Alex helms, age 15, of Billings, Mont... for his question:
WHAT IS ETHNOLOGY?
Ethnology is the science of living peoples. Two Greek words were used to make up the name: "ethos" meaning "nation" or "people" and "logos" meaning "science." Ethnology is one of four subdivisions of anthropology, the other three being physical anthropology, archaeology and linguistics.
Scientists involved in the field of ethnology are call ethnologists. They study to .discover why people elect to live in large cities or small, widely separated towns. And they must study the different ways people build their houses, educate their children, govern themselves and worship their gods.
Unlike most other scientists, it is impossible for the ethnologist to bring his subject, the human being, into his lab. In order to complete his study, it is necessary for the ethnologist to go to every corner of the world.
To do a proper job, an ethnologist must learn the language of the people he is studying and must study their beliefs and customs as they are practiced in their daily living patterns.
A special branch of ethnology has been developed that is called ethnography. It is used to describe the life of a single tribe or type of people who live within a larger group of people. An example of this would be the Amish farmers who live lives unlike those lived by the general ,population of the United States.
What kind of houses do they build? What kind of foods do they eat? What kind of tools and utensils do they use? These are some of the questions that must be asked.
The ethnologist must also find out whether or not all races of man started in the same place and how the divisions into races or stocks came about by studying all living peoples, the ethnologist is able to discover how societies differ and how they are related. His findings help him to increase man's information about himself and to deepen understanding between societies.
An ethnologist wants to know about the growth of languages, why words are borrowed and how new words come to be. To find the answers to this type of question, the enthnologist must compare one society with another. He wants to come up with theories that will explain the likenesses and the differences of human behavior.
An ethnologist can set up laws of human behavior since all humans must obey certain laws or rules if they are to continue to live. All men have certain very basic needs: needs for food, cleanliness, shelter, love, friendship and wanting to belong to a group.
It is the customs and beliefs man has built around the satisfaction of his needs that are different, the ethnologist has discovered.
To do his job, the ethnologist observes people as they live their daily lives, and he then compares one society with another.