History of the Study of Human Biology

Abstract

INTRODUCTION The field of human biology is broad based but with its principal origins in studies of variation in living populations within physical or biological anthropology. Today, human biology incorporates a majority of scientists trained in anthropology, but also counts among its members scientists trained in other specialties of the human sciences. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, our stem science – physical anthropology – was oriented toward skeletal studies, gross anatomy, and human variation as represented by race. Skeletal studies included those of both living and prehistoric populations. Anatomically oriented studies of the skeleton and of the living were focused on structure and origins, but with less interest in function and evolutionary causality. In his Manual of Physical Anthropology , Juan Comas (1960) presented an excellent overview of the history of physical anthropology from its earliest origins, including the origins of and connections with natural history, racial classification, craniometry, prehistory and paleoanthropology, and evolution. In later chapters, he reviewed the histories of growth studies, somatology, constitutional typology, craniology, osteology, and racial classification. The beginning of an integrated human biology in the United States dates back to the late 1920s when Darwin's ideas of population variation, adaptation, selection, and evolution began to be reconceptualized by a number of leading scientists. At th…