What is distinctive about anthropology is that, anthropologists, no matter what the focus of their research, always remember that they are seeing only one possible way out of many that humans can think about and act in the world. Thus, anthropologists examine how human cultures differ from each other as well as in what makes humans different from other animals. Culture is the central concept of anthropological research. For example, when studying how humans differ from other animals, physical anthropologists look at how human evolution led to our capacity for culture. Physical anthropologists compare human culture to that of the non human primates, such as gorillas or chimpanzees.
Human cultures vary greatly over time and around the world.
Archaeologists study human society using things that people left behind or threw away rather than words that they wrote down. These material remains might be thousands of years old, or they might be what someone put in the garbage dump yesterday. Social anthropologists look at contemporary human societies, from small groups of people living in the Brazilian Amazon rainforest to people living in the biggest cities of the world. Anthropology is related to the discipline of sociology , but has a distinct history and focus. Social anthropology, the branch that is closest to sociology, differs from it by making cross-cultural comparisons central to any study.