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[Race as Global Data Stream: Anthropological Research in 20th Century Hamburg as a Vantage Point for a Data History of Racialization]. NTM 2023; 31:387-420. [PMID: 38019282 PMCID: PMC10781799 DOI: 10.1007/s00048-023-00370-1] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Accepted: 11/03/2023] [Indexed: 11/30/2023]
Abstract
This article explores anthropological research conducted in Hamburg during the 20th century and demonstrates how historically specific discourse networks (Aufschreibesysteme) shaped concepts of race and their subsequent use in politics. To this end, this study examines three paradigms within the history of German anthropology in terms of their underlying inscription technique: physical anthropology/loose-leaf collection, "Erblehre"/card index, and population genetics/electronic data processing. By outlining a data history of racialization, this article avoids the ontological pitfalls of recent debates about the category of race.
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Skeletal evidence for violent trauma from the bronze age Qijia culture (2,300-1,500 BCE), Gansu Province, China. INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PALEOPATHOLOGY 2019; 27:66-79. [PMID: 31606648 DOI: 10.1016/j.ijpp.2019.08.002] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/17/2018] [Revised: 08/07/2019] [Accepted: 08/08/2019] [Indexed: 06/10/2023]
Abstract
This research explores how social and environmental factors may have contributed to conflict during the early Bronze Age in Northwest China by analyzing violent trauma on human skeletal remains from a cemetery of the Qijia culture (2300-1500 BCE). The Qijia culture existed during a period of dramatic social, technological, and environmental change, though minimal research has been conducted on how these factors may have contributed to violence within the area of the Qijia and other contemporaneous material cultures. An osteological assessment was conducted on 361 individuals (n = 241 adults, n = 120 non-adults) that were excavated from the Mogou site, Lintan County, Gansu, China. Injuries indicative of violence, including sharp- and blunt-force trauma that was sustained ante- or peri-mortem, were identified, and the patterns of trauma were analysed. Violent injuries were found on 8.58% (n = 31/361) of individuals, primarily adult males. No evidence of trauma was found on infants or children. Cranial trauma was found on 11.8% (n = 23/195) of the adult individuals examined. Of these, 43.5% (n = 10/23) presented with severe peri-mortem craniofacial trauma. The high rate of perimortem injuries and their locations indicate lethal intent. This lethality, in addition to the fact that individuals with trauma were predominantly male, suggest intergroup violence such as raiding, warfare, or feuding. Both social and environmental factors may have contributed to this conflict in the TaoRiver Valley, though future systematic archaeological and paleoenvironmental data will be needed to disentangle the many potential causal factors.
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The Human Wallace Line: Racial Science and Political Afterlife. MEDICAL HISTORY 2019; 63:314-329. [PMID: 31208482 PMCID: PMC7329216 DOI: 10.1017/mdh.2019.29] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 06/09/2023]
Abstract
This paper examines racial science and its political uses in Southeast Asia. It follows several anthropologists who travelled to east Nusa Tenggara (the Timor Archipelago, including the islands of Timor, Flores and Sumba), where Alfred Russel Wallace had drawn a dividing line between the races of the east and the west of the archipelago. These medically trained anthropologists aimed to find out if the Wallace Line could be more precisely defined with measurements of the human body. The paper shows how anthropologists failed to find definite markers to quantify the difference between Malay and Papuan/Melanesian. This, however, did not diminish the conceptual power of the Wallace Line, as the idea of a boundary between Malays and Papuans was taken up in the political arena during the West New Guinea dispute and was employed as a political tool by all parties involved. It shows how colonial and racial concepts can be appropriated by local actors and dismissed or emphasised depending on political perspectives.
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All things bleak and bare beneath a brazen sky: practice and place in the analysis of Australopithecus. HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF THE LIFE SCIENCES 2019; 41:19. [PMID: 31016405 DOI: 10.1007/s40656-019-0258-x] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/13/2018] [Accepted: 04/11/2019] [Indexed: 06/09/2023]
Abstract
The fossilized primate skull known as the Taungs Baby, discovered in South Africa, was put forward in 1925 as a controversial 'missing link' between humans and apes. This essay examines the controversy generated by the fossil, with a focus on practice and the circulation of material objects. Viewing the Taungs story from this perspective provides a new outlook on debates, one that suggests that attention to the importance of place, particularly the ways that specific localities shape scientific practices, is crucial to understanding such controversies. During the 1920s, the fossil itself did not move or circulate from its South African location, a fact that raised methodological concerns in understanding its significance and drew immense criticism from a range of experts. Examining the criticisms regarding the fossil's failure to circulate draws attention to the importance of centers of accumulation in the analysis of hominid fossils. Diverging from existing histories that primarily emphasize the role of theory in paleoanthropological debates, then, this article argues that scientific practice played an important role in the Taungs fossil controversy. Examining this dimension of the debates has broader implications for revealing the underlying imperial assumptions that guided hominid paleontology during the early twentieth century.
