Anthropology and people

While the scientific study of anthropology is relatively recent, this cannot be said of interest in anthropology matters.

People have always been curious about themselves and have always asked anthropological questions and sought answers to those questions in the spirit in which anthropologists conduct research today.

Of course, we have no written records to take us back dawn of the human species, but for as far as we do have records, they indicate that people had an interest in human nature and in the diversity of the world around them.

Herodotus (484-424 B.C) the Greek historian who is sometimes called the father of history, might also be called an anthropologist.

In writing about the events in his time, he raised a number of questions about the differences who lived in surrounding areas.

He believed that the people encountered by the Greeks in the Persian Wars represented and earlier stage of Greek society.

Unfortunately, Herodotus , like many of his contemporary, felt that if you weren’t Greek, you were ”savage” or “barbaric”.

Nevertheless, it is from his writings, based on observations and interviews, that later scholar were able to get picture of what life in Egypt at that time.

A later historian, Thucydides (460-400 BC) in his accounts of Peloponnesian War, made an even stronger statement of the notion that the “barbarians” represented a stage through which Athenian culture had already passed in its rise to civilization.

Thus he was not only comprising different groups, but also analyzing the differences, trying to understand what caused them and explain the current state of his own society.
Anthropology and people