The United Kingdom played a leading part in the origins and subsequent development of English-language anthropology, initially through works by individual scholars in the humanities from the mid-nineteenth century but also by some from the natural sciences or the museums who had opportunities to travel to remote regions and observe “unknown” peoples. From the 1920s, along with the particular opportunities provided by colonial administrations, and after World War II especially with strong support from the universities, “social anthropology” emerged as a British specialism that saw humanity as a whole rather than as divided into “primitive” and “civilized,” or even into permanently different “cultures.” By the turn of the twenty-first century, fresh research questions had led to fruitful worldwide comparisons as well as stimulating new forms of philosophical and scientific inquiry into the character of humanity and its evolutionary origins.