PORTRAITS OF EARLY AMERICANS' 



Recent Publication by Charles K. Bolton Shows Intermediate Type in the 

 Evolution of the Nordic Face — Eyes and Nose Show the Most 

 Interesting Changes 



Frederick Adams Woods 

 Lecturer on Biology, Massachusetts Instittite of Technology 



FOR four or five hundred years 

 artists have been making graphic 

 records of the human face. Yet 

 this historical, anthropological, 

 and often beautiful material has been 

 but little utilized in the study of evolu- 

 tion. That it can be utilized to a very 

 great extent can scarcely admit of doubt. 

 Racial types are often no more clearly 

 marked in the faces of the living than 

 in the portraits of the dead. Eye- 

 color, hair-color, the shape of the bones 

 of the head, and more particularly the 

 bones of the face, the modeling and even 

 the expression of the mouth, are all 

 significant and vary in diverse races, 

 families, and social classes. Character 

 and intelligence are usually clearly writ- 

 ten in physiognomy. It only remains 

 for the intuitive perception of the expert 

 to be supplanted by measurements and 

 inductive analysis, and the human face, 

 containing the most vital, the most 

 varjdng, the most revealing of all an- 

 thropological data, will be promoted to 

 its position of importance in classifying 

 mankind. 



How do we recognize an old friend or 

 anticipate a new one? How do we 

 determine a person's probable attrac- 

 tiveness? How do we quickly differen- 

 tiate the special racial subdivisions of 

 mankind? We do not measure the 

 shapes of their heads. We look them 

 squarely in the face. And, undoubtedly 

 very limited portions of the face suffice, 

 — notably the small region around the 

 mouth and nostrils and certain indica- 



tions about the eyes. For instance, 

 the Mongolian eye is characteristic, 

 although occasionally found in other 

 races. The Semitic nostril and upper 

 lip are, in that race, so ancient and 

 universal that they appear with equal 

 constancy and obviousness in the earliest 

 profile drawings in Babylonian days. 



DEARTH OF ANATOMICAL MATERIAL 



Evidences of anatomical evolution 

 are not lacking if one goes back to pre- 

 historic times. The Neanderthal and 

 other very early skulls, human or semi- 

 human, are small in cranial capacity and 

 primitive in shape. Anthropologists 

 have found but little evidence of recent 

 human evolution — that is, within historic 

 time. We do judge from the sizes of 

 suits of armor that men are somewhat 

 larger than they were a few hundred 

 years ago, but increased body size may 

 not mean intellectual evolution. The 

 reason why anatomists have failed to 

 find visible evidence of recent evolution 

 is because they have attended to every 

 part of the body except that one external 

 feature which is most indicative of 

 character and intelligence. If there be 

 a real, recent mental evolution, and if 

 anatomists for centuries had been study- 

 ing the internal structure of the brain 

 after the methods of modern technique — • 

 mapping brain regions and counting 

 brain cells — they would have found 

 such evolution. But, naturally, the 

 older anatomists kept no such records; 

 and now, after the once living gray 



1 Review and supplementary research based upon "The Founders: Portraits of Persons 

 Born Abroad Who Came to the Colonias in North America before the Year 170j," with an in- 

 troduction, biographical outlines, and comments on the portraits, by Charles Knowles Bolton, 

 In 2 volumes. The Boston Athenaeum, 1919. 



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