Anthropology Reminiscence

Often when I'm teaching my students, they attempt to derail me and get me to talk about something other than the subject at hand. These devious souls, I say that with a smile - I afterall, did the same thing at their age - know they stand the highest degree of success by bringing up anything related to anthropology - a subject that I am very passionate about. I have to admit, the 12 years tromping about the Southwestern deserts and pouring through anthropological journals have provided me with a wealth of interesting, and often, thought-provoking material to share with my students; information that adds the "humanness" to any subject. Yesterday, it was ergot - a fungus that has tainted rye on an occasional basis since rye was domesticated; this little fungus is also the main ingredient in LSD. My class - drug awareness, education, and prevention - what did we discuss? How this little fungus has played major roles in the shaping of history (we specifically discussed witch hunts, a "nifty" Christian document called the "Witches Hammer", and the desire of the Christian church to convert those they deemed "heathens").....Yes, we discussed how ergot poisoning can cause the body to convulse, the hallucinations that can occur - often creating nightmare visions, the sensations of things within the skin, diaries from individuals describing people going through ergot poisoning, and that the developing brain of children are much more susceptible to drugs than that of an adults.....Did we hit a human side to ergot as well? Yes. I smile, as usual. Anthropology can, and does, touch upon the human phenomenon of any subject. When my students become very quiet and I see a classroom full of attentive faces aimed straight at me, I know I'm intriguing them. I'm educating them. I've hit a cord.

Anthropology is the most social of the social sciences; it is, literally, the study of people - or as I think of it - the study of the human phenomenon. It is the study of what makes people - human. Every aspect of the human animal - from our genetics and evolution, cultural changes through time, religion, social interaction, the rise and fall of civilizations, and language, to name a few - are studied by individuals in this profession. For an anthropologist, human variation - whether genetic or a cultural construct - is absolutely beautiful. I think of it as the tapestry of humanity and if you sit back, remove your personal cultural constructs for a moment, you would see exactly how beautiful this tapestry is. It is a discipline that continually strives to add the "human" element - those hopes, dreams, thoughts, feelings - to other subjects. History should never be a boring ramble of facts, dates, and numbers. Instead, it should reflect the people who created the history in the first place. History should include laughter, tears, celebrations, hopes and dreams, wars, and disease. Things of yesterday, in other words, isn't as different from today as we think; many history teachers just portray it as a boring segment of sterile facts devoid of the human element, the spark that makes history what it actually is. We also forget that who we are today is based upon who we were yesterday....