Introduction to the study of the living

1. Materials and techniques

At this point we have completed the survey in which, with the help of the combined disciplines of osteology, archaeology, history, and linguistic science, we have attempted to trace the development of racial entities in the territory occupied by the white race, from the earliest human times to the Middle Ages, the threshold of the modern period. We are now faced with the problem of working with a different body of material— that furnished by the anthropometry of living peoples. We must further attempt to fit this material into the frame furnished us by our study of the dead, so that from the combination of the two a complete and orderly reconstruction will result.

While we were dealing with the data gleaned from the measurement and observation of bones, the chief difficulty which faced us was the lack of adequate samples in most of the periods, regions, and cultural units under consideration. On the other hand, while metrical accuracy was by no means to be assumed, yet the measurements on the dry skulls and long bones were for the most part comparable, and technical difficulty was subordinate to the paucity of documents. In dealing with the living ma­terial, however, we have vastly larger samples. In some countries, as in Norway, Sweden, and Poland, these comprise the entire military age group of the nation, and thus cease to be samples in the strict sense, and assume the character of total populations. In relatively few regions is it necessary to use samples of less than one hundred individuals.

Our authority has, therefore, increased immensely. We may speak with some confidence of the superficial physical composition of most European nations. But, at the same time, what we have gained in volume, we have ' to a certain extent lost in accuracy, for the present state of anthropometry is partly one of confusion and mistrust in regard to technical methods. Despite various attempts in the past and in the present to establish a stand­ard corpus of technique,¹ different schools have arisen in different countries. What discrepancies may exist between the work of members of each school

1. Cf. The Geneva agreement of 1912; the standards established by R. Martin in his Lehrbuch der Anthropologie; the present laudable attempt of Miss Miriam Tildesley to bring about unification.

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can usually be determined and allowed for; but this is not the root of the trouble. The chief difficulty is that much measuring has been done not by professional anthropometrists but by amateurs, while some with pro­fessional status have not been properly trained. Therefore we cannot be sure that such men belong to any school, nor that they follow any stand­ard other than their own. The accuracy of existing documents on the living is far less than that of skeletal data, and it is not always possible to know what techniques have been used. This lack of consistency is often an obstacle to mathematical comparison, but not enough of an obstacle to render many series wholly useless. We still have a better tool for the study of race in the living than we had in the documents of the dead.

Let us review the more important measurements in which technical difficulties most commonly arise. Stature, unfortunately, heads the list. One would suppose that the maximum height of the body while standing would be a constant dimension and one easy to measure, but neither assumption is true. Some investigators allow the subject to be measured in his shoes, and then attempt to make a standard subtraction for the heel. This is seldom if ever satisfactory. On the other hand barefooted negroes with horny soles are raised up several millimeters by their callouses, when compared to thin-soled white men standing with their shoes removed. Differences in posture, and in degree of conscious stretching, may attain the dimensions of centimeters.

Furthermore, it has been established ² that the human body, except in senility, shrinks as much as 2.5 cm. during a daytime spent either afoot or in a chair, the amount depending partly on the degree of and nature of the day’s activity. It makes some differences, therefore, what time of day the investigator habitually chooses for his work. At the same time the state of nutrition and of health makes some difference, and one must beware of series measured entirely in hospitals.

For the reasons above outlined, and without doubt for others as well, we must not, in studying stature as a statistical criterion of racial value, even if our samples are equivalent in age, expect to find accuracy down to the millimeter. Therefore the common statistical devices used to check the validity of the series on the basis of the sampling process are set at too fine an adjustment in view of the coarseness of the measurement itself, and in view of the great variability caused by factors other than sampling or racial attributes. What applies to stature applies in varying degree to measurements of its segments and of other bodily dimensions; the breadths of the shoulder and hips, and the diameters of the chest, are de­pendent in some degree on the highly variable amounts of sinew, muscle, and fat present at the points of measurement.

² Backman, G., FUL, N. F. vol. 29, 1923-24, pp. 255-282.

243

In the dimensions of the head and face, most of the difficulties found in stature and bodily measurements cease to exist. On the whole, a much greater accuracy is not only possible but has been attained. There are but two important matters in which serious inaccuracies arise with any frequency; these are the measurement of auricular head height and the location of nasion.

