He went to Berlin to finish his project and while there, took a job in the Royal Ethnological Museum of Prussia. There was no independent field of Anthropology at that time, and those who investigated human cultures were largely employed by museums. Boas was profoundly influenced by Adolf Bastian, an ethnographer who was an early proponent of the belief that people in all human cultures were of essentially the same intellectual capacity.his idea went against the prevailing European view that cultures could be rated by their level of intellectual and social development. Academic publications of the time propounded the view that there was a historical progression from primitive to advanced cultures, and that the cultures of Europe had reached the pinnacle of advancement.