Abstract

The discipline of anthropology was established in the 19th century to answer one major question, viz., Why are we different? The first answer was provided by anthropologists educated in the biological sciences, principally doctors and anatomists. With the establishment of the anthropological society of Paris in 1839, the first President, Paul Broca, declared in his inaugural address that the task of anthropology was to trace the long evolutionary sweep of humankind from its first appearing to the present. A second answer was provided by pioneers in the social sciences, including Sir Edward Burnett Tylor and Emile Durkheim, each of whom asserted that we learn to be different. Most anthropologists would agree that our differences are results of both our biological inheritance and our personal and social experiences.