The first of these, the measurement of the height of the cranial vault, is without doubt the least satisfactory of all common anthropometric tech­niques. Although technique #15 of Martin ³ is considered standard, not all use it, and few do it in the same way. Some investigators use special metal head-spanners which measure the height of the vault from the middle of the ear hole, others measure from the top of the ear hole; still others, following Martin, from tragion. There is also a dispute as to whether the height taken should be to the vertex, as stated by Martin, or to a point exactly above the ear hole when the head is held in an approx­imation to the eye-ear plane.

As a result of these technical difficulties in taking head height on the living, differences of from ten to fifteen millimeters exist between the re­sults of different investigators working on identical populations, and re­ports embodying these discrepancies are published without comment. Since the difference between techniques is as great as the difference be­tween extremely disparate racial groups of mankind, head height on the living is a useless criterion when employed uncritically. Unless the com­piler knows the technical peculiarities and personal equation of each investigator whose work he uses, he should leave this material alone. In the present work, this ruling immediately excludes from consideration the majority of published data on head height.

The second major difficulty, the location of nasion in the living, while not quite as inaccurate, is even more serious, since three important vertical diameters of the face, morphological face height, morphological upper face height, and nose height, are theoretically limited, at their upper bound­ary, by this landmark; and nasion is an extremely hard point to determine. Ashley-Montagu, however, has recently devised a method which promises to overcome this difficulty in most cases.⁴ On adult male whites, luckily, there is usually enough ruggedness of facial relief to make this difficulty less serious than with mongoloids or negroids. Still technical differences of from five to ten millimeters render the works of different investigators incomparable, and one must again be sure of the individual equation of each investigator, or of the school in which he was trained. Since the facial

⁸ Martin, R., Lehrbuch der Anthropologie, vol. 1, pp. 185-186.

«Ashley-Montagu, M. F., AJPA, vol. 20, 1935, pp. 81-93; vol. 22, 1937, #3, Suppl. p. 6.

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and nasal indices depend upon vertical as well as lateral diameters, and hence upon nasion, these important racial criteria must be taken with great reserve, for the constancy of the lateral diameters serves only to exaggerate, in the indices, the differences between the vertical dimensions.

So much for the most serious metrical difficulties. In measurements on the living we see a more bountiful but less accurate counterpart of the criteria already familiar to the craniologist. There is another large body of data, however, unique in living material; the observations on the soft parts, including such features as hair form, hair texture; skin, hair, and eye color; the shape of the various component segments of the nose, the lips, and the external eye. These are important diagnostic racial charac­ters and deserve as careful study as do measurements and indices. But, unfortunately, accurate comparisons between the work of different in­vestigators is even less possible here than with metrical data, since observa­tion is a matter of judgment, and no two men’s judgments are the same.

The use of standard pigment scales in determining hair, skin, and eye color has helped enormously, but has not entirely eliminated the diffi­culties in the pigmentation field. There is no really adequate eye-color scale on the market, although Martin’s series of sixteen glass eyes is far better than nothing. Von Luschan’s skin-color scale does not always approximate human shades, and this is especially true with whites. The Saller-Fischer hair-color scale, made from actual human hair, is excel­lent, in most respects, but has not yet come into common use; the earlier Fischer scale, made of bleached and dyed vicufia hair, is also good.

Unfortunately, however, the majority of our observational data has been collected without reference to scales, and published without accu­rate definitions, and it is impossible to tell, in many instances, what color or what degree of blondism or pigmentation is implied by a given term. Then too, environment and age make great differences in pigmentation; the degree of tanning or of uncleanliness in regard to the skin color is seldom indicated; eyes often grow lighter with age, and the deposit of fat in the cornea, called arcus senilis, which gives a grayish-blue tone to the peripheral zone of the iris, is often mistaken for eye blondism. Hair color is notoriously transitory, changing, in all but pure brunets and extreme blonds, continuously from birth to grayness, baldness, or death.

Most observations, other than those referring to pigmentation and the morphology of the pilous system, are divided into the following categories: absent, sub-medium, medium, pronounced. These are frequently ex­pressed by the symbols, abs., sm., +> ++• Often ssm. and +++ are added for greater refinement. In general, the standard for the + or medium category is a roughly estimated and ideal mean or intermediate white or European male condition. Thus in nasal tip thickness almost all

245

negroes would be ++ or H—f- + ; in beard development almost all Eski­mos would be abs., ssm., or sm. There is a tendency for the observer to make the mean condition of the people he is studying + or medium, or to be unconsciously influenced by his own facial form.

