THE STATURE OP MAN AT VARIOUS EPOCHS. 5'Jl 



Clieops in order to compare their size with that of the present 

 «2:eneration. 



I'he same uncertainty does not characterize the methods of modern 

 anthro])ometry. Only limited faith is placed in the evidence of his- 

 torians, geographers, or voyagers, and none but scientific measurements 

 can be relied upon. The stature of vanished populations is ol)tained 

 directly by measuring their skeletons or parts of their skeletons, tlie 

 relations of which to the whole have been established by previous 

 study and careful research. No one has gone further than L. 

 Manouvrier in determining precisely the relation, long ignored, that 

 exists between the various parts of a skeleton. For the use of 

 anthropologists he codified after a fashion the rules outlined of old 

 by Orfila and revised by Topinard and E. RoUet in France, by 

 Humphry and J. Beddoe in P]ngland, and by Langer and Toldt in 

 (Termany. He made a sort of chart for ready reckoning, by the aid of 

 which, from the dimensions of the femur or the tibia, we can deduce 

 the height and the size of the body itself. The degree of approxi- 

 mation of the results is known, the extent of the extreme aberrsitions, 

 the causes of the aberrations, and all the conditions, in short, for 

 reducing the aberrations to a minimum. In these means of investi- 

 gation contemporaneous anthropology has weapons with which to 

 attack the prejudices that have long existed in regard to the gigantic 

 stature of our far-removed ancestors and in regard to the pretended 

 diminution in size which the human figure has been progressively 

 undergoing. 



P^rrors and exaggerations such as these have been collected, trans- 

 mitted, and j)roi)agated by historians of all times. The first expres- 

 sion that they received is incontestably to be found in the Bible. 

 The Hebrew scriptures allude in various passages to enoi-mous 

 men — as, for example, the population found by the spies of Moses 

 in the Promised Land. The prophet Amos compares these occu- 

 pants of Canaan to oaks for strength and to cedars for height. The 

 simile forcibly recalls almost the very words of the I^oemes Barbares, 

 hi which the hordes of primitive men are described as they issue from 

 dark woods and limitless deserts: 



More massive than the cechir. taller tliaii the pine. 



In the Book of Kings the giant Cxoliath is said to have been 11 

 feet 4 inches tall; and Deuteronomy narrates that the iron bed of ()g, 

 the King of Bashan, was 5) cubits, or about IT) feet, long. All the 

 Jews, however, did not entertain blind faith in the accuracy of these 

 figures, and many of them <iuestioned how gigantic races, so power- 

 fully built, could have completely disappeared. The prince of 

 scribes, Esdras, who edited the canonical books at the end of the 

 Babylonian exile and freed them of errors that had crept into them, 

 pleads the progressive debasement of the race. Succeeding gener- 



