Environmentalist

(See front cover)

In Washington last week one of the world's most distinguished anthropologists told the National Academy of Sciences about an Englishman who was raised in Italy and married a Jewess. In consequence this Englishman's gestures gradually became half Italian, half Jewish.

Anthropology is neither an old science like mathematics, astronomy and medicine, nor a modern one like genetics or electronics. The ancient Greeks were willing enough to assign man a place in the animal kingdom and some of them, notably Anaximander, had an inkling of evolution. But they were content to speculate and philosophize. In the early 19th Century anthropology as a science had made little headway. Species and varieties of plants and animals were considered changeless, and so were the races of man. The strange manlike bones found here & there in caves and quarries were thought to be the remains of monsters. The beliefs and practices of primitive people were shrugged off as so much sordid playacting. When the origin and fluidity of species, the significance of fossils and the rationale of primitive cultures were better understood, anthropology began to make progress as a serious study of man in all his aspects.

Modern anthropology overlaps a number of sciences--anatomy, pediatrics, sociology, psychology, ethnology, paleontology. Few living men in this vast field have plowed over all of it. The venerable Sir James Frazer (The Golden Bough) surveyed the realm of savage culture. Sir Arthur Keith is an authority on the forerunners of Homo sapiens, Malinowski on primitive sex customs, Levy-Bruhl on primitive mentality. Harvard's Hooton, a thorough student of African archeology and a brilliant commentator of human evolution, is first and foremost an anthropometrist--a man with a pair of calipers and a battery of tabulating machines. The Smithsonian Institution's famed Ales Hrdlicka is a physical and geographical anthropologist. In range and volume of work and weight of influence, Dr. Hrdlicka would stand alone in the U. S. except for one man. That one is Franz Boas.

Franz Boas got into anthropology 53 years ago. He has invaded almost every branch of this science: linguistics, primitive mentality, folklore, ethnology, growth and senility, the physical effects of environment. He reminds his colleagues of the oldtime family doctor who did everything from delivering babies to pulling teeth.

By no means all anthropologists share Dr. Boas' belief in the tremendous physical influence of environment. But when he has something to say they listen respectfully.

Members of the lordly National Academy of Sciences (membership limited to 300) and a few outsiders listened attentively last week from their comfortable leather chairs when old Dr. Boas stood up in the Academy's severe, oak-paneled lecture room to deliver what was probably his last public address as a practicing scientist. Next month Dr. Boas will retire from the faculty of Columbia University, which he joined 40 years ago.

Immigrants. In 1908 the U. S. Immigration & Naturalization Service asked Dr. Boas to study the question of physical changes in the descendants of immigrants. Over the ensuing 27 years Dr. Boas piled up a mountain of evidence that such changes do occur. Last week's talk was a summation of those years of research.

"It has been known for a long time," said Dr. Boas, "that the bulk of the body as expressed by stature and weight is easily modified by ... favorable conditions of life. In Europe there has been a gradual increase of bulk of body between 1850 and 1914. Adult immigrants who came to America from South and East Europe have not taken part in this general increase. . . . Their children, however, born in America, or who came here young, have participated in the general increase of stature of our native population. With this go hand in hand appreciable differences in bodily form. Just in the same way as the proportions of body, head and face of animals born in captivity change when compared with their wild-born ancestors, thus the bodily proportions of man undergo minute changes in new environment. In some types the forms of head and face of immigrants are wider than those of their children. . . . These changes do not obliterate differences between genetic types, but they show that the type as we see it contains elements that are not genetic. . . ."

The time of puberty was found by Dr. Boas to be more a matter of environment than of "race." Contrary to popular belief, climate has little to do with it. In New York City the onset of puberty occurs at practically the same age among Negroes and whites of various descent. Poor Negroes, however, mature later than those economically better off. Southern and West Indian blacks mature later than those farther north. Among European whites, rustics reach puberty later than city-dwellers.

