THE SYSTEMATISERS OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY
HITHERTO we have been dealing with the great pioneers in Anthropology,
those who laid the foundations, brought order out of chaos, and
suggested the outlines of future work. Henceforward Anthropology may
claim the name of a science, and the work developed on definite lines.
It will be more convenient to treat these separately, abandoning a
strict chronological method.
The first branch to attract workers was Somatology, the physical aspect
of man, of which we have already noted the inception: not until the
nineteenth century can Archæology, or Prehistoric Anthropology, be said
to have developed into a science; while the scientific study of
Ethnology, or Cultural Anthropology, is barely half a century old.
[Sidenote: =Craniology.=]
[Sidenote: =Norma Verticalis of Blumenbach.=]
Somatology had already been foreshadowed by Vesalius, Spigel, and
Linnæus; but Blumenbach was the first to strike its keynote by recording
the shape of the skull and of the face. He was the fortunate possessor
of a large number of skulls—large, that is, for his time, and he
published a description of them (1790-1820), _Decas collectionis suae
craniorum diversarum gentium illustrata_, with 70 plates. He noted
particularly the _norma verticalis_—_i.e._, the shape of the skull as
seen from above, distinguishing by its means three types—the square
shape of the Mongols, the narrow or “pressed in from the sides” shape of
the Negroes, and the intermediate form which he recognised in the
“Caucasians.” He was the first to popularise craniology, and “it became
the fashion to visit the Blumenbachian Museum, to have the differences
which distinguish the different cranial types pointed out, and to
indulge in sentimental rhapsodies upon the beauty and symmetry of the
young female Georgian skull, which was considered to represent the
highest type of all.”[19] But Blumenbach does not seem to have taken
advantage of his own discoveries. In choosing the _norma verticalis_ as
a racial criterion he made a valuable contribution to science, but he
did not reproduce his _normæ_ in his plates, nor did he base his
classification on them. Indeed, his typical Caucasian skull is really
squarer than his typical Mongolian.
Footnote 19:
Cunningham, p. 26.
[Illustration:
UPPER AND SIDE VIEWS OF SKULLS OF MEN
belonging to the Neolithic and Bronze Age Races; photographed by the
Author from specimens in the Cambridge Anatomical Museum.
_A_, Long Barrow, Dinnington, Rotherham. Length, 204 mm.; breadth, 143
mm.; cranial index, 70. 1.
_B_, Winterbourne Stoke. Length, 177 mm.; breadth, 156 mm.; cranial
index, 88. 1.
]
[Sidenote: =Facial Angle of Camper.=]
Peter Camper (1722-1789) had already been studying head-form, though
from a totally different standpoint, and his deductions were not
published until after his death.
His contributions to Anthropology were an essay on the _Physical
Education of the Child_, a lecture on _The Origin and Colour of the
Negro_, and a treatise on _The Orang-outang and some other species of
Apes_; but only his work on the facial angle has attained permanent
fame. His early inclinations were towards art, and he was carefully
trained in drawing, painting, and architecture; and it was in the
interests of Art, not of Anthropology, that the researches which
resulted in his determination of the facial angle came to be undertaken.
This he describes in his preface to his lectures:—
At the age of eighteen, my instructor, Charles Moor the younger,
to whose attention and care I am indebted for any subsequent
progress I may have made in this art, set me to paint one of the
beautiful pieces of Van Tempel, in which there was the figure of
a negro, that by no means pleased me. In his colour he was a
negro, but his features were those of a European. As I could
neither please myself nor gain any proper directions, I desisted
from the undertaking. By critically examining the prints taken
from Guido Reni, C. Marat, Seb. Ricci, and P. P. Rubens, I
observed that they, in painting the countenances of the Eastern
Magi, had, like Van Tempel, painted black men, but they were not
Negroes.
To obtain the necessary facial effects distinguishing the Negro from the
European, Camper devised his system of measurements. He drew a line from
the aperture of the ear to the base of the nose, and another from the
line of the junction of the lips (or, in the case of a skull, from the
front of the incisor teeth) to the most prominent part of the forehead.
