anthrop-, anthropo-, -anthrope, -anthropic, -anthropical, -anthropically, -anthropism, -anthropist, -anthropoid, -anthropus, -anthropy
(Greek: man, mankind; human beings; including, males (man, men; boy, boys) and females (woman, women; girl, girls); all members of the human race; people, humanity)
2. A reference to the natural history of human beings.
More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly.
2. Anyone who is professionally involved in, or versed in, the study of the human species and their ancestors: Anthropologists have made considerable use of information provided by archaeologists in their attempt to understand the origins of modern customs, art, and social and political life.
Anthropologists seek to study and to interpret the special characteristics of any particular population or activity in terms of its time and place in the total history of mankind.
- Physical anthropology
- Archaeology
- Anthropological linguistics
- Cultural anthropology
- Archaeology
- Anthropological linguistics
- Cultural anthropology
- Social anthropology
3. The branch of the science that investigates the position of man zoologically, his evolution, and history as a race of animated beings.
The objective study of anthropology has led to the idea of cultural relativity, meaning that all societies must be evaluated within their own cultural frameworks.
Specialists in anthropology attempt to understand human nature and mankind's' place in nature; therefore, as a highly diverse discipline, anthropology is concerned with the sociocultural as well as the biological side of humanness.
The three main events in a human's life are being born, married, and buried; in other words, hatched, matched, and dispatched.
This form of anthropomancy was practiced in ancient Egypt. The Roman Emperor Heliogabalus is said to have done this, too.
Herodotus said that Menelaus, who was detained in Egypt by contrary winds, used anthropomancy by sacrificing two children of the country, and sought to discover his destiny by this method.
It is reported that in his magical operations of anthropomancy, Julian the Apostate, caused a large number of children to be killed so that he might consult their entrails and a woman was found in the Temple of the Moon at Carra, in Mesopotamia, hanging by her hair with her liver torn out.
This type of anthropomancy divination continued through the period of the Roman Empire and it was believed to have been revived by notorious practitioners of the black arts during the Middle Ages.