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Anthropology (/ˌænθɹəˈpɒlədʒi/, from the Greek grc 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).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.

Archaeology is the study of human material culture, including both artifacts (older pieces of human culture) carefully gathered ''in situ'', museum pieces and modern garbage. 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: for example the Paleolithic, the Neolithic, the Bronze Age, which are further subdivided according to artifact traditions and culture region, such as the Oldowan or the Gravettian. In this way, archaeologists provide a vast reference of the places human beings have traveled over the past 200,000 years, their ways of making a living, and their demographics. Archaeologists also investigate nutrition, symbolization, art, systems of writing, and other physical remnants of human cultural activity.

Linguistics is the study of language. Linguistic anthropology (also called anthropological linguistics) seeks to understand the processes of human communications, verbal and non-verbal, variation in language 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 anthropological linguistics, sociolinguistics, pragmatics, cognitive linguistics, semiotics, discourse analysis, and narrative analysis. This field is divided into its own subfields: 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 stuy 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.

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, it is difficult to characterize the entire field in a brief article, although attempts to write histories of the entire field have been made.

Anthropology has also been central in the development of several new (late 20th century) interdisciplinary fields such as cognitive neuroscience, global studies, and various ethnic studies.

Basic trends in anthropology

The goal of anthropology is to provide a holistic account of humans and human nature. Since anthropology arose as a science in Western societies that were complex and industrial, a major trend within anthropology has been a methodological drive to study peoples in societies with more simple social organization, sometimes called ''primitive'' in anthropological literature, but without any connotation of ''inferior.'' Today, most anthropologists use terms such as ''less complex'' societies or refer to specific modes of subsistence or production, such as ''hunter-gatherer'' or ''forager'' or ''simple farmer'' to refer to humans living in non-industrial, non-Western cultures, such people or folk (''ethnos'') remaining of great interest within anthropology. The quest for holism leads most anthropologists to study a particular folk or people in detail, using biogenetic, archaeological, and linguistic data alongside direct observation of contemporary customs. In the 1990s and 2000s, calls for clarification of what constitutes a culture, of how an observer knows where his or her own culture ends and another begins, and other crucial topics in writing anthropology were heard. It is possible to view all human cultures as part of one large, evolving global culture. These dynamic relationships, between what can be observed on the ground, as opposed to what can be observed by compiling many local observations remain fundamental in any kind of anthropology, whether cultural, biological, linguistic or archaeological.

Anthropologists are interested in both human variation and in the possibility of human universals (behaviors, ideas or concepts shared by virtually all human cultures) They use many different methods of study, but modern population genetics, participant observation and other techniques often take anthropologists ''into the field'' which means traveling to a community in its own setting, to do something called ''fieldwork.'' On the biological or physical side, human measurements, genetic samples, nutritional data may be gathered and published as articles or monographs. Due to the interest in variation, anthropologists are drawn to the study of human extremes, aberrations and other unusual circumstances, such as headhunting, whirling dervishes, whether there were real Hobbit people, snake handling, and glossolalia (speaking in tongues), just to list a few.

At the same time, anthropologists urge, as part of their quest for scientific objectivity, cultural relativism, which has an influence on all the subfields of anthropology. This is the notion that particular cultures should not be judged by one culture's values or viewpoints, but that all cultures should be viewed as relative to each other. There should be no notions, in good anthropology, of one culture being better or worse than another culture. Ethical commitments in anthropology include noticing and documenting genocide, infanticide, racism, mutilation including especially circumcision and subincision, and torture. Topics like racism, slavery or human sacrifice, therefore, attract anthropological attention and theories ranging from nutritional deficiencies to genes to acculturation have been proposed, not to mention theories of acculturation, colonialism and many others as root causes of man's inhumanity to man. To illustrate the depth of an anthropological approach, one can take just one of these topics, such as ''racism'' and find thousands of anthropological references, stretching across all the subfields (and subfields of subfields).

In addition to dividing up their project by theoretical emphasis, anthropologists typically divide the world up into relevant time periods and geographic regions. Human time on Earth is divided up into relevant cultural traditions based on material, such as the Paleolithic and the Neolithic, of particular use in archaeology. Further cultural subdivisions according to tool types, such as Olduwan or Mousterian or Levallois help archaeologists and other anthropologists in understanding major trends in the human past. Anthropologists and geographers share approaches to Culture regions as well, since mapping cultures is central to both sciences. By making comparisons across cultural traditions (time-based) and cultural regions (space-based), anthropologists have developed various kinds of comparative method, a central part of their science.

Contemporary anthropology is an established science with academic departments at most universities and colleges. The single largest organization of Anthropologists is the American Anthropological Association, which was founded in 1903 . Membership is made up of Anthropologists from around the globe. Hundreds of other organizations exist in the various subfields of anthropology, sometimes divided up by nation or region, and many anthropologists work with collaborators in other disciplines, such as geology, physics, zoology, paleontology, anatomy, music theory, art history, sociology and so on, belonging to professional societies in those disciplines as well.

History of anthropology

The first use of the term ''anthropology'' in English to refer to a natural science of humankind was apparently in 1593, the first of the ''logies'' to be coined. It took Immanuel Kant 25 years to write one of the first major treatises on anthropology, his ''Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View''. Kant is not generally considered to be a modern anthropologist, however, as he never left his region of Germany nor did he study any cultures besides his own. He did, however, begin teaching an annual course in anthropology in 1772. Anthropology is thus primarily an Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment endeavor.