“If,” he said, “the projecting part of the forehead be made to exceed
the 100th degree, the head becomes mis-shapen and assumes the appearance
of hydrocephalus or watery head. It is very surprising that the artists
of Ancient Greece should have chosen precisely the maximum, while the
best Roman artists have limited themselves to the 95th degree, which is
not so pleasing. The angle which the facial or characteristic line of
the face makes,” he continued, “varies from 70 to 80 degrees in the
human species. All above is resolved by the rules of art; all below
bears resemblance to that of apes. If I make the facial line lean
forward, I have an antique head; if backward, the head of a Negro. If I
still more incline it, I have the head of an ape; and if more still,
that of a dog, and then that of an idiot.”
Camper’s facial angle may be of service to Art, but since the points
from which the lines are drawn are all variable, owing to the disturbing
influence of other factors, such as an increased length of face or an
unusually prominent brow-ridge, it cannot form an accurate measurement
for Anthropology. It was severely criticised by Blumenbach, Lawrence,
and Prichard, but adopted in France, and by Morton in America.
Dr. J. Aitken Meigs[20] pointed out that as early as 1553 the
measurement of the head appears to have exercised the ingenuity of
Albert Dürer, who, in his _De Symmetriâ Partium in Rectis Formis
Humanorum Corporum_, has given such measurements in almost every view.
These, however, are more artistic in their tendency and scope than
scientific. A glance at some of the outline drawings of Dürer shows
incontestably that the facial line and angle were not wholly unknown to
him, and that Camper has rather elaborated than invented this method of
cranial measurement. The artist even seems to have entertained more
philosophical views of cephalometry, or head measurement, than the
professor.
Footnote 20:
_North American Med.-Chir. Rev._, 1861, p. 840.
[Sidenote: =Various Early Craniologists.=]
The evolution of craniometrical measurements is of interest to the
physical anthropologist, but even a brief recital of this progress would
weary the non-specialist. A history of Anthropology would, however, not
be complete if it ignored the general trend of such investigations.
Some of the early workers, such as Daubenton (1716-99) and Mulder,
Walther, Barclay, and Serres in the first half of the nineteenth
century, attempted to express the relation between the brain-case and
the face by some simple measurement or method of comparison in their
endeavour to formulate not only the differences between the races of
mankind, but also those which obtain between men and the lower animals.
Others during the same period investigated the relations and proportions
of portions of the skull to the whole by means of lines. Spix (1815)
adopted five lines. Herder employed a series of lines radiating from the
atlas (the uppermost bone of the vertebral column); but, more generally,
the _meatus auditorius_ (ear-hole) was the starting-point (Doornik,
1815).
The internal capacity of the skull first received attention from
Tiedemann (1836), who determined it by filling the skull with millet
seed and then ascertaining the weight of the seed. Morton first used
white pepper seed, which he discarded later for No. 8 shot, while
Volkoff employed water. Modifications in the use of these three
media—seeds, shot, and water—are still employed by craniologists.
The most noteworthy names among the earlier workers in craniology are
those of Retzius and Grattan. Anders Retzius (1796-1860) correlated the
schemes of Blumenbach and Camper, and so arrived at the methods of
craniological measurements which are almost universally in use at the
present day.
[Sidenote: =Cephalic Index of Retzius.=]
In 1840 he introduced his theory regarding cranial shapes to the Academy
of Science at Stockholm, and two years later gave a course of lectures
on the same subject. He criticised the results attained by Blumenbach,
showing that his group contains varying types of skull form; and he
invented the cephalic index, or length-breadth index—_i.e._, the ratio
of the breadth of a skull to its length, expressed as a per-centage. The
narrower skulls he termed dolichocephalic, the broader ones
brachycephalic. By this method Retzius designed rather to arrange the
forms of crania than to classify thereby the races of mankind, though he
tried to group the European peoples more or less according to their
head-form. While thus elaborating the suggestion of Blumenbach, he also
recorded the degree of the projection of the jaws, demonstrated by
Camper, and he added the measurements of the face, height, and jugular
breadth. Thus was Craniology established on its present lines.
