Conclusion

1. Comments and reflections

Since the classification of the subdivisions of the white race has already- been given in Chapter VIII, it seems unnecessary to review it here; the second part of the book has been summarized in advance. The work as a whole is an attempt to deal with the materials of physical anthropology in terms of archaeology and of history, in recognition of the facts that the human body is one unit in a social group of bodies and cannot be studied profitably out of its biological and social context. Furthermore, it cannot be studied with more than indifferent profit in the fiat two-dimensional plane of the present; reference must be had to the past, and thoughts may be legitimately entertained as to the future.

It has been borne home to me, in the perusal of the body of anthro­pometric literature concerning the living members of the white race, that one good, accurately measured study of a few hundred men, which includes all of the more important measurements permitted by the Monaco agreement and specified by Rudolf Martin, as well as a large number of accurately taken morphological observations, is better than a general survey of a few characters on a million. Studies of this nature have so far been made principally by Americans, Norwegians, Germans, Austrians, and Russians. In tribute to the volume and accuracy of their observational data, it is my feeling that we anthropometrists of the rest of the world must take off our hats to our colleagues in Moscow. Their activities in both the European and the Asiatic portions of their country have been extremely productive and have served to cast much light upon the definition of the mongoloid race, and upon the racial history of the Uralic- and Altaic-speaking peoples. For a systematic investigation of their own people, the palm is divided between Norway and Germany; in the latter case it goes especially to the editors and authors of the Deutsche Rassenkunde.

For many years physical anthropologists have found it more amusing to travel to distant lands and to measure small remnants of little known or romantic peoples than to tackle the drudgery of a systematic study of their own compatriots. For that reason the sections in the present book which deal with the Lapps, the Arabs, the Berbers, the Tajiks, and the Ghegs may appear more fully and more lucidly treated than those which deal with the French, the Hungarians, the Czechs, or the English. What

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