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Nature of Anthropology

Different branches of Anthropology focus on different


aspects of the human experience:
i. Some branches focus on how our species evolved from
earlier species.
ii. Others focus on how we came to possess the facility for
language, how languages evolved and diversified, & how
modern languages serve the needs of human
communication.
iii. Still others focus on the learned traditions of human
thoughts and behavior; how ancient cultures change or
stay the same.
The word Anthropology is a combined form derived from the
Greek terms anthropos (man or human being) and logos (study)
and translated as “the study of humanity”.

Its subject matter includes:


– The earliest fossilized bones of humanlike creatures,
– the artifacts and material traces left in the earth by our
ancestor,
– and all of the living or historically described peoples of the
earth.
The four major branches of
anthropology
 Biological Anthropology

 Cultural-social Anthropology

 Archeology

 Linguistic
Culture it is the study of human beings living in
societies & following distinctive ways of the life
labelled.
Anthropology and Sociology are both sciences concern themselves
with human societies.
The Anthropologist investigates not only their forms of social
organization and social relationships, which are of primary
interest to sociologist, but also their economics, religion,
government, language, legends, and customs, as well as the
personalities of their inhabitants.
The Sociologist does not study their economy, as such, nor their
religion, nor their government, nor their language and literature
and science, but rather the social organizations, the social
structure, and the social matrix within which these various
phenomena appear.
Robert Bierstedt “The Social Order” showed the relations
between the pure and applied sciences which can be seen
more clearly when justaposed in the ff. fashion

PURE SCIENCES APPLIED SCIENCES

Physics Engineering

Astronomy Navigation

Accounting
Mathematics
Pharmacy
Chemistry
Medicine
Physiology
Politics
Political Science
Law
Jurisprudence
Animal Husbandry
Zoology
Agriculture
Botany
Journalism
History
Business
Economics Administration
Sociology and Diplomacy
Anthropology Social Work
Anthropological Genesis
– The existence of civilizations as early as 6000 BC with all their
artistic beautiful crafts which suggest their own technology
during time immemorial.
– In the 1800s, the European explorers had learned of the
existence of most of the major geographic regions of the world.
– Several centuries worth of written records had accumulated
about the beliefs and customs of the diverse people in the
Americas, Africa, Asia, and other islands of the Pacific.
– At the several places in England & France, crude, axe-like
stone tools were found in association with extinct mammals.
Anthropological Development
and Forerunners
GEOLOGIST JAMES HUTTON (June 03, 1726 –
March 26, 1797)
Was a Scottish Geologist, Physician, Chemical
Manufacturer, Naturalist, and Experimental
Agriculturist
- He contributed to what was later called
uniformitarianism, fundamental principle of
geology, that explains the features of the earth’s
crust by means of natural processes over geologic
times, 1795.
- Father of Modern Geology
Anthropological Development
and Forerunners
CHARLES LYELL (Nov. 14, 1797 – Feb. 22, 1875)
Was a Scottish Geologist who demonstrated the
power of existing natural causes in explaining Earth
History.
- He is best known as the author of Principles of
Geology. He popularized the Uniformitarian
Theory
- His science contribution included a pioneering
explanation of climate change, in which shifting
boundaries between oceans and continents could
be used to explain long-term variations in
Anthropological Development
and Forerunners
CHARLES DARWIN (February 12, 1809 – April 19,
1882)
Was an English Naturalist, Geologist and Biologist.
- He is best known for his contributions to the
science of Evolution
- In each generation, organism encountered
natural conditions that select for those
individuals best able to complete, avoid being
eaten, resist diseases and parasites, find and hold
mates, & so on, this called process natural
selection.
Anthropological Development
and Forerunners
Unilineal Evolution Theory. This is a 19th century
anthropologists’ devise to account for cultural
development.

LEWIS HENRY MORGAN (November 21, 1818 –


December 17, 1881)
Was a pioneering American Anthropologist & Social
Theorist who worked as a Railraod Lawyer
- He is best known for his work on Kinship & Social
Structure, his theories of social evolution, & his
Ethnography of the Iroquois.
Anthropologist Lewis Henry Morgan, a lawyer
from New York State, identified seven stages in his
book Ancient Society, published in 1877 as
follows
I. Lower Savagery
II. Middle Savagery
III. Upper Savagery
IV. Lower Barbarism
V. Middle Barbarism
VI. Upper Barbarism
VII.Civilization
Anthropological Development
and Forerunners
Sir Edward Burnett Tylor (1832-1917)
-In a religious parlance, in the Primitive Culture,
published in 1871 investigated the origins and development
of religion.
-He postulated that religion had passed through stages,
these are:
1. Animism.
2. Polytheism.
3. Monotheism.
Anthropological Development
and Forerunners
Historical Particularism Theory (CA. 1900-1940).
- This was championed by American Anthropologist
Franz Boas in the early 1900s. This approach was
historical because it attempted to discover the past
influences on a given culture that made it the way it is
today.
– Franz Boas (1858-1942)
“Father of American Anthropology”
British Functionalism Theory (CA 1920-1950).
Functionalist Bronislaw Malinowski, a British famous in anthropological work
because of his magnificent ethnographies of a Pacific people known as the
Trobriand Islanders.
- The basic function of Functionalism was that the cultural feature of the
people should be explained by the function they perform.
- The primary needs of people everywhere are similar:
 nutrition
 protection from enemies
 reproduction
 shelter from cold and other elements
 And maintenance of the body in a healthy condition
Divisions of Anthropology

1. Physical or Biological Anthropology


2. Cultural Anthropology
3. Ethnology
1. Physical or Biological
Anthropology
Physical or Biological
Anthropology
-Branch of Anthropology that focuses on humans
as biological organisms.

-Provides a biological perspective to systematic study of human


beings.

-Human evolutions (Haviland, 1991)


Questions seeks to answer:

– Questions about the emergence of humans and their later


evolution
-Human Paleontology or paleoanthropology

– How and why contemporary human populations vary


biologically
-an area reffered to as human variation.
2. Cultural Anthropology
Cultural Anthropology

Branch of Anthropology concerned with the study of of human


societies and cultures and their development

Edward Burnett Tylor


founder of academic anthropology in the
English-speaking world
Culture… taken in its wide
ethnographic sense is that
complex whole which includes
knowledge, belief, art, morals,
law, customs, and any other
capabilities and habits acquired
by man as a member of society.
The condition of culture among
the various societies of mankind,
in so far as it is capable of being
investigated on general principles,
is a subject apt for the study of
laws of human thought and
action.
Branch of Cultural Anthropology
1. Archeology
– Studies material remains in order to describe and explain
human behavior

– Focused on the human past


2. Linguistic Anthropology
– Studies human languages

Historical linguistics
Studies of how languages change overtime and how they may
related
3. Ethnology
Ethnology

– Compares and analyzes the characteristics of different peoples


and relationship between them ( cultural, social, sociocultural,
anthropology)

– Study of human behavior as it can be seen, experienced, and


discussed with those whose culture is to be understood.
Ethnography
– Is the systematic description of a culture based on firsthand
observation
– Include any historical, geographical, linguistic, etc. study of
particular ethnic group prepared by missionaries, explorers,
and the like.
Ethnology and Ethnography

Ethnology is the branch of anthropology that involves


comparative study of cultures and the analysis of that data to
propose theoretical frameworks for better understanding cultural
phenomena. Ethnographies are the studies that provide the raw
data which ethnology analyzes to develop theories of culture.

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