Short communication
The anthropometric legacy of Franz Boas

https://doi.org/10.1016/S1570-677X(03)00036-4Get rights and content

Abstract

Franz Boas was responsible for obtaining anthropometric data from approximately 27,000 subjects living around the turn-of-the-century. The subjects are of Native American, Siberian and European ancestry. These data have been entered into databases and are available for research. This paper describes the circumstances under which these data were collected and discusses their research potential.

Introduction

Anthropometric data are increasingly recognized as valuable in addressing problems of interest to modern social scientists as well as human biologists. Sources for such data are numerous, including military records (Fogel, 1986), prison records (Komlos, 1997) private and boarding school records (Komlos et al., 1992), ship manifests (Steckel, 1987), but anthropometric data collected by turn-of-the-century anthropologists provide some of the highest quality historic records available. The closing decades of the 19th century and the early decades of the 20th century were marked by intense anthropometric data collection on the part of early anthropologists (Hrdlicka, 1935, Hrdlicka, 1970, Hooton et al., 1955). Several standardization conferences had been held, resulting in standardized measurement definitions (Hrdlicka, 1920). Anthropometers and calipers measuring to the nearest millimeter were commonly used. Boas was arguably the most prolific data collector among these turn-of-the-century anthropometrists.

Boas was born and educated in Germany, receiving his Ph.D. in physics and geography in 1881 from Kiel. It is likely that his interest in anthropometry was stimulated early in his career when he had the opportunity to observe Rudolph Virchow measure a group of Bella Coola, a Native American tribe from the Northwest Coast of North America, visiting Berlin in 1885 (Cole, 1985). Boas’s interest in a programmatic approach designed to answer major questions, such as origins of Native American populations, their relationships to each other and to Siberian populations (Boas, 2001) or environmental impacts on the phenotype (Boas, 1940) set him apart from his contemporaries. In order to achieve these general syntheses, Boas thought that large data sets were required if one hoped to identify patterns of variation, which Boas realized could be subtle. Accordingly Boas designed several large anthropometric surveys, focusing on Native Americans, but including Siberians as well as European immigrants to the United States.

Boas’s Native American and Siberian data were little known prior to 1985. A lament by Stewart (1973) that more had not been done with the data led to a search for their whereabouts. The data were discovered at the American Museum of Natural History in 1983. Since their recovery (Jantz et al., 1992) they have been used for a number of purposes. In this paper I outline Boas’s major anthropometric surveys and summarize the data they produced. I end by summarizing the recent applications of Boas’s data to human biological questions and indicate some additional research avenues for which they could be used.

Section snippets

Boas’s anthropometric surveys

Boas began collecting American Indian anthropometric data in 1890 and continued through 1911, by which time he was directly or indirectly responsible for measuring over 27,000 subjects and creating a data set that reached half way around the world, from Newfoundland to Yakutsk. Details of Boas’s sampling can be found in Jantz et al. (1992) and Jantz (1995). Table 1 shows information on Boas’ samples from 1890 to 1911. Boas’ earliest work was supported by the Northwest Tribes Committee of the

Continental samples

A broad description of Boas’s sample by ethnic group and age is presented in Table 2. It shows the major continental samples acquired by Boas in the various projects described above. American Indians and European immigrants are about evenly divided between adults and children. The Siberian sample is much smaller and has relatively fewer children.

Research potential

Boas’s data provides numerous avenues for investigating biological problems of turn-of-the-century populations, including population structure, growth, secular changes in size and shape, sexual differences (dimorphism), quantitative genetics and others. Some of these have been explored to various degrees.

Conclusions

Boas’s anthropometric data, collected between 1891 and 1911, provide a resource with many as yet unexploited research possibilities. Boas’s efforts were synergistic because others adopted his protocol and produced comparable data sets of their own on various populations (Gifford, 1926).

Boas was well ahead of his time in his understanding of statistics and the need for large databases to address questions of variation in a systematic manner. The fact that he collected databases which far

Acknowledgements

Recovery and database development of the Native American data have been supported by the American Philosophical Society (grant no. B01998635); the Wenner-Gren Foundation (grant no. 4670) and the National Science Foundation (grant no. BNS8821724). I am indebted to Dr. D.H. Thomas, formerly Chair of Anthropology, and Ms. Belinda Kaye, formerly registrar of loans, for their willingness to make Boas’s data available to me. The Native American data are to be deposited with the International

References (45)

  • J. Komlos

    On the puzzling cycle in the biological standard of living: the case of antebellum Georgia

    Explor. Econ. History

    (1997)
  • Boas, F., 1891. Physical Characteristics of the Tribes of the Northwest Coast. Report of British Association for the...
  • Boas, F., 1895a. Physical Characteristics of the Tribes of the North Pacific Coast. Report of British Association for...
  • F. Boas

    Zur Anthropologie der nordamerikanischen Indianer

    Zeitschrift für Ethnologie

    (1895)
  • F. Boas

    Anthropometrical observations on the Mission Indians of Southern California

    Proc. Am. Assoc. Adv. Sci.

    (1895)
  • Boas, F., 1898. Summary of the Work of the Committee in British Columbia. Report of the British Association for the...
  • Boas, F., 1905. Anthropometry of Central California, vol. 17, no. 4. American Museum of Natural History,...
  • F. Boas

    Changes in bodily form of descendants of immigrants

    Am. Anthropol.

    (1912)
  • Boas, F., 1928. Materials for the Study of Inheritance in Man, Contributions to Anthropology, vol. 6. Columbia...
  • Boas, F., 1940. Changes in bodily form of descendants of immigrants. In: Boas, F. (Ed.), Race, Language and Culture....
  • Boas, F., 2001. The results of the Jesup Expedition. In: Krupnik, I., Fitzhugh, W.W. (Eds.), Gateways: Exploring the...
  • Boas, F., Farrand, L., 1898. Physical Characteristics of the Tribes of British Columbia, Report of the British...
  • Cole, D., 1985. Captured Heritage: The Scramble for Northwest Coast Artifacts. University of Washington Press,...
  • Cole, D., 2001. The greatest thing undertaken by any museum. In: Krupnik, I., Fitzhugh, W.W. (Eds.), Gateways:...
  • A.G. Comuzzie et al.

    Population relationships among historical and modern indigenous Siberians based on anthropmetric characters

    Hum. Biol.

    (1995)
  • R.A. Fisher et al.

    Inheritance in man: Boas’s data studied by the method of analysis of variance

    Ann. Eugenics

    (1937)
  • Fogel, R.W., 1986. Nutrition and the decline in mortality since 1700: some preliminary findings. In: Engerman, J.L.,...
  • Gifford, E.W., 1926. Californian Anthropometry, University of California Publications in American Archaeology and...
  • C.C. Gravlee et al.

    Heredity, environment, and cranial form: a reanalysis of Boas’s immigrant data

    Am. Anthropol.

    (2003)
  • R.L. Hall et al.

    Geographic variation of native people along the pacific coast

    Hum. Biol.

    (1995)
  • R. Hall et al.

    Multivariate analysis of anthropometric data and classification of British Columbia natives

    Am. J. Phys. Anthropol.

    (1972)
  • Hooton, E.A., Dupertuis, C.W., Dawson, H., 1955. The Physical Anthropology Ireland. Papers of the Peabody Museum, vol....
  • Cited by (10)

    View all citing articles on Scopus
    View full text