Physical anthropology

“ Each social unit consists of a series of individuals whose bodily form depends on their ancestry and on their environment. If the opinion of the critics of physical anthropology regarding the predominant effect of environment is correct, then we cannot hope to make any discoveries as to ancestry of local or social groups by means of anatomical investigations. If, on the other hand, it can be shown that heredity is the predominant factor, then the prospects of important discoveries bearing on the early history of mankind are very bright indeed. ”

“ It is the determination and explanation of the occurrence of different types of man in different countries. The fact that individuals cannot be classified as belonging to a certain type shows that physical anthropology cannot possibly lead to a classification of mankind as detailed as does the classification based on language. The statistical study of types will, however, lead to an understanding of the blood relationship between different types. It will consequently be a means of reconstructing the history of the mixture of human types. ”

“ The history of development of the mental side of anthropology has been quite different from the growth of physical anthropology. While in the latter branch of our science the differences between human types were the first to attract attention, it was the similarity in cultural types found in remote regions which first impressed itself upon ethnologists. A comparison of the descriptions of the customs of primitive peoples the world over brought out analogies in ever-increasing number. These were early correlated with general impressions regarding the degrees of civilization ”

“ This lack of definite individual descriptive features has led many investigators to conclude that the method is at fault, and that the skeleton cannot be used as a satisfactory basis for a classification of mankind. This view has been strengthened by the belief, frequently expressed, that the characteristic features of each race are not stable, but that they are influenced to a great extent by environment, geographical as well as social. ”

“ I do not mean by this that mesmerism and spiritualism combined with mechanical physiology constitute anthropology: far from it. Both mesmerism and spiritualism are rich but empirical collections of facts, in which there is a large amount of material, but very little that can be called philosophy or satisfactory science.
Anthropology is established by investigating the centre of man's existence—the seat of his conscious life—the brain, in which the spiritual comes into contact with the physical, and is subject to analogous laws. ”

“ We have yet to discover how adequately to describe or gauge the essential anatomical distinctions between races and peoples. This problem is complicated by our ignorance of the stability of physical characters, and of how far or how speedily they are affected by change of environment. At the present time the effects of miscegenation and of environment afford fruitful fields for research. The imperfection of the geological record is answerable for the relatively slow progress that has been made in tracing the evolution of man as an animal. ”

“ ANTHROPOLOGY In attempting to set forth briefly the principal results of anthropological research, I find my task beset with many difficulties. If the clear enunciation of the aims and methods of physical or biological science is not an easy matter, difficulties many times greater are encountered in an attempt to explain the present position of investigation dealing with mankind from the biological, geographical, and psychological points of view,—subjects that seem to lack in unity, and that present a number of most divergent aspects. ”

“ 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 47the quantitative aspect, and it is by experiment and observation on biometrical lines that future progress is clearly promised.... ”

“ It seems to me that, under present conditions, it is best in the study of the anatomical characteristics of man not to start from far-reaching assumptions in regard to the question of the effect of heredity and environment, but first of all to ascertain the distribution of types of man. ”

“ So likewise in hygiene and medicine, in ethics and religion, in language and arts, in painting, architecture, sculpture and music, the full import and often unconscious intention of human activity can only be understood, and directed in the most productive channels, by such a careful historical and physical analysis as Anthropology aims to present. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In comparatively few cases have we had opportunity to make a thorough study of the characteristics of the soft parts of the body of individuals belonging to foreign races. The desire to find good specific characters in the skeleton has also been stimulated by the necessity of studying extinct races. ”

“ Such cultural causes constitute the third set or kind of factors by which civilization is explainable. If the example just discussed is representative, it is clear that cultural factors ordinarily interpret more phenomena of civilization, and interpret them more fully, than factors either of racial heredity or physical environment.
It is different in zoölogy and botany. The forms and behavior of animals and plants are explainable in terms of heredity and environment because animals and plants have no culture. ”

“ Palæontological.—The antiquity of man as evidenced by fossil and semi-fossilised remains, including the geological evidence.
(c) Physiological and Psychological.—The comparative study of the bodily functions and mental processes.
(d) Ethnological.—The comparative study of the physical characters which distinguish the various races and sub-races of man. Classification of the human race in accordance with physical and psychical characters. Geographical distribution of the varieties of mankind. The influence of environment on physique.
B.—Cultural Anthropology (Ethnology of some writers) . ”

“ Fortunately, there is a quite different state of affairs for the study of the mind—or Psychology—though even in this field there is yet a great deal of work to be done.
During the eighteenth century the term “Anthropology,” which was very vaguely employed, was often used to designate a comprehensive psychology dealing with the entire mental side of man, as well as the relations between soul and body. Later, as its scope became widened, the centre of gravity shifted over to physical man; but anthropologists have always maintained their right to deal also more or less with psychology. ”

“ Insofar as the reconstruction of the characteristics of prehistoric races can be based on extensive material, there will be a certain justification for a reconstruction of the soft parts, if a detailed comparison of the osteological remains of prehistoric types and of present types proves them to be conformable. ”