Various attempts have been made to standardize these quantitative observations, and the most promising is perhaps that of the Moscow school, where a series of plaster casts has been made to show standard stages of sm., +, and H—(-in each of the more commonly studied criteria. Still, whatever standards are used, the location of the borderline between categories must always be a matter of individual judgment.

Our first difficulty with the study of race from existing data on living populations, whether these data be metrical or observational, is therefore one of technical inaccuracy and inconsistency. But it is not the greatest difficulty which will be encountered, and it is not insuperable. The care­ful compiler can usually discover what are the technical idiosyncracies of a given investigator, and if he is familiar with the material as a whole, he can usually sense improbable divergences from standard technique. The comparison of different samples selected from the same population by different investigators often makes a standard adjustment possible.

Technical inconsistencies and inaccuracies render the study of race on the living something less than an exact science, but it remains something more than a plaything. The manipulation of metrical data requires ex­perience and judgment, and the uncritical use of existing materials on a purely statistical basis, no matter how erudite in the mathematical sense, can never be more than a sterile exercise. Those who employ experience and judgment, and who make a discreet use of the simpler statistical methods, may learn much from the handling of the immense body of anthropometric data.

2. THE USE OF STATISTICS IN PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY

In the introduction to the study of the skeletal material, we made only the briefest mention of the statistical methods to be employed in that seg­ment of the book.⁶ This was done because the numerical size and the nature of the cranial samples employed limited the treatment, in most cases, to a discussion of individual crania and to a comparison of simple means. With the living material however, the use of much larger samples, and of non-metrical soft part criteria, will necessitate reference to more elaborate methods, and therefore a brief allusion to the better known statistical principles and techniques which are commonly employed seems indicated.

Modern physical anthropology, in company with other technical and

8. ChaDter I. dd. 14—15.

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biological disciplines, has entered a stage of increasing dependence upon mathematics, and lengthy formulae which involve the use of several alpha- bets are currently employed by most physical anthropologists. Although there are several schools each of which has assembled a favorite collection of symbols, the method as a whole is a product of the English biometric school founded by Gal ton and Pearson. Aside from the calculation of means, the purposes for which these formulae and numerical techniques are em- ployed may be reduced to four, which, expressed in the simplest possible form, are as follows:

1. To determine the degree of homogeneity or heterogeneity of a given statistical sample, in the various criteria measured or observed, and to compare it in these re- spects with other samples.

2. To determine whether or not two statistical samples may be considered random selections from a single population.

3. Having found that the two samples represent demonstrably different popula- tions, to determine exactly how different, in a metrical sense, they are.

4. To determine whether or not a given sample is racially mixed, and if it is, to discover its component elements.

Let us review these four purposes and the techniques by which they are accomplished, in as simple and brief a manner as possible.

1. To study the relative variability of samples. This is done by means of the two constants, standard deviation and coefficient of variation.⁶ The former, in which the variability of the extremes is emphasized by the quadratic treatment, indicates how many unit points the average individual in the sample deviates from that mean. When used to compare approximately equivalent means within the same criterion, it is a simple and useful constant. The coefficient of variation is designed to facilitate comparison between criteria in which the metrical values of the means are quite different, in order to eliminate the size element. By comparing <r’s and V’s of a given sample with those of a general compilation, such as that of Howells,⁷ one may gauge the relative variability of the sample, and may compare it with other specific samples in this regard. This technique is

100 • <r

V

fx²

— - A². V (Coefficient of Variation) =

P. E. M. (Probable error of the mean) =

M

.67450-

Vn

.6745<r

P. E. <r (Probable error of the standard deviation) =

P. E. V. (Probable error of the coefficient of variation) =

V2N

.6745V

V2N

P. E. Diff. « VP. E. M.i + P. E. M.*

7. Howells, W. W., HB, vol. 8, 1936, #4, pp. 592-600.

247

not by its nature limited to living material, but it may be profitably employed with many more published series of the living than of crania.

