Anthropology studies the whole of the human condition and it includes both scientific and humanistic approaches. It compares cultures and populations across the world and examines the development of human diversity over the past few million years. Anthropologists take a holistic approach, which means they study everything about what it means to be human (e.g., biology, economics, politics, religion, culture, language, marriage patterns, etc), and they look for the interrelations of these parts. Anthropology is divided into four major subfields (physical/biological anthropology, cultural anthropology, linguistics, and archaeology) and this course will introduce students to all of these subfields. Along the way students will be looking at some of the most fundamental and important issues in the world today (e.g., the concept of race, genetics, the sources and solutions to ethnic conflict, and many more)

Two central ideas in anthropology are the concept of culture and the concept of evolution. One definition of culture is: the complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, arts, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by humans as a member of society. Students will explore many dimensions of culture in this course and how it has shaped the human condition. The National Academy of Sciences has stated that the most fundamental concept in all of biology is evolution. One definition of evolution is a change in allele frequency between generations. A less technical one is descent with modification. However evolution is defined, it is essential that basic concepts behind biological evolution are understand in order to understand the human species: Homo sapiens, in other words us. In this course students will examine human biology from an evolutionary and adaptive framework looking at, among other things:

• the course of human evolution,
• humans' relationship to their closest living relatives — the primates,
• how evolution has affected what humans' look like (e.g., their skin color)
• human adaptation to the diverse environments of the world.

One important goal of this course is that students develop the ability to look at the world through the anthropological lens. That is, they are able to understand and apply ideas about culture and evolution that they have learned in this course to any and all situations they encounter in life.