Races of man / by Sonia Cole.

  • Sonia Mary Cole
Date:
1965
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

Credit: Races of man / by Sonia Cole. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    of a primary race is the Mediterranean Race of the Caucasoid stock; within this race there are a number of sub-races, in Europe, western Asia and India, North and north-eastern Africa. Classifications such as these are useful in tracing broad relationships between the various groups. Without some such scheme a study of the living peoples of the world would be hopelessly confusing and a book like this would be unreadable. It must be emphasized, however, that racial divisions and sub-divisions are a matter of convenience and that classifications vary considerably according to the beliefs or prejudices of different authorities. Everywhere we find that human races and sub-races grade into one another, that there are 'clines' between neigh bouring populations. The recent emphasis on human biology, particularly the study of blood groups and other biochemical characters (chapter IV), may eventu ally result in a really scientific appreciation of racial and individual variation, but these studies are still in their infancy. The tremendous variations in individuals of any race or sub-race must be stressed, and although we may define the characteristics of a race as a whole, there will always be individuals of that race who do not conform to the general pattern. Some races are taller than average, others are shorter5 but in every race there will be the tall and the short, the fat and the thin. Sheldon's classification of somatotypes is particularly useful in distinguishing between body-builds, which seem to be correlated with temperament, behaviour and susceptibility to certain diseases. A person's somatotype is rated by three sets of numerals from 1 to 7, expressing the degree of 'roundness' or endomorphy, muscularity or mesomorphy, and leanness or ectomorphy. Thus an extreme endomorph would be rated 7—1—1, an extreme mesomorph 1—7—1, and an extreme ectomorph 1-1-7 (most individuals, of course, have a moderate amount of each component). Foundations of Classification Linnaeus, in 1740, recognized four variants of man: European, American Indian, Asiatic and African. The first detailed scientific study of human races, however, was made by J. F. Blumenbach in 1775. He was the first to stress that the totality of all features must be taken into account in defining races and he recognized the extent to which differences grade into one another. Blumenbach's classification was based on skin colour, hair form and colour, eye colour, stature and measure ments of various parts of the head and body. A vast number of records of measure
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