Races of man / by Sonia Cole.

  • Sonia Mary Cole
Date:
1965
Catalogue details
    15/150 page 10
    sub-divide these broad groups, however, more complicated combinations of characters must be assessed. No two individuals except identical twins are ever exactly alike ow T ing to the enormous number of possible combinations of the genes inherited from both parents. The problem is to decide just which characters, and which of them in combination, are racially significant. Current research is very much concerned with the ways in which populations are affected both by heredity and environment and the biological significance of race differences. Nationality has not necessarily any connection with race, nor has language or culture, though they have been responsible for isolating certain groups and thus indirectly affect gene frequencies. A race, in fact, differs from other races only in the frequency of the genes it possesses (chapter III) 5 it is this that causes members of a race to look alike and, to some extent, to behave alike, though behaviour is also the result of a common culture. Other Methods of Classification Various attempts have been made to express by a single figure the degree of affinity or divergence between populations. These include the 'coefficient of racial likeness' (Pearson, 1921) and the 'generalized distance statistic' or D 2 (Mahalanobis, 1928). This distance statistic has been modified (Penrose, 1947, 1954) and split into two components of 'size' and 'shape'. These methods, which involve computation, are very useful to physical anthropologists but need not concern us further in this book. Some anthropologists (Coon et al n 1950) believe that if the four measurements of stature, weight, volume and surface area were available for large series of individuals of different races, they would provide mathematical constants which would go a long way towards establishing relationships. Although a start has been made in collecting such data, these measurements are not yet available on a world wide scale. Coon and his co-authors therefore distinguish between races according to the following characteristics: evolutionary status as reflected in differences in teeth and jaws, skull thickness, size of brow-ridges and the presence or absence of 'archaic' features ; body build as reflecting adaptations to extreme climatic conditions such as deserts, mountains or arctic temperatures; special surface features like black skin or flat faces which appear to be adaptations to different conditions of heat, light and cold. Geneticists such as Boyd (1950) base schemes of classifications on differences in
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