[Sidenote: =Grattan.=]
John Grattan (1800-1871), the Belfast apothecary, has never received the
recognition that was his due. Having undertaken to describe the numerous
ancient Irish skulls collected by his friend Edmund Getty, he soon
became impressed by the absence of
that uniformity of method and that numerical precision without
which no scientific investigation requiring the co-operation of
numerous observers can be successfully prosecuted. The mode of
procedure hitherto adopted furnishes to the mind nothing but
vague generalities ... until we can record with something
approaching towards accuracy the proportional development of the
great subdivisions of the brain, as indicated by its bony
covering, and by our figures convey to the mind determinate
ideas of the relation they bear towards each other, we shall not
be in a position to do justice to our materials.... No single
cranium can _per se_ be taken to represent the true average
characteristics of the variety from which it may be derived. It
is only from a large deduction that the ethnologist can venture
to pronounce with confidence upon the normal type of any
race.[21]
Footnote 21:
J. Grattan, _Ulster Journal of Arch._, 1858.
Grattan devised a series of radial measurements from the _meatus
auditorius_, and constructed an ingenious craniometer. As Professor J.
Symington points out, “Grattan’s work was almost cotemporaneous with
that of Anders Retzius, and nearly all of it was done before the German
and French Schools had elaborated their schemes of skull
measurements.”[22] He adopted the most useful of the measurements then
existing, and added new ones of his own devising.
Footnote 22:
_Proc. Belfast Nat. Hist. and Phil. Soc._, 1903-4; and _Journ. Anat.
and Phys._
The distinguished American physician and physiologist Dr. J. Aitken
Meigs laid down the principles that “Cranial measurements to be of
practical use should be both absolute and relative. Absolute
measurements are necessary to demonstrate those anatomical differences
between the crania of different races which assume a great zoological
significance in proportion to their constancy. By relative measurements
of the head we obtain an approximate idea of the peculiar physiological
character of the enclosed brain ... the craniographer, in fact, becomes
the cranioscopist” (1861, p. 857). In this paper Meigs gives
craniometrical directions, some of which were designed to give
measurements for portions of the brain.
[Sidenote: =Broca.=]
In France the greatest names are those of Broca, Topinard, and de
Quatrefages. Pierre Paul Broca (1824-1880) was first destined for the
army, but when the death of his sister left him the only child he was
unwilling to leave his parents, and resolved to study medicine and share
the work of his father, an eminent physician. He soon distinguished
himself, especially in surgery, not only in practical work, but also in
his writings. With regard to the latter, Dr. Pozzi, in a memoir, says of
him: “There is hardly one of the subjects in which he did not at the
first stroke make a discovery, great or small; there is not one on which
he has not left the mark of his originality.”[23]
Footnote 23:
_J.A.I._, x., 1881, p. 243.
[Illustration:
PAUL BROCA.
]
In 1847 he was appointed to serve on a Commission to report on some
excavations in the cemetery of the Celestins, and this led him to study
craniology, and thence to ethnology, in which his interest, once
aroused, never flagged. The story of the formation of the _Société
d’anthropologie de Paris_ (1859) and of _l’École_ _d’anthropologie_
(1876), of both of which Broca was the moving spirit, affords a curious
commentary on the suspicion in which Anthropology was held. To the
success of the School he devoted all his energies, and during many years
of anxiety he met and overcame all obstacles, surmounted all
difficulties, wore down all opposition, and finally placed it in a
secure position. He invented several instruments for the more accurate
study of craniology, such as the occipital crochet, goniometer, and
stereograph, and also standardised methods; but, dissatisfied with the
inconclusiveness of mere cranial comparisons, he turned towards the end
of his life to the study of the brain. He was an indefatigable worker,
and his sudden death in his fifty-sixth year is attributed to cerebral
exhaustion.
“Broca was a man,” said Dr. Beddoe, “who positively radiated science and
the love of science; no one could associate with him without catching a
portion of the sacred flame. Topinard has been the Elisha of this
Elijah.”[24]
Footnote 24:
Anniversary Address, Anth. Inst., 1891.
[Sidenote: =Topinard.=]
Paul Topinard, pupil, colleague, and friend of Broca, made valuable
investigations on the living population of France, besides devoting much
time to anthropometrical studies; but his greatest service has been the
preparation and publication of _l’Anthropologie_ (1876), a guide for
students and a manual of reference for travellers and others, voicing
the idea of Broca and his school, and “elucidating in a single volume a
series of vast dimensions, in process of rapid development.” In 1885 he
published his classic _Eléments d’anthropologie générale_,[25] which
aimed at creating a new atmosphere for the science, breaking free from
the traditions of the monogenists and polygenists, and incorporating the
new ideas spread by Darwin and Haeckel.
