About
Anthropology is the study of humankind; this section concerns its physical branch, the study of human bodily variation and its classification.
The classical literature of the subject, from the eighteenth century to the middle of the twentieth, described populations through measurements, indices and named types. That literature is treated here as a documented body of claims rather than as settled fact: what was measured, how the measures were defined, where authorities disagreed, and what each measure has since been shown to be evidence of. Resources are built so that a reader can follow a term or a type back to its definition and its source.
Anthropometric Glossary
The measurement vocabulary of physical anthropology, read as measurement. Each entry gives the morphemes of the term, the landmarks and instrument, the formula, the class boundaries set out by authority, the history of the measure, and an assessment of what it is evidence of.
- /glossary
- Front page and morpheme grid: the prefixes and roots from which the vocabulary is built, with the combinations the literature actually forms.
- /glossary/cephalic-index
- Head breadth as a percentage of head length — the oldest and most used index, its boundaries by authority from Broca to Martin, and the plasticity evidence since Boas.
- /glossary/nasal-index
- Nose breadth as a percentage of nose height — one word, three incompatible scales, and the strongest climatic signal among the facial measures.
- /glossary/height-length-index
- Skull height as a percentage of skull length — the cephalic index's companion, with a question about whether it is as steady as its advocates hold.
- /glossary/stature
- Standing height — the most heritable measure in the glossary and the one that conditions move furthest, with the source's own pre-industrial and post-industrial grades.
- /glossary/trunk-length
- Leg length against trunk length — the skelic and cormic indices, and a set of class names that mean the opposite in two traditions.
- /glossary/somatotype
- Body build rated by endomorphy, mesomorphy and ectomorphy — Sheldon's scheme, its discredited origin in constitutional psychology, and its reformed survival.
Practice
- /pheno-guesser
- A phenotype guessing game: place the origin of an anthropological type on a world map from its composite portraits, with unlimited play and a documented answer for every round.