ABSTRACT
Overview Anthropology, like all disciplines of knowledge, is an outcome of centuries of discourse, thought, and debate among dierent minds. e history of ideas in anthropology is not just a linear transmission of knowledge on the subject, passed on dutifully from aging teacher to eager young student, generation aer generation, even though enculturation is partly how the eld has been passed on to the present day. Knowledge in anthropology has also advanced with new discoveries: of fossils, artifacts, sites, villages, and cultures. eories have changed, too, with inuences from society itself, such as world wars, international treaties, human migrations, and the internet. In this chapter we trace the development of thinking in anthropology in North America and Europe from the Enlightenment in the 1700s to the end of World War II in 1945.