Footnote 25:
General Anthropology, according to Topinard’s classification, is
concerned merely with man as an animal, and deals with anatomy and
physiology, pathology, and psychology.
[Sidenote: =De Quatrefages.=]
Armand de Quatrefages de Bréau (1810-92) was not only a distinguished
zoologist, occupying himself mainly with certain groups of marine
animals, but also Professor of Anthropology at the Paris Museum of
Natural History, and undertook several voyages along the coasts of the
Mediterranean and the Atlantic in search of information. In 1867 he
published _Rapport sur le progrès de l’Anthropologie_, “which reduces to
a complete and intelligible system the abstruse and difficult, and, to
many, the incomprehensible science of anthropology, embracing during his
investigations a wide range of topics, and arranging disjointed facts in
due order, so as at once to evince their bearing upon the subject.”[26]
He published many other works, among them _Les Pygmées_ (1887),
_L’espèce humaine_ (1877), _Histoire générale des races humaines_
(1889), and, together with E. T. Hamy, the famous _Crania ethnica_
(1875-79). Professor F. Starr, in the preface to his translation of _The
Pygmies_ (1895), says:—
Footnote 26:
_Anth. Rev._, 1869, p. 231.
A man of strong convictions and very conservative, de
Quatrefages was ever ready to hear the other side, and ever
candid and kindly in argument. He was one of the first to
support the Society of Anthropology. Those who know the story of
the early days of that great association understand what that
means. When the claim for man’s antiquity was generally derided,
de Quatrefages championed the cause. A monogenist [p. 53], a
believer in the extreme antiquity of our race, he was never won
over by any of the proposed theories of evolution.... To the
very end of a long life our author lived happily and busily
active among his books and specimens.
[Sidenote: =Virchow.=]
In Germany the greatest name is that of Virchow. Rudolf Ludwig Karl
Virchow (1821-1902) had already gained fame in the medical world,
especially with regard to histology, pathology, and the study of
epidemics, and was the prime leader in the “_Medizinische Reform_”
movement before he began his valuable contributions to the science of
Anthropology.
His first anthropological writings were some papers on cretinism (1851
and 1852), and from this date onwards his services to the science can
scarcely be over-estimated. Much of his energy was also given to somatic
anthropology, and in 1866 he started his investigations into prehistoric
archæology, combining scientific method with spade-work.
In a notice of his work by Oscar Israel[27] (p. 656) we read:—
Footnote 27:
Smithsonian Report, 1902. Translated from the _Deutsche Rundschau_ of
Dec., 1902.
Virchow devoted himself to ethnographic studies no less than to
other branches of anthropology, and here he became a center to
which the material streamed from all sides, and from which went
forth suggestion, criticism, and energetic assistance. This
never-idle man did not disdain to teach travelers schooled in
other lines of investigation the anthropometric methods; and,
indeed, he found time for everything, and never left a piece of
work to others that he could possibly do himself. Thus, for
example, for ten years following its inception by him in 1876,
he worked up alone the data recorded in German schools as to the
color of the eyes, the hair, and the skin which has proved of
such value for the knowledge of the different branches of the
German race.
[Sidenote: =Sergi.=]
Professor Sergi at one time proposed to banish measurements from
craniology, and to rely solely on observational methods. He has later
modified his extreme position, while, as a result of his crusade, he has
induced most anthropologists to pay more attention to the configuration
of the skull, and some of his descriptive terms have come into common
use.
[Sidenote: =Hagen’s Criticism of Craniometry.=]
Dr. Hagen relates the extreme specialisation into which craniologists
were led:—
A rage for skull measurements, vast, vigorous, and heedless, set
in on all sides, especially after Lucae had discovered and
perfected a method of accurately representing the irregular form
of the object studied. “More skulls” was henceforth the war-cry;
the trunk, extremities, soft tissues, skin and hair, might all
go by the board, being counted of no scientific value whatever.
Anthropologists, or those who aspired to the title, measured and
delineated skulls; museums became veritable cities of skulls,
and the reputation of a scientific traveller almost stood or
fell with the number of crania which he brought back with him.
