Craniometry

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Craniometry is the technique of measuring the bones of the skull. Craniometry was once intensively practiced in anthropology/ethnology. It is distinct from phrenology, the study of personality and character, and physiognomy, the study of facial features. However, these fields have all claimed the ability to predict traits or intelligence. They were once intensively practised in anthropology, in particular in physical anthropology in the 19th century. Theories attempting to scientifically justify the segregation of society based on race became popular at this time, one of its prominent figure being Georges Vacher de Lapouge (1854-1936), who divided humanity into various, hierarchized, different "races", spanning from the "Aryan white race, dolichocephalic" (from the Ancient Greek kephalê, head, and dolikhos, long and thin), to the "brachycephalic" (short and broad) race. Such attempts to relate the form of the skull to a particular character or intelligence are today unanimously denounced by the scientific community as pseudo-science, while historians study the influence and caution science provided for racially divisive ideologies in the late 19th and early 20th century, at the heigh of the New Imperialism period. On the other hand, craniometry and the study of skeletons were used to demonstrate Charles Darwin's theory of evolution first expressed in The Origin of Species (1859).

Contents 1 The cephalic index 2 Craniometry and anthropology 3 Cranial capacity, races and 19th-20th century scientific ideas 4 Craniometry, phrenology and physiognomy 5 Criticisms and revival of past cranial theories in the 20th century 6 Modern use of craniometry 7 References 8 See also 9 Original starting source of article

[edit] The cephalic index

Swedish professor of anatomy Anders Retzius (1796-1860) first used the cephalic index in physical anthropology to classify ancient human remains found in Europe. He classified brains into three main categories, "dolichocephalic" (from the Ancient Greek kephalê, head, and dolikhos, long and thin), "brachycephalic" (short and broad) and "mesocephalic" (intermediate length and width).

These terms were then used by Georges Vacher de Lapouge (1854-1936), one of the pioneer of scientific theories in this area and a theoretician of eugenics, who divided in L'Aryen et son rôle social (1899 - "The Aryan and his social role") humanity into various, hierarchized, different "races", spanning from the "Aryan white race, dolichocephalic", to the "brachycephalic" "mediocre and inert" race, best represented by the "Jew ^[sic]." Between these, Vacher de Lapouge identified the "Homo europaeus (Teutonic, Protestant, etc.), the "Homo alpinus" (Auvergnat, Turkish, etc.), and finally the "Homo mediterraneus" (Napolitano, Andalus, etc.) Vacher de Lapouge became one of the leading inspirations of Nazi anti-semitism and Nazi ideology ^[1]. His classification was mirrored in William Z. Ripley in The Races of Europe (1899).

[edit] Craniometry and anthropology

Further information: Anthropology  and Physical anthropology

In 1764, Louis-Jean-Marie Daubenton, who wrote many comparative anatomy memoirs for the Académie française, published the Mémoire sur les différences de la situation du grand trou occipital dans l’homme et dans les animaux (which translates as Memoir on the Different Positions of the Occipital Foramen in Man and Animals). Six years later, Pieter Camper (1722-1789), distinguished both as an artist and as an anatomist, published some lectures containing an account of his craniometrical methods, and these may be fairly claimed as having laid the foundation of all subsequent work.

Pieter Camper invented the "facial angle", a measure meant to determine intelligence among various species. According to this technique, a "facial angle" was formed by drawing two lines: one horizontally from the nostril to the ear; and the other perpendicularly from the advancing part of the upper jawbone to the most prominent part of the forehead. Camper claimed that antique statues presented an angle of 90°, Europeans of 80°, Black people of 70° and the orangutan of 58°, thus displaying a hierarchic view of mankind, based on a decadent conception of history. This scientific research was continued by Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire (1772-1844) and Paul Broca (1824-1880).

It has been explained that the measurements were first made with a view to elucidating the comparison of the skulls of men with those of other animals. This wide comparison constitutes the first subdivision of craniometric studies. It is further remarkable that among the first measurements employed angular determinations occur, and indeed the name of Camper is chiefly perpetuated in anthropological literature by the facial angle invented by that artist-anatomist.

Camper's work followed the lines of 18th century scientific theories, where his measurements of facial angle were used to liken the skulls of non-Europeans to those of apes.

