ANTH 002 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Moe Williams, Evolutionism
7 May 2020
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Document Summary
Reconstructs the life and customs of peoples who lived in the past, traced cultural changes and offers possible explanations to those changes. Archeologists deal with prehistory, the time before written records. A specialty called historical archeology, the remains of recent peoples who left written records. Linguistics study changes that have taken place over time, as well as variation. How languages change over time and how they may be related. Descriptive or structural linguistics: how contemporary languages differ, in their construction. How language is used in social contexts. Tries to understand how and why people today and in the past differ or are similar in their ways of thinking and acting. Provides data for a description called an ethnography. Studies life of a particular group, how they have changed over time. Discovers general patterns about cultural traits, what is universal. Basic research is driven by curiosity with no thought as to where it might lead.