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A century of development. AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY 2018; 165:726-740. [PMID: 29574839 PMCID: PMC6007869 DOI: 10.1002/ajpa.23379] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/02/2017] [Revised: 12/02/2017] [Accepted: 12/09/2017] [Indexed: 12/13/2022]
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The Anatomy Lesson of Professor Barge. J R Soc Med 2018; 89:649-50. [PMID: 9135600 PMCID: PMC1296007 DOI: 10.1177/014107689608901117] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/15/2022] Open
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Paleoanthropology's uses of the bipedal criterion. HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF THE LIFE SCIENCES 2017; 40:7. [PMID: 29168074 DOI: 10.1007/s40656-017-0172-z] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/06/2016] [Accepted: 11/15/2017] [Indexed: 06/07/2023]
Abstract
Bipedalism is one of the criteria that paleoanthropologists use in order to interpret the fossil record and to determine if a specimen belongs to the human lineage. In the context of such interpretations, bipedalism is considered to be a unique characteristic of this lineage that also marks its origin. This conception has largely remained unchallenged over the last decades, in spite of fossil discoveries that led to the emergence of bipedalism in the human lineage being shifted back by several millions of years. In this paper, I analyze the uses of this criterion in paleoanthropology and demonstrate that interpretative biases (such as underdetermined inferences and circular reasoning) are at play in interpretations of hominin remains. By discussing Darwin's hypotheses about the evolution of bipedalism, I identify major theoretical issues that need to be addressed in the current debates on hominin evolution. First, the assumption that "man alone has become a biped" (Darwin in The descent of man, and selection in relation to sex, John Murray, London, 1871) is analyzed in the light of recent empirical data. Three major issues are discussed: the definition of "man", i.e. "human", the uniqueness of human bipedalism, and the equivocal meaning of being a "biped". Then, I highlight some of Darwin's remarks that may be helpful for current debates in paleoanthropology, regarding natural selection in locomotor evolution, as well as taxonomic and phylogenetic significance of functional features. Finally, I analyze two examples of how fossil discoverers referred to Darwin in the recent years and discuss his role as an intellectual support.
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Biological Discourses on Human Races and Scientific Racism in Brazil (1832-1911). JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF BIOLOGY 2017; 50:267-314. [PMID: 27216739 DOI: 10.1007/s10739-016-9445-8] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 05/05/2023]
Abstract
This paper analyzes biological and scientific discourses about the racial composition of the Brazilian population, between 1832 and 1911. The first of these dates represents Darwin's first arrival in the South-American country during his voyage on H.M.S. Beagle. The study ends in 1911, with the celebration of the First universal Races congress in London, where the Brazilian physical anthropologist J.B. Lacerda predicted the complete extinction of black Brazilians by the year 2012. Contemporary European and North-American racial theories had a profound influence in Brazilian scientific debates on race and miscegenation. These debates also reflected a wider political and cultural concern, shared by most Brazilian scholars, about the future of the Nation. With few known exceptions, Brazilian evolutionists, medical doctors, physical anthropologists, and naturalists, considered that the racial composition of the population was a handicap to the commonly shared nationalistic goal of creating a modern and progressive Brazilian Republic.
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Bergmann's Rule, Adaptation, and Thermoregulation in Arctic Animals: Conflicting Perspectives from Physiology, Evolutionary Biology, and Physical Anthropology After World War II. JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF BIOLOGY 2017; 50:235-265. [PMID: 27317307 DOI: 10.1007/s10739-016-9446-7] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 06/06/2023]
Abstract
Bergmann's rule and Allen's rule played important roles in mid-twentieth century discussions of adaptation, variation, and geographical distribution. Although inherited from the nineteenth-century natural history tradition these rules gained significance during the consolidation of the modern synthesis as evolutionary theorists focused attention on populations as units of evolution. For systematists, the rules provided a compelling rationale for identifying geographical races or subspecies, a function that was also picked up by some physical anthropologists. More generally, the rules provided strong evidence for adaptation by natural selection. Supporters of the rules tacitly, or often explicitly, assumed that the clines described by the rules reflected adaptations for thermoregulation. This assumption was challenged by the physiologists Laurence Irving and Per Scholander based on their arctic research conducted after World War II. Their critique spurred a controversy played out in a series of articles in Evolution, in Ernst Mayr's Animal Species and Evolution, and in the writings of other prominent evolutionary biologists and physical anthropologists. Considering this episode highlights the complexity and ambiguity of important biological concepts such as adaptation, homeostasis, and self-regulation. It also demonstrates how different disciplinary orientations and styles of scientific research influenced evolutionary explanations, and the consequent difficulties of constructing a truly synthetic evolutionary biology in the decades immediately following World War II.
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Dietary resilience among hunter-gatherers of Tierra del Fuego: Isotopic evidence in a diachronic perspective. PLoS One 2017; 12:e0175594. [PMID: 28407013 PMCID: PMC5391079 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0175594] [Citation(s) in RCA: 13] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.9] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/05/2017] [Accepted: 03/28/2017] [Indexed: 11/18/2022] Open
Abstract
The native groups of Patagonia have relied on a hunter-gatherer economy well after the first Europeans and North Americans reached this part of the world. The large exploitation of marine mammals (i.e., seals) by such allochthonous groups has had a strong impact on the local ecology in a way that might have forced the natives to adjust their subsistence strategies. Similarly, the introduction of new foods might have changed local diet. These are the premises of our isotopic-based analysis. There is a large set of paleonutritional investigations through isotopic analysis on Fuegians groups, however a systematic exploration of food practices across time in relation to possible pre- and post-contact changes is still lacking. In this paper we investigate dietary variation in hunter-gatherer groups of Tierra del Fuego in a diachronic perspective, through measuring the isotopic ratio of carbon (∂13C) and nitrogen (∂15N) in the bone collagen of human and a selection of terrestrial and marine animal samples. The data obtained reveal an unexpected isotopic uniformity across prehistoric and recent groups, with little variation in both carbon and nitrogen mean values, which we interpret as the possible evidence of resilience among these groups and persistence of subsistence strategies, allowing inferences on the dramatic contraction (and extinction) of Fuegian populations.
