English sources, a Slovak lower nobleman, was a historian, ethnologist, and as Imperial-Royal Court Councilor and Chief Imperial-Royal Librarian, an influential advocate of Empress Maria Theresa's Enlightened and centralist policies. His advancement of Maria Theresa's status in the Kingdom of in 1783).[9]
The study of kinship Kinship is a relationship between any entities that share a genealogical origin, through either biological, cultural, or historical descent. And descent groups, lineages, etc. are treated in their own subsections, see Contents below and social organization Social organization or social institution, refers to a group of social positions, connected by social relations, performing a social role. It can also be defined in a narrower sense as any institution in a society that works to socialize the groups or people in it. Common examples include education, governments, families, economic systems, is a central focus of cultural anthropology, as kinship is a human universal A cultural universal is an element, pattern, trait, or institution that is common to all human cultures worldwide. Some anthropological and sociological theorists of an extreme cultural relativism perspective may deny, or minimize the importance of, the existence of cultural universals: the extent to which these universals are "cultural". 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, values, etiquette, worldview, sports, music, nutrition, recreation, games, food, festivals, and language (which is also the object of study in linguistic anthropology).
Archaeology is the study of human material culture, including both artifacts An artifact or artefact is any object made or modified by a human. In archaeology, an artifact is an object recovered by some archaeological endeavor, which may have a cultural interest. Examples include stone tools such as projectile points, pottery vessels, metal objects such as guns, and items of personal adornment such as buttons, jewellery (older pieces of human culture) carefully gathered in situ, museum pieces and modern garbage.[10] Archaeologists work closely with biological anthropologists, art historians, physics laboratories (for dating), and museums. They are charged with preserving the results of their excavations and are often found in museums. Typically, archaeologists are associated with "digs," or excavation of layers of ancient sites.
Archaeologists subdivide time into cultural periods based on long-lasting artifacts: the Paleolithic Lower Paleolithic (genus Homo), the Neolithic The Neolithic Age, Era, or Period, or New Stone Age, was a period in the development of human technology, beginning about 9500 BC in the Middle East that is traditionally considered the last part of the Stone Age. The Neolithic followed the terminal Holocene Epipalaeolithic period, beginning with the rise of farming, which produced the ", the Bronze Age The Bronze Age of a culture is the period when the most advanced metalworking in that culture used bronze. This could either have been based on the local smelting of copper and tin from ores, or trading for bronze from production areas elsewhere. Many, though not all, Bronze Age cultures flourished in prehistory, which are further subdivided according to artifact traditions and culture region, such as the Oldowan The Oldowan, which was formerly often spelt Olduwan or Oldawan, is the archaeological term used to refer to the stone tool industry that was used by Hominins during the Lower Palaeolithic period. The Oldowan is significant for being the earliest stone tool industry in prehistory, being used from 2.6 million years ago up until 1.7 million years ago, or the Gravettian The Gravettian toolmaking culture was a specific archaeological industry of the European Upper Palaeolithic era prevalent before the last glacial epoch. It is named after the type site of La Gravette in the Dordogne region of France where its characteristic tools were first found and studied. It dates from between 28,000 and 22,000 years ago and. In this way, archaeologists provide a vast frame of reference for the places human beings have traveled, their ways of making a living, and their demographics Demographics or demographic data are the characteristics of a human population as used in government, marketing or opinion research, or the demographic profiles used in such research. Note the distinction from the term "demography" Commonly used demographics include gender, race, age, income, disabilities, mobility (in terms of travel. Archaeologists also investigate nutrition, symbolization, art, systems of writing, and other physical remnants of human cultural activity.
Linguistic anthropology Linguistic anthropology is the interdisciplinary study of how language influences social life. It is a branch of anthropology that originated from the endeavor to document endangered languages, and has grown over the past 100 years to encompass almost any aspect of language structure and use (also called anthropological linguistics Anthropological linguistics is the study of the relations between language and culture and the relations between human biology, cognition and language. This strongly overlaps the field of linguistic anthropology, which is the branch of anthropology that studies humans through the languages that they use) seeks to understand the processes of human communications, verbal and non-verbal, variation in language Language is a term most commonly used to refer to so-called "natural languages" — the spoken forms of communication ubiquitous among humankind. By extension the term also refers to the type of thought process which creates and uses language. Essential to both meanings is the systematic creation, maintenance and use of systems of across time and space, the social uses of language, and the relationship between language and culture. It is the branch of anthropology that brings linguistic methods to bear on anthropological problems, linking the analysis of linguistic forms and processes to the interpretation of sociocultural processes. Linguistic anthropologists often draw on related fields including sociolinguistics Sociolinguistics is the study of the effect of any and all aspects of society, including cultural norms, expectations, and context, on the way language is used, and the effects of language use on society. Sociolinguistics differs from sociology of language in that the focus of sociolinguistics is the effect of the society on the language, while, pragmatics Pragmatics is a subfield of linguistics which studies the ways in which context contributes to meaning. Pragmatics encompasses speech act theory, conversational implicature, talk in interaction and other approaches to language behavior in philosophy, sociology, and linguistics. It studies how the transmission of meaning depends not only on the, cognitive linguistics In linguistics, cognitive linguistics refers to the branch of linguistics that interprets language in terms of the concepts, sometimes universal, sometimes specific to a particular tongue, which underlie its forms. It is thus closely associated with semantics but is distinct from psycholinguistics, which draws upon empirical findings from, semiotics, discourse analysis, and narrative analysis.[11]
Linguistic anthropology is divided into its own sub-fields: descriptive linguistics the construction of grammars and lexicons for unstudied languages; historical linguistics, including the reconstruction of past languages, from which our current languages have descended; ethnolinguistics, the study of the relationship between language and culture, and sociolinguistics, the study of the social functions of language. Anthropological linguistics is also concerned with the evolution of the parts of the brain that deal with language.[12]
Because anthropology developed from so many different enterprises (see History of Anthropology), including but not limited to fossil-hunting, exploring, documentary film-making, paleontology, primatology, antiquity dealings and curatorship, philology, etymology, genetics, regional analysis, ethnology, history, philosophy and religious studies,[13][14] it is difficult to characterize the entire field in a brief article, although attempts to write histories of the entire field have been made.[15]
On the one hand this has led to instability in many American anthropology departments, resulting in the division or reorganization of sub-fields (e.g. at Stanford, Duke, and most recently at Harvard).[16] However, seen in a positive light, anthropology is one of the few places in many American universities where humanities, social, and natural sciences are forced to confront one another. As such, anthropology has also been central in the development of several new (late 20th century) interdisciplinary fields such as cognitive science, global studies, human-computer interaction, and various ethnic studies.
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Free University in Internet. Over 300 political, social, cultural ;amp;amp; scientifical Clips under ? kam200 ? . Anthropology, Archaeology ... ... linkcry.com.
Kyle Strobel
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After my reviews of Jamie Smith's work here and here, I've decided to do something of a series of book reviews here on theological . anthropology. , culminating in the new two volume Eccentric Existence by Kelsey. ...
