Palaeoanthropology

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The branch of anthropology that investigates the fossil remains and evolutionary history of early human ancestors and their close relatives
2. A scientific discipline devoted to studying ancient hominins through fossils, bones and other traces of prehistoric human origins
3. The study of prehistoric humans and their predecessors, drawing on fossil evidence to trace how the human lineage developed over time

Etymology: The word is a compound built from three Greek elements, and the first of them, "palaios," is one of the oldest words in the family. Its root, traced back to Proto-Indo-European, carried the sense of "long ago," and in Ancient Greek "palai" meant "long since" or "of old." English took the form "palaeo-" from that Greek adjective, and it is now a standard prefix for the distant past, as in palaeontology and palaeography. The second element, "anthrōpos," means "human being" in Greek, and "-logy" comes from "logos," a word that meant "word," "reason," or "account," and later came to mean the systematic study of a subject. Joined together, the parts describe the study of humankind in its earliest times. The compound is English, formed from these Greek pieces rather than inherited from an ancient text, so it could not have been used by the Greeks themselves.

Synonyms: paleoanthropology