Why might one want to study anthropology?

[YorktownGal]

Originally Posted by TamaraSavannah

Which, may be another thing for parents advising their children on what to go for. Do they really know the major in question or, at best, do they know it from the decades ago when they came across it?

True.

The OP son should move to Italy where anthropologist is a prestige degree/career.

In countries with a long past and many ruins, anthropologists are viewed very different from the good ole USA where it's kind of useless. In Italy or Greece, you can't dig without hitting for an archeology site. As a result, archeologists and anthropologist are in demand.

[Forever Blue]

I took a few anthro courses in college & I've told my self before if money was no object & I was just going to school for fun & wanted to earn a PhD, it would be in Anthropology.

[TamaraSavannah]

Originally Posted by Forever Blue

I took a few anthro courses in college & I've told my self before if money was no object & I was just going to school for fun & wanted to earn a PhD, it would be in Anthropology.

I was thinking this morning about a one world problem and wondering what they, others, were thinking when they took the Greenland Inuit from their hunting life in the 50s, put them on government provided food, ..... and now we have higher diabetes rates in that population. My memory may be off of the causes but this link at least shows it is a problem: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7034430/

As I said, what were they thinking when they changed their diets? Now, in all fairness, perhaps they just didn't know, the science wasn't there at the time to consider that such would happen. But, on the other hand, if there was an anthropologist in that program, maybe someone could have been around to say, "Wait a minute.".

Maybe....for it is an A and B situation from my observations of so many years. A: One being of such knowledge can probably always find a job in someone's administration here or there, the brain power to look beyond the face value of a situation. B: But as may be so often in government service, one may be right but for whatever reason, their recommendation is not accepted.

BUT, there may be hope, still. One of my advanced degrees includes major course work in Antiquity Theft (remember, I am basically a cop/state security). One of my board said at the end of it that this was the quality of work for working for someone like the Ford Foundation and producing grants for countries like Costa Rica (ecological and antiquity tourism is major national income there).

[Mircea]

Originally Posted by RobertFisher

I know all about the debate to let kids choose what they want to study; hopefully we can bypass that. My issue here is, an anthropology degree seems very very useless to me. (and History is a close second).

That's typical of unimaginative people unfamiliar with the world.

There was a time when the President of Security for 5th/3rd Bank had a psychology degree.

Those of you who bank at 5th/3rd might be wondering if the money in your account was safe seeing how she did not have a degree in law enforcement or criminology or criminal justice or pre-law or banking, finance, accounting, or forensic accounting/finance or anything even remotely related to physical security or crime prevention.

It isn't the degree, it's how you present yourself.

Originally Posted by RobertFisher

I asked him why he's interested in anthropology, and he says he's just curious about human behaviors and how humans came about.

Is this a good enough reason?!

Absolutely it is, even more so since it's his life, not yours.

Originally Posted by RobertFisher

So I want to ask the education experts... What are the most common reasons people may choose to study anthropology?

Anthropology is fascinating and it is the archeological version of sociology which is the study of groups, societies, ethnic groups, nations, nation-States and countries in the past.

Maybe your son could solve a conundrum and become famous.

The Akkadians bequeathed to the Chaldeans the MUL.APIN. It's a star list. It includes MUL.NEBIRU. Maybe your son could look into that.

About a dozen or so Greek authors writing between 350 BCE and 450 CE including Rhetorius the Egyptian who was actually Greek say certain planets were exalted at certain latitudes in certain constellations, for example the Sun at Aries 19° and Mars at Capricorn 28° which is the conundrum because those planets don't have those values now and they didn't have them when the Greeks were writing.

Perhaps:

1) The Greeks were just plain wrong.
2) The Greeks are right but we're not sure why they're right.
3) Those values were obtained in the far remote distant past.
4) The Chaldeans were using a radically different star scheme other than Aries 8° or Aries 10° or Aries 15° for the Spring Equinox.

It's likely #3 and #4 but that is terrifyingly frightening or frighteningly terrifying.

Without delving into celestial mechanics, suffice to say Earth's obliquity moves from 21.1° to 24.5° over the course of 20,500 years and from 24.5° to 21.1° over 20,500 years making the cycle 41,000 years.

Those values are only possible when Earth's obliquity is between 21.1° and 22.5° and the last time that was true was between 35,000 BCE and 24,000 BCE.

