Archive for August 6th, 2007
Life Magazine’s 1941 article “How To Tell Japs From The Chinese”
I’ve got sort of a time machine of an article that will get you to ask yourself, “Boy, how times have changed anthropology… or have they?” I read the transcribed 1941 article, and wonder how we view Asian ‘races’ any different now in 2007? Be sure to digg this too.
This is basically the whole article, but it is my favorite excerpt,
“U.S. citizens have been demonstrating a distressing ignorance on the delicate question of how to tell a Chinese from a Jap. Innocent victims in cities all over the country are many of the 75,000 U.S. Chinese, whose homeland is our stanch ally. So serious were the consequences threatened, that the
Chinese consulates last week prepared to tag their nationals with identification buttons. To dispel some of this confusion, LIFE here adduces a rule-of-thumb from the anthropometric conformations that distinguish friendly Chinese from enemy alien Japs.
To physical anthropologists, devoted debunkers of race myths, the difference between Chinese and Japs is measurable in millimeters. Both are related to the Eskimo and North American Indian. The modern Jap is the descendant of Mongoloids who invaded the Japanese archipelago back in the mists of prehistory, and of the native aborigines who possessed the islands before them. Physical anthropology, in consequence, finds Japs and Chinese as closely related as Germans and English. It can, however, set apart the special types of each national group.
The typical Northern Chinese, represented by Ong Wen-hao, Chungking’s Minister of Economic Affairs (left, above), is relatively tall and slenderly built. His complexion is parchment yellow, his face long and delicately boned, his nose more finely bridged. Representative of the Japanese people as a whole is Premier and General Hideki Tojo (left, below), who betrays aboriginal antecedents in a squat, long-torsoed build, a broader, more massively boned head and face, flat, often pug, nose, yellow-ocher skin and heavier beard. From this average type, aristocratic Japs, who claim kinship to the Imperial Household, diverge sharply. They are proud to approximate the patrician lines of the Northern Chinese.”
Were the first Europeans fom Asia?
Okay, so I’ve got kinda sorta a good news/bad news situation. The good news, more informative news is coming out about the big fossil tooth study that I shared with’ya last night. National Geographic is covering it better than anyone else, so until the publication comes out (tomorrow, hopefully — and that’s the bad news), all we got is what they have to share.
First and foremost, the sample size of this study is pretty remarkable. 5,000 teeth were studied. 
The analysis started way back from 2 mya Australopithecines to modern Homo and each tooth was scrutinized to over 50 different measurements and observations.
Paraphrased from National Geographic, what they found is that European teeth were more similar to Asian teeth than they were to African teeth. They conclude that Europe’s first early human colonizers were from Asia, not Africa. I’ve asked this before, why teeth? I’ll answer it again, the shape of the teeth offered clues about each species’ genetic lineages because teeth change shape very little once they are formed, and their shape is strongly influenced by genetics.
Lead author, Marcos Martinón-Torres, commented on these results,
“This finding does not necessarily imply that there was not genetic flow between continents… Just because people had come out of Africa didn’t mean that they couldn’t turn around and go back again.”
I think a much more safe conclusion to make is that it appears as if the current fossil record of hominid teeth is showing us that human ancestors spread in many directions before arriving in Europe. I wonder if and how does the genetic, archaeological, and linguistic evidence supplement this?
Here is a set of some of the human evolution publications that Martinón-Torres has been a part of:
Lucy’s tour is stirring up quite a ruckus
Way back in October of 2006, I and other anthro-bloggers covered the debacle that surrounds Lucy’s trip to the United States. To most of us, it sounded awesome at first. It gave most of us a chance to see the actual fossils, as well as a way to support Ethiopian museums. Then as we began to assess the circumstance, especially the risk for the fossils to be damaged, we began to second guess our enthusiasm.While I was in Ethiopia, I got a chance to see the boxes that held Lucy’s remains be packed and readied for shipment over at the National Museum. The overall consensus in the museum was a bit somber.It seems like Ethiopians outside of their country and others in the United States are a bit more ticked off than somber about the whole situation. BBC News is covering a short little blurb where they quote, Zelalem Assefa, a Ethiopian academic who works at the Smithsonian Institution, saying,
“These are original, irreplaceable materials. These are things you don’t gamble with.”
After almost a year after I reported Lucy’s travel plans, I noticed it has almost always been me sharing my opinion or quotes of professional paleoanthropologists stating how they think about this. I want to hear from you, so I’ll open this thread up and ask what your opinion is on the matter? Will you try and see Lucy in New York, Denver, and/or Colorado?
