Anthropology and people ll

In Western Europe the age of exploration and discovery that followed the decline of the middle ages created greater interest in the variety of peoples and customs on other parts of the world.

European explorers, adventurers, missionaries, and travelers came into contact with societies whose people behaved on ways that the Europeans found very strange.

In letters and journals they described these societies in the utmost details. The more contact they had with different cultures, the more information was collected and published, creating even greater interest in the study of other people.

Although some of the early attempts at scientific analysis of foreign customs and peoples of radically different appearance were quite naive – still they were the first step toward development of anthropology as a science.

Are these strange peoples in the far corners of the earth related to each other and to us? How do their customs compare with ours?

And how can we explain such a wide range behavior? These were the kind of questions asked by early anthropologists.
Anthropology and people ll