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Concept
History of anthropometry
Summary
The history of anthropometry includes its use as an early tool of anthropology, use for identification, use for the purposes of understanding human physical variation in paleoanthropology and in various attempts to correlate physical with racial and psychological traits. At various points in history, certain anthropometrics have been cited by advocates of discrimination and eugenics often as part of novel social movements or based upon pseudoscience.
In 1716 Louis-Jean-Marie Daubenton, who wrote many essays on comparative anatomy for the Académie française, published his Memoir on the Different Positions of the Occipital Foramen in Man and Animals (Mémoire sur les différences de la situation du grand trou occipital dans l'homme et dans les animaux). Six years later Pieter Camper (1722–1789), distinguished both as an artist and as an anatomist, published some lectures that laid the foundation of much work. 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's measurements of facial angle were first made to compare the skulls of men with those of other animals. Camper claimed that antique statues presented an angle of 90°, Europeans of 80°, Central Africans of 70° and the orangutan of 58°.
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 classed skulls in 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). Scientific research was continued by Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire (1772–1844) and Paul Broca (1824–1880), founder of the Anthropological Society in France in 1859.
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