Origins Biological anthropology looks different today than it did even at the end of the 1990s. Even the name is relatively new, having been known as 'physical anthropology' since before 1900, with some practitioners still applying that term. Biological anthropologists look back to the work of
Charles Darwin as a major foundation for what they do today. However, if one traces the intellectual genealogy back to the beginnings of physical anthropology—before the discovery of much of what we now know of the hominin fossil record—the focus shifts to human biological variation. Some editors, see below, have rooted the field even deeper than formal science. Attempts to study and classify human beings as living organisms date back to Ancient Greece. The Greek philosopher
Plato ( 428– 347 BC) placed humans on the
scala naturae, which included all things, from inanimate objects at the bottom to deities at the top. This became the main system through which scholars thought about nature for the next roughly 2,000 years. The first prominent physical anthropologist, the German physician
Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (1752–1840) of
Göttingen, amassed a large collection of human skulls (
Decas craniorum, published during 1790–1828), from which he argued for the division of humankind into five major races (termed
Caucasian,
Mongolian,
Aethiopian,
Malayan and
American), now recognised as outdated and obsolete. In the 19th century, French physical anthropologists, led by
Paul Broca (1824–1880), focused on
craniometry while the German tradition, led by
Rudolf Virchow (1821–1902), emphasized the influence of environment and disease upon the human body. In the 1830s and 40s, physical anthropology was prominent in the debate about
slavery, with the scientific,
monogenist works of the British abolitionist
James Cowles Prichard (1786–1848) opposing those of the American
polygenist Samuel George Morton (1799–1851). In the late 19th century, German-American anthropologist
Franz Boas (1858–1942) had a significant impact on biological anthropology by emphasizing the influence of culture and experience on the human form. His research showed that head shape was malleable to environmental and nutritional factors rather than a stable "racial" trait. However,
scientific racism persisted in biological anthropology, with prominent figures such as
Earnest Hooton and
Aleš Hrdlička promoting theories of racial superiority and a European origin of modern humans.
"New physical anthropology" In 1951,
Sherwood Washburn, a former student of Hooton, introduced a "new physical anthropology." He shifted the focus from racial typology to concentrate upon the study of human evolution, moving away from classification towards evolutionary process. Anthropology expanded to include
paleoanthropology and
primatology. The 20th century also saw the
modern synthesis in biology: the reconciling of
Charles Darwin's theory of
evolution and
Gregor Mendel's research on heredity. Advances in the understanding of the
molecular structure of DNA and the development of
chronological dating methods opened the door to a more accurate and much greater understanding of human variation, both past and present. == Notable biological anthropologists ==