Physical Anthropology Sources for your Essay

Physical Anthropology Human Variation Physical


Boas believed that discriminatory laws were wrong because 'races' could 'improve.' For example, while anthropologists of Boas' day generally assumed that certain "distinct, fixed races or types" existed known as "permanent forms" had "lasted without variation from the beginning of our modem geological period up to the present time" Boas emphasized how immigrants had been changed by their new environment, contrasting the children's physicality from their parents' bodies (Gravlee 2003)

Physical Anthropology Human Variation Physical


There is no center there; there is no there in the center. It's fluid" (Goodman 2003)

Physical Anthropology Human Variation Physical


Sub-Saharan Africans have dark skin and people who live in East Asia tend to have a light tan skin and an eye color and eye shape and hair that are different than Europeans. So there is this kind of genetic - it is genetic - differentiation of some features of the body between people who live in Central Asia, Africa, Europe, North America, and South America" (Lewontin 2003)

Physical Anthropology Human Variation Physical


"Working at places like the Anthropological Institute of Vienna where their reputations added legitimacy to the practice of validating racial heredity certificates in compliance with Nazi policies….these anthropologists must have been aware that their efforts to preserve the physical measurements and social medical data on the Jews tied neatly with the exhumation of Jewish corpses from graves in other parts of Europe and the robbery of Jewish artifacts from synagogues, museums, and libraries" (Price 2005)

Physical Anthropology Human Variation Physical


" One of the earliest influences upon concepts of race and racism in the field of anthropology was that of the early 20th century anthropologist Franz Boas. Boas "struggled to reconcile the tension between cultural anthropology and the methodological rigors of physical anthropology," arguing that physically, the "the average African-American possessed the same mental capabilities as ordinary whites," but falling prey to the self-serving assumptions of his day, as Boas claimed there was a "dearth of 'men of high genius,' among African-Americans (Smithers 2008, p

Physical Anthropology


He was powerfully built had massive brow ridges and a large face which had a long skull. It is again here that the phylogeny tree diverges into two, on one side there is the branch that many scholars argue is either a dead end branch (Stringer and Gamble) or is a continuation of the normal branch