From a History of Anthropometry to Anthropometric History

Anthropometry is the longest-used measure of human variation, and since it measures surface morphology, is intuitively understood at the elementary level. By standing in any major junction of any major city on Earth, one can easily marvel at the range of human physical diversity: short, tall, thin, fat, long-legged, stumpy; native wit provides the face validity for the study of anthropometric variation and its application (Ulijaszek and Mascie-Taylor 2005). Ideas of biological difference between human populations are of great antiquity but only became quantitatively formalised in the nineteenth century, with early attempts at doing so having taken place in the eighteenth century. Prior to innovations that could identify variation at microscopic levels, including physiological, biochemical, endocrinological, and genetic ones, morphology was the prime means of classification of nature. The strength of anthropometry as a measure of human variation is its relative cheapness and simplicity of application, although accuracy is another issue. It is no surprise that anthropometric methods have changed little since the nineteenth century. However, the meaning and interpretation of anthropometric variation has changed with new understandings of how human variation is generated and contents