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The most brutal of human skulls: measuring and knowing the first Neanderthal. BRITISH JOURNAL FOR THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE 2016; 49:411-432. [PMID: 27719693 DOI: 10.1017/s0007087416000650] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 06/06/2023]
Abstract
A fossilized skeleton discovered in 1856 presented naturalists with a unique challenge. The strange, human-looking bones of the first recognized Neanderthal confronted naturalists with a new type of object for which they had no readily available interpretive framework. This paper explores the techniques and approaches used to understand these bones in the years immediately following the discovery, in particular 1856-1864. Historians have previously suggested that interpretations and debates about Neanderthals hinged primarily on social, political and cultural ideologies. In this paper, I will argue that much of the scientific controversy surrounding the first recognized Neanderthal centred on questions of methodology and practice, and will demonstrate this through an exploration of the tools and approaches naturalists utilized in their examinations of the fossils. This will contribute to a growing historical recognition of the complex exchange between disciplines including geology, archaeology and comparative anatomy in the early study of fossil hominins, and provide a future framework for histories of Neanderthal debates in the twentieth century.
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Physical anthropology of living and skeletal populations from the Yucatan Peninsula (introduction to special section). Am J Hum Biol 2015; 27:745-6. [PMID: 26397176 DOI: 10.1002/ajhb.22794] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/07/2022] Open
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13
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Sinanthropus in Britain: human origins and international science, 1920-1939. BRITISH JOURNAL FOR THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE 2015; 48:289-319. [PMID: 25921683 DOI: 10.1017/s0007087414000909] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 06/04/2023]
Abstract
The Peking Man fossils discovered at Zhoukoudian in north-east China in the 1920s and 1930s were some of the most extensive palaeoanthropological finds of the twentieth century. This article examines their publicization and discussion in Britain, where they were engaged with by some of the world's leading authorities in human evolution, and a media and public highly interested in human-origins research. This international link - simultaneously promoted by scientists in China and in Britain itself - reflected wider debates on international networks; the role of science in the modern world; and changing definitions of race, progress and human nature. This article illustrates how human-origins research was an important means of binding these areas together and presenting scientific work as simultaneously authoritative and credible, but also evoking mystery and adventurousness. Examining this illustrates important features of contemporary views of both science and human development, showing not only the complexities of contemporary regard for the international and public dynamics of scientific research, but wider concerns over human nature, which oscillated between optimistic notions of unity and progress and pessimistic ones of essential differences and misdirected development.
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RACE RELATIONSHIPS: COLLEGIALITY AND DEMARCATION IN PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY. JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF THE BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES 2015; 51:237-260. [PMID: 25950769 DOI: 10.1002/jhbs.21728] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 06/04/2023]
Abstract
In 1962, anthropologist Carleton Coon argued in The Origin of Races that some human races had evolved further than others. Among his most vocal critics were geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky and anthropologist Ashley Montagu, each of whom had known Coon for decades. I use this episode, and the long relationships between scientists that preceded it, to argue that scientific research on race was intertwined not only with political projects to conserve or reform race relations, but also with the relationships scientists shared as colleagues. Demarcation between science and pseudoscience, between legitimate research and scientific racism, involved emotional as well as intellectual labor.
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Wandering anatomists and itinerant anthropologists: the antipodean sciences of race in Britain between the wars. BRITISH JOURNAL FOR THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE 2015; 48:1-16. [PMID: 25833796 DOI: 10.1017/s0007087413000939] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.1] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 06/04/2023]
Abstract
While the British Empire conventionally is recognized as a source of research subjects and objects in anthropology, and a site where anthropological expertise might inform public administration, the settler-colonial affiliations and experiences of many leading physical anthropologists could also directly shape theories of human variation, both physical and cultural. Antipodean anthropologists like Grafton Elliot Smith were pre-adapted to diffusionist models that explained cultural achievement in terms of the migration, contact and mixing of peoples. Trained in comparative methods, these fractious cosmopolitans also favoured a dynamic human biology, often emphasizing the heterogeneity and environmental plasticity of body form and function, and viewing fixed, static racial typologies and hierarchies sceptically. By following leading representatives of empire anatomy and physical anthropology, such as Elliot Smith and Frederic Wood Jones, around the globe, it is possible to recover the colonial entanglements and biases of interwar British anthropology, moving beyond a simple inventory of imperial sources, and crediting human biology and social anthropology not just as colonial sciences but as the sciences of itinerant colonials.
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"Geographical Distribution Patterns of Various Genes": genetic studies of human variation after 1945. STUDIES IN HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF BIOLOGICAL AND BIOMEDICAL SCIENCES 2014; 47 Pt A:50-61. [PMID: 25049107 DOI: 10.1016/j.shpsc.2014.05.006] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 06/03/2023]
Abstract
After WWII, physical anthropologists and human geneticists struggled hard to demonstrate distance from 'racial science' and 'eugenics'. This was a crucial factor in the 'revolution' of physical anthropology in the 1950s, as contemporary accounts referred to it. My paper examines the apparent turn during this period from anthropometric measurements to blood-group analysis, and from 'races' to 'small endogamous populations', or 'isolates', as the unit of study. I demonstrate that anthropometry and blood-group analysis were used simultaneously and in the same research projects until the 1960s. Isolated populations were the new target groups of human population geneticists, from large continental groups to small village populations. Colonial infrastructures provided suitable conditions for these kinds of transnational research projects. I argue that this new framework helped to translate much of the content of earlier racial studies into a less attackable approach to human variation.
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Inventing Homo gardarensis: prestige, pressure, and human evolution in interwar Scandinavia. SCIENCE IN CONTEXT 2014; 27:359-383. [PMID: 24941795] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 06/03/2023]
Abstract
In the 1920s there were still very few fossil human remains to support an evolutionary explanation of human origins. Nonetheless, evolution as an explanatory framework was widely accepted. This led to a search for ancestors in several continents with fierce international competition. With so little fossil evidence available and the idea of a Missing Link as a crucial piece of evidence in human evolution still intact, many actors participated in the scientific race to identify the human ancestor. The curious case of Homo gardarensis serves as an example of how personal ambitions and national pride were deeply interconnected as scientific concerns were sometimes slighted in interwar palaeoanthropology.
