I delivered a research paper at a food science conference in Yokahama, Japan, in August (it's a tough job, but someone's got to do it). On the morning of my departure, I took a taxi to the airport.
The Japanese taxi-driver had very little English but felt under a completely understandable pressure to engage me in conversation. "Where you go?", he asked. "Ireland," I replied. "Oh, Ireland. It cold there? Is very hot here." (Boy, was he right there, 34 degrees Celsius.) And so we went, back and forth, all the way to our destination. Although from two very different cultures, we were, I felt, in all fundamental ways pretty much identical to each other.
Anthropology (the study of human origins, physical characteristics, institutions, social relationships etc) has shown that different cultures differ from each other in very many ways. But there must also be a basic human nature common to everybody. Anthropologists have expended much more energy in cataloguing differences between cultures than in identifying the precise set of characteristics that is common to every human.
In my opinion, pinpointing this common set of characteristics is a more important task than cataloguing the differences between peoples. Anthropological studies have shown that the way different people perceive many matters, particularly in the social and psychological realms, is conditioned by culture. It follows therefore that you can't understand a culture if you try to interpret its beliefs in terms of your own culture. You have to see each of the culture's beliefs in the context of its other beliefs. This is the anthropological version of the concept of cultural relativism.
In 1872 Charles Darwin published a book, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, where he compared the behaviour of different animals in an attempt to understand evolutionary relationships. Darwin concentrated on the non-verbal way in which various animals, including humans, exhibit emotions such as anger and fear. The book shows line drawings of angry dogs with hackles raised, eyes wide, ears back and mouths drawn taut. Drawings of the human face with similar expressions keyed to the same emotion are also presented. And finally, Darwin presented descriptions of tribal peoples in remote areas detailing emotional facial expressions identical to the familiar European ones and similar to the animal expressions.
Ethology is the study of the behaviour of animals in their normal environment. Careful observations of a wide range of peoples, including a wide variety of tribal cultures and contemporary European cultures, have consistently noted certain standard behaviours. For example, adults hide their faces when embarrassed and pout when disappointed. Also when any two people meet each other they usually raise and lower their eyebrows quickly, in an action that takes a fraction of a second. This eyebrow movement is also used on parting, reaching agreement or flirting. Again, toddlers everywhere kick, hit, bite and spit at each other. And, as I described in recent articles, smiling and humour are innate human characteristics.
A huge variety of languages is spoken around the world. Anthropologists have noted that any infant, placed in any culture, can learn the language easily. The explanation is that all languages have a basic similarity, being characterised by eight key features. Because all babies are capable of automatically picking up their own language by learning to use the eight features, they are capable of learning any language.
Again, in all cultures, males of all ages are more physically aggressive than females. However, there is a significant overlap in the distribution of this characteristic between the sexes. In other words, the most aggressive females will be much fiercer than the least aggressive males.
As far as I am aware, every culture has rules for determining who is allowed to have sex with whom. The most common rule of all is the taboo on incest. Another universal trait is the nuclear family, either as the only form of the family or as the unit upon which more complicated family forms are built.
A detailed cataloguing of differences between people is undoubtedly important, but the identification of universal patterns of human behaviour would seem to be a more basic starting point for anthropology.
It can be assumed that universal patterns of human behaviour have a biological basis, that is, they are "hard-wired" into our basic biological chemistry. In other words, when a woman flirts with me by giving me an eyebrow flash, or I with her, we are automatically using fundamental skills written in our neurological pathways. (But don't let that put you off.)
Anthropology should concentrate more on studying similarities between peoples rather than differences. Indeed, only when it fully understands the commonalities in human nature will it properly appreciate the differences between cultures. I am indebted to an interesting article by Melvin Connor in the November/December 1988 edition of The Sciences for much of the information I have presented in this article.
William Reville is a senior lecturer in biochemistry and director of microscopy at UCC