Scientists anthropologists. Scientists - anthropologists presented a new missing link

On September 15, the famous Russian anthropologist, candidate of biological sciences, scientific editor of the portal “Anthropogenesis.ru” Stanislav Drobyshevsky visited Tolyatti. At the Burevestnik cultural and leisure center, the scientist gave a lecture “The Life of the Simple and the Cunning: The Life of the Past and Its Biological Consequences.” What people of old times looked like and what they did, how living conditions affected their health - you could learn about this and much more at the lecture.

The anthropologist’s visit took place thanks to the initiative of the international public movement “Community of Young Scientists”. It is this organization that invites leading scientists to our city. For example, last year in Tolyatti Maxim Lebedev– famous archaeologist and expert on Egyptian pyramids. Now an expert on evolution and human origins has come to give us a lecture.

Before the start of the performance, a historical and entertainment quest took place in the Burevestnik lobby. At interactive stations, guests were invited to make a torch out of paper, guess an ancient Russian riddle, build a tower from small planks, and also take part in a lottery where they could win various sweets or books by anthropologists.

Stanislav Drobyshevsky– popularizer of science, associate professor of the Department of Biological Sciences, Moscow State University. M.V. Lomonosov, lecturer at the “Scientists against Myths” forum. In 2018, he became a laureate of the IV All-Russian Prize “For Fidelity to Science” of the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation. Since 1997, he regularly took part in archaeological expeditions: in excavations of the ancient Greek necropolis of Artezian, Paleolithic sites in Denisova Cave (Altai), in the Moscow Kremlin, Stavropol Territory, Veliky Novgorod and beyond. Stanislav Vladimirovich is the author of numerous scientific monographs, textbooks for students, and the popular two-volume book “The Getting Link.” The scientist’s recent work is the book “Tales from the Grotto. 50 stories from the life of ancient people." The work is a collection of stories in which the author tries to reconstruct the life of ancient people from different parts of the world - from Europe to Australia. As the head of the supervisory board of the public movement “Community of Young Scientists” and the organizer of the lecture put it: Igor Vlasenko, who introduced the speaker to the audience, “a rock star from the world of science has come to us!”

The “scientific rock concert” was dedicated to the life of ancient people. According to Stanislav Drobyshevsky, many often mistakenly imagine that in the past people were the same as they are now. Of course, the lives of people of the past were similar to ours in many ways, but they were also strikingly different in many ways. Food, housing, social status, profession, illness and habits - all this was partially reflected in their body, namely in their bones. By examining the remains of ancestors, anthropologists can now determine what people of the past did during their lifetime, without affecting written sources or architectural objects.

– When we [scientists] find some archaeological remains - pots, dishes, broken houses - it is not always obvious how they can be used to study the life of people,– says Stanislav Drobyshevsky. – How, for example, can you find out whether people lived well in the past? In fact, the quality of life is reflected in the people themselves. You can find out about this even after many years from the skeleton.

According to the scientist, the bones contain so-called markers of nonspecific stress. This means that the child had problems in life in the past that contributed to the abnormal growth of bones in the body. Defects form in infancy and many of them persist throughout life. Stress can be caused by anything: hunger, cold, war, relocation to another habitat, epidemic. When stress occurs regularly and continues for a long time (otherwise it will not affect the skeleton in any way), scientists can notice the defects caused by it. Whenever a person dies, an anthropologist is able to calculate at what age and how many times he had problems that affected his health. One of the most common markers of stress is hypoplasia - insufficient development of the enamel of baby or permanent teeth.

“When we [scientists] find one individual with hypoplasia, it doesn’t mean much. Maybe he was the only one who had problems in his life. And if there is a burial ground and the frequency of hypoplastic stripes is high, this means that something was consistently wrong with this particular group,– the lecturer emphasized.

Stanislav Vladimirovich noted that there are a lot of syndromes and complexes that arise as a result of a specific type of activity. For example, when a person regularly rides a horse, out of habit he jumps off the horse to one side and lands on his foot with a swing. Every time you jump off a horse, small microdamages occur, and bone tissue grows in a person’s knee. If such a defect was found in a person of the past, then we can assume that he was a horseman. Consequently, thanks to the bones, scientists are able to identify the type of activity of an ancient person.

