For those that study anthropology, one of the most common questions they come across is: what is anthropology? The answer to that is quite simple; anthropology is the study of the human being, from a biological, social, psychological and cultural point of view.

However, it is a very complex career. It basically aims to understand and study the most complicated creature that has ever existed, with around seven million years of history behind it. Then there’s the usual follow-up question: so, what do you do with that after you graduate? Actually, anthropologists are qualified to work in a huge variety of fields.

It’s important to know that anthropology has four main branches; biological anthropology, archaeology, social anthropology, and linguistics. In America, they’re all studied when you major in Anthropology, but in European schools, they are sometimes separated.

Biological anthropology and archaeology are usually the most well-known areas of anthropology, since they’re portrayed in entertainment and it’s what we see most often in museums. Biological anthropology has to do with the physical aspect of human beings; including evolution, genetics, physical differences between cultures, forensic science, osteology (the study of bones), cultural body modifications, and basically anything that has to do with the human body.

Biological anthropologists are the ones that have explained the enormous importance of having opposable thumbs, and the huge advantage it gave our first ancestors, and how that helped almost every technological advancement the humans ever made.

They have also determined how different environments and weather conditions and diets explain why people have different skin tones, different hair, and different facial features.

Archaeology deals with excavations and studying the objects, clothes, buildings, and any other tool that humans may have used at some point. It is a fascinating area of study because through those artifacts we can determine when humans started using certain materials, and they give a timeline into our technological evolution as well.

Thanks to archaeologists we know what kind of building materials early humans used, and what they used for cooking, and what they used to wear to protect themselves from the cold. Archaeologists can easily tell the difference between a rock and a piece of bone, they can tell if a stone is also part of an ancient construction or if just a regular stone.

Social anthropology studies the behavior and cultural traditions and characteristics of people all over the world. Some have the idea that social anthropologists are always going deep into jungles to observe exotic and isolated tribes and things like that; however, a lot of social anthropologists also study and observe the behavior of people in the cities, or their hometown.

With the changes going around today in the entire planet, there is quite a lot to see in urban areas, and people would be surprised to know how everyone is being affected, without them even noticing it. It also deals with how culture has evolved and changed throughout history. All kinds of culture; this includes religion, laws, wars, social movements, migration, and how they have shaped the way humans live today.

Linguistic anthropology is extremely interesting since it goes deep into the origins of our communications. All our languages in all their forms, how we developed writing, how we expressed ourselves through art, how our mouths have changed in order to be able to pronounce certain sounds, how our vocal cords also evolved so that our voices could be understood. Dead tongues, dialects, slang, root tongues; they are all studied and analyzed by linguistic anthropologists.

As you can see, Anthropology covers a lot of ground, and that also translates into being qualified for many, many areas of work. From working in a museum or teaching to being a marketing consultant or criminologist.

From doing field research on an excavation site to doing research in a genetics lab. From working as a physical therapist in a sports team to working as a computer programmer. It really is amazing how studying anthropology prepares people and gives them tools that no other career does when it comes to human interaction and understanding why humans do what humans do. That’s why studying Anthropology is such a good idea.