Learning about people everywhere
The way that a group of people live is called its culture. Each group of
people has some ways of life that make it different from all other
groups of people. Scientists called cultural anthropologists study the
cultures of people everywhere.
A cultural anthropologist wants to know how people in a particular
culture get their food, how they work and play, and how they worship.
Why do they dress the way they do? What do they wonder about? What are
they afraid of? What do they think is bad and good, or beautiful and
ugly? How do they pass their culture on to their children?
To find out about such things, some cultural anthropologists travel to
distant lands. They live with the people they study. They learn their
customs, they eat their foods, they even help them with their work.
Other cultural anthropologists work closer to home, in their own
countries. They study the ways of people who live in big cities and
small towns.
Dr. Margaret Mead
Dr. Mead was a famous cultural anthropologist. She was the author of a
book for children called Anthropologists and What They Do.