Motor Habits--the way people use their bodies--seem to be closely linked with the biological makeup. They are fairly uniform over wide areas. The American Indian cuts by drawing the knife toward himself; the African native cuts away from himself, like a New England whittler. Postures and gesticulations are good indicators of motor habits. To sort out cultural from biological factors, therefore, Dr. Boas made motion pictures of conversational gestures of different nationalities, projected the frames slowly one after another, translated the movements. Typical findings:

"Italian gestures are characterized by a wide, symmetrical sweep from the shoulders. Furthermore they are symbolic. The gestures have definite meanings, many of which can be traced back to antiquity. . . . For this reason Italians are able to converse in pantomime without uttering a single word. Their posture is characterized by an easy relaxation of the shoulders and a strong forward curvature of the back. At the same time the elbows are held backward. . . . "

By contrast the Jewish gestures are jerky. Generally the two hands do not move symmetrically. The elbows are almost stationary, close to the body and the movements are made with forearms and fingers. They are emphasized by movements of the head. They are not graphic, but follow lines of thought. . . . Conversation without words is impossible. By contrast with the Italian the Jew tries to get in touch with his friend. The posture is characterized by a slump of the neck and relaxation of the knees. . . .

"The common assumption that Americans do not gesticulate is not correct. Even aside from the well-known oratorical gestures we are fairly lively. Most of our gestures may be designated as descriptive. We supplement our speech with move ments that indicate the form of what we are talking about. Nevertheless on the whole our gestures are moderate."

The young of immigrants who move out of the family orbit change their motor habits completely, begin to gesture like those in the new environment. Mixed marriages may alter the gestures of the spouses. Even in the same country motor habits are not stable. The British, for example, have not always manifested their present immobility. In Elizabethan times they gestured violently. Dr. Boas' conclusion from all this is direct and simple : motor habits are cultural, not biological.

Magna Charta. Currently in England a group of scientists including Sir Arthur Smith Woodward and Julian Huxley are engaged in knocking the flimsy props from under Nazi ideas of race purity and race superiority. A quarter-century ago Franz Boas was attacking the same sort of ideas. At that time the view was popular that different races had their characteristic mentalities which determined their culture. Boas had piled up enough data to convince him that such was not the case. His Mind of Primitive Man was published in 1911. When he was elected president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1931, that book was called "A Magna Charta of self-respect for the 'lower' races."

Boas observed that nowhere on earth was there such a thing as a pure race, and that the term "race" was a vague and ap proximate one at best. He doubted that there were any "superior" races. To Boas it seemed that if one person was innately superior to another, it was because there was more genetic difference between family lines than between racial types. Anatomists cannot tell the difference between the brains of a Swede and a Negro. They may distinguish the skulls, but it has been shown over & over that neither the size nor shape of the skull, within the range of normality, has anything to do with intelligence. Dr. Boas has no confidence in intelligence tests as measures of race superiority, because such tests cannot be divorced entirely from environment and experience. During the War it was found that Chicago Negroes did better with intelligence tests than Louisiana blacks, although the two groups were anthropologically alike.

If it is argued that that race is best which has evolved farthest from an apelike ancestor, some curious champions appear. The narrow, prominent noses of Armenians are least like the broad, flat noses of apes. Negroes have the thickest, therefore the most "human" lips as contrasted with the thin lips of apes. Apes are hairy; Mongols have the least hair. Apes have small brains; Eskimos have big ones.

Dr. Boas sees no harm for the U. S. in assimilating alien populations. He believes it would help make a more homogeneous nation and abate race prejudice if there were more unions between white men and Negro women. He thinks the eugenists might as well call off their dream of breeding toward an ideal man until there is some agreement as to what the ideal is. He reminds eugenists that the exclusion of imbeciles among immigrants to the U. S. has not prevented imbecility from cropping up among their children.

