DEFINITION
A specific definition of physical anthropology is not possible for the simple reason that it involves interdisciplinary approach.
- Paul Broca (father of Physical Anthropology) defines it as natural history of the genus Homo and more concretely as the science whose objective is to study humanity as a whole and in relationship to rest of the nature.
- Herskovits identifies that physical anthropologists study such matters as the nature of racial differences; the inheritance of bodily traits; the growth, development and decay of human organism; the influence of natural environment on man.
- Juan Comas, it is defined as science which studies variation, comparative study of the human body and its inseparable functions, exposition of the causes and courses of human evolution, transmission and classification, effects and tendencies in the functional and organic differences, etc.
Thus, Physical Anthropology comprises of
- Biological evolution,
- Genetic inheritance,
- Human adaptability and variation,
- Primatology,
- The fossil record of human evolution.
The discipline thereby facilitates us in
- Investigating the sources of variation which are the result of genetic differences and environmental modifications and directions of change which originated in the past. These differences perhaps arose over long spans of time through evolution both among individuals and groups.
- The branch of anthropology that concerns the human and nonhuman primate evolution, the biological basis of human behaviour, and human biological variability and its significance.
Physical Versus Biological Anthropology: An Overview
During the initial stage of the inception of the branch, the interest was to understand the evolution and physical variations in human beings. Physical variation among human beings basically tries to answer the question of differences in colour of the skin, hair, eyes, height, weight etc. among people living in different geographical conditions. Primarily, the features that are visible to the naked eyes were studied, therefore the emphasis was on the anthropometric and somatoscopic measurements. This interest carried on till the early twentieth century and is still a major area of research. Thus, since begining of branch, it has been refered as physical anthropology.
However, since the late 1950’s with the breakthrough in the fields of genetics and molecular biology, the interest of the physical anthropologists have shifted to understanding biological aspects in terms of human genetics, nutrition, physiological adaptation, growth and development etc. Thus, based on the rapidly growing interest and shift in emphasis of biologically oriented topics, many prefer to call it as biological anthropology.
The usage of the term physical anthropology is however, still being retained by the American Association of Physical Anthropologists in their journals and many college courses, while some anthropologists prefer to name the subject as physical/ biological anthropology wherein both the aspects of human beings are the focus area. Thus, it can be concluded that physical anthropology was the original term, but today based on the shift in emphasis to more biologically oriented concerns the term biological anthropology is gaining popularity. Nonetheless, the subject matter tries to concentrate equally on physical and biological aspects of human beings.
AIM
Physical anthropology integrates bio-cultural studies of human diversity, the ancestors of human species, comparative anatomy, ecology, behaviour and history of primates. Physical anthropologists are interested in studying human genetics, growth and development and evolutionary history. They attempt to accurately describe human physical structure both past and present and also investigate how function and behaviour are integrated into the environment in which human beings live.
SCOPE
The essence of physical anthropology right from its inception remains focused on man’s physical characters, their origin, how they evolved and their development to present state that is, whatever we are today is the result of past and present conditions. Physical anthropology is widely accepted as the comparative science of man as a physical organism in context to his total surrounding be it social or cultural or physical; because development of his physical and cultural factors is reliant on the environment prevailing at that time.
What makes physical anthropology so indispensable? The answer lies in the very fact that the understanding and assessment of the degree of human variability along with the accounting of factors responsible for our current distribution have been of vital concern. Major answer lies in the fields of genetics and anthropometry which has been used in approximating the causes of diversification and human variation. Human variation is a specialised branch of physical anthropology.
The stages of evolution particularly the ‘prehuman’ history of man to his present form is the basis of Primatology. It also includes the study of human biology including anatomy, physiology and ethology. Undeniable is the contribution of Primate Palaeontology on extinct primates. This entire phenomenon tracing the origin of man and his evolution comes under Palaeoanthropology. Appropriate evaluation of the remains of fossil men in evolutionary outlook requires the contribution of comparative anatomy as well as embryology or developmental anatomy and physiology of growth.
Human diversity, another important component of physical anthropology takes into account human taxonomy, which in anthropological perspective refers to study of races. It was decided to replace the term ‘race’ with ‘ethnic group’ due to the misuse of the term, but then again the term is being revived.
The inclusion of human genetics as an essential component of physical anthropology has witnessed tremendous growth even occupying place in health magazine about a disease cell or gene therapy to treat diseases. Whatever it may be, there would undoubtedly be some information related to the field of genetics. Patterns of inheritance of trait in humans have generated tremendous interest. The assessment of the distribution and the gene frequency of the traits form an important basis for evaluating the continuous process of human differentiation. The information on recurrence of a particular trait interests us a lot, like, what would be the stature of a child born to parents of average stature. The study of human genetics has facilitated for treatment and genetic counseling to prevent recurrence of Down’s and other syndromes. Human population genetics using mating pattern as a method contributes in the evaluation of inflow and outflowof genes which are responsible for evolution. Eugenics forms a fundamental part of physical anthropology responsible towards the improvement of populations.
Growth and development in physical anthropology has its own importance, be it studying secular trends (e.g., increase or decrease of weight in the next generation), stages of growth, growth pattern of a population, factors affecting nutritional status and reproductive biology, population variation, all come under the flagship of physical anthropology.
Recent years have witnessed physical anthropology playing undeniable services in the field of dentistry, medicine and industrial research. This clearly is reflection of the basic fact that whenever human body in part or whole needs any explanation be it the form, functional or age changes, physical anthropology plays a vital role. The scope of physical anthropology in the field of forensic science is noteworthy. The various branches of physical anthropology which facilitates forensic scientist in arriving at conclusion are dermatoglyphics, osteology, osteometry, and serology; somatic and genetic characteristics contributing towards the determination of age and sex. Somatological knowledge plays an important role in interpreting the body types for different sports or even in relation to specific disease.