After two decades of measuring and collecting ever greater
quantities of material from foreign lands, and from the
so-called primitive or aboriginal races, the inadequacy of
Retzius’s method became apparent. Far too many intermediate
forms were met with, which it was found absolutely impossible to
classify by its means. In accordance with the suggestion of the
French anthropologist Broca, and of Welcker, Professor of
Anatomy at Halle, a third type, the so-called Mesocephalic form,
was interposed between the two forms recognised by Retzius. Even
this did not suffice, however. In the face of the infinite
variety of form of the crania now massed together, a variety
only comparable to that of leaves in a forest, this primitively
simple scheme, with its four and finally six types, failed
through lack of elasticity. Then began complication extending
ever further and further. Attention was no longer confined to
the length and breadth, but also to the height of the cranium,
high and low (or flat) skulls—_i.e._, hypsicephalic and
chamaecephalic varieties being recognised. The facial part of
the skull was examined not only from the side, with a view to
recording the straightness or obliquity of the profile, but also
from the front; and there were thus distinguished long, medium,
and short faces, and also broad and narrow facial types. The
nasal skeleton, the palate, the orbit, the teeth, and the
mandible were investigated in turn, and at last all the
individual bones of the cranium and face, their irregularities
of outline, and their relations to one another, were subjected
to the closest examination and most subtle measurements, with
instruments of extreme delicacy of construction and ingenuity of
design, till, finally, the trifling number of five thousand
measurements for every skull found an advocate in the person of
the Hungarian Professor V. Török (whereby the wealth of detail
obscured the main objects of study); while, on the other hand,
observers deviated into scientific jugglery, like that of the
Italian Professor Sergi, who contrived to recognise within the
limits of a single small archipelago, the D’Entrecasteaux group
of islets near New Guinea, as many as eleven cranial varieties,
which were all distinguished by high-sounding descriptive names,
such as _Lophocephalus brachyclitometopus_, etc.
[Sidenote: =Macalister’s Criticism of Craniometry.=]
The misuse of Craniometry is also described by Professor Alexander
Macalister[28]:—
Footnote 28:
Presidential Address to Section H., Brit. Ass., 1892.
Despite all the labour that has been bestowed on the subject,
craniometric literature is at present as unsatisfactory as it
is dull. Hitherto observations have been concentrated on
cranial measurements as methods for the discrimination of the
skulls of different races. Scores of lines, arcs, chords, and
indexes have been devised for this purpose, and the diagnosis
of skulls has been attempted by a process as mechanical as
that whereby we identify certain issues of postage-stamps by
counting the nicks in the margin. But there is underlying all
these no unifying hypothesis; so that when we, in our
sesquipedalian jargon, describe an Australian skull as
microcephalic, phænozygous, tapeino-dolichocephalic,
prognathic, platyrhine, hypselopalatine, leptostaphyline,
dolichuranic, chamaeprosopic, and microseme, we are no nearer
to the formulation of any philosophic concept of the general
principles which have led to the assumption of these
characters by the cranium in question, and we are forced to
echo the apostrophe of Von Török, “Vanity, thy name is
Craniology.”
It is significant that so many of the earlier craniologists recognised
that the really important problem before them was to gain a knowledge of
the size and relative proportions of the various regions of the brain,
this being a direct result of the phrenological studies then so much in
vogue. When phrenology became discredited, this aspect of craniometry
was largely neglected; but recently it has exhibited signs of a healthy
revival, and the inner surface of the cranium is now regarded as more
instructive than the outer.
Though for a time craniology was hailed as the magic formula by which
alone all ethnological tangles could be unravelled, measurements of
other parts of the body were not ignored by those who recognised that no
one measurement was sufficient to determine racial affinities.
[Sidenote: =Anthropometry.=]
Thus Anthropometry began to map out definite lines of research, and
detailed studies were made of arms and legs, hands and feet, curves and
angles, brains and viscera; while, shorn of its extravagant claims,
craniology took its legitimate place as one in a series of bodily
measurements. One of the earliest workers in measurements other than
that of the skull was Charles White (1728-1813).
His contribution to Somatology was a series of measurements on arms; and
he discovered that the fore-arm of the Negro is longer, in comparison
with his upper-arm, than that of the European, and that that of the Ape
is relatively longer than that of the Negro. On account of these
measurements on the living (no less than fifty Negroes were measured),
White has been claimed as the founder of Anthropometry. Soemmerring
(1755-1830), however, had made use of measurements in his comparison of
the anatomy of the Negro with the European.
