The goal of the presentation is to outline several examples of values associated with early anthropologists (including criticism that they received, like Said’s critique of W. R. Smith), and contrast them with what we know about the events being mentioned or discussed from the written and historical records. Furthermore, the paper will provide illustrations of the important shifts in the patterns that privilege certain types of discourses (usually associated with a dominant paradigm of the time), and then impose them on a global community. Anthropology has played an important role in shaping and formulating of different values, and this can be seen on the examples from the former Yugoslavia, for example (with the construction of nationhood and the role that different scholars, including Cvijić, Županič and Gavazzi, played during the 20th century in Serbia, Slovenia, and Croatia). This is an important reminder about the power and importance of words, for what we write and what we say can have unintended consequences.