What is Anthropology?

Anthropology is a group of subjects that conduct comprehensive research on humans from a biological and cultural perspective.

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Anthropology is a discipline that takes people as the direct research object, and uses it as the basis and comprehensive understanding. It is impossible to understand people in a comprehensive way if we distinguish between human beings as animals and cultural people. Anthropology is a comprehensive study of the human body and culture (life

Anthropology originated from the study of European and American scholars outside the modern Western technological civilization in the era of Geographical Discovery. This society is called "barbaric", "primitive", "tribal", "legendary", "have "Society before words." However, the current research field of anthropology has been extended to modern society, trying to generalize the general problems of human behavior, and to describe the social and cultural phenomena as a whole.

The two main areas of anthropology are physical anthropology and cultural anthropology. They are closely related to other disciplines, such as philosophy, linguistics, sociology, political science, economics, psychology, and history. Interdisciplinary exchanges have produced many valuable results. For example, economists proposed the concept of "economic man" based on the comparative schema of anthropology, and formed

Four races: Asian race (

The main research methods of anthropology are:

Archeology : ancient humans; the origin of civilization.

Human constitution:

Applied research in anthropology, aimed at providing guidance to governments and other organizations, has achieved many achievements. For example, the consequences of social change, knowledge about traditional social and cultural aspects, and so on. The main problem in applied research is the question of value judgment, that is, the issue of absolutely objective research and acceptance of established policies.

The purpose of physical anthropology is to determine the position of humans in nature and explain the natural differences between races. Darwin's theory of evolution and Gregor Mendel's genetics continue to deepen and change people's perceptions. The main content studied today is the relationship between humans and other primates and the essence of human bone evolution for at least 500,000 years. The ape-man fossils found in South Africa and East Africa in 1929 and 1959 provided a wealth of data for the study. It is known that the processes that lead to racial differences from individual differences are: selection, legacy transmission, migration, and mutation. Using objective methods to separate various features, and then mathematically calculate their frequency of occurrence and find out their functional and evolutionary significance, this research enables us to understand the structure of human beings and predict the future. At present, the main research fields of physical anthropology are: human ecology, human chemistry, primate, and genetics. There are also applied research such as anthropometrics.

In simple terms, the purpose of anthropological research is to understand the individual as a human in a comprehensive way. But more deeply, this kind of research is not only about the understanding of human body structure, but also the possibility of all human thoughts and ideas. In other words, how humans act, how they perceive their own actions, how the results of actions affect human thinking, and how people interact with other groups and symbols are the most fundamental questions anthropology wants to answer.

The purpose of anthropological research is to find an answer. Research without an answer is endless controversy and has no practical significance.

Since humans are not ordinary animals, and they have both natural and social attributes, they should be studied from these two aspects. Natural attributes are mainly the study of physiological problems and the study of physiological standards. The root cause of the complexity of human problems is that there are no physical and cultural standards for physical, mental, and intellectual health, and this standard has been initially achieved.

This is achieved through personalized scientific nutrition and Chinese learning. There are physiological standards in individualized scientific nutrition methods, and social and cultural standards in national studies. In the Northern Song Dynasty, Zhang Zai once said that "the righteousness is also a person," and "the righteousness is one of the important social standards of human beings. ^[1]