“Wise” Apes! : Human Evolution Anthropology
Being the wise monkeys
"You could never convince a monkey to give you a banana by promising him limitless bananas after death in monkey heaven."
-Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind)
As a person growing up in an Indian traditional family, my manners in social circumstances were pretty much shaped by the elders in our family. They dictated some unwritten rules to us as children. This made me very keen on the language I use when angry.
We, as children, were not allowed to use curse words at home or with strangers. But living in a joint family, you will have plenty of situations where you are forced to put up with the tantrums (and sometimes bullying) of siblings and cousins growing up. Although these were unharmful (even funny) in nature, you will feel the need to use bad words, at least to soothe your ego. This situation calls for the need for swear words. So the comparatively 'modest' terms used by us were "monkey" and "donkey" to refer to each other during fights. Thinking about it now, I don't even know why we took it as such a huge insult because, after all, they are just animals.
As I grew up, I learned that human beings descended from "monkeys", making our swear word not much of a bad word. I was then able to console myself by telling myself that at least we are monkeys with wisdom. This reminds me of something Terry Pratchett said;
"The anthropologists got it wrong when they named our species Homo sapiens ('wise man'). In any case, it's an arrogant and big-headed thing to say, wisdom being one of our least evident features. As a matter of fact, we are Pan Narrans, the storytelling chimpanzee."
How social anthropology compares to human evolution?
In his work "Sapiens; A Brief History of Humankind", Yuval Noah Harari says that we have "immodestly" named ourselves Homo sapiens, which means 'wise man. But he also talks about the importance of human beings' "extraordinarily large brains" (compared to other animals). A hundred millennia ago, our Earth was walked by at least six species of man. When we consider points such as:
- The origin of species
- Their mutual affinities
- Embryological relations
- Geographical distribution
- Geological succession
- Many other scientific facts
We can understand that each species had not been independently created but had descended from other species as its varieties. So, how did we learn about the relationship between man and apes? Once upon a time, a curious scientist looked.
In the face of his growling, angry neighbour and found a striking similarity between him and gorillas!? No, it didn't happen that way. For that, we have a field of study named Anthropology.
What is human evolution in anthropology?
Anthropology is the holistic scientific and social study of humanity. It uses ethnography (Ethnography is the branch of anthropology that scientifically describes specific human cultures and societies) as its method. Anthropology traces back to ancient Greek historical and philosophical writings about human nature and society. Anthropologists generally regard the Greek historian Herodotus and the Arab historian Ibn Khaldun as the first thinkers to write concepts that later became central to anthropology. While Herodotus described the Persian Empire's various peoples, Khaldun examined environmental, sociological, psychological and economic factors of civilisations.
It was in the 19th century that Modern Anthropology came into being. In 1859, the British naturalist Charles Darwin came up with the idea of "natural selection" through his influential book the Origin of Species. This book paved the way for the scientific acceptance of anthropological methods of studying human evolution.
How does social anthropology define human evolution?
According to Darwin, animal and plant species have changed or evolved through time under the influence of "natural selection". Natural selection refers to the way some variants of species survived, reproduced and evolved while others perished. Gregor Mendel's studies of genetic inheritance conducted in the 1850s and 1860s substantiated Darwin's theories. At the same time, the American Anthropologist Henry Morgan argued that the European civilisation was the pinnacle of human evolutionary progress, representing humanity's highest biological, moral and technological advancement. He also added that human societies had evolved into civilisation through conditions or stages like Savagery and Barbarism. In the 1920s, Anthropology emerged as a serious professional and scientific discipline.
Types of Anthropology
Anthropology is also known as the science of humanity. It studies humans in aspects ranging from evolutionary history to the features of society and culture that differentiate human beings from other animal species. There are four major fields of anthropology: biological anthropology, cultural anthropology, linguistic anthropology and archaeology.
Biological Anthropology
Biological anthropology, also known as physical anthropology, systematically studies non-cultural aspects of humans and near-humans (monkeys, apes and other primates). The primary interest of most biological anthropologists today is the anthropological methods of studying human evolution. They analyse the mechanisms of evolution, genetic inheritance, human variations and adaptations under different environmental stresses. Primatologists carry out non-human primate studies. At the same time, paleoanthropologists recover human fossil records to understand the path of our evolution.
Cultural Anthropology
Cultural anthropology, which is also known as socio-cultural anthropology, deals with the cultural aspects of human societies all over the world. In addition, it focuses on human evolution and cultural highlights of anthropology. Moreover, their focus is primarily on subjects like socio-political organisations, marriage patterns, kinship systems, economic structures and religious beliefs of different societies.
Linguistic Anthropology
Linguistic anthropologists study the human communication process by focusing on the physiology of speech, the structure and function of languages, social and cultural influences on speech and writing and how languages developed over time.
Archaeological anthropology
Archaeologists recover the prehistory of societies and their cultures. Archaeological field investigations are a three-step process:
- Identification- determining the presence or absence of an archaeological site in an area.
- Evaluation- determining the historical and cultural significance of archaeological materials located during the first stage.
- Mitigation/data recovery- full-scale excavation and data recovery of the archaeological site.
Archaeologists systematically uncover the evidence by excavating, dating and analysing the material remains left by people in the past. Different types of archaeologists focus on different areas. For instance, a classical archaeologist is interested in ancient civilisations of the Middle East and the Mediterranean world. Likewise, a historical archaeologist focuses on the unrecorded aspects of life in historically more modern societies like colonial America. Whereas prehistoric archaeologists deal with the ancient, pre-literate societies around the world, underwater archaeologists excavate ancient shipwrecks and submerged cities. Meanwhile, zooarchaeologists work on animal remains found in archaeological sites. Ethnology is the branch of anthropology that studies and compares different human cultures.
There are applied anthropologists who use their knowledge for practical purposes in both private and government agencies. Forensic anthropologists analyse skeletal remains and DNA to identify murder and disaster victims. Whereas Medical anthropologists deal with how different cultures treat different illnesses. The new genre, contemporary anthropology, refers to studying the modern human condition. Just as they did in the past, anthropologists explore the human relationships, patterns and structures in society, power hierarchies, politics, kinship, gender, social class, and religion. Social anthropology uses practical methods to investigate philosophical problems about the nature of human life in society. To sum it up, anthropology asks about what it is to be a human being and how a society forms. It studies the past and present and gives an insight into the future of humanity.
The Significance of Anthropology in the Contemporary World
If you are an expert anthropologist major, you can try a career in the fields like:
- Advertising
- Community development
- Cultural and environmental resource management
- Forensics
- Human resources
- Human rights and social justice advocacy
- Law
- Management
- Marketing and communications
- Market research
- Museums
- Public health
- Public relations
- Social work
- Teaching and tourism.
This could be their dream job for people simply passionate about human evolution anthropology. When asked why Stanley A. Freed joined the field of Anthropology and wrote books on it, he said:
"In the 1980s, I joined the small group of anthropologists who were writing about the history of their subject. I believed I could add some balance to American Anthropological history. The best place to start was with museums- where the story began. The more I delved into archives, the more I was fascinated. I was hooked."
One of the main reasons why human evolution anthropology is important in this contemporary world is that the cultural contact between different societies has increased due to globalisation. So it is necessary to understand what cultural variation and multiculturalism in society entail. In today's interconnected world, Anthropology has the power to bridge geographic, economic or ideological gaps by capturing the ground realities. It studies almost all aspects of human existence, and by doing so, it helps to connect everyone from around the world. In short, anthropology is essential for building an understanding and respect across real or imagined cultural divides. Anthropology is rightly called the "science of humanity."