Problems also happened with Russian princes. Yes, skeleton Yaroslav the Wise says that during his lifetime he had battle injuries, as well as a pathology of the knee, which is why the prince limped on one leg. The chronicle details how they killed Andrey Bogolyubsky. The brutal murder is also confirmed by archaeologists - many traces of wounds were found on his skeleton. And at the remains Ivan the Terrible Scientists have discovered prohibitive concentrations of mercury. The substance was included in many medicines of that time, which means it was treated for a serious illness.

- The doctors of Ancient Rus' did not draw parallels: we treat with mercury - he got worse - we are treating the king incorrectly. They thought differently: he feels bad, which means we need to give him more of the same drugs,– concluded Stanislav Drobyshevsky.

The lecturer made a consoling conclusion for the audience: “We should be glad that we live in the twenty-first century - and we do not live like people of old times. No one knocks on our heads or chops us with sabers. We don’t work like horses, and the changing climate is not an obstacle for us, so we don’t wear out our skeleton with wild force.”

After the lecture, listeners asked about the clothes of ancient people, about the burials of monks, and about the chances of scientists finding a frozen person or animal. But the best question, according to the lecturer, was asked by a girl violist: “Is it possible to identify a musician by his bones?” Stanislav Drobyshevsky answered jokingly: “To identify a musician, you must first understand what deformations occur in a musician throughout his life. Over time, you can donate yourself to science. Better yet, organize a crowd of violists for us [scientists] to calculate all the possible defects. Then we’ll look for musicians too.” The author of the question received a book by S.V. as a gift from the organizers. Gordeev "Magical history of the world".

At London's Natural History Museum, UK, copies of the remains of the australopithecus Australopithecus sediba are exhibited. Museum visitors had the opportunity to see with their own eyes what paleoanthropologists have been heatedly arguing about since 2010.

American paleoartist John Gurshe created a portrait of Australopithecus sediba
A group of anthropologists from the University of Johannesburg in South Africa began excavations in 2008 in Malapa Cave, in the north of the country. There they found more than 220 bones of ancient hominids.

In 2010, 2 years later, Lee Berger and his colleagues discovered the well-preserved remains of a new species of australopithecus - Australopithecus sediba, which is an intermediate link from australopithecines to humans themselves. It is likely that the australopithecines, whose skeletons were found by scientists, fell into a large pit and therefore remained virtually untouched. A total of 2 skeletons were found - a young female aged approximately 30 years, and a young individual aged 10–13 years.

“The presence of many “advanced” features in the structure of the skeleton and skull, as well as the updated age of our find, allows us to assume that Australopithecus sediba is better suited to the role of the ancestor of the genus Homo - our genus, in comparison with the “current” ancestor of people - Homo habilis (Homo habilis) habilis)," said the discoverer of the "transition link" Lee Berger from the University of Johannesburg in South Africa.

Australopithecines have characteristics characteristic of both humans and chimpanzees. What makes them similar to humans are their short fingers, a structure of the skull similar to ours, and legs adapted for walking. However, these primates had long arms, their wrists were adapted for climbing trees, and their brains were relatively small compared to the first “direct” ancestor of humans, Homo habilis.

Paleontologists led by Robyn Pickering from the University of Melbourne, Australia, calculated the exact age of the fossils, which was 1.977 million years. The result was obtained by analyzing the ratio of uranium and lead isotopes in the remains themselves and in the surrounding rocks. Thus, Australopithecus sediba appeared in southern Africa at about the same time as Homo habilis.

A group of scientists led by Christian Carlson from the University of Witwatersrand (South Africa) studied the structure of the skull of a teenage Australopithecus who died at the age of 12-13 years. A scanner image of the inside of the skull showed that the brain of Australopithecus sediba was more similar to that of modern humans than to that of its closest relative, Australopithecus africanus.

