Anthropogeny

Anthropogeny is the study of human origins. It is not simply a synonym for human evolution by natural selection, which is only a part of the processes involved in human origins. Many other factors besides biological evolution were involved, ranging over climatic, geographic, ecological, social, and cultural ones. Anthropogenesis, meaning the process or point of becoming human, is also called hominization.

The term anthropogeny was used in the 1839 edition of Hooper's Medical Dictionary and was defined as "the study of the generation of man". The term was popularized by Ernst Heinrich Haeckel (1834–1919), a German naturalist and zoologist, in his groundbreaking books, Natural History of Creation (German: Natürliche Schöpfungsgeschicht) (1868) and The Evolution of Man (German: Anthropogenie) (1874). Haeckel was one of the first biologists to publish on evolution. Haeckel used the term Anthropogeny to refer to the study of comparative embryology and defined it as "the history of the evolution of man". The term changed over time, however, and came to refer to the study of human origins.

The last use of the word anthropogeny in English literature was in 1933 by William K. Gregory. There was a gap in the usage of the term from 1933 to 2008. Anthropogeny was reintroduced in 2008 and is now back in academic use at the Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny (CARTA) at the University of California, San Diego.

The root in ancient Greek anthropos means human and means discourse or study, and means the process of creation or origin. Anthropology, therefore, is quite literally the study of humans, whereas anthropogeny is the breakdown of the word anthropos again but with the link word -geny (γένη, γένος) which again literally means the study of the birth and gender of humans.

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