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Walking a fine scientific line: the extraordinary deeds of Dutch neuroscientist C. U. Ariëns Kappers before and during World War II. JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF THE NEUROSCIENCES 2014; 23:252-275. [PMID: 24827590 DOI: 10.1080/0964704x.2013.835109] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 06/03/2023]
Abstract
Dutch neuroscientist Cornelius Ubbo Ariëns Kappers is famous for pioneering neuroembryological work and for establishing the Amsterdam Central Institute for Brain Research. Less well known is his anthropological work, which ultimately played a role in saving Dutch Jews from deportation to their deaths during the Holocaust. Ariëns Kappers extensively campaigned against anti-Semitism and Nazi persecution during the 1930s. During World War II, he utilized his credentials to help create anthropological reports "proving" full-Jews were "actually" partial- or non-Jews to evade Nazi criteria, and at least 300 Jews were thus saved by Ariëns Kappers and colleagues. His earlier work demonstrating differences between Ashkenazic and Sephardic Jewish skull indices became the focus of an attempt to save hundreds of Dutch Portuguese Jews collectively from deportation. Ariëns Kappers and colleagues brilliantly understood how anthropology and neuroscience could be utilized to make a difference and to save lives during a tragic era.
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"No interest in human anatomy as such": Frederic Wood Jones dissects anatomical investigation in the United States in the 1920s. ENDEAVOUR 2014; 38:35-42. [PMID: 24199891 DOI: 10.1016/j.endeavour.2013.10.001] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/19/2013] [Accepted: 10/03/2013] [Indexed: 06/02/2023]
Abstract
In 1926, Frederic Wood Jones, professor of Anatomy at the University of Adelaide and a leading figure in the British anatomical world, took a Rockefeller Foundation funded trip to the United States in order to inspect anatomy programmes and medical museums and to meet leading figures in the anatomical and anthropological world. His later reflections paint a picture of a discipline in transition. Physical anthropology and gross anatomy were coming to a crisis point in the United States, increasingly displaced by research in histology, embryology and radiological anatomy. Meanwhile, in Britain and its colonial outposts, anatomists such as Wood Jones were attempting to re-invigorate the discipline in the field, studying biological specimens as functional and active agents in their particular milieus, but with human dissection at the core. Thus, an examination of this trip allows us to see how the interaction between two traditions in anatomy informed the process of the development of human biology in this critical period.
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Evolutionary Asiacentrism, Peking man, and the origins of sinocentric ethno-nationalism. JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF BIOLOGY 2014; 47:585-625. [PMID: 24771020 DOI: 10.1007/s10739-014-9381-4] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 06/03/2023]
Abstract
This paper discusses how the theory of evolutionary Asiacentrism and the Peking Man findings at the Zhoukoudian site stimulated Chinese intellectuals to construct Sinocentric ethno-nationalism during the period from the late 1920s to the early 1940s. It shows that the theory was first popularized by foreign scientists in Beijing, and the Peking man discoveries further provided strong evidence for the idea that Central Asia, or to be more specific, Tibet, Xinjiang, and Mongolia, was the original cradle of humans. Chinese scholars in the late 1930s and 1940s appropriated the findings to construct the monogenesis theory of the Chinese, which designated that all the diverse ethnic groups within the territory of China shared a common ancestor back to antiquity.
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Evolutionary activism: Stephen Jay Gould, the New Left and sociobiology. ENDEAVOUR 2013; 37:104-111. [PMID: 23643447 DOI: 10.1016/j.endeavour.2012.10.002] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.1] [Reference Citation Analysis] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/10/2012] [Accepted: 10/12/2012] [Indexed: 06/02/2023]
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The Missing Links Expeditions--or how the Peking Man was not found. ENDEAVOUR 2012; 36:97-105. [PMID: 22424748 DOI: 10.1016/j.endeavour.2012.01.002] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/02/2011] [Revised: 01/09/2012] [Accepted: 01/13/2012] [Indexed: 05/31/2023]
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Hybridity, race, and science: the voyage of the Zaca, 1934-1935. ISIS; AN INTERNATIONAL REVIEW DEVOTED TO THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE AND ITS CULTURAL INFLUENCES 2012; 103:229-253. [PMID: 22908420 DOI: 10.1086/666354] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.1] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 06/01/2023]
Abstract
In 1929 and 1934-1935, the physical anthropologist Harry L. Shapiro voyaged in the South Seas on the Mahina-l-Te-Pua and the Zaca, measuring mixed-race islanders, including the descendants of the Bounty mutineers on Pitcairn Island. His research in Polynesian hybridity reflects the growing cultural and scientific investment of the United States in the Pacific during this period. Shapiro's oceanic adventures and intimate encounters prompted him to discount typological speculation and emphasize instead the liberal Boasian program in physical anthropology, giving him the confidence to refigure his evaluations of racial difference. The seaborne investigatory enterprise came to influence U.S. racial thought, adding impetus to the condemnation of racism in science. On his return from the South Seas, Shapiro tried to get his fellow physical anthropologists to issue a manifesto opposing the harnessing of their science to racial discrimination and prejudice.
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Sherwood Washburn's New physical anthropology: rejecting the "religion of taxonomy". HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF THE LIFE SCIENCES 2012; 34:79-101. [PMID: 23272595] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 06/01/2023]
Abstract
Many physical anthropologists and nearly all of those studying primatology today can trace their academic genealogy to Sherwood Larned Washburn. His New physical anthropology, fully articulated in a 1951 paper, proposed that the study of hominid evolution must link understandings of form, function, and behavior along with the environment in order most accurately to reconstruct the evolution of our ancestors. This shift of concentration from strictly analyzing fossil remains to what Washburn termed adaptive complexes challenged not only Washburn's predecessors, but also led Washburn to critique the very system of academia within which he worked. Collaboration across multiple disciplines, linking the four fields of anthropology in order to understand humans and application of our understandings of human evolution to the betterment of society, are the hallmarks of Washburnian anthropology. In this paper I will explore how Washburn's New physical anthropology led him to not only change the research direction in physical anthropology, but also to challenge the academia within which he worked. I will conclude by reflecting on the prospects of continuing to practice Washburnian Anthropology.
