The Mind of Primitive Man by Franz Boas — Read

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 between the parents, or to a type dependent upon such a middle type.