REPORT ON THE SCIENCE OF ANTHROPOLOCxY IN THE WESTERN 

 HEMISPHERE AND THE PACIFIC ISLANDS. 



SUBJECT-MATTER OF ANTHROPOLOGY. 



For working purposes to-day, the science of anthropology may be classified 

 as follows: (1) physical anthropology, (2) ethnic anthropology, (3) cultural 

 anthropology, and (4) prehistoric anthropology. The field of anthropology 

 has been variously divided and its divisions have been variously named. 

 The terms physical anthropology, somatology, ethnology, ethnography, cul- 

 ture anthropology, archaeology, prehistoric anthropology, and numerous others 

 have been used. In this report the aim is to unify the names of the divisions 

 of the field for the sake of clearness, and they are therefore given in terms of 

 anthropology. A brief statement of their subject-matter will be given, and, 

 for further elucidation, some of the general research problems of each will be 

 sugge.sted. The divisions serve mainly as avenues of approach to the exten- 

 sive anthropological domain, and no permanently fast and fixed lines can be 

 drawn between them. 



PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY. 



Physical anthropology has as its subject-matter the entire biological 

 history of man: his origin, development, variations, and decline as a member 

 of the animal kingdom. 



The most important problem of the physical anthropologist is to make 

 clear, so far as possible, the origin of man. The' theory of evolution, as 

 applied to man, is accepted by a majority of educated people to-day, but 

 its proof is not yet universally conceded. Evidence of man's presumptive 

 ancestral or collateral kinship should be gathered from the living primates 

 and from fossil animals, now and then fortunately discovered, until the 

 suspected relationship is proved or disproved. Present-day experts in 

 schools of palaeontology, of human and comparative anatomy, physiology, 

 neurology, embryology, and psychology should be brought into sympathetic 

 touch with the large phylogenetic problem set before the physical anthro- 

 pologist until such an array of comparative data is at his disposal that there 

 can no longer be reasonable doubt as to man's exact zoological position. 

 Those characteristics which are essentially human must be selected, and the 

 point in development determined at which the manifestation of certain other 

 characteristics becomes the essence of humanity. In the solution of this 

 problem one will be led into the midst of the seething biological problem 

 of mutation versus shght and continuous variation. 



Typical individuals of the important groups of men should he exhaust- 

 ively studied, that data may be at hand for comparative individual and 



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