Final answer:
Jean Baptiste Lamarck, Charles Darwin, and Thomas Malthus were early thinkers who influenced the idea of studying humans as groups rather than individuals, highlighting the concepts of species change over time and the impact of population growth on resources.
Step-by-step explanation:
The idea to study humans as groups rather than as individuals was influenced by a few early thinkers, including Jean Baptiste Lamarck, Charles Darwin, and Thomas Malthus.
Lamarck was one of the first scientists to propose that species change over time, but his idea of the inheritance of acquired characteristics is considered incorrect.
Darwin was greatly influenced by Malthus, an English economist who argued that human populations grow faster than the resources they depend on, leading to famine and disease.