Geographical distribution of anthropological types in Wales / by H.J. Fleure and T.C. James.

  • H. J. Fleure
Date:
[1916?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Geographical distribution of anthropological types in Wales / by H.J. Fleure and T.C. James. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    conclusions are reached showing that some district-average, already somewhat meaningless owing to mixture of type, is below what is supposed to be the general average. It is possible in some such cases that there may be a preponderance or at any rate an abundance of some type for which the measurements in question are normally small; but the tendency of the observer is more frequently to attribute the smallness to bad housing, imperfect nutrition, and so on. These factors are no doubt responsible for a great deal, sometimes in the direction of stunting and retardation, but no doubt also act differentially. The importance of differential elimination as a factor affecting Boas’ results is possibly great, and its powerful action through emigration as well as through death- rate in Britain recently is almost certain. We can also hardly be said to know anything as yet about the ontogeny of racial types : itis essential for us first of all to know what are our racial types, and the determination of these is still inadequate. Perhaps the present schemes of reports on school children are the best possible under existing conditions of ignorance, but the consequent limitation of their value should be borne in mind more generally than is the case at present. As regards differential elimination, the potency of this factor has been recognized by students of the race history of the Eastern Mediterranean, and Von Luschan' gives a tragic instance of the migration of one thousand Circassian families into Western Asia near Islahiyeh in 1880, after the fall of Shamyl. In 1910 about seven families in a wretched state of fever and disease were all that remained. A study of cephalic indices and other physical characters near Islahiyeh in 1880 and in 1915 would probably have revealed striking differences due in this case undoubtedly to differential elimination. It must remain an open question for the present whether homologous factors may not have operated in the United States, leading either to the elimination, probably in infancy, of certain descendants of immigrants who might have survived in their original homes, or to the survival of certain of those descendants who might have been eliminated, also probably in infancy, in their original homes. At all events it seems that even a conservative statement on Boas’ lines is considerably more than the evidence justifies, based as it is on averages of such complex mixtures as those which come under the heading of “ Sicilians,” “ Bohemians,” “ Hebrews,” and so on. We may thus, for the present, retain some confidence that such physical characters as cephalic form have some degree of permanency, and it is hoped that this paper may help to strengthen that view by giving grounds for a belief that certain types, without any intervening social or linguistic barrier for centuries, have apparently persisted side by side in very marked fashion in certain parts of Wales. The notion of a fair degree of permanence of physical characters has already received some support from studies of heredity on modern lines. Hurst? has ‘ ‘Von Luschan, F., Journ. hoy. Anthrop. Inst., 1911, p. 221; * Hurst, C. C., “Inheritance of Eye Colour in Man,” Proce. hoy. Soc., B, 1908, p- 85.
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