That would mean as late as 24,000 BCE:

1) Someone devised a scheme of constellations
2) Someone had a big brain and knew how to do math
3) Someone knew the Earth was a sphere
4) Someone divided that sphere into 360°
5) Someone devised a scheme of terrestrial latitude or had a really big brain and could project terrestrial latitude into space or an even bigger brain and knew how to calculate right ascension and declination.

So, what happened to those people? Something happened to them.

We have Exhibit #1 an underwater city off the coast of India and Exhibit #2 an underwater temple off the coast of Japan and Exhibit #3 an underwater city in the South Pacific just for starters.

Exhibit #3 is most embarrassing because the walls and many structures are made of granite.

Captain Obvious says it's physically and geologically impossible for granite to exist in volcanic islands which are what the South Pacific Islands are and so are the coral islands which are just extensions of volcanic islands like Bermuda which is just a big chunk o' limestone sitting atop tholeitic lava but no granite.

So those people who historians say couldn't have been there in the first place got in their little boats and paddled to Australia or China or South America on a granite hunt.

You can rule out Australia. Once Tasmania separate those two cultures had no contact with other cultures which is why when we found them they were still running around in loin cloths chucking boomerangs. Maybe your son could look into that.

They could have paddled to South America. They'd have to park their boats and I'm so sure those South Pacific Islanders were appropriately dressed to go hiking in the Andes to find a suitable place to quarry granite.

Do I have to mention that one guy with a stone chisel and stone hammer ain't gonna get the job done? No, they'd need at least 1,000 people to quarry granite and anthropology says 7,000 people to support them because if you're working in the quarry all day you can't be hunting and fishing and farming and herding and building houses and preserving meats and processing grains to eat and making clothes.

There'd be a town of 8,000 people. Maybe your son could find it.

And then there's the 3 tribes in the Amazon Rain Forest that have Australasian DNA.

Maybe your son could figure out how a bunch of guys tooling around in their fishing boat in the Java Sea got blown off course and sailed right by 100s of islands and ended up on the east coast of South America.

Maybe those guys worked in the granite quarry: "Hey, as soon as we deliver this last load of granite, we'll come back and get you."

There's prehistoric granite quarries in China. Maybe they went there.

Captain Obvious says people don't build cities and temples underwater.

That means they were built when sea levels were lower and that was 14,000 years ago.

So, what happened?

It takes centuries for sea levels to rise. You don't panic and move into a cave, you move inland and build more stuff except they didn't. Why not?

People don't go from living in cities to roaming the plains because they wanna.

People only do that if they're forced to do it because of some calamity or catastrophe.

Whatever happened could happen again and I get the distinct impression you wouldn't like moving out of your house and roaming the plains in search of food.

There's the enigma of the Basques, Sumerians and Ainu. How is it the Sumerians came through proto-Indo-European areas but never picked up the language?

Tribal groups in the northeastern US built houses and warehouses and market places and had private property. Groups in the southwest built condos and apartments and had warehouses and market places. A few other groups like the Chickasaw, Choctaw, Seminole and Cherokee did too.

Who was building canals in Florida 3,000 years before Europeans showed up? Who drove the Hopewell out of Ohio and Indiana all the way down to Arkansas where they were slaughtered to the last in a genocidal frenzy by about a dozen groups of Plains Indians? And why did they slaughter them? That was around 600 CE.

Why was a Greek-Armenian, an Iranian and a Georgian building castles in Ireland in the 1200s? I think I know the answer to that but I'd welcome any input from your son or any other anthropologist.

Anthropology is multi-disciplinary because they work with archeologists and historians and linguists and there's no end to the work and usually investigating one mystery generates other mysteries and they're always publishing research papers.

I wish your son well.

[lhpartridge]

The former poet laureate of Mississippi, Beth Ann Fennelly, pushed back against State Auditor Shad White in her guest essay yesterday in the New York Times.

Stop Corporatizing My Students

Reducing education to a business model changes what, and who, gets taught. Framing students as entry-level employees emboldens this “nudge” toward the vocational. But students need a wide horizon to explore, dream, try, fail, try harder, fail better. They need, if you will, to be useless — for a while, anyway.

