[addifttiest]

For me, anthropology has been a life-long obsession/hobby. Sometimes a hobby, sometimes an obsession. Right now, it's more of a hobby. It all started when I was in 8th grade. At age 13, I became obsessed with Slavic phenotypes, particularly the phenotypes of fair-pigmented Poles. Having transferred from a school that was predominantly American (in the traditional sense) to a school that had a lot more recent immigrant Poles, prompted me to look for differences and similarities between the groups.

This hasn't been a constant theme in my anthropological interest, just the thing that sparked the whole thing for me.

[Audi_z]

My interests change all the time. Heritage was a big subject in my family growing up-- there was a lot of pride in the fact that one side of my family were major early contributors to the city I live in, and the historical sites meant a lot to me personally. Then as I got older, I just started looking around at people and wondered what their story was. When you have kids you can't help but want to know the whole story behind their existence, what caused them to look like they do, etc. I guess that's when I got really interested in this stuff.

[duceswild]

I got interested in it becuase I wanted to know what exact mix I am, but then got interested in all the world's races and sub-races.

[TeksPaisimi]

A Jewish kid in the neighborhood sold me a defective Super Nintendo. When I went back to complain he said, "buyer beware, Goy boy." It made me wonder... I'm kidding, of course. It was the Puerto Rican kid who stole my bike that eventually led me to academics like Mallory and their books on Indo-Europeans and other ancient people and then onward to these fine forums.

[Karensmith]

Ive been interested in races,ethnicities,countries,maps,geography cultures etc since i was 11 years old.

[CxofxJFm]

Well when I was younger race/ethnicity wasn't really discussed. I only knew that my paternal grandfather was Dutch, and we were 'white', so that's about it. As I got older I started wondering about the other 3/4 parts of me, that's when I started asking questions, which were answered with empty responses. Up until my grandmothers sister came to live with us and she filled in a lot of the gaps, and that's when I was able to really start doing genealogy research.

After a while. abou two years or so, I wanted to know more, go to a deeper level, than just my ancestral components and appearance I wanted to learn about different ancestries, how they came about, and so on. That's when I found ABF and decided to register :-p

[BurdenRobert]

i've always had an interest in race and race discussion in general, and my own ancestry, i always suspected my grandfather of being a gypsy or something. now that doesnt seem very likely (lol) but i came here to see what i could learn and if i could connect the dots so to speak.

anthropology is something that just recently peeked my interest when thumbing through an art book that was siting some of the differences in phenotypes and how understanding these differences can be beneficial in drawing the human figure and particuarly the face and its features. i notice alot more sutle things that i didn't before about the faces features since i came here.

[Quaganoca]

As far as I remember, I have always been interested in race and anthropology.

[hojutok]

A (philosemitic) Swedish physics professor on another forum introduced me to the concept of human biodiversity with the Cochran-Harpending theory. Later on he also did a very good job of defending Watson's comments regarding SSA, as well as defending Larry Summers' comments regarding women. He did it all without ever coming off as a bitter, hateful wackjob, as many racialists often do(unfortunately). I've been interested ever since. Not just in the existence of differences between different ethnic groups(and genders), but in people's reaction to evidence of those differences.

[Teeppoodiug]

When I was a kid I was always wondering why I looked so different from most of the people around me. I guess that was the start.

[BaselBimbooooo]

My maternal grandfather would always talk about our Croatian heritage and what not, which is what got me interested.

[trowUrillioth]

My mother always talked to me about how Finnish genes were "unique", and gave you "sisu" etc. She still does. I guess it originally started when I as a confused 15-year old came across a good old "Finns are Mongoloids" discussion on Swedish forum Flashback. I thought "but races don't exist?!" back then. After a while, I started becoming very interested in classifications, which was why I originally came to Anthroforum. I was never on HBF, the original forum.

[PareKeect]

I've been interested in race since grade school, especially concerning the spread & conquering of the European colonists against the Native Amerikans. I had put my anthropological interests on the backburner, studied philosophy for a dozen years, and finally made this switch about a year ago when I became interested in facial, phenotypes and classifications. I would like to devote a lot more time into facial recognition to phenotype groups, but, my plate is full with other info. So my judgment call on phenotypical looks is much more limited than I'd like it to be…

I also want to learn about the first Man-made fires and campsites. I think this would be the fundamental evidence concerning the spread of the first 'human' groups.

[carfAball]

When i slagged a chinese boy because of his eyes and then an idea pop up about how did Asians get there eyes. and after searching long and hard i found this site

[seawolferr]

and you still havent found the answer?

[Peter Hill]

it came with my love and intrigue in History, and a lesser interest in politics and sociology. also trying to find the history of my heritage.

[spamkillerj]

After I met this AA guy who said some white guy called him the 'n' word. I didn't even know that there was such a thing as racism. I became kind of obsessed with race and anthropology after that. I've never been the same since.

[Romobencience]

Mine came from when my brother was still studying at varsity, he studied psychology and also did subjects like Anthropology and Sociology, Ethics, Women and gender studies. I would read his textbooks all day, I was really fascinated by it all. Sometimes he'd get mad at me for all the times I'd take his books to my room and read all day.

[toksenveste]

I don't believe in the religious story of the creation. I became interested about human origins, human cultures, history, anthropology and sociology. It comes from this.

[BruceCroucshs]

Got started because of genealogy, due to the poor records regarding a lot of my ancestors (got lucky with some lineages like my patrilinear one that were well documented). I sought to break down the brick walls with at first physical classification and later DNA analysis , neither of which I have aptitude in. Once in college I got introduced to cultural anthropology and from then on have been laboring to analyze the culture I grew up in. Conveniently cultural anthropology gave just as many answers to my personal origins as did DNA testing.