[Sidenote: =Measurements and Observations of Living Populations.=]
About the middle of the nineteenth century observations on the living
were made, in addition to Anthropometry; investigations were undertaken,
not of the skulls and bones of the dead, or even of the head-forms and
body-measurements of the living, but of the forms of such features as
the nose and ear, pigmentation of the skin and eyes, and the like. As
early as 1834 L. R. Villermé had started investigations on the various
classes of the population of Great Britain, comparing the dwellers in
the country with those of manufacturing districts and large cities,
mainly in the interests of hygiene; and later he examined the size and
health of children working in coal-mines.
In 1861 the venerated Dr. John Beddoe published a study of hair and eye
colour in Ireland, and he has continued his researches in this fruitful
field from time to time in various parts of the British Isles, and to a
less extent on the continent of Europe.
But it was on the continent that this method of investigation was most
ardently prosecuted; and the story of its political origin may here be
briefly recounted, since the results were of great service to the
science of Anthropometry.
During the bombardment of Paris, in the Franco-Prussian War, the Natural
History Museum suffered some damage through shells; and soon afterwards
the director, de Quatrefages, published a pamphlet on _La Race
Prussienne_ (1871). This was to show that the Prussians were not
Teutonic at all, but were descended from the Finns, who were classed
with the Lapps as alien Mongolian intruders into Europe. They were thus
mere barbarians, with a hatred of a culture they could not appreciate;
and their object in shelling the museum was “to take from this Paris
that they execrate, from this Babylon that they curse, one of its
elements of superiority and attraction. Hence our collections were
doomed to perish.” A reply was made by Professor Virchow, of Berlin, and
the battle raged furiously. The significance of this controversy to
Anthropometry lies in the fact that its immediate result was an order
from the German Government authorising an official census of the colour
of the hair and eyes of 6,000,000 school children of the Empire—a census
which served at once as a stimulus to and a model for further
investigators.
This census had some amusing and unexpected results, quoted by Dr.
Tylor[29] as illustrating the growth of legends:—
Footnote 29:
Pres. Add. Brit. Ass., 1879.
No doubt many legends of the ancient world, though not really
history, are myths which have arisen by reasoning on actual
events, as definite as that which, some four years ago, was
terrifying the peasant mind in North Germany, and especially in
Posen. The report had spread far and wide that all Catholic
children with black hair and blue eyes were to be sent out of
the country, some said to Russia; while others declared that it
was the King of Prussia who had been playing cards with the
Sultan of Turkey, and had staked and lost 40,000 fair-haired,
blue-eyed children; and there were Moors travelling about in
covered carts to collect them; and the schoolmasters were
helping, for they were to have five dollars for every child they
handed over. For a time popular excitement was quite serious;
the parents kept their children away from school and hid them,
and when they appeared in the streets of the market town the
little ones clung to them with terrified looks.... One
schoolmaster, who evidently knew his people, assured the
terrified parents that it was only the children with blue hair
and green eyes that were wanted—an explanation that sent them
home quite comforted.
Observations of external characters, combined with precise measurements,
have now been made on a large scale in most European countries, and
these methods are adopted on anthropological expeditions. In this way a
great deal of valuable material for study has been accumulated, but much
work remains to be done in this direction.
[Sidenote: =Methods of Dealing with Anthropometric Data.=]
Not only have head, body, and limb measurements been recorded, but the
device of an “index” has been adopted which gives the ratio between two
measurements, as, for example, in the previously-mentioned cephalic
index (p. 34). The averages or means of series of indices obtained from
one people have been compared with those obtained from other peoples;
but this method is misleading, as there is frequently a very
considerable range in any given series, and a mean merely gives a
colourless conception of racial types, the only value of which is a
ready standard of comparison, which, however, is full of pitfalls.
A further step in the advancement of anthropometric research was made
when the extent and frequency of such deviations from the mean were
recorded. At first this was done in a tabular manner by means of
seriations; then curves were employed: a single peak was held to
indicate purity of race, double peaks that two racial elements entered
into the series measured, a broad peak or plateau was interpreted as
being due to race fusion. Dr. C. S. Myers,[30] who has discussed these
and other methods, points out the fallacies of this interpretation,
saying: “There can be little doubt that most of the many-peaked curves
owe their irregularity to the inadequate number of individual
measurements which have been taken.”