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Gall's visit to The Netherlands. JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF THE NEUROSCIENCES 2011; 20:135-150. [PMID: 21480037 DOI: 10.1080/0964704x.2010.503647] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 05/30/2023]
Abstract
In March 1805, Franz Joseph Gall left Vienna to start what has become known as his cranioscopic tour. He traveled through Germany, Denmark, and The Netherlands. In this article, we will describe his visit to The Netherlands in greater detail, as it has not yet received due attention. Gall was eager to go to Amsterdam because he was interested in the large collection of skulls of Petrus Camper. Gall presented a series of lectures, reports of which can be found in a local newspaper and in a few books, published at that time. We will summarize this material. We will first outline developments in the area of physiognomy, in particular in The Netherlands, and what the Dutch knew about Gall's doctrine prior to his arrival. We will then present a reconstruction of the contents of the lectures. Finally, we will discuss the reception of his ideas in the scientific community.
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[Georg Forster's outline of a "science of man"]. NTM 2010; 18:137-167. [PMID: 20703950 DOI: 10.1007/s00048-010-0014-5] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 05/29/2023]
Abstract
The major focus of the article is on Georg Forster's mode of elaborating a "science of man" in its theoretical and cultural contexts. The study aims at identifying Forster's distinct interest in the specificity of mankind and his interpretation of both the reasons for its diversity and its different stages of development. Forster, the articles argues, used a historicized version of Enlightenment natural history in order to analyse man a s a natural as well as a cultural being. At the same time, put anachronistically, Forster constituted the reciprocity of physical and cultural anthropology. However, he differs from Enlightenment historical thinking in that he interprets history as a contingency. Finally, the article maintains that Forster deliberately conceived of the "science of man" as a multidisciplinary empirical science.
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[Physical anthropology and human "zoos": the exhibition of natives as a scientific popularization practice on the threshold of the 20th century]. ASCLEPIO; ARCHIVO IBEROAMERICANO DE HISTORIA DE LA MEDICINA Y ANTROPOLOGIA MEDICA 2010; 62:269-292. [PMID: 21189664 DOI: 10.3989/asclepio.2010.v62.i1.305] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 05/30/2023]
Abstract
All along the nineteenth century different anthropological exhibitions were held in many countries, in which people from a number of indigenous communities, especially transported from their homeland for the occasion, were exhibited publicly, both for citizenship's instruction and for specialists's "in vivo" studies on human biology. This paper presents a brief description of some of these scientific shows, and tries to relate them to contemporary human biology theories.
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Waiting for sequences: Morris Goodman, immunodiffusion experiments, and the origins of molecular anthropology. JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF BIOLOGY 2010; 43:697-725. [PMID: 20665076 DOI: 10.1007/s10739-009-9219-7] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 05/29/2023]
Abstract
During the early 1960s, Morris Goodman used a variety of immunological tests to demonstrate the very close genetic relationships among humans, chimpanzees, and gorillas. Molecular anthropologists often point to this early research as a critical step in establishing their new specialty. Based on his molecular results, Goodman challenged the widely accepted taxonomic classification that separated humans from chimpanzees and gorillas in two separate families. His claim that chimpanzees and gorillas should join humans in family Hominidae sparked a well-known conflict with George Gaylord Simpson, Ernst Mayr, and other prominent evolutionary biologists. Less well known, but equally significant, were a series of disagreements between Goodman and other prominent molecular evolutionists concerning both methodological and theoretical issues. These included qualitative versus quantitative data, the role of natural selection, rates of evolution, and the reality of molecular clocks. These controversies continued throughout Goodman's career, even as he moved from immunological techniques to protein and DNA sequence analysis. This episode highlights the diversity of methods used by molecular evolutionists and the conflicting conclusions drawn from the data that these methods generated.
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“Lucy” redux: A review of research on Australopithecus afarensis. AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY 2009; 140 Suppl 49:2-48. [PMID: 19890859 DOI: 10.1002/ajpa.21183] [Citation(s) in RCA: 170] [Impact Index Per Article: 11.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/09/2022]
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Skulls, science, and the spoils of war: craniological studies at the United States Army Medical Museum, 1868-1900. STUDIES IN HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF BIOLOGICAL AND BIOMEDICAL SCIENCES 2009; 40:156-167. [PMID: 19720324 DOI: 10.1016/j.shpsc.2009.06.010] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.1] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/25/2008] [Revised: 04/06/2009] [Indexed: 05/28/2023]
Abstract
Beginning in 1868, the United States Army Medical Museum issued a request to Army medical personnel situated in 'Indian country' for specimens of skulls from Native Americans. The purpose of this collection was to promote the study of craniometry, a branch of racial science commonly used to delineate the different varieties of mankind and to rank them according to their perceived intellectual attributes. Yet, as this paper argues, the efforts of Army surgeons in amassing hundreds of crania for the Army Medical Museum were not matched by a similar level of commitment on the part of racial researchers. In examining why this seemingly impressive collection fell rapidly into disuse, this paper explores the creation and abandonment of one of the largest craniological collections formed in the United States in relation to the trajectory of craniometrical studies during this period. It also questions the link between the interests of racial researchers in the late nineteenth century and those of government policy makers, arguing that the two might not have been particularly closely aligned in the case of craniological research in Washington.