In the 19th century the names of notable contributors to the literature of craniometry quickly increased in number. While it is impossible to analyse each contribution, or even record a complete list of the names of the authors, it must be added that for the purposes of far-reaching comparisons of humans to other animals, craniometric methods were used by Paul Broca (1824-1880), founder of the Anthropological Society in 1859 in France, and by T. H. Huxley (1825-1895) in England. By comparing skeletons of apes to man, Huxley backed up Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, developing the "Pithecometra principle," that is than man descended from apes.

Along with Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919)'s work, who became famous for his now outdated "recapitulation theory" according to which each individual mirrored the evolution of the whole specie during his life, these researchs on skulls and skeletons helped liberate 19th century Europe from its ethnocentrism biases. ^[2] In particular, Eugène Dubois (1858-1940) discovery of the "Java Man", which was the first specimen of Homo erectus to be discovered, in 1891 in Trinil in Indonesia, demonstrated mankind's deep ancestry outside Europe.

[edit] Cranial capacity, races and 19th-20th century scientific ideas

Samuel George Morton (1799-1851), one of the inspirator of physical anthropology, collected hundreds of human skulls from all over the world and started trying to find a way to classify them according to some logical criteria. Influenced by the common theories of his time, he claimed that he could judge the intellectual capacity of a race by the cranial capacity (the measure of the volume of the interior of the skull). A large skull meant a large brain and high intellectual capacity, and a small skull indicated a small brain and decreased intellectual capacity. By studying these skulls he decided at what point Caucasians stopped being Caucasians, and at what point Negroes began. Morton had many skulls from ancient Egypt, and concluded that the ancient Egyptians were not African, but were white. His two major monographs were the Crania Americana (1839), An Inquiry into the Distinctive Characteristics of the Aboriginal Race of America and Crania Aegyptiaca (1844). In Crania Americana, he claimed that the mean cranial capacity of the skulls of Whites was 87 in³ (1,425 cm³), while that of Blacks was 78 in³ (1,278 cm³). Based on the measurement of 144 skulls of Native Americans, he reported a figure of 82 in³ (1,344 cm³) ^[sic].

Stephen Jay Gould (1941-2002), an American paleontologist, evolutionary biologist and historian of science, studied from a historical perspective these craniometric works in The Mismeasure of Man (1981). He showed that Samuel Morton had fudged data and "overpacked" the skulls with filler in order to justify his preconcieved notions on racial differences.

Morton's followers, particularly Josiah C. Nott (1804-1873) and George Gliddon (1809-1857) in their monumental tribute to Morton's work, Types of Mankind (1854), carried Morton's ideas further and claimed that his findings in fact supported the notion of polygenism, which claims that humanity originates from different lineages and is the ancestor of the multiregional hypothesis. Morton himself had been reluctant to explicitly espouse polygenism because it was a major challenge to the biblical account of creation. Charles Darwin opposed Nott and Glidon in his 1871 The Descent of Man, arguing for a monogenism of the species. Darwin conceived the common origin of all humans (aka single-origin hypothesis) as essential for evolutionary theory.

Furthermore, Josiah Nott was the translator of Arthur de Gobineau's An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races (1853-1855), which is one of the found ing works of the group of studies that segregates society based on race", in contrast to Boulainvilliers (1658-1722)'s theory of races. Henri de Boulainvilliers opposed the Français (French people), alleged descendants of the Nordic Franks, and members of the aristocracy, to the Third Estate, considered to be indigenous Gallo-Roman people who were subordinate to the Franks by right of conquest. Whereas Gobineau made three main divisions between races, based not on colour but on climatic conditions and geographic location, and which privilegied the "Aryan" race.

In 1873, Paul Broca (1824-1880) found the same pattern described by Samuel Morton's Crania Americana by weighing brains at autopsy. Other historical studies alleging a Black-White difference in brain size include Bean (1906), Mall, (1909), Pearl, (1934) and Vint (1934).

Furthermore, Georges Vacher de Lapouge's racial classification ("Teutonic", "Alpine" and "Mediterranean") was re-used by William Z. Ripley (1867-1941) in The Races of Europe (1899), who even made a map of Europe according to the alleged cephalic index of its inhabitants.