It’s true that the great majority of my students won’t go on to be writers, but they will go on to be readers who, through literature, educate themselves cognitively, emotionally and spiritually. They’ll leave my classroom prepared to think critically, to consider another’s perspective and muster empathy, and to recognize fake news, fear-mongering and demagogy.

Maybe that’s why the Shad Whites out there seem so keen to thwart my students working toward “useless” degrees. After all, they can detect faulty reasoning faster than a sneeze through a screen door. So let me suggest that higher education administrators jettison the corporatease. My students’ degrees are only “high value” if they’ve reason to value them highly. My campus is not your corporation. My classroom is not your boardroom.

The comments were particularly interesting. A huge number of comments from tech professionals with humanities degrees convinced me to incorporate a focus on the humanities in our coding academy. Our coders will use their skills to make a living, but they need the humanities in order to make a life.

As a math, physics, and computer science student who ended up teaching French for over three decades, I appreciated reading such strong support for ensuring that an education includes the full spectrum of human endeavor, from Anthropology, Abstract Algebra and the Arts to Zeno, Z-indices, and Zoology and as much as possible in-between.

[digitalUID]

My friend as a BA in Anthropology and a MS in Social Sciences and works as a UX designer. I think she makes around $250k/yr.

[digitalUID]

Originally Posted by YorktownGal

1st - I’m typing on my phone excuse the typos

History is only an easy degree if you can manage to read 250 - 500 college text pages a week and retain the information. It’s an easy major if you can crank out 5 page reports on a regular basis. It’s an easy if you can logically make a argument and draw parallels between countries, cultures overtime.

Unfortunately, the ability to do this is rare in the United States.

My mother was a systems programer in the 1970’s. It was easy for her. She couldn’t manage a history course reading or writing requirements. Something is only easy if you have a talent for it, and even so, writing papers is still hard work.

It's considered easy by some (the college is 'BS' crowd) because critical thinking skills, or any other intangible life skills for that matter, are severely discounted as something "everyone has already". Obviously not true, but those most lacking would never understand this anyway. History is an incredibly difficult subject if you have the right professors. These people seem to think that unless it's teaching you to interpret a balance sheet, build an engine, or diagnose someone's illness, it must be a worthless endeavor.

[EDS_]

Originally Posted by Mircea

That's typical of unimaginative people unfamiliar with the world.

There was a time when the President of Security for 5th/3rd Bank had a psychology degree.

Those of you who bank at 5th/3rd might be wondering if the money in your account was safe seeing how she did not have a degree in law enforcement or criminology or criminal justice or pre-law or banking, finance, accounting, or forensic accounting/finance or anything even remotely related to physical security or crime prevention.

It isn't the degree, it's how you present yourself.



Absolutely it is, even more so since it's his life, not yours.



Anthropology is fascinating and it is the archeological version of sociology which is the study of groups, societies, ethnic groups, nations, nation-States and countries in the past.

Maybe your son could solve a conundrum and become famous.

The Akkadians bequeathed to the Chaldeans the MUL.APIN. It's a star list. It includes MUL.NEBIRU. Maybe your son could look into that.

About a dozen or so Greek authors writing between 350 BCE and 450 CE including Rhetorius the Egyptian who was actually Greek say certain planets were exalted at certain latitudes in certain constellations, for example the Sun at Aries 19° and Mars at Capricorn 28° which is the conundrum because those planets don't have those values now and they didn't have them when the Greeks were writing.

Perhaps:

1) The Greeks were just plain wrong.
2) The Greeks are right but we're not sure why they're right.
3) Those values were obtained in the far remote distant past.
4) The Chaldeans were using a radically different star scheme other than Aries 8° or Aries 10° or Aries 15° for the Spring Equinox.

It's likely #3 and #4 but that is terrifyingly frightening or frighteningly terrifying.

Without delving into celestial mechanics, suffice to say Earth's obliquity moves from 21.1° to 24.5° over the course of 20,500 years and from 24.5° to 21.1° over 20,500 years making the cycle 41,000 years.

Those values are only possible when Earth's obliquity is between 21.1° and 22.5° and the last time that was true was between 35,000 BCE and 24,000 BCE.

That would mean as late as 24,000 BCE:

1) Someone devised a scheme of constellations
2) Someone had a big brain and knew how to do math
3) Someone knew the Earth was a sphere
4) Someone divided that sphere into 360°
5) Someone devised a scheme of terrestrial latitude or had a really big brain and could project terrestrial latitude into space or an even bigger brain and knew how to calculate right ascension and declination.