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1918: Three perspectives on race and human variation. AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY 2009; 139:5-15. [PMID: 19226644 DOI: 10.1002/ajpa.20975] [Citation(s) in RCA: 21] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/07/2022]
Abstract
Race was an important topic to the physical anthropologists of 1918, but their views were not monolithic. Multiple perspectives on race are expressed in the first volume of the AJPA, which encompass biological determinism and assumptions about evolutionary processes underlying the race concept. Most importantly, many of the significant alternative approaches to the study of human variation were already expressed in 1918. This paper examines race from the different perspectives of three key contributions to the first volume of the AJPA: papers from Hrdlicka, Hooton, and Boas. The meaning of race derived from this work is then discussed. Despite new understandings gained through the neo-Darwinian synthesis and the growth of genetics, the fundamentals of the modern discussions of race were already planted in 1918.
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What is the viewpoint of hemoglobin, and does it matter? HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF THE LIFE SCIENCES 2009; 31:241-262. [PMID: 20210111] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 05/28/2023]
Abstract
In this paper I discuss reductive trends in evolutionary anthropology. The first involved the reduction of human ancestry to genetic relationships (in the 1960s) and the second involved a parallel reduction of classification to phylogenetic retrieval (in the 1980s). Neither of these affords greater accuracy than their alternatives; that is to say, their novelty is epistemic, not empirical. As a result, there has been a revolution in classification in evolutionary anthropology, which arguably clouds the biological relationships of the relevant species, rather than clarifying them. Just below the species level, another taxonomic issue is raised by the reinscription of race as a natural category of the human species. This, too, is driven by the convergent interests of cultural forces including conservative political ideologies, the creation of pharmaceutical niche markets, free-market genomics, and old-fashioned scientific racism.
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Entering dubious realms: Grover Krantz, science, and Sasquatch. ANNALS OF SCIENCE 2009; 66:83-102. [PMID: 19831199 DOI: 10.1080/00033790802202421] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 05/28/2023]
Abstract
Physical anthropologist Grover Krantz (1931-2002) spent his career arguing that the anomalous North American primate called Sasquatch was a living animal. He attempted to prove the creature's existence by applying to the problem the techniques of physical anthropology: methodologies and theoretical models that were outside the experience of the amateur enthusiasts who dominated the field of anomalous primate studies. For his efforts, he was dismissed or ignored by academics who viewed the Sasquatch, also commonly called Bigfoot, as at best a relic of folklore and at worst a hoax, and Krantz's project as having dubious value. Krantz also received a negative reaction from amateur Sasquatch researchers, some of whom threatened and abused him. His career is best situated therefore as part of the discussion about the historical relationship between amateur naturalists and professional scientists. The literature on this relationship articulates a combining/displacement process: when a knowledge domain that has potential for contributions to science is created by amateurs, it will eventually combine with and then be taken over by professionals, with the result that amateur leadership is displaced. This paper contributes to that discussion by showing the process at work in Krantz's failed attempt to legitimize Bigfoot research by removing it from the amateur sphere and repositioning it in the professional world of anthropology.
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Ancient law and Indian Rights: an historical perspective from the Argentine Chaco. NEWSLETTER, HISTORY OF ANTHROPOLOGY 2008; 35:3-13. [PMID: 19856539] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [MESH Headings] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 05/28/2023]
MESH Headings
- Anthropology, Cultural/education
- Anthropology, Cultural/history
- Anthropology, Physical/education
- Anthropology, Physical/history
- Argentina/ethnology
- Civil Rights/economics
- Civil Rights/education
- Civil Rights/history
- Civil Rights/legislation & jurisprudence
- Civil Rights/psychology
- Colonialism/history
- Empirical Research
- Ethnicity/education
- Ethnicity/ethnology
- Ethnicity/history
- Ethnicity/legislation & jurisprudence
- Ethnicity/psychology
- History, Ancient
- Human Rights/economics
- Human Rights/education
- Human Rights/history
- Human Rights/legislation & jurisprudence
- Human Rights/psychology
- Humans
- Indians, South American/education
- Indians, South American/ethnology
- Indians, South American/history
- Indians, South American/legislation & jurisprudence
- Indians, South American/psychology
- Judicial Role/history
- Local Government
- Madagascar/ethnology
- Ownership/economics
- Ownership/history
- Power, Psychological
- Research Personnel/economics
- Research Personnel/education
- Research Personnel/history
- Research Personnel/psychology
- Social Conditions/economics
- Social Conditions/history
- Social Conditions/legislation & jurisprudence
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[Physical anthropology studies at Keijo Imperial University Medical School]. UI SAHAK 2008; 17:191-203. [PMID: 19174625] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 05/27/2023]
Abstract
Medical research during the Japanese Colonial Period became systematic and active after the Keijo Imperial University Medical School was established in 1926. Various kinds of research were conducted there including pharmacological, physiological, pathological and parasitological research. The Keijo Imperial University was give a mission to study about Korea. Urgent topics for medical research included control of infectious diseases, hygiene and environmental health that might have affected colonizing bodies of the Japanese as well as the colonized. The bodies of Koreans had been studied by Japanese even before the establishment of the University. The Keijo Imperial University research team, however, organized several field studies for physical anthropology and blood typing research at the national scale to get representative sampling of the people from its north to its south of the Korean peninsula. In the filed, they relied upon the local police and administrative power to gather reluctant women and men to measure them in a great detail. The physical anthropology and blood typing research by the Japanese researchers was related to their eagerness to place Korean people in the geography of the races in the world. Using racial index R.I.(= (A%+AB%)/(B%+AB%)), the Japanese researchers put Koreans as a race between the Mongolian and the Japanese. The preoccupation with constitution and race also pervasively affected the medical practice: race (Japanese, Korean, or Japanese living in Korea) must be written in every kind of medical chart as a default. After the breakout of Chinese-Japanese War in 1937, the Keijo Imperial University researchers extended its physical anthropology field study to Manchuria and China to get data on physics of the people in 1940. The Japanese government and research foundations financially well supported the Keijo Imperial University researchers and the field studies for physical anthropology in Korea, Manchuria and China. The physical anthropology research was actively conducted hand in hand with imperialistic expansion, and driven by zeal for measuring the body.
