Why Charles Darwin Was The Most Influential Anthropologist

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Why Charles Darwin was the most Influential Anthropologist

I believe that Charles Darwin was the most influential anthropologist because he revolutionized the field of anthropology and made others rethink previously held beliefs, paved the way for future anthropologists and future study, and is relevant today due to his discoveries. To begin, Darwin was a naturalist and a biologist best known for his theory of evolution and natural selection. Through his theory, he proclaimed that species survived through a process called natural selection, where those that are well adapted, or evolved, to meet the changing requirements of their natural habitat flourished, while those that were unsuccessful at evolving and reproducing died off. While he noticed the …show more content…

With the increase of fossil records individuals were able to find some of the transitional stages in human evolution that Darwin has talked about. The relevance of Darwin’s discovery today is that “The theory of evolution and natural selection not only changed the way we look at biology and other organisms, but altered the way we view of ourselves and the place we have in this universe” (www.muhlenberg.edu). In today’s day and age, one is able to refer back to Darwin's discovery and look at biology and other organisms in a different way. One of the major reasons why Charles Darwin is relevant today is because many anthropologists have been able to learn from his theory and be able to determine what makes us human by studying non - human primates and their evolution over time. Therefore I believe that Charles Darwin is the most influential anthropologist, as his theory proved to revolutionize the field of anthropology and question people’s beliefs, he paved the way for future anthropologists and future study, and he is relevant today due to his discovery of human evolution. I believe that there are many things that we can learn from his discoveries and