Anthropologists believe that their find is much closer to the genus Homo than to australopithecines, and should supplant Homo habilis as the first representative of the genus Homo. However, not scientists agree with this.

Bolshekaragan people are Arkaim people.

Thanks to archaeologists, we learned a lot about the inhabitants of Arkaim and the Land of Cities. But last year, anthropological scientists gave us a real sensation. They restored the appearance of specific people buried here four thousand years ago. Until now, we could only guess what the Arkaim people looked like. Famous anthropologists Alexey Nechvaloda from Ufa and Alexander Khokhlov from Samara made a scientific reconstruction of four of our ancient fellow countrymen using the methods of the famous scientist M.M. Gerasimova.

"Princess" from Kizilsky

The first female portrait was made on the basis of the remains found in the territory of the present Kizilsky district. Chelyabinsk archaeologists have been excavating here since 2008. In time, the Kizilsky burial ground precedes Arkaim. But it is unique in that it is one of the earliest burial mounds in the Urals.

The group of archaeologists was led here by Associate Professor of the Department of Archeology of ChelSU, Candidate of Historical Sciences Tatyana Malyutina. She says:

Before this, mounds were not built over the graves. The movement of the Yamnaya tribes is considered the most ancient migration of Indo-Europeans on the territory of the European steppes up to the Altai and Yenisei. Now a mound was being built for the burial of one person...

The skeleton of a woman was discovered in one of the local mounds. Scholars debate her social status, but privately call her "princess."

Princess.

Princess's grave

The fact is that the mound is large - 22 meters in diameter. Around it there is a deep ditch three to four meters wide. In essence, it is a small fortress. Making such a structure was not an easy task. Archaeologists did not find any “equipment” in the grave of the “princess”. However, at that time the tradition of laying objects with the deceased had not yet developed. The body was only sprinkled with ocher; apparently, there was some kind of ritual associated with resurrection - ocher symbolized blood, and therefore life.

The “Princess” was about 25 years old at the time of her death. It’s hard to say what she died from. Tatyana Malyutina says that at that time a person could die even from a cold. Therefore, they lived little - few lived to be 32 years old.

With a fang on his chest

Alexandrovsky man

But on the chest of the second man, whose appearance was restored by scientists, a bear fang was discovered. A. Nechvaloda depicted it as an amulet around the neck, but this is the scientist’s assumption, not a fact. The fang could have already been placed in the grave. The man is also no more than 25 years old. His remains were found by a group of archaeologists under the leadership of Dmitry Zdanovich, candidate of historical sciences, already near Arkaim, in the Aleksandrovsky-4 burial ground. Here, under the already blurred mounds at great depths, burials with perfectly preserved skeletons were found.

Here we also find ocher. In the light of new excavations, it was presented that the burials were also left by the Yamnaya tribes, says Tatyana Malyutina. - I conventionally call all the burials near Arkaim the burials of the patriarchs of Arkaim. When they were buried, Arkaim itself did not yet exist. People had just mastered this territory, understood its meaning and planned to build a fortress.

Young "citizens"

The last two reconstructions are actually Arkaim residents. These people are younger than the first two by about 200-300 years. But the man's age is supposedly 23 years old.

The woman is a little older. She is tall - about 180 centimeters, despite the fact that the average height of the residents of Arkaim was about 170 centimeters. Their remains were found in the Bolshekaragansky burial ground, one of the most striking mounds. There are many items here: arrowheads, an adze axe, a mace, a hook. It happened that sacrificial animals were placed in the graves along with the deceased person, in some cases up to 20 carcasses, which indicates a certain prosperity. But Doctor of Historical Sciences Gennady Zdanovich is sure that there was no strict stratification of property in Arkaim. Social differentiation depended on authority, talent, gender and age. Whether such a “classless” society was the result of a rational social organization or whether it needs to be explained by more mundane reasons is difficult to say. But Professor Zdanovich always insists: Arkaim is capable of teaching us important lessons.

Same as us

However, much has already been said and written about all this. But the restored appearance of the inhabitants of the Land of Cities gives us other important information. As we see, the Arkaimites, if they were in our time now, would easily disappear into the crowd. They really are very similar to us.

