Anthropology is a social science whose main object of study is the individual as a whole, that is, anthropology addresses the subject of the human being through the various approaches offered by disciplines such as natural , social and human sciences .
Anthropology, then, is that science that allows us to know man within the framework of the society and culture to which he belongs and also to see him as a product of these, something like an acute, extensive and detailed X-ray about the bio-social process. that understands the existence of the human race.
Although for a long time, men of all historical times have wondered about man, who he is, where he came from, where he got his lifestyles, among other issues, anthropology as a discipline emerged only in the middle of the 18th century. at the request of the work baptized as Histoire Naturelle belonging to Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, writer, naturalist, mathematician and botanist, among other professions.
At the beginning, the object of study of anthropology, many believed, was reduced only to knowing and focusing on culture or civilization, understanding by this, art , customs , morals , law and beliefs, acquired and adopted by man once become a member of that society, however, this goes much further, since anthropology also focuses on studying the responses that man gives to that environment to which he belongs, culture being the differentiating element of any human being.
The value of anthropology is that it has managed to unite and gather a lot of information that it has very certainly applied to its object of study, which is man.
On the other hand, another salient feature of anthropology is that of the first science that introduced what is called a field work that was proven with the story of the missionaries' travelers, for example.
Anthropology can be divided into four branches or sub-disciplines. Physical or biological anthropology, which is one that deals with studying and analyzing the diversity that the human body has gone through in the past and present, that is, the evolution that corresponded to anatomy. Social Anthropology is the sub branch that focuses on the study of human behavior, culture, the structure of social relationships. On the other hand, the other branch, archeology, is in charge of studying the human race that populated the earth in the past, that is, it is the one that allows us to know what they did, what they ate, what those primitive and extinct peoples were dedicated to. And finally , linguistic anthropology is the part of anthropology that will deal with the study of human languages, more than anything else with the development they have achieved over time and with the influences that issues such as migration and the overwhelming dissemination of information that has occurred on our planet.