Anthropologists are great storytellers. They tell many, many stories about all aspects of human life. At the heart of all of these stories is one fundamental story: the “story of humanity,” a rich and complex narrative. A narrative is a story that describes a connected set of features and events. Narratives can be fictional or nonfictional. The narrative of anthropology is a true story, a factual narrative about the origins and development of humanity as well as our contemporary ways of life. The central narrative of anthropology can be summarized this way.
Human beings have developed flexible biological and social features that have worked together in a wide variety of environmental and historical conditions to produce a diversity of cultures.
Three features of this narrative are especially important to anthropologists. These features form three central commitments of anthropology. In academic study, a commitment is a common goal recognized by the scholars in a discipline.
The content of this course has been taken from the free Anthropology textbook by Openstax