So, what happened to those people? Something happened to them.

We have Exhibit #1 an underwater city off the coast of India and Exhibit #2 an underwater temple off the coast of Japan and Exhibit #3 an underwater city in the South Pacific just for starters.

Exhibit #3 is most embarrassing because the walls and many structures are made of granite.

Captain Obvious says it's physically and geologically impossible for granite to exist in volcanic islands which are what the South Pacific Islands are and so are the coral islands which are just extensions of volcanic islands like Bermuda which is just a big chunk o' limestone sitting atop tholeitic lava but no granite.

So those people who historians say couldn't have been there in the first place got in their little boats and paddled to Australia or China or South America on a granite hunt.

You can rule out Australia. Once Tasmania separate those two cultures had no contact with other cultures which is why when we found them they were still running around in loin cloths chucking boomerangs. Maybe your son could look into that.

They could have paddled to South America. They'd have to park their boats and I'm so sure those South Pacific Islanders were appropriately dressed to go hiking in the Andes to find a suitable place to quarry granite.

Do I have to mention that one guy with a stone chisel and stone hammer ain't gonna get the job done? No, they'd need at least 1,000 people to quarry granite and anthropology says 7,000 people to support them because if you're working in the quarry all day you can't be hunting and fishing and farming and herding and building houses and preserving meats and processing grains to eat and making clothes.

There'd be a town of 8,000 people. Maybe your son could find it.

And then there's the 3 tribes in the Amazon Rain Forest that have Australasian DNA.

Maybe your son could figure out how a bunch of guys tooling around in their fishing boat in the Java Sea got blown off course and sailed right by 100s of islands and ended up on the east coast of South America.

Maybe those guys worked in the granite quarry: "Hey, as soon as we deliver this last load of granite, we'll come back and get you."

There's prehistoric granite quarries in China. Maybe they went there.

Captain Obvious says people don't build cities and temples underwater.

That means they were built when sea levels were lower and that was 14,000 years ago.

So, what happened?

It takes centuries for sea levels to rise. You don't panic and move into a cave, you move inland and build more stuff except they didn't. Why not?

People don't go from living in cities to roaming the plains because they wanna.

People only do that if they're forced to do it because of some calamity or catastrophe.

Whatever happened could happen again and I get the distinct impression you wouldn't like moving out of your house and roaming the plains in search of food.

There's the enigma of the Basques, Sumerians and Ainu. How is it the Sumerians came through proto-Indo-European areas but never picked up the language?

Tribal groups in the northeastern US built houses and warehouses and market places and had private property. Groups in the southwest built condos and apartments and had warehouses and market places. A few other groups like the Chickasaw, Choctaw, Seminole and Cherokee did too.

Who was building canals in Florida 3,000 years before Europeans showed up? Who drove the Hopewell out of Ohio and Indiana all the way down to Arkansas where they were slaughtered to the last in a genocidal frenzy by about a dozen groups of Plains Indians? And why did they slaughter them? That was around 600 CE.

Why was a Greek-Armenian, an Iranian and a Georgian building castles in Ireland in the 1200s? I think I know the answer to that but I'd welcome any input from your son or any other anthropologist.

Anthropology is multi-disciplinary because they work with archeologists and historians and linguists and there's no end to the work and usually investigating one mystery generates other mysteries and they're always publishing research papers.

I wish your son well.

I'm very familiar with the world.

BS/BA Anthropology makes a lot of sense for a few groups of kids.
1. Kids from rich families less concerned about long term financial prospects.

2. Excellent students who:
A. ....want to use anthropology as lever into graduate or professional school.
B. ....want to continue anthropology studies in graduate school and become pro anthropologists.
C. ....and truly top/high IQ students who may study anything and do well.

3. I don't know where the OP's kid fits on the continuum.......an OK to good student who studies BS/BA anthropology and finishes outside the top layer of the cadre is likely in for a tough time.


________


As a subject I'd agree anthropology is very interesting and challenging.

[toobusytoday]

One of my kids has their undergrad degree in Anthropology/Sociology and Education. Their masters is in International Education and Policy Management. They were able to get a job, in those fields, within a month of graduating and works in Manhattan.