Anthropology is centered around men’s past including prehistoric, ptoto-historic past. Anthropologists may be seen serving as the ‘historians’ involved in the cultural reconstruction of man’s past.
Anthropologist like historians reconstructs cultural past from material remains like pottery, tools, cave/rock paintings, ruins of shelter, ornaments and so many other material remains that survive the wear and tear of climatic factors
| Anthropology | History |
| Scope is universal. It deals with the prehistoric, proto-historic, historic and contemporary human societies because it is concerned with the study of human life right from its origins till today | Scope is limited. It deals mostly with the historic and literate societies because it is mostly concerned with the study of human experience in the past 5000 years. |
| Anthropology, is the abstract science of human experience. | History is the concrete study of human experience and human nature. |
| A whole-science, it studies culture and society in their totality. | A part-science, it studies culture and society only. |
| Less concerned with individuals and individual events than with major changes in forms of human adaptations and institutions | More concerned with individuals and individual events and chronology of events and institutions. |
| Surmises that the particular can be built into a system which will account for the general .On that basis, it creates a new system of ordering the observations with each piece of research. | Depreciates the significance of systems or believes that policies, relationships, culture and structures arc the result of capricious events. |
| anthropology believes that there is a system that the particular can be fitted into a system that explains the particular. | History assumes that the system comes into existence when the events can be placed in a chronological order and that this makes history. |