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Why did Kant reject physiological explanations in his anthropology? STUDIES IN HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE 2008; 39:495-505. [PMID: 19391367 DOI: 10.1016/j.shpsa.2008.09.009] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 05/27/2023]
Abstract
One of Kant's central tenets concerning the human sciences is the claim that one need not, and should not, use a physiological vocabulary if one studies human cognitions, feelings, desires, and actions from the point of view of his 'pragmatic' anthropology. The claim is well known, but the arguments Kant advances for it have not been closely discussed. I argue against misguided interpretations of the claim, and I present his actual reasons in favor of it. Contemporary critics of a 'physiological anthropology' reject physiological explanations of mental states as more or less epistemologically dubious. Kant does not favor such ignorance claims--and this is for the good, since none of these claims was sufficiently justified at that time. Instead, he develops an original irrelevance thesis concerning the empirical knowledge of the physiological basis of the mind. His arguments for this claim derive from his original and, up to now, little understood criticism of a certain conception of pragmatic history, related to his anthropological insights concerning our ability to create new rules of action, the social dynamics of human action, and the relative inconstancy of human nature. The irrelevance thesis also changes his views of the goal and methodology of anthropology. Kant thereby argues for a distinctive approach in quest for a general 'science of man'.
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Measuring the natives: Beatrice Blackwood and Leonard Dudley Buxton's work in Oxfordshire. NEWSLETTER, HISTORY OF ANTHROPOLOGY 2008; 35:3-14. [PMID: 19856538] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [MESH Headings] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 05/28/2023]
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Race and genomics. Old wine in new bottles? Documents from a transdisciplinary discussion. NTM 2008; 16:363-365. [PMID: 19244837 DOI: 10.1007/s00048-008-0301-6] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 05/27/2023]
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The Magyar moustache: the faces of Hungarian state formation, 1867-1918. STUDIES IN HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF BIOLOGICAL AND BIOMEDICAL SCIENCES 2007; 38:706-732. [PMID: 18053929 DOI: 10.1016/j.shpsc.2007.09.006] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.1] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 05/25/2023]
Abstract
This paper outlines the history of Hungarian ethnography and anthropology and their role in the construction of the nation and Hungarian liberalism in the Dualist period (1867-1918). Affected by the specific socio-political conditions of this ethnically most diverse country of contemporary Europe, the disciplinary trajectories of Hungarian ethnography and anthropology diverge considerably from the models offered by the historiography in the British, French and German contexts. The paper argues that the pluralistic, cultural and strongly integrative ethnographic tradition that prevailed in Hungary in the last decades of the nineteenth century did not notably wane and shift towards a biological, hierarchical and racialist thinking by the end of the First World War. Furthermore, Hungarian liberalism did not simply provide the milieu for these disciplines to flourish, but was itself partly the result of these disciplines' attempts to formulate the very concepts of ethnicity and race.
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Paul Broca (1824-1880): founder of anthropology, pioneer of neurology and oncology. JOURNAL OF B.U.ON. : OFFICIAL JOURNAL OF THE BALKAN UNION OF ONCOLOGY 2007; 12:557-564. [PMID: 18067221] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 05/25/2023]
Abstract
Paul Broca was an eminent surgeon, neurologist and anthropologist. He wrote many articles on brain anatomy, pathology of bones and joints, aneurysms, craniometry and physical anthropology, and he invented measuring instruments which are used even today. He described the condition of aphasia, called Broca's aphasia. Over a dozen anatomical features, including parts of the brain governing speech and smell, have made his name familiar to students. Thanks to his works on cancer and on tumors in general, he is considered as precursor of oncology.
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WLH Duckworth (1870-1956) and his translation of Galen's Anatomical Procedures. JOURNAL OF MEDICAL BIOGRAPHY 2007; 15:134-8. [PMID: 17641785 DOI: 10.1258/j.jmb.2007.06-20] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 05/16/2023]
Abstract
Wynfrid Laurence Henry Duckworth was one of the leading comparative anatomists of the first half of the 20th century, and he made important contributions to biological anthropology and anatomical education. In his eighth decade Duckworth turned his considerable gifts to the history of medicine. This paper examines the circumstances of his English translation of the second half of Anatomical Procedures, one of Galen's most important works.
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From craniology to serology: racial anthropology in interwar Hungary and Romania. JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF THE BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES 2007; 43:361-77. [PMID: 17912712 DOI: 10.1002/jhbs.20274] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.1] [Reference Citation Analysis] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 05/17/2023]
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Lorenzo Tenchini (1852-1906): neuroanatomy and criminal anthropology. MEDICINA NEI SECOLI 2007; 19:353-360. [PMID: 18450020] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 05/26/2023]
Abstract
Lorenzo Tenchini was born in Brescia and studied Medicine in Pavia where he became lecturer of Anatomy in 1880. In 1881, at the age of 29 years, he was appointed Professor of Anatomy at the University of Parma. In this city Tenchini began to study the morphology of the brains of criminals, later founding the "Museum of Criminal Anthropology". He collected brains of delinquents and their wax masks and studied the relationship between neuroanatomy and criminality. He promoted the building of a lunatic asylum in the province of Parma and was interested in social medicine, including the pellagra scourge in Northern Italy. Tenchini conducted important research work in the field of neuropsychiatry and anthropology. He was one of the founders of criminal anthropology in Italy and sought to explain criminal behavior through the study of neuroanatomy.
