Although Anthropology has been taught as an academic discipline in many occidental universities since 19th century, it was introduced in university curricula quite recently in Tunisia. In fact, after the independence of Tunisia in 1956, ending a 76-years French colonialism, the new ‘national’ educational systems put particular emphasis on modern sciences. The Tunisian university (University of Tunis) was created in 1960 and curricula in Sociology and Psychology started in 1961 and 1964, respectively. Anthropology, which was for long stigmatized as a European colonial science, was marginalized until the 1990s and studies were very rare before this decade and mostly linked to the preservation of cultural traditions. Moreover, the weakening of the religious influence after the independence, linked to the improvement of the educational level (school mandatory and free for all Tunisians), stimulated the development of many sciences, including modern anthropology. In 1980ies, a research group at the Faculty of Pharmacy of Monastir has carried on original studies in Genetic Anthropology. This group, led by Prof Hassen Chaabani, also created the Tunisian Association of Anthropology (ATA) in 2000 and founded the International Journal of Modern Anthropology in 2008. Despite limited financial resources, ATA has organized many national and international conferences, and its journal has reached a respectful academic level. In contrast to this strong capacity building in biological anthropology, the development of cultural and social Anthropology was slow and a curriculum in Anthropology was created only 25 years ago (in 1999) in the Higher Institute of Humanities (Tunis). In this communication, I will give a critical reading of the history of Anthropology in Tunisia trying to explain why biological anthropology was quicker to develop compared to other branches of anthropology.