Anthropology is the holistic study of humans--our biology and cultures, from our origins to the present, in all types of societies across the globe.

Anthropology includes four major subfields:

Biological Anthropology studies the behavior of monkeys and apes, biological differences among human populations, and the origin and evolution of the human species.	Archaeology is the reconstruction of societies and cultures in the past, particularly before written records, from material remains.
Cultural Anthropology studies the lifeways of communities around the world and the similarities and differences among cultures.	Linguistic Anthropology studies the nature, structure, and evolution of language, and the central role it plays in human life.

 

The four fields of anthropology share the following set of characteristics, which make anthropology a distinctive field of study and perspective on humanity.

• Anthropology is holistic.  It seeks to explore every facet of an issue or topic.  It is, therefore, inherently interdisciplinary.
• Anthropology looks at humans from a global perspective, comparing cultures in order to make generalizations and develop theories that apply to all societies, in all times and places.
• Anthropology is evolutionary; it seeks to discover the origins of humanity and human institutions, and how human beings and human culture change over time.
• Anthropology is the study of culture--the learned and shared bodies of knowledge which humans have developed to adapt to their environments.
• Anthropology is biocultural.  Anthropologists study biological as well as cultural factors, seeking to discover relationships between "nature" and "nurture."
• Anthropology is based on fieldwork--gathering information through extended periods of intense empirical investigation, which includes observing the behavior of primates in the wild, recovering fossils of human ancestors and artifacts from the past through excavation, and observing and interacting with the peoples of the world as they live their daily lives. and one of the
• Anthropology is a natural science, a social science, and one of the humanities.  Or, as the anthropologist Eric Wolf has said, it is "the most scientific of the humanities and the most humanistic of the sciences."
• Perhaps most importantly, anthropologists respect human diversity.  Ruth Benedict, one of the founders of American anthropology, said the mission of anthropology is "to make the world safe for human differences."