2. To test the statistical independence of two samples. The second purpose is, in effect, to tell whether or not two samples may be considered separate statistical entities. The technique most commonly employed is to com­pare the difference between two means with the probable error * of that difference. If the difference is three times or more its probable error, then the two samples are considered distinct in the criterion under study. If, in a large number of criteria, the two samples are consistently distinct, then two separate populations are represented. If, on the other hand, the two samples are not distinct, owing to the relative smallness of differences compared to their probable errors, then we may make one of the following deductions: (a) the two groups represent the same anthropometric popu­lation; (b) the two groups are really different, but owing to the small numerical size of one or both samples, or to the excessive variability of one or both, such a difference cannot be established statistically.

In order to determine which of these two premises is the more likely, the exercise of judgment must inevitably be interpolated. If both samples are large and of reasonable variability, the two are probably, in fact, alike; if both are very small and the probable errors large, the chances are great that the samples are statistically worthless. The chief utility of the sampling check, therefore, is to find out whether or not apparent differ­ences are really of significance. It is not an automatic proof of identity.

3. To measure the anthropometric difference between samples. The third pur­pose, to tell how close or how distant two samples are in a metrical sense, may be fulfilled in any one of a number of ways. One is merely to compare the means, and to compute the differences. Then, for convenience, one may pool the differences for separate statistical categories. For example, the difference between sample A and sample B in head length may be 4.35 inm.; in head breadth 7.32 mm.; ip head height 1.09 mm. The aver­age difference in three vault diameters is therefore 4.19 mm. The average for the same three diameters, between sample A and sample C, on the other hand, may be 9.73 mm. Therefore we may say that sample A resembles sample B, in the totality of three vault diameters, more than it resembles sample C. Similarly one may pool the vault indices, or the head and face measurements, or the head and face indices, but one may not average measurements and indices together. To do so would be to commit the kindergarten fallacy of adding oranges and apples. But there are anthro­pologists who have not only done this, but who have also added centi­meters and millimeters together as equal units, in pooling body and head measurements.

* See footnote 6 on preceding page.

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It has long been the wish of many anthropologists to find some means whereby they might express the degree of similarity of difference between two populations by a single figure. Taking population A as zero, B would be, say, 5.6; C = 7.3; D = 11.9. Thus the relationships of B, C, and D in respect to A could be determined. Taking each of the others in turn, it would be possible to triangulate and to plot the mutual relationships of any number of populations in a simple, graphic manner. Morant, work­ing with a formula invented by Pearson, has proposed and employed such a method in the form of the coefficient of racial likeness.⁸ Some have accepted this in principle, others have rejected it.⁹ Whatever its theoretical validity or error, however, it does actually give approximately the same results as a simple pooling of the several categories of differences. Unfor­tunately neither a simple pooling nor the coefficient of racial likeness takes into account correlative influences which compel several characters to vary in concert, and thus to weight, in a variable degree, the totality of characters chosen. According to Morant, these correlative influences could be eliminated, but only by an unfeasible amount of statistical labor.

Before proceeding to the fourth purpose, let us pause to make a few reflections upon the uses to which the three systems already outlined may be put. Although all are useful, not one automatically answers any im­portant questions. The first technique, that which is concerned with variability, tells us how variable samples are, but not why they are vari­able. Unusual variability may indicate an active evolutionary tendency, the recent and as yet not fully amalgamated mixture between two popula­tions, or any one of a number of other causes. Unusual homogeneity, on the other hand, does not necessarily mean racial “purity,” in the historical sense, but rather a complete amalgamation and a static evolutionary condition. The second is useful mainly to eliminate from serious consider­ation statistically inadequate samples. The third gives a detailed idea of degrees of metrical similarity and difference. But neither the second technique nor the third tells the investigator what is the genetic relationship between two samples.

4. To analyze a racially mixed sample. Let us now turn to the fourth and last important use which the physical anthropologist makes of statistics. This is his attempt to divide a given sample, which he considers to have resulted from a mixture of races, into its component elements, and to see what these elements are and how much there is of each in the mixture. This is a rather complicated process, and many different methods have been devised to accomplish it.

⁸ Morant, G. M., Biometrika, vol. 14, 1923, pp. 193-264; vol. 16, 1924, pp. 1-105.

Pearson, K., Biometrika, vol. 18, 1926, pp. 105-117.

• Fisher, R. A., JRAI, vol. 66, 1936, pp. 57-63.

