PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND AFFILIATED 



SOCIETIES 



THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON 



A special meeting of the Anthropological Society of Washington was 

 held at 4.30 p.m. December 9, 1913, in the National Museum, the presi- 

 dent, Mr. Stetson, in the chair. About fifty persons were present. 



Dr. Charles B. Davenport of the Carnegie Institution, director of 

 the laboratory at Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island, addressed the So- 

 ciety on Man from the standpoint of modern genetics. He said that the 

 problem of the origin of species has now become largely reduced to 

 the problem of the origin and survival of the characters of the species. 

 Since groups differentiated by a single character are called biotypes, the 

 question of the origin of species is now that of the origin of biotypes. 

 Man is a congeries of biotypes. If these do not exist as distinct ele- 

 mentary species it is because of the tremendous hybridization that is 

 taking place between biotypes. These biotypes are most nearly real- 

 ized in islands, peninsulas, and out-of-the-way places. The most dis- 

 tinct of the human races exist today in such places as Australia and Cey- 

 lon, the Japan Islands (Ainos), Cape Horn, and inside of the Arctic 

 circle within the old and new world. But in small islands off the coast, 

 where people have been long settled and little disturbed, they tend to 

 approach a pure race or biotype. 



Under the shelter of this isolation, incidentally, opportunity has been 

 afforded for an adjusted race to spring up; but there is danger of deterio- 

 ration thru too close inter-breeding. Hybridization, as stated, is con- 

 stantly preventing the complete development of these biotypes. This 

 hybridization has gone on with man since early times so that few bio- 

 types are now actuality realized. It is now going on faster than ever 

 and even the rare fairly pure biotypes are fast disappearing from the 

 globe. The work of the anthropologist of the future must be largely 

 with these hybridized biotypes; his principal study will be the inherit- 

 ance of the various differential traits. 



The method of inheritance of some of these traits has already been 

 studied. Thus we know that the brown iris is dominant over its ab- 

 sence, as seen in blue eyes. The skin color of the negro is complex, 

 being due to two double (or four) factors; and these may work inde- 

 pendently of one another, so that we have over two, three, or four pig- 

 ment factors in the skin, producing the typical quadroon, mulatto, 

 Sambo, and full negro skin coloration. Dark brown hair is dominant 

 over blond hair; so that when both parents have only blond hair the 



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