Kenneth L. Beals

Redefining Race: The Potential Demise of a Concept in Physical Anthropology [and Comments and Reply]

Analysis of physical anthropology textbooks published in the United States in the years 1932-79 reveals a significant decline in support for the race concept, expecially in the 1970s. Before 1970 the great majority of texts expressed the view that races exist and that the race concept is a valid tool for the description and study of human variation. In the 1970s an increasing proportion of texts rejected the race concept, with the no-race view becoming the most frequent one by 1975-79. Although the accumulation of new knowledge about human variation has contributed to the dramatic shift in textbook treatments of race, we argue that changes in the social context of anthropology have also been important. The political milieu of the 1960s coupled with the rapid institutional expansion of anthropology and the changing sociocultural characteristics of anthropologists and their students have contributed to the decline of the race concept in physical anthropology textbooks.

Natural Selection and Morphological Variability: The Case of Europe From Neolithic to Modern Times [and Comments and Reply]

Two hypotheses concerning the influence of natural selection intensity on intra- and interpopulational variability of metric characteristics of the human skull ar tested. Using data on 58 series from Europe and its environs dating from Neolithic to modern times, it has been found that with the decline of the decline of the intensity of operation of natural selection (1) intragroup variability increases, (2) intergroup variability decreases, and (3) there is a trend toward shorter, wider, and lower braincase and shorter upper face.

Body weight and ABO blood types: are AB females heavier?

Four samples from widely separated and culturally distinct populations—U.S. college students, Mennonites, Egyptian villagers, and Brazilian migrants—are examined for evidence of a relationship between ABO blood type and body weight. Overall, the results do not support the existence of such a relationship, although they do offer further support to the possibility that females of AB blood type are consistently the heaviest phenotype.