The mind of primitive man : $b A course of lectures delivered before the Lowell Institute, Boston, Mass., and the National University of Mexico, 1910-1911Boas, Franz
Science
The mind of primitive man : $b A course of lectures delivered before the Lowell Institute, Boston, Mass., and the National University of Mexico, 1910-1911
Boas, Franz
Ethnopsychology; Race
WE will now turn to the consideration of another element which
determines the physical type of man. Although we have seen that
environment, particularly domestication, has a far-reaching influence
upon the bodily form of the races of man, these influences are of a
quite secondary character when compared to the far-reaching influence of
heredity. Even granting the greatest possible amount of influence to
environment, it is readily seen that all the essential traits of man are
due primarily to heredity. The descendants of the negro will always be
negroes; the descendants of the whites, whites; and we may go even
considerably further, and may recognize that the essential detailed
characteristics of a type will always be reproduced in the descendants,
although they may be modified to a considerable extent by the influence
of environment. I am inclined to believe that the influence of
environment is of such a character, that, although the same race may
assume a different type when removed from one environment to another, it
will revert to its old type when replaced in its old environment. This
point has not been proved by actual anthropological evidence; but it
seems reasonable to make this assumption by analogy with what we know of
the behavior of plants and animals. It would, of course, be highly
desirable to clear up this question by appropriate investigations.
In order to obtain a clearer understanding of the racial problem, it
seems necessary to describe more definitely the characteristics of
heredity. In the discussion of modern anthropology, two theories have
been advocated relating to the manner in which parental traits are
inherited by children. Francis Galton and his adherents have assumed
that the form of the body of an individual is determined by the racial
type to which the parents belong, modified, however, by the tendency of
reversion to a type intermediate between the special variations
presented by the parents. When, for instance, the father of an
individual is unusually tall, his mother somewhat taller than the
average, it is assumed that the tendency of the children would be to
develop a stature which is somewhat near the general type, but at the
same time dependent upon the intermediate value located between the
stature of the mother and that of the father. On the other hand, the
development of the Mendelian doctrine (Lock, Bateson) of heredity has
led other investigators to assume that the offspring of two distinct
types may be a mixed type, but that his descendants will tend to revert
either to one parental type or to the other, or that one of the parental
types may dominate over the influence of the other parental type.
Investigations relating to this problem are not very numerous; but, on
the whole, it would appear that the results so far obtained are in favor
rather of a modified form of Mendelian inheritance than of an
inheritance characterized by reversion of the children to a middle type
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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