We are sure that there is a song of anthropology ‘What they call human being, now I know what a human is.’ would be. Because anthropology is a science that examines the concept of human through many different fields, especially culture and nature. After man becomes homo sapiens, that is, the human we know, all his experiences enter the field of anthropology and are examined in all details with many different methods.
Although anthropology is a science that has been studied for many years, it gained its real rise in the 20th century and has specialized in fields since then. Thanks to the studies, we discover the unknowns about the past of humanity and try to illuminate today’s world with the light of the past. Let’s take a closer look at what anthropology is, what it studies, what its effects are on social life.
Let’s start with a basic definition; What is anthropology?
Anthropology, also called human science in our language, is a science that studies all kinds of cultural and biological characteristics that distinguish human beings from animals throughout the evolutionary historical process. Anything can fall within the realm of anthropology and be used by experts. The only thing to note is that that area is somehow related to the human being.
What exactly does anthropology study?
Anthropology has developed different sub-specialties over time. For example, physical anthropology examines the changing biology of human beings in the evolutionary process. Cultural anthropology, on the other hand, studies the social and cultural structures of human societies. It is possible to talk about numerous sub-specialties such as social, linguistic and psychological anthropology.
For example, archeology is a different science, but it has become an integral part of anthropology, especially after the studies carried out in the 19th century. Because there are both biological and cultural developments in the past of humanity. If we are lucky, we may find some evidence of these developments in archaeological studies.
Anthropology was born at the intersection of the humanities and natural sciences:
If we think of the whole humanity, examining its cultural developments has become the field of human sciences, and examining biological developments has become the field of natural sciences. But as we can imagine, if we look at the total development of man, these alone are not enough. Because culture was formed at the point where humans separated from animals and continued to be shaped by biology.
When we look at the whole historical process, culture has given people a different separation from other forms of adaptation. As a result of the ecological system that he had to adapt to the place he is in, especially to survive, man has developed a creativity skill with countless variables. This is exactly what anthropology examines.
The growth, change and development of human societies have been shaped by the development of culture in their natural environment. Historical patterns, variations, and other related features in human groups that lived in the same period but existed in different ecological systems have been the main research topics of anthropology since day one.
In fact, anthropology studies have been done for hundreds of years:
Even though it was possible to consider anthropology as a separate discipline only in the first years of the 20th century, if we look at its definition and fields of study, we can say that scientists have been working on anthropology for hundreds of years. The colonization of different communities by European states, especially starting from the 17th century, can be accepted as the institutional beginning of these studies.
Think of the early times when North America, South America, Australia or Africa were discovered. There are people in front of them, but these people are not like themselves. Of course, some mental patients among them did not see them as human beings and practiced systematic massacres. Fortunately, some sane scientists have conducted studies in the field of natural history.
By the 19th century, anthropology began to separate from natural history. With the work titled A Hundred Years of Anthropology written by TK Penniman in 1935, anthropology has become a separate discipline. Unfortunately, in the following years, these studies also laid the foundations of the concept of scientific racism. Yes, Hitler.
Anthropology has different specialties:
- biological anthropology
- linguistic anthropology
- cultural anthropology
- psychological anthropology
- archaeology
Biological anthropology:
Biological anthropology, also called physical anthropology, focuses on the biological characteristics that distinguish humans from other living things. There are different fields of study such as the biological evolution of the environment, primate morphology, heredity, adaptation and variation, especially fossils related to human evolution. It is desired to make sense of how people have adapted to different environments through biological anthropology studies.
Linguistic anthropology:
Linguistic anthropology, as the name suggests, examines language, which is the most basic concept that makes people human. Because how we see the world and how we communicate with each other is our most important feature. With language, we construct meanings in our lives, create new identities or change our identities. It has already been accepted that the key to society is language.
Cultural anthropology:
The main purpose of cultural anthropology is to try to understand how people living in a particular region understand that region. Basic cultural values such as dressing, eating and speaking are actually the rules that a group of people sets over what they understand. Through these rules, it is revealed how different societies change, how they develop, how they combine or how they diverge. Many cultural anthropologists spend time in foreign cultures to carry out their studies.
Psychological anthropology:
Psychological anthropology is a specialty that the American scientific world focused on and emerged in the second half of the 20th century. Anthropology generally studies groups of people through organizational patterns. However, in the studies conducted, it has been noticed that individuals in social structure have effects on the general group. In other words, the individual in the society was also deemed worthy of examination.
Archaeology:
In fact, archeology is a science on its own and is evaluated as such. However, these two disciplines have become an inseparable whole over time, since most of the historical findings required for anthropology studies were obtained as a result of archeology studies. Without archeology studies, the necessary findings for anthropological studies would be incomplete, and therefore the results could never fully reflect the truth.
We answered questions such as what is anthropology, which is a science that evaluates human beings with their environment since the day they became human, and what does it study? Of course, anthropology is a whole science and has details that we can lose when we dive into it, but in this article, we only aimed to give basic information to our readers who are introduced to anthropology for the first time.
