Teaching and Research in Human Biology. Symposia of The Society for The Study of Human Biology, Vol. 6

161 Pages·1964·3.486 MB·English

by  G. Ainsworth Harrison (Eds.)

SOCIETY FOR THE STUDY OF HUMAN BIOLOGY
Although there are many scientific societies for the furtherance of the biological
study of man as an individual, there has been no organization in Great Britain
catering for those (such as physical anthropologists or human geneticists) concerned
with the biology of human populations. The need for such an association was made
clear at a Symposium at the Ciba Foundation in November 1957, on "The Scope
of Physical Anthropology and Human Population Biology and their Place in
Academic Studies". As a result the Society for the Study of Human Biology was
founded on May 7th, 1958, at a meeting at the British Museum (Natural History).
The aims of the Society are to advance the study of the biology of human popu
lations and of man as a species, in all its branches, particularly human variability,
human genetics and evolution, human adaptability and ecology.
At present the Society holds two full-day meetings per year—a Symposium
(usually in the autumn) on a particular theme with invited speakers, and a scientific
meeting for proffered papers. The papers given at the Symposia are published and
the monographs are available to members at reduced prices.
Persons are eligible for membership who work or who have worked in the field
of human biology as defined in the aims of the Society. They must be proposed
and seconded by members of the Society. The subscription is £2. 10s. per annum
(this includes the Society's journal Human Biology) and there is no entrance fee.
Applications for membership should be made to Dr. G. A. Harrison, Hon.
General Secretary, Department of Human Anatomy, Oxford.
PUBLICATIONS OF THE SOCIETY
Symposia, Volume I, 1958: The Scope of Physical Anthropology and Its
Place in Academic Studies, edited by D. F.
ROBERTS and J. S. WEINER (out of print).
Volume II, 1959: Natural Selection in Human Populations, edited
by D. F. ROBERTS and G. A. HARRISON.
Pergamon Press {£1).
Volume III, i960: Human Growth, edited by J. M. TANNER.
Pergamon Press (members 10s. 6d.).
Volume IV, 1961: Genetical Variation in Human Populations,
edited by G. A. HARRISON. Pergamon Press
(members £1).
Volume V, 1963: Dental Anthropology, edited by D. R. BROTH-
WELL. Pergamon Press (members 25s.).
Volume VI, 1963: Teaching and Research in Human Biology, edited
by G. A. HARRISON. Pergamon Press.
SYMPOSIA OF THE
SOCIETY FOR THE STUDY OF HUMAN BIOLOGY
Volume VI
TEACHING AND RESEARCH IN
HUMAN BIOLOGY
Edited by
G. AINSWORTH HARRISON
A Pergamon Press Book
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THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
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This book is distributed by
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
pursuant to a special arrangement with
PERGAMON PRESS LIMITED
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Copyright © 1964
PERGAMON PRESS LTD.
First Edition 1964
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 64-7809
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN
PREFACE
THERE has been a dramatic increase of interest in Human
Biology in Britain since the meeting at the Ciba Foundation
London on "The scope of physical anthropology and its place
in academic studies" in 1957 and the subsequent Foundation
of the Society for the Study of Human Biology in the following
year. Research in the field has expanded both in intensity and
in scope, a number of universities have instituted courses in
Human Biology at various levels, and many other proposals for
advancing the subject, not only in universities but also in
schools, are now being considered. It, therefore, seemed appro
priate that the scope of the subject should be re-examined and
the many new developments reviewed, and a meeting of the
Society was held for this purpose in the Anatomy Department
of University College, London, by kind permission of Professor
J. Z. Young, F.R.S., on April 25th, 1964. Publication of
the proceedings seemed highly desirable, particularly as the
report of the 1957 Ciba meeting (Volume 1 in the Society's
symposia series) is now out of print, and the eight papers
delivered at the symposium are presented here. In addition the
papers in the earlier volume by Dr A. E. Mourant and Dr K. P.
Oakley dealing with practical aspects of Human Biology have
been reproduced with appropriate amendments, and the
reports of the Working Parties on a School of Medicine and
Human Biology (1963) have been reprinted in full as an appen
dix to Dr N. Malleson's contribution.
Each of the papers delivered at the meeting was followed by
lively and profitable discussions, and it is regretted that these
could not be published in full. It seemed, however, that speedy
publication was more important and only those discussions
which have particular relevance to Dr Malleson's paper have
been included. Because of the very great impact that the reports
of the Working Parties on a School of Medicine and Human
vi PREFACE
Biology is making on those concerned with the training of med
ical students, it was felt that some of the discussion on these
reports had to be included in these published proceedings.