Alexey Nechvaloda and Alexander Khokhlov classify the Arkaim population as the oldest Caucasoids, specifying that two Caucasoid branches are mixed here - Central European and Mediterranean. Uraloid signs are also present.

This confirms the previously known opinion of scientists that the most ancient population in the Urals was of Finno-Ugric origin (Uraloids). It existed and developed here in the singular until the Eneolithic (the era of transition from the Stone Age to the Bronze Age) and the Bronze Age. Only in the Bronze Age did the Caucasian population appear here - the “Yamniki”. They begin to mix with the Uraloid population. Moreover, women have a greater degree of Uraloidity (anthropologists say that this is even noticeable in reconstructions), while men are more Caucasian.

Anthropologists say that with the current capabilities of science (and with sufficient funds, of course), it would be easy to obtain even the genome of the inhabitants of Arkaim.

Gerasimov School of Reconstruction

In Russia, for 60 years now, there has been a whole scientific school of anthropological reconstruction of a person’s appearance based on his skull. Its founder is the outstanding scientist Mikhail Gerasimov. His technique is recognized throughout the world and is considered unique to this day, and the reconstruction is very accurate. Mikhail Mikhailovich recreated portraits of nameless ancient people, as well as famous historical characters. Among them were Yaroslav the Wise and Ivan the Terrible, and most of all the scientist himself was proud of the fact that he had recreated the appearance of Tamerlane.

The results of the work of M.M. Gerasimov's works are kept in many museums around the world, including the famous Museum of Man in Paris.

Gerasimov’s method is also used by modern criminologists in their work, which is well known to detective fans. The work begins with an analysis of the skull. Then comes the turn of graphic reconstruction of the face. The next stage is a sculptural reproduction of the head diagram. On a genuine skull, the main muscles are restored using plasticine or wax, and thick ridges are applied. Gerasimov developed a table of soft tissue thickness.

The most difficult thing is to restore the eyes, nose, mouth and especially the ears. But there is a special technique here too. For example, the cartilaginous part of the nose can be reconstructed based on the shape of the edges of the nasal opening of the skull. The height of the wings of the nose is determined by the height of the so-called conchal ridge, located at the very edge of the nasal opening. Even to restore the shape of the ears and their protrusion, there are methods.

The work ends with the creation of a sculptural bust, taking into account historical data (if any) - clothing, hairstyle, jewelry. It should be noted that a specialist involved in reconstruction must not only know the intricacies of anatomy, but also be to a large extent an artist.

Alexey Nechvaloda:

A person's skull is as individual as his face. It is the uniqueness of the skull that provides a portrait reproduction of a person’s external appearance. Each new reconstruction, whether you are working on restoring the image of a nameless person of the Bronze Age, Iron Age, or on restoring the appearance of a famous historical figure, is another opportunity to learn to “read” the skull as deeply as possible, that is, to study it enough to “remove” it as much as possible. » from it all the information about the individual characteristics of the person.

Reference:

Alexey Ivanovich NECHVALODA - anthropologist, specialist in paleoanthropology and facial reconstruction from the skull, artist, head of the anthropology department of the Ufa Museum of Natural History. Author of many printed works and a series of graphic and sculptural reconstructions of the ancient population of the Urals, Kazakhstan, Central Asia, Egypt and other regions.

Alexander Alexandrovich KHOKHLOV- Candidate of Historical Sciences, Associate Professor, Head of the Paleoanthropological Laboratory of the Faculty of Natural Geography of the Volga Region State Social and Humanitarian Academy.

Federal Agency for Education
State educational institution
Higher professional education
"Syktyvkar State University"
Faculty of Information Systems and Technologies
Department of Information Systems in Economics

TEST
Famous anthropologists

Executor:
Lyutoeva Marina Evgenievna
Faculty of Information Technology and Technology Group 127

Syktyvkar 2009

INTRODUCTION
Every person, as soon as he began to realize himself as an individual, was visited by the question “where did we come from?” Despite the fact that the question sounds absolutely banal, there is no single answer to it. Nevertheless, this problem - the problem of the emergence and development of man - is dealt with by the science of anthropology, which is studied by scientific anthropologists.
The main purpose of this test is to find out what the science of anthropology studies and what scientists are working on this issue.
In this work, based on our goal, we want to pay special attention to the great achievements and discoveries of famous anthropologists of the world.