Footnote 30:
C. S. Myers, “The Future of Anthropometry,” _Journ. Anth. Inst._,
xxxiii., 1903, p. 36.
Dr. Myers emphatically states:—
If physical anthropology is to be a science, its results _must_
be capable of expression in mathematical formulæ. To this end
some of the most interesting of biological work of the age is
tending ... generally speaking, the study of living forms is
passing from the descriptive to the quantitative aspect, and it
is by experiment and observation on biometrical lines that
future progress is clearly promised.... Thanks to the recent
work of Professor Karl Pearson, the proper start has at last
been made.
His school is now attacking by statistical methods the problem of the
dependence of the variation of one character upon that of another. It
should be remembered that Quetelet was the first to apply the Gaussian
Law of Error to human measurements in its elementary binomial form; in
this he was followed by Sir Francis Galton, who was the first in this
country to realise the importance of applying mathematical methods to
anthropological measurements and observations. An interesting account of
the genesis of his work in this direction is given in his _Memories of
My Life_ (1908). Similar work has also been undertaken by German
investigators.
[Sidenote: =Scientific and Practical Value of Anthropometry.=]
We may conclude this chapter with a brief summary of the main lines
which investigations are now taking; but it is impossible to mention
even the more important of recent workers in this vast field.
From the beginning of the study, anthropometry was employed as a precise
means of expressing the differences between man and the lower animals;
and, owing to improved methods of research and the discovery of new
material, the origin and differentiation of man is still investigated
with assiduity.
Though no one measurement can be used for purposes of race
discrimination, yet a series of measurements on a sufficiently large
group of subjects, together with observations on the colour of the skin,
hair, and eyes, the form of various organs—such as the nose and ears—and
other comparisons of a similar nature, are invaluable in the study of
the races of mankind. It is only in this way that the mixtures of the
population can be sorted out, their origins traced, and some idea gained
of the racial migrations which have taken place since man first
appeared.
Through the initiative of Sir Francis Galton, as Dr. Myers points out,
anthropometry has begun to investigate other problems which must
ultimately be of ethnological interest; and he has opened out the whole
subject of heredity, which eventually must enter into every branch of
physical anthropology. The followers of Mendel are at present laying a
foundation upon their experiments with plants and animals. At present
very little attention has been paid by them to man; nor, probably, can
much be attempted until more precise data are available.
Lamentably little is known with accuracy about the physical and
psychical effects of the mixture of different human types, and it is yet
to be determined how far the admitted unsatisfactory character of many
half-caste populations is due to physiological or sociological causes.
There is a great dearth of sufficiently numerous and reliable
observations and statistics concerning the effect of the environment
upon small or large groups of human beings—a problem to which Professor
Ridgeway devoted his last presidential address to the Royal
Anthropological Institute (1910).
It is often important that the physical fitness of people should be
tested, in order to see how they stand in relation to other people, and
to discover any physical imperfections. Especially is this desirable in
the case of children; and the government inspection of school children,
though inadequate, is a step in the right direction. By such means early
inclinations to various defects are discovered and prevented, and
valuable statistics are obtained which can not only be utilised for
comparative purposes, but may form a basis for future legislation. It is
also a matter of importance to determine whether certain imperfections
are due to diseased, abnormal, or other undesirable factors in their
parentage; or whether they are the results of unfavourable subsequent
conditions. But in order that comparisons can be made, it is necessary
to make similar investigations on the normal, capable, and healthy
population.
Another branch of investigation was undertaken mainly for the
identification of criminals, and consisted in certain measurements
selected by M. Alphonse Bertillon, supplemented by photographs and a
record of individual peculiarities. The practical value of this method
of identification in France was demonstrated by its immediate results.
Criminals began to leave off aliases, and numbers of them flocked to
England. Finger-prints as a means of identification were first
discovered by Purkenje, the Breslau physiologist (1823), who utilised
them for classification. Sir William Herschel, of the Indian Civil
Service, adopted the method in Bengal, and now methods introduced by Sir
Francis Galton are in use in India, England, and elsewhere, having in
most cases supplanted the Bertillon system.
------------------------------------------------------------------------