I agree that historians are also well qualified, but isn't the scope of their work different from the scope of anthropologists?
Somewhat. A historian is looking at a broader picture, even if they are speaking about a small section of it. If I say "what was the effect of the Civil War on the city of Richmond in terms of economic damage" then I am analyzing a few things. I'm looking at the actual damages, how much of it was affected, the impact on the economy, the economy prior to the war, the effect of freemen replacing slaves in terms of wages, any money being spent in the area, how much trade was changed by the war, what major tobacco fields took a hit, how much damage the roads took, etc. While this documents the economic impact on Richmond, it also gives a wider view of the Civil War. In turn, that broadens our perspective onn reconstruction, the Southern Revival, and the culture of the United States after that time period. The perspective is much larger than the initial topic, all from that investigation. Human history is not happening in a vacuum. What, say, the Greeks developed is actually much less important than the fact that Alexander the Great spread it, or that the Arabs and Persians preserved it. The importance of a discovery, or of a culture, can only be measured by the number of connections it makes to other countries. When people say "but Tibetan Monks could've discovered the cure for cancer 400 years ago" they are missing the point. Discoveries, and cultures, are irrelevant in terms of human history (a very broad subject) if they are not connected to other cultures even on a small scale. When an anthropologist interviews an isolated tribe in Brazil they are giving you the image of an isolated tribe in Brazil. When a historian tells you about the history of that tribe, they are weaving a more thorough picture of the cultures within the region and likely giving some insighht in to Brazilian history at the same time. In terms of raw connections, we have Malaria to thank for the Gasoline Engine, and we have the Ottoman Turks to thank for Satellite Navigation.
So, if I understand correctly, historians are looking for connections in history. Anthropologists on the other hand isolate culture/events in order to study it. This means that a historian does more macro-culture while a anthropologist is looking at micro-culture. Seems to me that those are 2 different things. In the case of the isolated tribe, an anthropologist will be looking at the small things like relations between people while the historian will be looking at the larger picture. Please tell me if I am mistaken. I now want to understand what historians and anthropologists actually do. And really? Malaria to thank for the gasoline engine? How did that work?
I avoid commenting too much on the difference between historians and anthropologists because they overlap quite a bit. Here's how Malaria gave you the gasoline engine. So Britain in particular is trying to get quinine because everyone in its island colonies off in the Far East is getting Malaria and dying by the droves. Now this is actually not terrible because the British, at this point basically in control of every trade route worth mentioning, have a decent enough supply of quinine plantations. The problem is that quinine tastes disgusting, and you really can't avoid the taste because at the time, the way you take it is by dissolving it in water. Well in the process of trying to get it to taste less like a rancid human asshole, the Brits end up discovering that depending on how you mix the solution, it becomes carbonated. Add a little bit of sweetner and it does help with the taste a little bit, and all those bubbles are at least interesting on the tongue. So they promptly find a way to bottle this new fizzy soda and find a way to dispense it from said bottle. How? Well, a spray nozzle. Jump ahead a bit. That spray nozzle is now being used in the latest marketing triumph, perfume, and its being used everywhere, only this time its much, much smaller and the nozzles don't send out a stream of fizzy liquid, they aerosolized the liquid perfume so that it comes out in the cloud we know today. That part is important. Now, two Germans are working on their gasoline engine, but they have a problem. They can get it to run, but not efficiently; if you just burn the gasoline it uses up a huge amount and doesn't get nearly enough bang - if you'll pardon the phrase - for your buck. So what do they do? Well, first they get a perfume style nozzle, which means that instead of liquid gasoline they are injecting a small, explosive cloud of gasoline in to a cylinder. Then they make one that is adjustable; change the mixture to make it pump in more or less gasoline. This explosion drives a pistol, which turns a crankshaft, which makes your wheels spin, which propels the car. And how did they make this explosion? With aerosolized gasoline, which they made by creating a cloud like perfume, which traces the origins of the spray nozzle back to the tonics first used to make quinine taste better, because quinine tastes awful but is necessary for the prevention of malaria, which was an issue because the British needed people to run their plantations. Mother. Fucking. History.