SUBJECT ANTHROPOLOGY
The term “Anthropology” is of Greek origin and literally means “the science of man” (anthropos - man; logos - science). The first use of the term dates back to antiquity. Aristotle (384-322 BC) was the first to use it to designate a field of knowledge that studies primarily the spiritual side of human nature (currently psychology deals with this). With this meaning the term existed for over a millennium. It has been preserved to this day, for example, in religious knowledge (theology), in philosophy, in many humanities (for example, in art history), and partly in psychology itself. Thus, Anthropology is a field of scientific knowledge within which the fundamental problems of human existence in the natural and artificial environment are studied.
In modern science there are various options for systematizing anthropological disciplines. Anthropology includes: archaeology, ethnography, ethnology, folklore, linguistics, physical and social Anthropology. This set of anthropological disciplines is gradually expanding. It includes medical Anthropology (human psychology, human genetics), human ecology, etc. In the literature, there is an opinion that Anthropology as a field of scientific research unites Anthropology itself, or the natural history of man (including embryology, biology, anatomy, human psychophysiology); paleoethnology, or prehistory; ethnology - the science of the distribution of man on earth, his behavior and customs; sociology, which examines the relationships between people; linguistics; mythology; social geography, devoted to the impact of climate and natural landscapes on humans; demography, which presents statistics about the composition and distribution of the human population.

SYSTEMATIZATION OF ANTHROPOLOGY
Based on the delimitation of research fields, we can give the following systematization of Anthropology.
Philosophical anthropology focuses its attention on the study of the problems of human existence in the world as a whole, and seeks an answer to the question of the essence of man. It arose as a natural continuation of the search for a solution to the human problem in Western philosophy, as one of the options for its solution. “What is a person?” - the problem posed by Kant was later picked up by Scheler, who believed that in a certain sense all the central problems of philosophy can be reduced to the question: what is a person and what is his metaphysical place in the general integrity of being, the world and God. The problems of philosophical anthropology were developed by Gehlen, E. Rothacker, M. Landman, Plesner and others.
Theological anthropology examines human interaction with the world of the superreal, the divine; For this direction it is important to define a person through the prism of a religious idea. Theological anthropology is one of the areas of modern religious modernism, within the framework of which religious thinkers raise questions about the essence of man as a dual being by nature, consider the problems of human existence in the modern world, the tragic processes of the growth of lack of spirituality, based on the fundamental principles of Christian doctrine..
Cultural anthropology is a special field of scientific research that focuses on the process of relationship between man and culture. This area of ​​knowledge developed in European culture in the 19th century. and finally took shape in the last quarter of the 19th century. In foreign literature, there are different approaches to identifying the subject field of this science. The concept of cultural anthropology is used to denote a relatively narrow field concerned with the study of human customs, i.e. comparative studies of cultures and communities, the science of humanity that strives for generalizations about human behavior and the fullest possible understanding of human diversity. Cultural anthropology focuses on the problems of the genesis of man as a creator and the creation of culture in phylogenetic and ontogenetic terms. It developed in the research of Fr. Fraser, J. McLennan, J. Lebbock, Y. Lippert and domestic scientists K.D. Kavelina, M.M. Kovalevsky, M.I. Kulishera, N.N. Miklouho-Maclay, D.N. Anuchina, V.G. Bogoraza (Tan) and others.
In 20-30 years. Psychological anthropology arose in the USA, which was initially called the “culture-and-personality” direction. She became widely known thanks to the books of M. Mchd, Benedict, I. Hallowell, J. Dollard, J. Whiting, I. Child, J. Honigman, E. Hughes. The main subject was the study of how an individual acts, knows and feels in different cultural environments.
Biological (or natural science) anthropology focuses on the biology of humans as a species. To date, anthropology is understood not only as the science of the most ancient forms of man, of his evolution (i.e., anthropogenesis and paleoanthropology), but most often as the anatomy, physiology, and morphology of man (the study of patterns of growth and variations common to all humanity). body structure).
After World War II, researchers turned to the methodology of structural-functional analysis, which led to the emergence of social anthropology (Malinowski, Radcliffe-Brown, etc.). It explores the formation of man as a social being, as well as the basic structures and institutions that contribute to the process of human socialization, and a number of other issues. The ideas of social anthropology were developed by Malinovsky, Radcliffe-Brown,
One of the leading structuralist trends in A. is cognitive A. (Goodenough, F. Lounsbury, H. Conchlin, S. Bruner, etc.), which deals with the identification and comparison of “cognitive categories” in different cultures. This trend arose in the mid-50s. in the USA as part of the development of methods of formal semantic analysis. It finally took shape in the mid-60s. Cognitive psychology is based on the idea of ​​culture as a system of symbols, as a specifically human way of cognition, organization, and mental structuring of the surrounding reality.

