INTRODUCTION 



THE HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE SCIENCE OF 

 ANTHROPOMETRY 



When White in 1794, basing his assertions upon the observation of 

 both skeletons and living men, made the statement that the forearm of 

 negroes, in proportion to the upper arm, was longer than in white men, 

 he inaugurated the science of Comparative Racial Anthropometry, and 

 showed that there were constant differences in the bodily proportions of 

 the various human races. Differences of this sort seem to have been 

 unrecognized before this, even by artists and sculptors, who, although 

 from the time of the Egyptian and Assyrian carvings had elaborated and 

 even emphasized the racial characters of face and head, had given no 

 heed to differences in the other parts of the body. It is thus quite pos- 

 sible that the classic sculptors of Greece and Rome may have used indif- 

 ferently as models their own people and their foreign slaves, which may 

 serve to verify and explain the asserted negroid proportions of the Apollo 

 Belvidere.* 



The assertion of White was an advance upon new ground, and 

 although it was accompanied by neither detailed measurements, calcula- 

 tion of averages, or indices, it was yet of great value in the development of 

 the subject. After this, however, the work rested for forty-four years, 

 when Humphrey, in 1838, made careful measurements, not only of 

 humerus and radius, but of femur and tibia also, in twenty-five skeletons 

 of negroes and the same number of those of white men. He compared 

 each individual length with the total height of the skeleton from which 

 it came, taken as 100, and thus obtained indices which could be directly 

 compared. His results corroborated White regarding the long forearm 

 (radius) of negroes, and found a similar greater length in the lower leg 

 (tibia) of the same race, as compared with the whites. He found, for 

 example, that the average humerus in the two races bore practically the 

 same proportion to the total height, 19.52% in negroes and 19.54% in 

 whites, while the figures for the radius, also expressed in a percentage of 

 the total height, were respectively 15.16% and 14.15%. In the same 

 way the figures for the femur were 27.40 and 27.51, a negligible differ- 

 ence, while those for the tibia were 23.23 and 22.15. 



But by this time other anthropologists had become interested in 

 racial differences in bodily proportion, and under the critical scrutiny 

 of Broca this subject received still more careful treatment. He pointed 



* Perhaps a Greek head on a negro body, as has often been asserted. 



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