[edit] Craniometry, phrenology and physiognomy

Further information: Phrenology ,  Physiognomy , and Anthropological criminology

Craniometry was also used in phrenology, which purported to determine character, personality traits, and criminality on the basis of the shape of the head and thus of the skull. At the turn of the 19th century, Franz Joseph Gall (1758-1822) developed "cranioscopy" (Ancient Greek «cranium»: skull, «scopos»: vision), a method to determine the personality and development of mental and moral faculties on the basis of the external shape of the skull. Cranioscopy was later renamed to phrenology (phrenos»: mind, «logos»: study) by his student Johann Spurzheim (1776-1832), who wrote extensively on the "Drs. Gall and Spurzheim's physiognomical System." Physiognomy claimed a correlation between physical features (especially facial features) and character traits. It was made famous by Cesare Lombroso (1835-1909), the founder of anthropological criminology, who claimed to be able to scientifically identify links between the nature of a crime and the personality or physical appearance of the offender. The originator of the concept of a "born criminal" and arguing in favor of biological determinism, Lombroso tried to recognize criminals by measures of there body. He concluded that skull and facial features were clues to genetic criminality, these features could be measured with craniometers and calipers with the results developed into quantitative research. A few of the 14 identified traits of a criminal included large jaws, forward projection of jaw, low sloping forehead; high cheekbones, flattened or upturned nose; handle-shaped ears ;hawk-like noses or fleshy lips; hard shifty eyes, scanty beard or baldness; insensitivity to pain, long arms, etc.

[edit] Criticisms and revival of past cranial theories in the 20th century

After being a main influence of US white supremacists, William Ripley's The Races of Europe (1899) was eventually rewritten in 1939, just before World War II, by Harvard physical anthropologist Carleton S. Coon. Coon eventually resigned from the American Association of Physical Anthropologists, while some of his other works were discounted because he wouldn't agree with the evidence brought forward by the works of scientifics such as Franz Boas, Stephen Jay Gould, Richard Lewontin, Lieberman and others which played down or even dismissed race as a valid concept with which to partition biodiversity.^[3].

J. Philippe Rushton, psychologist and author of the controversial work Race, Evolution and Behavior (1995), which has been alleged by mainstream scientists to be a revival of 19th century scientific theories, reanalyzed Gould's retabulation in 1989, and pretended that Samuel Morton, in his 1839 book Crania Americana, had shown a pattern of decreasing brain size proceeding from East Asians, Europeans, and Africans. In his 1995 book, he alleged an average endocranial volume of 1,415 cm³ for "Orientals" ^[sic], 1,362 for Whites, and 1,268 for Blacks ^[sic]. Other similar claims have been made by Ho et al. (1980), who measured 1,261 brains at autopsy, and Beals et al. (1984), who measured approximately 20,000 skulls, finding the same East Asian → European → African pattern ^[sic].

Rushton is the director of the Pioneer Fund which claims "to advance the scientific study of heredity and human differences" and which publish the Mankind Quarterly, in which, among others, Nouvelle Droite founder Alain de Benoist has contributed. Rushton's association has been characterized as a "hate group" by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a civil rights advocacy organization ^[4].

Rushton has been accused by other researchers of misrepresenting the data. When they have reanalyzed the data, Zack Cernovsky et al. argue that many of Rushton's claims are incorrect. Thus, they write that:

"Hasty and eager acceptance of weak, biased, and unrepresentative data as scientific evidence of genetically based and relatively immutable racial differences in human potential amounts to psychological warfare on oppressed racial groups. Similar defamation of vulnerable minorities by Nazi pseudoscientists led to the loss of millions of human lives in the past. Statistical theory classifies similar endeavors as a Type I error (a misleading rejection of the null hypothesis)" ^[5]

[edit] Modern use of craniometry

Brain volume data and other craniometric data is used in mainstream science to compare modern-day animal species, and to analyze the evolution of the human species in archeology.

[edit] References

[edit] See also

• Race
• Anthropometry
• Samuel George Morton
• Craniofacial anthropometry
• Races of craniofacial anthropology
• Forensic anthropology

[edit] Original starting source of article

• This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.