FAMOUS ANTHROPOLOGISTS
Mikhail Mikhailovich Gerasimov (1907 - 1970) - anthropologist, archaeologist and sculptor, Doctor of Historical Sciences. Author of a method for restoring a person’s external appearance based on skeletal remains - the so-called “Gerasimov method”.
Mikhail Mikhailovich Gerasimov was born on September 15, 1907 in St. Petersburg, in the family of a zemstvo doctor. My father was an educated man and an excellent doctor, my maternal grandfather was an artist.
He spent his childhood and youth in Irkutsk. The boy's interests were formed early, which was facilitated by his father's rich library. From a young age, he dreamed of recreating the appearance of ancient people. From the age of 13, Gerasimov studied at the anatomical museum at the Irkutsk Medical Institute, and also worked at the Museum of Local Lore. These classes laid the foundation for Gerasimov's future work in the field of facial reconstruction based on its bone base. His first experiments in the field of plastic reconstruction date back to 1927, when he made sculptures of Pithecanthropus and Neanderthal for the museum. Before the war, Gerasimov created at least 17 reconstructions of the faces of fossil people and two reconstructions of the appearance of Russian princes - Yaroslav the Wise and Andrei Bogolyubsky.
In Leningrad, the scientist worked at the Institute of the History of Material Culture and headed the restoration workshops of the Hermitage.
In Samarkand, he participated in the opening of the tomb of Timur and the Timurids in the Gur-Emir mausoleum.
In 1938, the remains of a Neanderthal boy who died at the age of 9-10 were discovered in the Teshik-Tash grotto, located in the spurs of the Gissar ridge south of Samarkand (Uzbekistan), at an altitude of about 1500 m above sea level.
Skull of a child from the Teshik-Tash grotto (Middle Paleolithic, Uzbekistan). M.M. Gerasimov completely reconstructed the appearance of the child from Teshik-Tash. The skull, he said, “is much larger and more powerful than the modern skull of a child of the same age. The size of the eyebrow exceeds the degree of its development in a modern adult. The forehead is sloping. The head is large, heavy, especially in the front part, the height is small, the torso is long. He is only 9-10 years old, but he looks older than his age. This disproportion in the size of the head and figure is combined with very strong shoulders and a peculiar stoop of the entire upper torso. Hands are very strong. The legs are short and muscular. This entire complex of features is typical of Neanderthal forms.”
Since 1944, Gerasimov lived in Moscow, worked at the Institute of the History of Material Culture, and at the Institute of Ethnography of the USSR Academy of Sciences.
Over the years of painstaking work M.M. Gerasimov studied in detail the anatomical relationship between the structure of the facial skeleton and soft tissues of the face. He developed a detailed scale of soft tissue thickness at different levels of the head and face. Gender and age differences in the distribution of these indicators were studied. The asymmetry of the soft tissues was studied, which is closely related to the asymmetry of the facial skeleton and largely determines the unique individuality of the human face. He discovered a number of patterns in the variability of the thickness of soft tissues depending on the degree of development of the skull relief. MM. Gerasimov was the first to prove that by recreating a person’s appearance from the skull, it is possible to achieve a close portrait resemblance if one is guided by a whole complex of individual morphological features of the facial skeleton.
Gerasimov is known for his works: “Basics of facial reconstruction from the skull” (1949), “Face reconstruction from the skull” (1955) and “People of the Stone Age” (1964). Based on the method he developed, he created reconstructions of many representatives of the most ancient (Pithecanthropus, Sinanthropus) and ancient people (over 200 in total). Gerasimov’s works give an idea of ​​the appearance of people who lived in different territories (from France to China) in different eras.
In 1950, the Laboratory of Plastic Reconstruction was created at the Institute of Ethnography. Her work M.M. Gerasimov led for twenty years, until his death. Mikhail Mikhailovich Gerasimov died at the age of 62 in 1970.

