How did Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species influence the development of anthropology?

Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species (1859) was a foundational catalyst for the development of modern anthropology, providing a scientific framework that shifted the study of human societies toward evolutionary models.12

Darwin’s assertion that all life shares a common ancestry, later expanded in The Descent of Man (1871) to include humans and African apes, encouraged anthropologists to view human history as a progressive sequence. Early pioneers like Edward Burnett Tylor and Lewis Henry Morgan applied these evolutionary concepts to social institutions, theorizing that all societies inevitably advanced through fixed stages—from "savagery" to "civilization"—driven by increasing rationality and technological progress.13

However, this influence also had profound ethical consequences. Darwin’s theories were often misappropriated to support social Darwinism, a theory that justified imperialism, racism, and class stratification by applying the "survival of the fittest" to human groups. While Darwin himself was an abolitionist, these interpretations were used to advocate for the superiority of certain populations and the neglect of those deemed "unfit". By the 20th century, such deterministic views were largely rejected as expanded knowledge of cultural and social phenomena undermined their validity.45