EVOLUTION, GENETICS, ANTHROPOLOGY — MOURANT 517 



of dealing both with the complexity of the genetical situation and with 

 the vast extent of the data, would, I predict, release from the treasure 

 houses of the past an abounding harvest of priceless information. 



Such developments are, however, not to be expected immediately, 

 and we must now consider further the relation between the two main 

 methods of human classification available at the present time. When 

 blood-group observations began to be applied to anthropology there 

 was a tendency on both sides to place emphasis on the discrepancies 

 between the results of the new methods and those of classical anthro- 

 pometry, and to claim that one method or the other was the more 

 reliable. It is indeed not surprising that a classification based on a 

 single genetical system, that of the ABO blood groups, failed to agree 

 at all fully with one based on morphological characters representing 

 the integrated effects of scores, if not hundreds, of sets of allelomor- 

 phic genes. Few physical anthropologists would now deny the 

 classificatory value of the blood groups and biochemical characters, 

 and most serologists and geneticists who apply their results to anthro- 

 pology appreciate the importance of the morphological characters, 

 despite the lack of any means of analyzing them genetically. The time 

 is past, however, if it ever existed, for the two classes of information 

 to be contrasted to the detriment of either. Morphological observa- 

 tions have now as great a value as they ever possessed, but they can be 

 supplemented by information derived from a rapidly growing range 

 of serological and biochemical investigations. Those who have at- 

 tempted fully to use both methods, such as Beckman (1959) in Sweden, 

 have found not only that there is a high degree of agreement between 

 the classifications of populations based on the two methods, but that 

 the most complete picture of hereditary connections between popula- 

 tions can be obtained only by combining all the available information 

 of both kinds. 



To Huxley more perhaps than to any other man we owe the existence, 

 at the present time, of a fully scientific discipline of biology as a 

 whole. To the scientific status of anthropology too, in particular, he 

 made a very great contribution, but he did not live to see it achieve 

 the objectiveness of, for instance, the remainder of zoology. Even 

 at the present time anthropology still suffers both from a pseudo- 

 scientific racialism which lingers in a few quarters, and from a failure 

 to use to the full all the methods of investigation which are now 

 available. Only by calling upon the full resources of paleontology, 

 anatomy, physiology, biochemistiy, genetics, ecology, and psychology, 

 that is to say, on the whole available power of biological analysis, 

 will irrational prejudices be overthrown and a science of physical 

 anthropology arise which is both fully objective, and adequate in its 

 compass and its achievement to the great subject of its investigations. 



