Anthropology, or the study of humans, is a broad discipline that is divided into many subfields, including physical anthropology. Physical anthropology is the study of human biological evolution. Specific areas studied within physical anthropology include human genetics, primatology, human biological variation, human growth and development, human ecology, osteology, and forensic anthropology. Other subfields within the discipline of anthropology include cultural anthropology, anthropological linguistics, and archaeology.

Science is the activity of seeking out reliable explanations for phenomena. Science is also the search for order and a method for discovery. Scientific thinking provides a systematic way of investigation and includes the identification of variables, hypothesis formation, tests of the validity of the hypothesis and postulating theories.

Evolutionary theory has been shown to be a valid and reliable explanation of basic questions about life. Modern evolutionary theory grew out of a European intellectual climate. Prior to the nineteenth century, most Europeans saw humans as the superior center of a world populated by spontaneously created organisms that did not change once created. Each of these ideas ultimately failed in light of new knowledge gathered by hundreds of scholars, including Copernicus, Linnaeus, Buffon, Lamarck, Lyell, Boucher de Crèvecoeur de Perthes, Darwin, Wallace, and Mendel. Darwin’s concept of natural selection has fused with Mendel’s concept of genetics; to this mixture new ingredients continue to be added.