HISTORY
Early physical anthropologists pondered about the nature and geneses of human races. Seventeenth century, it was widely accepted by the western scholars that humans belonged to a single species, all descendants of Noah and his family. When they came across so many different looking human beings, it struck upon them the diversity among mankind. This was obviously something they had not imagined.
With the advent of 18th century, physical anthropology answered this curiosity with its emergence as the scientific study of race, a response to the presence of so many human types.
The founder of physical anthropology was the German physician Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (1752–1840) belived on craniological collections mankind could be divided into five races: American, Caucasian, Ethiopian, Malayan and Mongolian.
The very first impression everyone had, was that all contemporary human races were monogenic, which meant that man’s origin was from a single gene. James Cowles Prichard (1786-1848), was of the opinion that, as the descendants of Adam became lighter-skinned they attained higher intellects and civilization. With passage of time, all races would become similar to Western Europeans, the race that in his view had progressed farther or more rapidly.
It was in late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the proposal that races were polygenic, that is more than one gene, picked up momentum in the scientific circles of Europe especially France and America. The advocates of polygenism were of the view that the extent of human diversity found could not be attributed to the opponents of polygenism as the variation between the races was too much to bejust a resultant of environmental differences and too great for humanity to be attributed to a single species. Therefore, there must have been many species right from the beginning. This human variation which came into limelight was studied using anthropometric measurements (anthropometry) by a Philadelphia physician and advocate of polygenism, Samuel George Morton (1799-1844), in later nineteenth century.
Anthropological Society of Paris, first in the field of Anthropology, was founded in 1859 by a French surgeon, Paul Broca (1824-1880). He followed the tradition of Samuel Morton. Most of the activities of these early physical anthropologists could be categorized as racial craniology (Anthropometry). It became clearer why polygenism was preferred over monogenism. The polygenists were in a position to make their point more acceptable. Broca emphasised that it was incorrect to attribute the huge diversity in races due to degeneration and also argued that it would be degrading to believe the diversity of racial variation as degeneration from a single superior species.
Paul Broca along with other French physical anthropologists intensified their work on cranial anatomy and other small variations. While the German tradition, led by Rudolf Virchow (1821–1902) stressed on the fact that the variation observed in the human form is a result of environment and disease upon the human body, and the lack of fit among race, nation, and culture. The American tradition focused upon the “pacified” aboriginal (Indian) inhabitants of the North American continent, unearthing and gathering skeletons as scientific objects along with artifacts, languages, and culture.
It was Edward Tyson (1650-1708), a London physician and member of the Royal Society, who started the European primate studies and differentiated between the animal, humans, and monkeys by dissecting a chimpanzee. In fact lot of curiosity was generated among people in primate behaviour despite it most of the early scientific investigations were basically anatomical. Thomas Henry Huxley’s in Man’s Place in Nature (1863) endeavored to apply Darwinism to appreciate the origins of human. Thus Primatology focused on anatomy and look for primate evolution from paleontological record. It was Ernst Haeckel (18341919) in Germany who published an encyclopedia of primate anatomy and came up with first scientific phylogenetic trees. It was because of these efforts that made us understand what we are today, with anatomy remaining the focal point until after 1900.
Subsequently, with the advent of nineteenth century, it was anthropometry which came more in limelight by becoming more sophisticated under the patronage of Karl Pearson (1857-1936), co-founder and editor of the journal, Biometrika. It goes to the credit of Karl Pearson who treated the measurements of bones and bodies to statistical tests which made the exercise more scientific including computations for variation and correlation, and tests of significance for comparing samples. Physical anthropology was devoted to the study of racial determinism– a philosophy that assumed the superiority of Caucasoids in the last half of the nineteenth century.
It was prevalent in the United States after the Civil War (1861–65) that physical anthropology was a mystique medical speciality. But it was Franz Boas (1858– 1942) in 1897, an architect of today’s face of physical anthropology who used his expertise in measuring schoolchildren, and collecting Inuit skeletons. Boas also propagated changeability of the human form and minimize race in favor of studying culture.
Ales Hrdlicka (1869–1943), a physician, studied physical anthropology in France, whereas Hooton, a Classics Ph.D from the University of Wisconsin, then entered anthropology as an Oxford Rhodes Scholar, under R. R. Marett, and the anatomist Arthur Keith. In the following decades, Hooton trained most American physical anthropologists under his umbrella: like Harry L. Shapiro and Carleton S. Coon whose input to the discipline is unmatched. As the leading US student of race in the 1930s, Earnest Hooton, a protagonist of race in 1930’s, tried to differentiate “good” American physical anthropology from “bad” German physical anthropology. Unaware of the conflict of scientific interpretation, the priceless input towards the field of anthropology continued between Germans and Americans, by Eugen Fischer, Fritz Lenz and Erwin Baur.
Right in the middle of twentieth century in 1951, a Hooton alumnus, Sherwood Washburn rediscovered the field with newer focus in physical anthropology; racial typology studies took a backseat and centre was shifted to the study of human microevolution distancing from classification, emphasising evolutionary process and history. Washburn’s anthropology ventured to paleoanthropology and primatology. As a result, current anthropology boasts of diverse methodology to get a more vivid picture of animal behaviour, human genetics and medical anatomy. It has taken several roads of development in recognising physical anthropology and giving it a very enviable position in scientific fraternity.
Note to be written in Bottom of text:
- Human biology has many times been erroneously used as a synonym for physical anthropology although, there is clear cut area for both the fields. Human biology comprises structure and function of contemporary man, whereas physical anthropology refers to all that is chronological, racial, social and even pathological groupings of human. They are very close knit, yet they maintain individual identity in working methods, techniques and objectives.