Historians of anthropology, like Marvin Harris indicate two major frameworks within which empirical anthropology has arisen: interest in comparisons of people over space and interest in longterm human processes or humans as viewed through time. Harris dates both to Classical Greece and Classical Rome, specifically Herodotus, often called the ''father of history'' and the Roman historian Tacitus, who wrote many of our only surviving contemporary accounts of several ancient Celtic and Germanic peoples. Herodotus first formulated some of the persisting problems of anthropology.

Medieval scholars may be considered forerunners of modern anthropology as well, insofar as they conducted or wrote detailed studies of the customs of peoples considered ''different'' from themselves in terms of geography. John of Plano Carpini reported of his stay among the Mongols. His report was unusual in its detailed depiction of a non-European culture. Marco Polo's systematic

observations of nature, anthropology, and geography are another example of studying human variation across space. Polo's travels took him across such a diverse human landscape and his accounts of the peoples he encountered as he he journeyed were so detailed that they earned for Polo the name ''the father of modern anthropology.'' Another candidate for one of the first scholars to carry out comparative ethnographic-type studies in person was the medieval Persian scholar Abū Rayhān Bīrūnī in the 11th century, who wrote about the peoples, customs, and religions of the Indian subcontinent. Like modern anthropologists, he engaged in extensive participant observation with a given group of people, learnt their language and studied their primary texts, and presented his findings with objectivity and neutrality using cross-cultural comparisons. He wrote detailed comparative studies on the religions and cultures in the Middle East, Mediterranean and especially South Asia. Biruni's tradition of comparative cross-cultural study continued in the Muslim world through to Ibn Khaldun's work in the 14th century.

In the late 1980s and 1990s authors such as George Marcus and James Clifford pondered ethnographic authority, particularly how and why anthropological knowledge was possible and authoritative. They were reflecting trends in research and discourse initiated by Feminists in the academy, although they excused themselves from commenting specifically on those pioneering critics. Nevertheless, key aspects of feminist theorizing and methods became ''de rigueur'' as part of the 'post-modern moment' in anthropology: Ethnographies became more reflexive, explicitly addressing the author's methodology, cultural, gender and racial positioning, and their influence on his or her ethnographic analysis. This was part of a more general trend of postmodernism that was popular contemporaneously. Currently anthropologists pay attention to a wide variety of issues pertaining to the contemporary world, including globalization, medicine and biotechnology, indigenous rights, virtual communities, and the anthropology of industrialized societies.

Controversies about the history of anthropology

Anthropologists, like other researchers (esp. historians and scientists engaged in field research), have over time assisted state policies and projects, especially colonialism.

Some commentators have contended:

Anthropology and the military

Anthropologists’ involvement with the U.S. government, in particular, has caused bitter controversy within the discipline. Franz Boas publicly objected to US participation in World War I, and after the war he published a brief expose and condemnation of the participation of several American archeologists in espionage in Mexico under their cover as scientists. But by the 1940s, many of Boas' anthropologist contemporaries were active in the allied war effort against the ''Axis'' (Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Imperial Japan). Many served in the armed forces but others worked in intelligence (for example, Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and the Office of War Information). At the same time, David H. Price's work on American anthropology during the Cold War provides detailed accounts of the pursuit and dismissal of several anthropologists from their jobs for communist sympathies.

Attempts to accuse anthropologists of complicity with the CIA and government intelligence activities during the Vietnam War years have turned up surprisingly little (although anthropologist Hugo Nutini was active in the stillborn Project Camelot). Many anthropologists (students and teachers) were active in the antiwar movement and a great many resolutions condemning the war in all its aspects were passed overwhelmingly at the annual meetings of the American Anthropological Association (AAA). In the decades since the Vietnam war the tone of cultural and social anthropology, at least, has been increasingly politicized, with the dominant liberal tone of earlier generations replaced with one more radical, a mix of, and varying degrees of, Marxist, feminist, anarchist, post-colonial, post-modern, Saidian, Foucauldian, identity-based, and more.

Professional anthropological bodies often object to the use of anthropology for the benefit of the state. Their codes of ethics or statements may proscribe anthropologists from giving secret briefings. The Association of Social Anthropologists of the UK and Commonwealth (ASA ) has called certain scholarships ethically dangerous. The AAA's current 'Statement of Professional Responsibility' clearly states that ''in relation with their own government and with host governments … no secret research, no secret reports or debriefings of any kind should be agreed to or given.''

However, anthropologists, along with other social scientists, are once again being used in warfare as part of the . The Christian Science Monitor reports that ''Counterinsurgency efforts focus on better grasping and meeting local needs'' in Afghanistan, under the rubric of .

Major discussions about anthropology

Focus on other cultures

Some authors argue that anthropology originated and developed as the study of ''other cultures'', both in terms of time (past societies) and space (non-European/non-Western societies). For example, the classic of urban anthropology, Ulf Hannerz in the introduction to his seminal ''Exploring the City: Inquiries Toward an Urban Anthropology'' mentions that the ''Third World'' had habitually received most of attention; anthropologists who traditionally specialized in ''other cultures'' looked for them far away and started to look ''across the tracks'' only in late 1960s. Now there exist many works focusing on peoples and topics very close to the author's ''home''. It is also argued that other fields of study, like History and Sociology, on the contrary focus disproportionately on the West.

In France, the study of existing contemporary society has been traditionally left to sociologists, but this is increasingly changing, starting in the 1970s from scholars like Isac Chiva and journals like ''Terrain'' (''fieldwork''), and developing with the center founded by Marc Augé (''Le Centre d'anthropologie des mondes contemporains'', the Anthropological Research Center of Contemporary Societies). The same approach of focusing on ''modern world'' topics by ''Terrain'', was also present in the British Manchester School of the 1950s.