G. AINSWORTH HARRISON
THE DEVELOPMENT AND SCOPE OF
HUMAN BIOLOGY
N. A. BARNICOT
Department of Anthropology, University College, London
IN most of the symposia of this society we have chosen a special
branch of biology such as genetics or growth and have seen
what it has to tell us about man. Today our aim is broader.
We wish to view the subject as a whole and especially to
examine what it has to offer as a part of education at various
levels. Does it provide information which will not only hold
the student's interest but will be useful in a career and does it
form a coherent body of fact and theory which, to borrow
words from the Robbins Committee, fits it to "promote the
general powers of the mind" and to contribute to the formation
of the "cultivated man"?
It might seem to a literal mind that if biology is the scientific
study of living organisms then human biology must surely
encompass all aspects of human life. A student of mouse
biology or even of monkey biology might feel no misgivings
about such a comprehensive approach, but I imagine that a
student of literature, history or even sociology would be startled
and perhaps less than flattered to be told that he is really a
kind of biologist. The point is, of course, that while man is
an animal species open to zoological scrutiny he is also a very
unusual one. Moreover, in taking ourselves as an object for
scientific study we have a peculiar involvement which makes
this task in some ways easier and in others more difficult.
Human populations change and evolve and men metabolize,
transmit genes, grow and die much as other creatures but they
are also uniquely inventive and communicative. They devise
not only material tools but systems of social organization,
I
2 N. A. BARNIGOT
thought and belief and in symbolic marks and noises they
find a means of conceptualizing their thoughts and passing
their skills and customs to their descendants. This mechanism
of social heredity with its potentialities for cumulative learning
and for very rapid change of behaviour is a cardinal feature
of human evolutionary adaptation, as many biologists have
emphasized. I do not wish to press the presumptuous claim that
all the manifestations of human mentality which distinguish
men so conspicuously, yet not completely, from other animals
should be declared biological territory. I doubt whether
biologists are in a position to teach the social scientist his
business, though I believe they may have something to contri
bute to the sociological field. What I wish to stress is that there
is something wrong with human biology if it neglects the most
outstanding characteristics of the species. Culture in its myriad
forms intervenes between man and his environment at every
turn and the human biologist in his legitimate pursuits can
ill afford to forget it.
I am asked to speak of the development of human biology
but I cannot say when it began and this is not only because
records are imperfect and my own knowledge limited but
because there is an element of continuity in scientific history
which makes it easier to see points of rapid acceleration than to
trace a subject to its source. Probably thoughts on man's place
in nature, on the workings of his body and on disease are very
ancient, but it is certain that in classical Greek writings we
find ideas and observations that guided, and sometimes mis
guided, science for centuries. Man's upright posture, his large
brain, his use of tools and suchlike characteristics which are still
listed in the opening chapters of anthropology textbooks were
expounded by Aristotle. Even if we reject his physiology and
dislike his blatantly ideological explanations we must allow
that he often posed problems that still interest us. Do men have
hands because they are intelligent, or did they, as Anaxagoras
maintained, become intelligent because they have hands ? The
question has a topical ring now that early tool-makers are
being unearthed and speculations on the causes and conse
quences of this momentous evolutionary step are in fashion.
THE DEVELOPMENT AND SCOPE OF HUMAN BIOLOGY 3
One thing then that the human biologist can do with man is
to compare him with other animals and especially with other
primates. We gain thereby a point of reference by which to
judge the extent of our peculiarities and also of what we share
with other members of the natural world, and this has some
general philosophical value. Prior to the advent of evolutionary
thinking the demonstrations of orderliness in the array of
animal forms could have only metaphysical or theological
implications. The shock of Darwinism was to discover relatives
not merely fellow-creatures. During the last century the com
parative method as a key to problems of descent has been
greatly exploited but it is not yet exhausted because old data
have periodically to be re-evaluated, refined and expanded and
because new methods make new kinds of comparison possible.
We need not restrict ourselves to anatomy though in fact com
parative anatomy, sprouting vigorously in the 18th century
from the seed set by Aristotle, has been the dominant approach.
