Franz Boas and Native American biological variability

Human Biology, Jun 1995 by Jantz, R L

Boas used the fertility information to combat notions of inferiority thought to be associated with mixed ancestry (Boas 1894). Boas never used some of the information, such as the genealogies, which Konigsberg and Ousley (1995) used for the first time. The "place of birth" and "tribe of mother and father" entries on the data sheets hold much potential for intertribal gene flow and population structure, particularly in the Northwest, where Boas personally collected detailed data.

Conclusion

Boas's opposition to the then-current theories and methods is a matter of record and may in part account for what Washburn (1984) referred to as a tradition in physical anthropology of minimizing Boas's contributions. Unlike the situation in ethnology and linguistics, Boas's ideas in physical anthropology were not carried forth by large numbers of students. He apparently had only two students at Columbia, Marcus Goldstein and Isabel Gordon Carter. Carter apparently ceased professional activity after her dissertation (Carter 1928). But it is also true that the amount of time, effort, and money Boas invested in physical anthropology is generally unappreciated. Our database documents that Boas personally measured 2088 Native Americans between 1890 and 1897. If we estimate that it required an average of 20 minutes to measure a subject, then measuring alone consumed about 4 months of 40-hour work weeks over this 7-year period. Add to this the time invested in statistical analysis, which Boas performed himself, and in writing the numerous papers that appeared during this time, and it becomes apparent that Boas was probably devoting a larger share of his resources to physical anthropology than to ethnology or linguistics.

Particular individuals contribute to the development of a discipline only insofar as their ideas are embraced. Boas's approaches were rejected in favor of the typology of Hrdlicka and Hooton, both larger historical figures in physical anthropology than Boas. Yet Boas anticipated many of the themes that are currently important but that came to physical anthropology much later and by means of different routes. Before Hrdlicka began classifying Amerindians into types, Boas was concerned with geographic patterning. His maps showing the distribution of stature and cranial index probably are the first spatial analyses and anticipate the current focus on this problem.

Typological approaches emphasize within-group homogeneity, but Boas was explicitly concerned with variation. He observed that "whenever a tribe is located between two tribes of different types its variability is increased" (Boas, n.d.). Boas perceived the role of gene flow in variability, an anticipation of later concern with this topic culminating in formal models for its analysis (Relethford and Blangero 1990).

Boas's interest in biocultural interaction anticipates much of the current interest in that topic. Boas expressed his perception of the complexity of anthropometric relationships as follows: "The anthropometric method is a most important means of elucidating the early history of mankind and the effect of the social and geographic environment upon man" (Boas 1912, p. 562). To those who take the view that language marks biological history, or in the case of Amerindians, separate migrations, Boas's admonition should provide a reminder of the complexity of this issue: