376 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1945 



1926, 1937; Washburn, 1942), so there is no reason to expect greater 

 homogeneity in man. In the primates as a whole, there appear to be 

 no pure races in the sense of types, such as some strains of laboratory 

 rats or mice, which are held constant by inbreeding and removal of 

 any deviating individuals. The human situation is more complex than 

 that of other primates because human wanderings and migrations 

 have been so much more extensive. Also human social habits, such as 

 trade, war, and slavery, introduce an entirely new set of factors. 



Mixing has played a much greater part in the physical history of 

 man than it has in the evolution of nonhuman primates. In this sense 

 it is correct to say that there are no pure human races. 



However, the word "pure" has been applied to races created by two 

 different methods, and it is very important to keep these methods sep- 

 arate in one's thinking. For example, let us consider the construction 

 of the races frequently called "pure" aboriginal Australian and "pure" 

 Nordic. 



In the case of the Australian aboriginal, "pure Australian" means 

 the Australian black as he is observed to be, without obvious mixture 

 with other races. The characteristics of the type are derived from the 

 study of the population. The range of variation in each character is 

 charted. The children belong to the same group as their parents, that 

 is, the race breeds true within the limits of the parental population. 



"Pure Nordic" means a group of people who are tall, long-headed, 

 blond, blue-eyed, and who have the numerous other traits which are 

 attributed to this race. Do Nordics breed true, that is, will the chil- 

 dren of Nordic parents be Nordic? The children may be too short, 

 too round-headed, too dark-haired or dark-eyed to be classed as Nor- 

 dics. From this it is clear that the group which has been selected as 

 pure Nordic is pure in phenotype only. How was the Nordic race 

 created? Individuals were seen with the characteristics attributed 

 to the race, and then the pure race was postulated, and the observed 

 situation described as the result of mixture. In the case of Nordic the 

 meaning of "pure" lies in the operations performed to construct the 

 race, that is, in the creation of an imaginary type, which is not found. 

 In the case of the aboriginal Australian, "pure" means a population 

 which exists, which is studied directly, and which is without obvious 

 admixture. This does not mean that there never was any crossing, 

 but simply that our methods cannot detect any. 



The descriptions of some races, such as the Australian, are based on 

 the study of populations. Other races, such as the Nordic, are created 

 by selecting individuals from a population and then describing the 

 selected group. 



The great interest in racial purity has taken attention from the 

 fact that some of the mixed races cannot even be demonstrated as 

 actual groups of living, breeding human beings. Each race is worth 



