“The great enigma of anthropology can be phrased like this: All over the world, humans are born with the same cognitive and physical apparatus, and yet they grow into distinctly different persons and groups, with different societal types, beliefs, technologies, languages and notions about the good life. Differences in innate endowments vary within each group and not between them, so that musicality, intelligence, intuition and other qualities that vary from person to person are quite evenly distributed globally.”

— Thomas Hylland Eriksen

Source: What is Anthropology? (2nd ed., 2017), Ch. 1 : Why Anthropology?

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Thomas Hylland Eriksen 18

Norwegian social anthropologist and professor 1962

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Thomas Hylland Eriksen 18

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