364 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1945 



approach to race, pays little attention to fossil man, the antiquity 

 of races, or the work of any recent anatomists. 



The danger of discussing race without really trying to understand 

 the anatomy of the situation is that one's examples will be irrelevant 

 and one's logic faulty. As an example of faulty reasoning take the 

 current statement that there are no important differences between races 

 because all races intergrade. This is like saying that there are no 

 differences in intelligence because there is a continuous distribution 

 from the lowest to the highest IQ. 



The best way to understand race is by a direct approach to the facts 

 (Cobb, 1943) , that is, to the study of fossil man, comparative anatomy, 

 and the purposes and methods of classification. It is with these that 

 this paper deals. 



THE NATURE OF RACIAL CLASSIFICATIONS 



The descriptions of the various races may be regarded as a series of 

 guidebooks to the anatomy of man. Following the guidebook analogy, 

 the content of the whole series of books equals present knowledge of 

 comparative human anatomy. Since the subject matter of this series 

 of books is continuous, the beginning and end of each volume is arbi- 

 trary, being determined by convenience. This guidebook series is 

 a useful way of sorting and cataloging anatomical information, and 

 the descriptions which the books contain were written to answer 

 questions which arose in man's quest for knowledge and understanding. 



The practical value of the anatomical descriptions which the books 

 contain will become clearer as they are used. For example, we find 

 that the volume entitled "Europeans" is especially useful because 

 there are over 700 million people to whom this guide applies. The 

 volume on "Mongoloids" includes over 600 million people. These two 

 guidebooks alone describe two-thirds of the people in the world, and, 

 therefore, they are the most useful ones we have. There is another 

 book called "African Negro" which covers some 100 million. Then 

 there are a number of slim volumes which describe types anatomically 

 distinct enough so that it is useful to have separate guidebooks for 

 them, but which are not numerous. Two such volumes would be called 

 "Australian-Melanesian" and "Bushman-Hottentot." 



Still there would be a great many people for whom no guidebook 

 is available. Some of these are put in appendices or special chap- 

 ters. Some have been shifted about when new information showed 

 that they would fit better in a different volume. Migrations and sub- 

 sequent crossing are creating new situations which the old volumes 

 did not cover. The guidebooks, of course, will need constant revision 

 to keep them up to date. 



