90 skull measurements and tells you who you are

A reanalysis of findings on immigrant cranial structures, collected by one of the founders of anthropology, reignites the debate over whether it is possible to differentiate between people on the basis of race

14.10.2002
By: Nicholas Wade New York Times

Reconstruction of the Kennewick Man. The discovery of the 9,000-year-old skeleton this year once again raised the question of whether the races that exist today also appeared this way in the past. Two experts in physical anthropology, who reanalyzed findings collected by one of the founders of anthropology in the USA, Franz Boas, claim that he was wrong in his claim that the environment affects the shape of the human skull. In the data collected by Boas, say the two researchers, there is almost no evidence of such an effect.

The reanalysis is related to the question of whether craniometrics - the measurement of the skull - can reliably identify ethnicity. If so, this may lead to a re-evaluation of the definition of human races and of ancient skulls such as that of the "McKenwick Man".

"I used Boas' research to combat what might be called racial attitudes in anthropology," said Dr. David Thomas, curator of the anthropology department at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. "I must say that I am amazed by the findings of the new study."

Anthropologists who believe in the reliability of craniometrics believe that 90 measurements of a skull make it possible to associate the owner of the skull with his continent of origin, that is, to find out his race - although many anthropologists shy away from this term - with an accuracy of 80%. XNUMX Opponents of the method, citing data from Boas, claim that it is partial and ineffective, because the effects of the environment - such as nutrition or the degree of hardness of the food - may cancel out the genetic effects.

Boas measured the heads of 13 thousand immigrants from Europe to the USA and their children born on American soil, in 1909 and 1910 and reported significant effects on the shape of the skull, depending on the duration of exposure to the American environment. But in a re-examination of his data, Dr. Cory Sparks from Pennsylvania State University, and Dr. Richard Jantz from the University of Tennessee found that the effects of the new environment are "not significant", and that the differences between parents and children and between children born in Europe and those born in America are "negligible compared to the differences between ethnic groups". This is what they reported last week in the journal of the US National Academy of Sciences.

The ethnic groups that Boas studied were natives of Bohemia, Central Italy, Jews, Hungarians, Poles, Sicilians and Scots. Regarding the question of why he drew the wrong conclusion, Sparks and Jentz point out that Boas was deeply involved in trying to disprove the popular belief at the time that it was possible to make distinctions between people on the basis of race. According to them, there may be a connection between Boas's motives "and his approach that the racial and typological tendency of early anthropology must be put to an end. His claim regarding dramatic changes in the shape of the skull was in terms of sufficient evidence to curb typological thinking."

Jantz said that Boas "was determined to prove that the scientific racism of his day had no basis, and he had to skew his data a little so that his work would lead in that direction." "Certainly we are not claiming that we should return to scientific racism," he added, "but that also does not mean that studying the shape of the skull is a meaningless pursuit."

The new report raises the question of whether the efforts of a previous generation to minimize the role of genetics in areas such as behavior and racial differences may have been exaggerated. Dr. Steven Pinker, who in his new book "The Smooth Slate" attributes to genetics a central role in shaping behavior, says that it was not Boas but his students - including the anthropologists Ruth Benedict, Margaret Mead and Ashley Montague - who "helped establish the anti-biological worldview of the social sciences , who sees the influence of the environment as the appearance of everything".

According to Thomas, "from the moment the anthropologists said the race did not exist, they ignored it." In this context, according to him, the reanalysis of Boas's findings "may have considerable consequences".

One of them is the question of whether the races that exist today also appeared this way in the past - an issue that arose following the discovery of the "McKenwick Man". The 9,000-year-old skeleton, which included a skull similar to that of modern whites, was found near the bank of the Columbia River in Washington state. Native Americans in the area claim that the skull found is different from that of modern-day Indians because of environmental changes. Scientists, who want to study the skull, say that it is evidence that other ethnic groups came to North America, apart from the Central Asians, whose Indians are the most similar.

In his recent book on Kennewick Man, The Skull Wars, Thomas argued that it would be scientifically incorrect to use modern racial terms such as the "white race" in the context of humans who lived 9,000 years ago, because environmental factors must have significantly changed the shape of the body in the intervening thousands of years. . According to him, researchers from the other side, including Gentz, "were attacked because they adhere to the validity of racial classifications even in the past."

Since no DNA sample was taken from the Kennewick human bones, craniometry is the only way to learn about his ancestry, Sparks said. According to this method, the skull is most similar to the skull of the Ainu people, the original inhabitants of Japan who now live in the northernmost islands of the country. Boas's data on immigrants, said Sparks, "for 90 years was a thorn in the side of those who tried to study population history based on data on the shape of the skull." "I would be happy to find out that they were wrong," Thomas said in reference to this. "But I don't see any holes in the research."