(1) Human origins. (2) The scientific study of human origins.
Comment:The roots underlying this fashionable but ugly neogrecism are anthropos, “human,” and genesis, “origins”; the idea that it is a study is understood, but not inherent in the word, which is an unstable compound easily available to studies of origin myths as readily as to biology. (Logically, the study of anthropogeny should presumably have produced anthropogenology, which is an even less graceful compound.)
The adjectival form, anthropogenic, can also mean “caused by humans,” as in anthropogenic environmental change.
Anthropogeny is not to be confused with anthropophagy, a highfalutin term for cannibalism.
Definition Revised: 2010-08-03
Script Last Modified: 2025-02-04
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