Anthropology
Overview
Anthropology icon is the study of humanity. It has origins in the humanities
Humanities
The humanities are academic disciplines that study the human condition, using methods that are primarily analytical, critical, or speculative, as distinguished from the mainly empirical approaches of the natural sciences....

, the natural science
Natural science
The natural sciences are branches of science that seek to elucidate the rules that govern the natural world by using empirical and scientific methods...

s, and the social sciences. The term "anthropology" is from the Greek
Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek is the stage of the Greek language in the periods spanning the times c. 9th–6th centuries BC, , c. 5th–4th centuries BC , and the c. 3rd century BC – 6th century AD of ancient Greece and the ancient world; being predated in the 2nd millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek...

 anthrōpos , "man", understood to mean mankind or humanity, and -logia (-λογία), "discourse" or "study", and was first used in 1501 by German philosopher Magnus Hundt
Magnus Hundt
Magnus Hundt was a German philosopher, physician and theologian. Together with Otto Casmann he is regarded as the founder of modern anthropology since they invented and popularized the term....

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Anthropology's basic concerns are "What defines human life and origins?", "How are social relations among humans organized?", "Who are the ancestors of modern Homo sapiens?", "What are humans' physical traits?", "How do humans behave?", "Why are there variations among different groups of humans?", "How has the evolutionary past of Homo sapiens influenced its social organization and culture?" and so forth.

In the United States, contemporary anthropology is typically multiplied into four sub-fields: cultural anthropology
Cultural anthropology
Cultural anthropology is a branch of anthropology focused on the study of cultural variation among humans, collecting data about the impact of global economic and political processes on local cultural realities. Anthropologists use a variety of methods, including participant observation,...

 also known as socio-cultural anthropology, archaeology
Archaeology
Archaeology, or archeology , is the study of human society, primarily through the recovery and analysis of the material culture and environmental data that they have left behind, which includes artifacts, architecture, biofacts and cultural landscapes...

, linguistic anthropology
Linguistic anthropology
Linguistic anthropology is the interdisciplinary study of how language influences social life. It is a branch of anthropology that originated from the endeavor to document endangered languages, and has grown over the past 100 years to encompass almost any aspect of language structure and...

, and physical (or biological) anthropology
Biological anthropology
Biological anthropology is that branch of anthropology that studies the physical development of the human species. It plays an important part in paleoanthropology and in forensic anthropology...

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