“ The first objection, which is based on the lack of typical characteristics in the individual, does not take into consideration the fact that anthropological study is not a study of individuals, but of local or social varieties. ”

“ All sciences and arts, all pleasures and pursuits, are assigned their respective rank in his interest by reference to those physical powers and mental processes which are peculiarly the property of his own species. ”

“ To understand these modifications, we require a knowledge of individual anatomy, physiology, and psychology, because the establishment of a characteristic social group can be brought about only by a parallel development which occurs in all the individuals exposed to similar influences.
Thus it appears that the genesis of the types of man, considered from an anatomical, physiological, and psychological point of view, is the chief object of anthropological research. ”

“ To-day it is at least possible to link up, not only physics and chemistry and geology and evolutionary biology, but also anthropology and psychology, into a whole which, though far from complete, is at least organized and coherent with itself. If the seventeenth century cleared the ground for that dwelling-place of human mind which we call the scientific view of things, if the eighteenth century laid the foundations and the nineteenth built the walls, the twentieth is already fitting up some of the rooms for actual habitation. ”

“ In that primeval transition of the ethnologist in which geology draws to a close, and archæology has its beginning, amid all the rudeness of palæolithic art, we may still recognise the rational lord of creation, the being endowed, not with physical but moral supremacy; in whom intelligence and accumulated experience were to prove more than a match for all the brute force of those gigantic mammalia so familiar to us now in fossil disclosures of the drift-gravels and cave-earth. ”

“ The scientists who study the bones and teeth and any other parts they find of the bodies of prehistoric men, are called physical anthropologists. Physical anthropologists are trained, much like doctors, to know all about the human body. They study living people, too ”

“ A development-history, as it were, of the transition of individual types from one into another, it leads back through paleontology and geology to the fiery-liquid youth of our planet, and hence extends its hand in the nebular hypothesis to the theory of the persistence of energy, while anthropology, ethnology, and the history of the primitive ages lay the bridge to linguistics, the theory of knowledge, and the historical sciences. ”

“ The Study of Man in accordance with the laws of inductive research is, therefore, the aim and meaning of Anthropology. The subject is a broad one,—in space, as wide as the world; in time, longer than all history; in depth, reaching to the innermost consciousness. A man may be regarded merely as a specimen of a certain species of vertebrates ”

“ The products of the human mind are something different from the body. And these products, as well as the human body, are the subjects of firmly established sciences, which would seem to leave little room for anthropology except as a less organized duplication. Ordinary political history, economics, literary criticism, and the history of art all deal with the works and doings of man; biology and medicine study his body. ”

“ In other words, we are interested in anatomical and mental characteristics in so far as they are peculiar to groups of men living under the same biological, geographical, and social environment, and as determined by their past. ”

“ Students show the tallest stature of all, because they have in their favour the joint effect of the two chief factors of environment that influence this anthropological datum: mechanical causes and nutrition. ”

“ We shall thus complete the study of the cranial characteristics dependent on the brain, with which I began, and shall be able to pass to the characteristics derived from the skeleton, among which we shall again find the application of all the preceding evolutionary data. Then only shall we be permitted to conclude upon the place which anthropology makes for man in nature. ”

“ But there is, perhaps, some truth in the remark, though frequently made on little better foundation than conjecture, that the prevailing form or configuration of the body is more liable to be influenced by the habits of different races, and their manner of living, than by the simple agencies of climate. It would be an interesting discovery, could it be shown that there is any apparent connexion between the display of particular forms, or the leading physical characters of human races, and their habits of existence. ”

“ This phenomenon, moreover, is but the anthropological expression of a more general biological law, in virtue of which human races, in order to adapt themselves to the medium in which they are developed, assume a uniform physical type and character, which persists, or repeats itself anatomically and psychically through the ages, in spite of the external forms of their civilization ”

“ In the long run, too, the older implements prove to be the simpler. Thus archæologists have succeeded in working out an evolution of civilization which parallels rather neatly the evolution of life forms. This evolution of human mental operations as it is reflected in the artifacts preserved from the lowest and earliest strata of civilization is the subject of the present chapter. ”

“ The purely psychological branch of the subject takes up half of the space allotted to Geist in the Encyklopädie. It falls under the three heads of anthropology, phenomenology and psychology proper. Anthropology treats of the mind in union with the body—of the natural soul—and discusses the relations of the soul with the planets, the races of mankind, the differences of age, dreams, animal magnetism, insanity and phrenology. ”

“ But few indeed have a comprehensive knowledge of the wider range of racial variation in which these familiar examples find their place. Anthropology, or the science of mankind, is a large and well-organized department of knowledge, dealing with the entire array of structural and physiological characters of all men. One of its subdivisions, anthropometry, is almost an independent discipline with methods of its own; it describes the characteristics of human races as these are determined by statistical methods of a somewhat technical nature. ”

“ For man has gained new muscles, in his use of the forms and forces of the inorganic world, and has commenced a new process of adaptation, which has already enabled him to extend his kingdom from the tropic to the frigid zone, and which promises to make him to some extent master of the fields of water and air. And his mental experience of wider and wider conditions of nature has produced a new form of physical adaptation—that signified in clothing and habitation. ”