Both Charles Lyell and Charles Darwin were important to the development of Anthropology as a discipline because... they both defined the word "culture" and showed how human cultures could be ranked according to their level of technology. they discovered that humans had evolved from monkeys and that human culture is simply an extension of non-human primate societies. they helped scientists and researchers to focus on natural processes as explanations for change and variation, rather than just biblical explanations. they proved that the supernatural did not exist and that science was a better explanation for real-world phenomena. they were the first people to suggest that culture could be examined scientifically.