Anthropology

专业介绍

Welcome to the Anthropology Department of UC San Diego. Our department takes diverse approaches to studying humans. These range from investigating our species’ evolution, deep prehistory and more recent history, how we communicate, develop and function as individuals, groups and societies, to how we experience health and disease. The department consists of four subfields: archaeological, biological, psychological, and sociocultural/linguistic anthropology. 

There is much to be discovered about us humans. How did we become the global species we now are? How did we become self-aware, aware of our mortality, capable of extreme optimism or pessimism, capable of endless imagination, and possessing the combined capacity for highly pro-social acts and worst atrocities? Humans now directly shape the earth’s biosphere and climate. Our species has existed for over 200,000 years, is one of ~500 primates, and one of over 6,000 mammalian species. It took humans over 200,000 years to reach a population of one billion, but less than 200 years to reach eight billion, with half of us now living in cities.