I am a human, and nothing human can be of indifference to me. We are curious about ourselves and about other people, the living as well as the dead, here and around the globe. Such questions are part of a folk anthropology practiced in school yards, office buildings and neighborhood cafes. This, the comparative method, attempts to explain similarities and differences among people holistically, in the context of humanity as a whole. Any detail of our behavior can best be understood when it is seen in the context provided by the full range of human behavior.
Anthropology seeks to uncover principles of behavior that apply to all human communities.
To illustrate, imagine having our entire lives in a world of red. As a field, anthropology brings an explicit, evolutionary approach to the study of human behavior. In North America the discipline's largest branch, cultural anthropology, applies the comparative method and evolutionary perspective to human culture. Ethnographers compare what they see and hear themselves with the observations and findings of studies conducted in other societies. Originally, anthropologists pieced together a complete way of life for a culture, viewed as a whole.