Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - Part I - Professor Martin Ramström, Uppsala, Anthropological and Race-biological Researches in Sweden
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partly to have been this which influenced here in Sweden the eminent anatomist
Anders Retzius (1796—1860) and tempted him especially to make craniology the
object of a profound investigation. By means of the work Anders Retzius after*
wards achieved in this field he has given anthropology a firm foundation, system*
atized it and given it exact methods of investigation and study which have since
been used in nearly all anthropological researches.
There were 3 methods he chiefly employed, the metrical, the typological and
the historical. It was just these means that afterwards showed themselves to be
of such unprecedented importance in bearing fruit as regards anthropology, and
it is thanks to them that anthropology from the modest position it held, when
Anders Retzius began his work, has been capable of swinging itself up to the high
position and the imposing dimensions it takes now.
Especially momentous and important were the means of help he gave to the
study of anthropology by the introduction of the mdex=number, that is, the ex*
pression of the relation between certain dimensions of the skuli by means of
numbers, for that has now become an indispensable means for the clearing up
and deciding objectively the distinguishing marks in the objects compared. Anders
Retzius used it first to make plain the difference in form, which the craniums
present when they are surveyed from a crown view. For this reason he measured
1) the greatest length, and 2) the greatest breadth of the cranium, and combined
these measurements in the following relation in numbers: —
the greatest length : the greatest breadth = 100 : x.
By this means he gained the so*called length=breadth=index of the cranium and
thus won firm ground for their division, supported by which he carried out his
welhknown classification of craniums into
longheads or dolichocephals
shortheads or brachycephals.
(Dolichocephals with an average index of 75 and brachycephals with one of 83.7.)
By the use of such an index*number it became possible for him to show in an
objective manner the essential shape and differences in the structure of the skuil,
which are to be found among nations and races, for example between the craniums
of the Swedes, Finns, and Lapps, as well as between those of Lapps and Esqui*
mos, etc. See his work: — »On the shape of the craniums of the Northern
peoples», which lays the foundation for modern anthropology.
He asserted in the meanwhile that both dolichocephals and brachycephals
were to be found in all the continents with the exception of Africa, and the ex*
istence of intermediate forms was by no means unfamiliar to him, although he
did not as yet feel it necessary to place them in a special group.
In his classification he combined also the shape of the cranium with that of the
jaws, and in this manner he created the well*known system of dividing the human*
races as: 1) prognathous, and 2) orthognathous, i. e. with projecting and non*
projecting jaws, as sub*classes in both the dolichocephalic and brachycephalic groups.
The system and the methods of study introduced by Anders Retzius, are
still the li ving principles in all anthropological research and continue to win a
more extended application, so that without exaggeration, it may be said, that he
is the creator of scientific anthropology as it is known at the present day.
L.
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