as though the line break doesn’t exist. If you’re reading this as an e-book, you’ve got it easy — just click the web address to be taken directly to the web page.
Foolish Assumptions
I don’t think I’m going too far out on a flimsy limb to make these assumptions about you as a reader:
You’re someone — just about anyone who can read, really — interested in the human species. Bring that interest to the reading and you’ll be rewarded.
You’re taking an Introduction to Anthropology course and your textbook just isn’t making things clear; all you want is a friendly, digestible resource that gives you the info you need in plain English.
You either believe that evolution happens or that it’s a sound biological theory. Evolution is the basis of modern biology, and nothing in the world of living things makes sense without it. Even if you have some doubts about evolution, I’m assuming that you can keep your mind open to the fact that humanity is very ancient; evolution is a foundation of the scientific study of our species.
You’re anyone who wants a handy reference to settle a friendly argument about some aspect of humanity. When did the first civilizations arise? How many human languages exist? What did our earliest ancestors eat? You’ll find these answers and plenty more.
Icons Used in This Book
To make this book easier to read and simpler to use, I include some icons that can help you find and fathom key ideas and information.
Beyond the Book
In addition to the material in the print or e-book you’re reading right now, this product also comes with a free Cheat Sheet for information on how anthropologists group the early hominins, linguistic anthropology, and more. To access the Cheat Sheet, go to www.dummies.com and type Anthropology For Dummies Cheat Sheet in the Search box.
Where to Go from Here
I’ve organized this book so that you can go wherever you want to find complete information. Want to know about the evolution of civilization, for example? Check out Chapter 10. If you’re interested in Neanderthals and why they became extinct, you want Chapter 7. If the complexities of language or religion flip your switch, head for Chapter 13 or 16. You get the idea. You can use the table of contents to find broad categories of information or the index to look up more specific topics.
If you’re not sure where you want to go, you may want to start with Part I. It gets you started with what anthropology studies, and how, and you can follow your interests from there.
Part 1
What Is Anthropology?
IN THIS PART …
Get an overview of anthropology.
Understand the history of anthropology.
See how anthropology is studied today.
Chapter 1
Human Beings and Being Human: An Overview of Anthropology
IN THIS CHAPTER
Why isn’t everyone the same? Why do people worldwide have differences in skin and hair color and ways of greeting one another? Why doesn’t everyone speak the same language? Is there such a thing as “human nature”?
Questions like these have fascinated humanity for as long as we have written records — and I’m sure people thousands and even tens of thousands of years before writing asked the same questions (in whatever language they used). Why don’t those people do things the way I do? What’s wrong with them, anyway? Of course, people from that other group just on the next hilltop were scratching their heads and asking the same questions.
Enter anthropology, the scientific study of humanity. In this book I tell you what you need to know about anthropology, what anthropologists have discovered about humanity, and what anthropologists mean when they say that there are “many ways of being human.” I also tell you how anthropology works, and what anthropologists have learned about humanity, both modern and ancient. You’ll see that in a century or so of study, anthropology has helped to answer some of humanity’s fundamental questions about itself.
And knowing ourselves is important if, as a species, we want to make good decisions about our present and future. Biologically, humanity needs to know itself if it’s going to make good decisions about everything from gene therapy to genetically engineered food crops; that knowledge comes from anthropology. And culturally, knowledge of our past helps us understand what we are today, for better and worse; we did not just pop up out of nowhere. We have a long and complex evolutionary history that can help us understand what we are at the moment. In Part 1 of this book — specifically in Chapters 2 and 3 — you find out how anthropology studies humanity from these biological and cultural perspectives. In Part 4 of this