For example, biochemical work on inherited variations in
human haemoglobins is now being extended to other primates
and a picture is emerging of the extent of divergence within
the Order in the composition of this protein. This comparative
anatomy of molecules comes very close to genetics since altera
tions in the protein are attributable to unit changes in the
coding structure of the genes.
When we try to reconstruct evolutionary lineages solely from
information about living forms we are apt to run into difficulties
because we do not know what weight to give to various items
of evidence. The more direct testimony of fossils is always
eagerly sought, though they cannot help us much if we are
interested in the perishable soft tissues. In Darwin's time very
few fossil specimens of men or other primates were known.
Today we are incomparably richer in material. Yet there are
still large enough gaps and imperfections in the hominid fossil
record to guarantee the pleasures of controversy and guesswork
for some years to come, and for many other parts of the primate
evolutionary radiation the view is still very misty.
Primate fossils are usually fragmented bones or teeth and to
conjure living animals from these dead shapes needs a functional
4 N. A. BARNIGOT
anatomy derived from laboratory and field studies of living
forms together with whatever geologists, palaeobotanists and
zoologists can tell us about the habitat in which they lived.
We do not find fossil behaviour but only bones, and maybe
artifacts, associated in a particular environmental context. In
the case of forms transitional to man we should be particularly
interested to know how the use and fabrication of tools came
about and what were the implications of this habit for the
development of social life. This is one reason why there is now
a renaissance of behaviour studies on monkeys, anthropoid
apes and even human hunter-gatherers in their natural haunts.
Imagination supplemented by comparative natural history
can go some way to compensate for the deficiency of direct
evidence. We are now getting to know much more about the
size of primate social groups, their composition by sex and
age, how far they range in feeding, how they react to other
groups and the ways in which sexual functions, grooming,
gesture, vocalization act to hold the group together and to
maintain a structure within it. Since primate evolution has
happened for the most part out of doors there is much to be
said for getting out of the museum to study it, but work on
behaviour in the laboratory can also be illuminating. We rightly
stress the importance of social environment in the mental and
emotional growth of the relatively immature and slow-
maturing human child. To me at least it was surprising to
read of the gross, and apparently irreversible, disorders of adult
behaviour which result when young monkeys are deprived of
contact with their mothers or sibs.
Another line can be discerned in the pedigrees of human
biology though it is faint at first and never wholly distinct from
others. It stems from the ancient geographers who described
the places and peoples at the edge of the Mediterranean world,
though it is said that the Greeks before Alexander were not
much interested in foreigners and thought Herodotus a little
eccentric. Medical science by its preoccupation with human
disease has always held an important place in the development
of human biology and it is interesting to find in the Hippocratic
writings not only acute and remarkably objective descriptions
THE DEVELOPMENT AND SCOPE OF HUMAN BIOLOGY 5
of disease symptoms but an attempt to account for local
differences of physique and temperament in terms of climate.
This idea has persisted and in modified forms is still very
active today. By 1859, after some three hundred years of
geographical exploration, it seemed timely to draw together the
many sources of information about man in relation to other
animals and as a geographically variable species. In this year
the Société d'Anthropologie was founded in Paris, thanks
largely to the inspiration of Paul Broca, but with difficulty, it
seems, because it was suspected of seditious intentions and a
police officer was detailed to attend its meetings. Our own
Society, founded almost a century later and with similar
objectives, has not I think received this attention from the
State; but if there should be a plain-clothes agent seated in
conspicuously amongst us I take the opportunity to welcome
him to the meeting.
Broca's vision of anthropology was primarily as a biological
science, and the word is so used on the continent today. He did
not ignore, however, the information to be gleaned from
archaeology and linguistics. The main approach to population
comparisons at that time was anatomical and Broca encouraged
the collection of precise metrical data and realized the need
for large representative samples, for measures of variability
and for standardization of techniques. The statistical methods,
which are so essential in dealing with population data, were
starting to develop in the hands of Quetelet and Galton in the
latter part of the 19th century and were expanded later by
Karl Pearson whose Biometrie School did such monumental
work on human metrical variation. Broca did not envisage
anatomical comparison alone but suggested that such things
as acuteness of the senses, age of puberty, susceptibility to
disease and ability to withstand heat and cold ought to be
studied. He recognized the force of Darwinian principles in
interpreting early phases of human evolution, but in considering
the origins of modern peoples he tended to think mainly in
terms of prehistoric migrations and intermixtures. His con
ception of anthropology was not solely as an academic pursuit.
He felt, for example, that assertions, mainly by the Germans,