"If we were to select," says Franz Boas, "the most intelligent, imaginative, energetic and emotionally stable third of mankind, all races would be represented."

War. Well aware is Franz Boas that his anthropologist's view of war may seem naive to historians, politicians, economists, soldiers. In substance it is this:

Early men were grouped into small hordes which had their own hunting grounds and, for self-preservation, intense feelings of solidarity. Members of other hordes were alarmingly different in customs, speech, appearance. In addition, these outsiders might poach on the hunting ground, steal roots and fruits. Hence it was an act of merit to kill them. As the art of hunting improved and methods were found of storing food, famines diminished and the hordes grew larger. Small, weak hordes were exterminated. The increase in size and decrease in number of the groups continued. Today the groups are nations. But the primitive feeling of simple hostility to the stranger survives. If we understand this, and believe that nations are not the largest possible social units, we are "face to face with those forces that will ultimately abolish warfare."

Five years ago Britain's Anthropologist Sir Arthur Keith declared that Nature keeps her human orchard healthy by pruning, that war is her pruning hook.

Dr. Boas took vigorous exception: "War eliminates the physically strong; war increases all the devastating scourges of mankind such as tuberculosis and genital diseases; war weakens the growing generation."

Said Sir Arthur: "Race antipathy and race prejudice are implanted by Nature for her own end, the improvement of mankind through racial differentiation."

Retorted Dr. Boas: "I challenge him to prove that race antipathy is implanted by Nature and is not the effect of social causes which are active in every closed social group."

Dr. Boas argues that if common race prejudice had "instinctive" antipathy for its source, it would show itself in the most intimate of all contacts, the sexual relation. But throughout history slave-owners have bedded with female slaves of different race, whites have mated with Indians and Negroes. Southern children show no aversion whatever to black nurses, must be taught by their elders not to accept blacks as equals. The strongest antipathies are those between social castes like those of India and ancient Egypt -- between people of the same race.

Papa Franz. It was as a physicist that Boas began his scientific career. Born 77 years ago to a family of German Jews in Minden, Westphalia, he won his Ph. D. at Kiel with a thesis on "The Nature of the Color of Water." The young physicist liked geography, thirsted for travel. He wanted to go to Greenland on a ship which was to bring back a corps of meteorologists. His father refused to finance this junket. Boas financed it himself with a newspaper contract for travel articles. When he reached Baffin Land he was so interested in the Eskimos that he unpacked, stayed a year. When he had finished a book about them, he was an anthropologist for life.

After a year in the University of Berlin he went to the U. S. to marry Marie Krackowizer, daughter of a distinguished Austrian surgeon. For a while he was associate editor of Science. Thereafter he joined the faculty of Clark University, was in charge of anthropology at Chicago's World's Fair. On expeditions to the north Pacific Coast he studied Indian art, music, religion, the secret societies of the Kwakiutl. His Tsimshian Mythology is regarded by experts as a classic concordance of North American myths.

In his first years at Columbia, Boas was something of a storm centre. To his German-trained scientific mind the idea of popularization was repugnant. He snorted savagely that some of the students which his own renown was attracting had no business to be anthropologists. Lately he has softened, has even written a few books for popular consumption, notably Anthropology and Modern Life.

Dr. Boas still speaks with a thick German accent. The entire Department of Anthropology calls him "Papa Franz." He has no hobbies except playing the piano, which he does very well, and his six grandchildren, who go to him with personal problems and tough Latin passages. His old age has not been happy. One of his five children died of infantile paralysis, another was killed in an automobile crash. His wife died two years ago.

In 1931 Dr. Boas went back to Kiel to renew his Ph. D. (German Ph. D.'s are good for only 50 years). The university officials gave him an honorary M. D., the only honor they could think of that he had not received. After the Nazi ascendancy the square before Kiel University was lit up by a great bonfire, and the Boas books were thrown into it. Commented "Papa Franz": "If people want to be crazy, what can you do about it?"

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