249

One is the system employed by Hooton and his school, in which the author was trained. That is for the anthropometrist, working either with crania or with the living, to divide his series into what seem to him natural groupings, and to specify on each measurement blank which of these types is represented. After the sample has been seriated as a whole, the sub-samples of the different types are seriated separately, and statistically compared with each other and with the total mean. By this means it may be determined whether or not statistically different elements have actu­ally been isolated. If so, the next step is to determine, by comparison, what the larger racial relationships of these elements are.¹⁰ Hooton bases his system on the principle that the individual possesses a racial identity, as well as does the group to which he belongs.

Another method which is less subjective but wholly arbitrary is that of Czekanowski, who plots the mean differences between individuals in a sample on a chequered field; this is done only with indices of the head and face, when the original system is followed.¹¹ Two individuals alike in all indices chosen produce a black square at the point where their lines inter­sect; two which are less alike produce a square which is striped, in varying degrees arranged to show the degree of similarity; then those which are dissimilar in all indices are represented by white squares. After these squares have been completely plotted, the graph is rearranged so that those which are naturally related are placed in contiguous positions. In this way it is possible to see how many sub-groups of naturally correlated individuals occur, and how large these sub-groups are. The next step is to find the racial affinities of each sub-group. For this purpose the Polish school has designated a formal list of races, each symbolized by a separate Greek letter, and each equipped with a list of ideal metrical positions in the more commonly used measurements and indices, as well as with a characteristic pigmental position. Each group of correlated black squares in the graph is assigned to one of these races, or to a combination of two or more, and the percentages of each race in the sample is thus worked out.

A third method is that originated by von Eickstedt, the leader of the Breslau School, and amplified by Schwidetzky.¹² This method is to sort the sample directly into sub-series by splitting the distribution frequen­cies of the characters at arbitrary racial boundaries, and by combining the results of this process as applied to pairs of characters; to plot the

10. Hooton, E. A., The Ancient Inhabitants of the Canary Islands; Indians of Pecos; Science, vol. 63, 1926, p. 75.

11. Czekanowski, J., MAGW, vol. 42, 1912, pp. 17-217; AASF* ser. A., vol. 25, #2, Helsinki, 1925; AAnz, vol. 5, 1928, pp. 335-359.

12. Eickstedt, E. von, ZFRK, vol. 2, 1935, pp. 1-32.

Schwidetzky, I., ZFRK, vol. 2, 1935, pp*. 32-40; vol. 3, 1936, pp. 46-55.

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distribution curves of the sub-series, so-created, for measurements, indices, and percentages of observations; and to test the sorting by a comparison of these curves with others which represent arbitrary racial norms. Like all such systems, this one operates on the assumption that the result of

A + B

mixing A + B in any metrical character is —

The three methods outlined above are all based on the principle of correlation. Correlation statistics alone are even more commonly used than any of these. One may correlate metrical characters with each other; metrical characters with indices; either metrical characters or indices with observations, and observations with each other. By means of these corre­lation statistics one finds which characters are associated, in the sense that their variations are not mutually independent. One finds, for example, that light eyes are usually if not always correlated with light hair. The elements of blondism are to a certain extent linked. One will also find that segments of a dimension are positively correlated with that dimen­sion, but this is of no racial significance. If they are not correlated, or are negatively correlated, then there is something to investigate. One must furthermore expect all gross size diameters to be intercorrelated to some extent in any population, for obvious reasons.

Correlations of racial significance are those which are not dependent on gross size and are not involved in a part-and-whole relationship. Thus, if tall stature goes with blond hair and short stature with dark hair, or if a broad nose goes with a low relative sitting height, and vice versa, then the anthropologist who is analyzing his series assumes that he has uncov­ered linkages showing racial variations within his sample.

There is no possible objection to the use of correlations, but there are many objections to the ways in which they are often interpreted. In the first place, a valid correlation implies some degree of genetic linkage. But it does not necessarily imply that this linkage represents with com­plete fidelity a combination found in one component element in a hypo­thetical mixture. There may have been no mixture at all—the group may be evolving, by mutation, in a certain direction which involves more than a single character. Or if there has been mixture, the correlation may represent a recombination of characters.

Correlation, in brief, shows linkage, but what does linkage mean? We must not forget that a population, in the physical as well as in the social sense, has an existence of its own in addition to and above the existences of its component units, and we must not, furthermore, anticipate the findings of the geneticists. All of the methods which partition a series, or which employ the principle of correlation, have some justification in their initial steps, and some utility, but all of them become unscientific as soon