Not only was Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) the first authority to make use of the word “anthropology,”[[10]] but he may also be described as an anthropologist. Material had been collected by travellers, such as Hanno, the Carthaginian, who encountered gorillas in Africa; by historians, such as Herodotus (who was also a traveller); and by doctors, such as Hippocrates. Aristotle was indebted to some extent to all of these; but his vast works in natural history were based mainly on what he considered of primary importance—facts of actual personal knowledge derived from personal observation. On this account alone his writings deserved the place which they held for many centuries.
[10]. Cf. p. 6.
Thus, undisturbed by the dogmas of religion or philosophy, he placed man naturally among the animals (being thus, as Topinard remarks, about twenty centuries ahead of humanity), but distinguished from them by certain features—by the relative size of the brain, by two-leggedness, by mental characters, etc. Some writers regard it as improbable that either Hippocrates or Aristotle had ever dissected the human body, but it is also possible to hold an opposite view. Even Galen (c. 130 A.D.), whose anatomy held the field for more than a thousand years, had to base his conclusions on the bodies of animals, notably on those of monkeys; and, although he did not conceal the fact, it was not until the time of Vesalius that the discrepancy between simian and human anatomy was discovered.
Vesalius.
Vesalius (1513-1564) is the next great name in the history of physical anthropology. He was Professor of Anatomy at Padua, Bologna, and Pisa, and physician to Charles V. and Philip II. His work marks a revolution in anatomical science; for not only did he overthrow the doctrines which had been accepted for fourteen centuries, demonstrating that to a great extent Galen had studied the anatomy of the ape rather than that of man, but, by his own deductions from direct observation and original research, he established a fresh and unassailable foundation for future investigation. His services to anatomy have been compared to those of Galileo and Copernicus in the field of astronomy. His fate was not unlike that of many other daring pioneers of the Middle Ages. He was accused of having dissected a man while yet alive, and was dragged by his enemies before the Inquisition and condemned to death. By the intercession of the king his sentence was commuted into a pilgrimage to the Holy Sepulchre; but on his return journey he was shipwrecked and drowned off the island of Zante.
Cunningham, in his Presidential Address to the Royal Anthropological Institute, 1908, refers to the work of Vesalius, whom he describes as one of the most remarkable figures in the sixteenth century. He adds:—
It is interesting to note in passing that certain racial distinctions did not escape the eye of Vesalius. “It appears,” he remarks, “that most nations have something peculiar in the shape of the head. The crania of the Genoese, and, still more remarkable, those of the Greeks and Turks, are globular in form. This shape, which they esteem elegant and well adapted to their practice of enveloping the head in the folds of their turbans, is often produced by the midwives at the solicitation of the mother.” He further observes “that the Germans had generally a flattened occiput and broad head, because the children are always laid on their backs in the cradles; and that the Belgians have a more oblong form, because the children are allowed to sleep on their sides.”
We know that more or less continuous pressure is exerted on the pliable heads of infants to produce admired shapes, but the theory was carried rather too far when adduced, some centuries later, to account for the facial features of negroes. Lawrence, in his Lectures on Comparative Anatomy, attributed the flat noses and thick lips of the negro to the method of carrying babies in Africa. The negro mothers, while at work, carry their infants on their backs, and “in the violent motions required for their hard labour, as in beating or pounding millet, the face of the child is said to be constantly thumping against the back of the mother.” By this rude treatment the face of the negro child was supposed to be moulded into shape; but, as Cunningham points out, no attempt was made to explain how the process of bumping produced exactly opposite results in the case of the nose and lips—reducing the prominence of the former and increasing the projection of the latter.
Spigel.
“The invention of the ‘lineæ cephalometricæ’ of Spigel, who died in the early part of the seventeenth century, may perhaps be regarded as constituting the earliest scientific attempt at cranial measurement.” He drew four lines in certain directions, and a skull in which these lines were equal to each other he regarded as regularly proportioned. “Although these lines are evidently not sufficient for the comparative ethnography of the present day, yet it is interesting to observe that, in ascending the zoological scale, these lines approximate equality just in proportion as the head measured approaches the human form.”[[11]]