Eric R. Wolf is an Austrian-born American anthropologist and Marxist historian. Eric Wulff was born in Vienna to a Jewish family, Arthur Georg and Maria Ossinovskaya. In 1933-1938 he lived in the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia. The dismemberment of Czechoslovakia by the Munich Treaty forced Wulff's family to flee the country to avoid anti-Semitic persecution. She first went to Great Britain (in 1938) and then to the United States of America, settling in New York.

Eric Wolf participated in World War II: he joined the 10th Mountain Division of the US Army, formed in July 1943, and fought with it on the Italian front from 1943-1945, where his interest in studying other cultures began. After the end of the war and the demobilization of a significant part of the American army, the government provided demobilized soldiers with preferences in obtaining higher education. Like many of his comrades, Wolfe took advantage of the GI Bill of Rights and enrolled at Columbia University to study anthropology.

Home to the anthropological school of Franz Boas, Columbia University was for many years the foremost center for the study of anthropology in North America. By the time Wolfe arrived at the university, Boas had already died, and his colleagues abandoned the methods he had used, which involved abandoning generalizations and creating a comprehensive picture in favor of detailed study of individual issues. The new head of the anthropology department was Julian Steward, a student of Robert Loewy and Alfred Kroeber, interested in creating a full-fledged scientific anthropology that could explain the process of development of human societies and their adaptation to environmental conditions.

Woolf was among the students whose scientific views were formed under the influence of Steward. Most of Steward's students, like Woolf, were left-wing in their political beliefs and proceeded from a materialistic view of history, which did not prevent them from fruitfully collaborating with their less politicized mentor. These included many prominent anthropologists of the second half of the 20th century, including Marvin Harris, Sidney Mintz, Morton Fried, Stanley Diamond, and Robert F. Murphy.

Wolfe's dissertation was written as part of Steward's project to study the population of Puerto Rico. Subsequently, Latin American themes played one of the most important roles in Wolfe’s work. After graduation, Wolf accepted a teaching position at the University of Michigan in Ann Anbor. Since 1971, he has worked at Lehman College and the CUNY Graduate Center. In addition to his work in Latin America, he was also active in field research in Europe.

The importance of Wolfe's work for modern anthropology is enhanced by the fact that he focused on issues of power, politics, and colonialism, while most of his colleagues moved away from these issues in the 1970s and 1980s. Wolf's most famous book - written in line with the world-system analysis of Immanuel Wallerstein and Andre Gunder Frank, “Europe and the People Without History” - from a Marxist position explains the processes due to which Western Europe overtook Western Europe during the Great Geographical Discoveries. in the economic development of other regions of the world and subordinated them to its influence. Particular attention is paid to how non-Europeans were oppressed by Western capitalism through global processes such as the slave trade or the fur trade. Debunking Eurocentrism in general and myths about the “backwardness” of non-European cultures, Woolf explains that they were not “isolated” or “frozen in time,” but were always involved in the world historical process.

At the end of his life, Wolf warned about the danger of “intellectual impoverishment” of anthropology, which abandoned field research and the connection of science with ongoing realities and problems, dealing exclusively with abstract issues of “high matters.” Eric Wolf died of cancer in 1999.

BOAS Franz (1858-1942
etc.................