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Physique as destiny: William H. Sheldon, Barbara Honeyman Heath and the struggle for hegemony in the science of somatotyping. CANADIAN BULLETIN OF MEDICAL HISTORY = BULLETIN CANADIEN D'HISTOIRE DE LA MEDECINE 2007; 24:291-316. [PMID: 18447308 DOI: 10.3138/cbmh.24.2.291] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 05/26/2023]
Abstract
When Ron Rosenbaum unveiled his explosive journalistic report on the "Great Ivy League Nude Posture Photo Scandal" in 1995 it was a story that revealed the uneven evolution of attitudes toward body, race, and gender in the last half century. His intention was to highlight how easily ideas about the body have been taken up by scientists and sustained in elite institutions of higher education well beyond the bounds of common sense. The villain of his story was William H. Sheldon, a constitutional psychologist who appropriated the ritual of taking posture photos for his scientific study of somatotypes, a system built upon the relationship of body type to character. Sheldon's toxic eugenic views and equation of physique with destiny in the years following World War II made him increasingly unpopular. And while Rosenbaum concluded that Sheldon's downfall was due to the anger of women students over the taking of nude photos, the deathknell of his career was dealt by his former female assistant, Barbara Honeyman Heath. Publicly denouncing his methods as fraudulent and his somatotypes inaccurate she went on to build a successful career modifying somatotyping techniques and participating in projects all over the world.
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Profile of Svante Pääbo. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 2006; 103:13575-7. [PMID: 16954182 PMCID: PMC1564240 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0606596103] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/18/2022] Open
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Two centuries of growth among Czech children and youth. ECONOMICS AND HUMAN BIOLOGY 2006; 4:237-52. [PMID: 16371255 DOI: 10.1016/j.ehb.2005.09.002] [Citation(s) in RCA: 23] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/30/2005] [Accepted: 09/30/2005] [Indexed: 05/05/2023]
Abstract
The trend of increasing height can be interpreted as a reflection of the unfolding progress of civilization. Height changes among children and adolescents are good markers of this trend. We analyze the secular trend in the heights of children and adolescents in the Czech Republic on the basis of data from anthropological surveys. The earliest height data pertain to Czech youths who attended the Military Schools in Austria in 1800-1809. Data also exist for 1895 and continue in 1951 and at 10-year intervals thereafter. Growth curves were obtained for separate age groups by fitting mean values via third-order polynomial smoothing splines. Between 1951 and 2001, the mean heights of boys and girls aged 2.5 years increased by 2.7 and 3 cm, respectively. Since 1895, the mean height of 13-year-old boys has increased by 19.4 cm, and the mean height of girls has increased by 18.3 cm.
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[The beginnings of anthropology in Hungary]. IDEGGYOGYASZATI SZEMLE 2006; 59:217-24. [PMID: 16786715] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 05/10/2023]
Abstract
In the second half of the 19th century anthropological research started everywhere in the world. Cranioscopy formed an important part of physical anthropology. József Lenhossék (1818-1888) worked also on this subject and on the basis of one of his investigations in 1875 he became the founder of physical anthropology in Hungary. On 76 skulls of several collections and on 265 heads together with his coworkers he performed 50 measurements on each skulls and heads and calculated the important ratios (skull-indexes). He determined the skull-indexes of the Hungarian people. These indexes are valid also today.
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[Congenital spinal malformations: issues of anthropological ancient samples]. MEDICINA NEI SECOLI 2006; 18:421-429. [PMID: 17992848] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 05/25/2023]
Abstract
This work is part of a more extensive, still ongoing, research which aims to provide a morphological assessment and interpretation of congenital malformations on ancient bones. The study of the frequency and distribution of congenital malformations on juvenile osteological remains may provide interesting insight and critical observations in assessing the role of those factors that are responsible for child's mortality. In the present study we describe and discuss two cases of congenital spinal malformation refer to failure in the separation of vertebral arch elements between contiguous vertebrae. The skeletons belonging to two children who died in early childhood, between 0 and 6 years of age. The research was conducted on 132 juvenile individuals came from nine necropolises located in north an middle Italy, from ancient and late Roman times to late medieval times.
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History and demographic composition of the Robert J. Terry anatomical collection. AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY 2005; 127:406-17. [PMID: 15624209 DOI: 10.1002/ajpa.20135] [Citation(s) in RCA: 124] [Impact Index Per Article: 6.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/09/2022]
Abstract
Robert J. Terry began collecting human skeletal remains in the area of St. Louis, Missouri for research and educational purposes in 1898. He continued collecting skeletal specimens in the Anatomy Department at Washington University until his retirement in 1941. Mildred Trotter succeeded Terry as anatomy professor and continued his collecting, and strove to balance the demographic distribution of the collection. In 1967, after her retirement, the collection was moved to the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History. As with several other well-documented collections, the Terry Collection is widely used for a diverse range of anthropological and medical research. Despite its extensive use, there has been limited discussion of the collection's history and incomplete description of holdings and associated materials of this collection. In this paper, the historical background of the collection and the collection process is described; the demographic composition of the collection, and a description of the documentary and supporting data are presented; and the quality and of these data are assessed. The Terry Collection consists of 1,728 individuals. Age at death ranges from 14-102 years, with the majority of the individuals ranging from 20-80 years. Year of birth ranges from 1828-1943; the mean year of birth for males is 1880, and for females it is 1884. The mean age at death for males is 53 years, and for females it is 58 years. Terry's strict protocols for the processing of cadavers and the recording of documentary data make the Terry Collection a valuable resource for anthropological and medical research.
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