Biological anthropology (also known as bioanthropology and physical anthropology) is a branch of anthropology that studies the physical development of the human species. It plays an important part in paleoanthropology (the study of human origins) and in forensic anthropology (the analysis and identification of human remains for legal purposes). It draws upon human anthropometrics (body measurements), human genetics (molecular anthropology) and human osteology (the study of bones) and includes neuroanthropology, the study of human brain evolution, and of culture as neurological adaptation to environment.
In two centuries biological anthropology has been involved in a range of controversies. The quest for human origins was accompanied by the evolution debate and various racial theories. The nature and nurture debate became a political battleground. There have been various attempts to correlate human physique with psychological traits such as intelligence, criminality and personality type, many of which proved themselves mistaken and are now obsolete.
Read more about Physical Anthropology: Branches, History, Human Biology, Biomedical Anthropology, Typology, Somatotypes, Racial Mapping
Famous quotes containing the words physical and/or anthropology:
“Let us hope ... that by the best cultivation of the physical world, beneath and around us; and the intellectual and moral world within us, we shall secure an individual, social and political prosperity and happiness, whose course shall be onward and upward, and which, while the earth endures, shall not pass away.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“History is, strictly speaking, the study of questions; the study of answers belongs to anthropology and sociology.”
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