Development of normalized curves for the international growth reference: historical and technical considerations

The World Health Organization recommended in 1978 that the National Center for Health Statistics/Centers for Disease Control growth reference curves be used as an international growth reference. To permit the expression of growth in terms of standard deviations, CDC developed growth curves from the observed data that approximate normal distributions. Because of significant skewness, standard deviations for weight-for-age and weight-for-height were calculated separately for distributions below and above the median. Standard deviations below the median were calculated from the 5th, 10th, 25th, and 50th observed percentiles while those above the median were based on the 50th, 75th, 90th, and 95th observed percentiles. Height-for-age distributions did not show significant skewness, thus, the standard deviations were calculated based on all six of the above observed percentiles. The normalized reference curves provide a highly useful data base that permits the standardized comparison of anthropometric data from different populations.

History and demographic composition of the Robert J. Terry anatomical collection

Robert J. Terry began collecting human skeletal remains in the area of St. Louis, Missouri for research and educational purposes in 1898. He continued collecting skeletal specimens in the Anatomy Department at Washington University until his retirement in 1941. Mildred Trotter succeeded Terry as anatomy professor and continued his collecting, and strove to balance the demographic distribution of the collection. In 1967, after her retirement, the collection was moved to the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History. As with several other well-documented collections, the Terry Collection is widely used for a diverse range of anthropological and medical research. Despite its extensive use, there has been limited discussion of the collection's history and incomplete description of holdings and associated materials of this collection. In this paper, the historical background of the collection and the collection process is described; the demographic composition of the collection, and a description of the documentary and supporting data are presented; and the quality and of these data are assessed. The Terry Collection consists of 1,728 individuals. Age at death ranges from 14-102 years, with the majority of the individuals ranging from 20-80 years. Year of birth ranges from 1828-1943; the mean year of birth for males is 1880, and for females it is 1884. The mean age at death for males is 53 years, and for females it is 58 years. Terry's strict protocols for the processing of cadavers and the recording of documentary data make the Terry Collection a valuable resource for anthropological and medical research.

Clinical anthropometry and canons of the face in historical perspective

Measurements of the human face as part of the body have been performed since the Greek era, and many aspects of ancient measurements can be found in modern clinical anthropometry. A historical appraisal of the use of facial measurements is presented. The influence on modern facial anthropometry of Greek proportion sciences, the golden proportion, canons of important Renaissance artists, physical anthropology, and cephalometry are discussed. The main difference between human measurements in classic times and modern anthropometry is the denial of realistic sizes and proportions in former times. Human forms and canons were depicted in a way the artist or scientist preferred, rather than how they objectively were. For reconstructive and cosmetic surgery, realistic sizes and proportions are assessed using anthropometric techniques and used as guidelines to correct deformities or disproportions.

Cranial variation in prehistoric human skeletal remains from the Marianas

Nonmetric cranial variation and facial flatness of the Pacific and circum-Pacific populations are investigated. The peoples of the Marianas, eastern Polynesia and Hawaii form a cluster and show affinities in terms of nonmetric cranial variation with the Southeast and East Asians rather than with the Jomon-Ainu, a view which is widely supported by others. Facial flatness analysis also indicates that Polynesians have different patterns of facial prominence as compared with the Jomon-Ainu. These results increase the difficulty of accepting the Jomon-Pacific cluster proposed by Brace and his coworkers. Although genetic and nonmetric cranial variation reveal relatively close relationships, the Mariana skeletons are markedly different in facial flatness and limb bone morphology from those of Polynesians.

History of migration studies in biological anthropology

The earliest studies of human biological factors in migration in which a clear research design was employed date back to the early 20th century in the United States. Maurice Fishberg's study of Jewish migrants, published in 1905, antedated the classic study of Franz Boas initiated in 1908. There have been two main approaches. The first approach examined the impact of migration in relation to changing environment and the importance of environmental plasticity. For example, Fishberg reported that migrants had offspring different in stature from themselves and with differences thought to be due to improvements in the environment, although some selection of genetically determined traits was suggested. Subsequently, a number of research designs have been used, ranging from Boas's simple design of sedente (nonmigrant) adults and children compared with first- and second-generation migrants; Shapiro's extension of this study in Japanese migrants to Hawai'i; Goldstein's four-fold comparison of Mexican sedentes and their offspring in Mexico, and migrants to the USA and their offspring in the USA; and Lasker's extension of Goldstein's Mexican study by including comparison of sedentes with returning emigrants. More sophisticated designs were used by Harrison and Baker in examining altitude effects and changes in subsistence and lifestyle during the 1960s through to the 1980s. The second approach has focused on the effect of migration on gene flow. For example, the clinal variation of ABO blood groups in Europe and Australia is generally purported to result from past migration, although increasing random migration for blood groups is likely to eliminate clinal variation. Migration has usually been considered from a spatial (geographic) perspective, but more recent studies have also investigated the impact of social or occupational movement (social mobility) alone, or in combination with geographic migration, and tested whether such movements are selective or random for a number of biological traits.

Observations on the history of Dutch physical stature from the late-Middle Ages to the present

In the late-Middle Ages and at the onset of the early modern period, the Dutch population was taller than in the first half of the 19th century. This inference is partially based on skeletal evidence, mainly collected by the Dutch physical anthropologist George Maat and his co-workers. A spectacular increase in Dutch heights began in the second half of the 19th century and accelerated in the second half of the 20th century. At the end of the 20th century, the Dutch became tallest in the world.

[Secular height trend: a literature review]

This paper presents a literature review of secular height trends. The principal topics included were definition of the phenomenon, use of historical data sets on height as an alternative approach for monitoring economic changes, the main theoretical explanations of the phenomenon, the beginning of military anthropometry, and past and current use in measuring secular height trends in recruits and children. The most important results showed that the positive secular trend can be attributed to environmental influences, especially improvements in health, economic, and social conditions. The mean reported rates in height increases varied with age, socioeconomic status, and country, so one must exercise caution in drawing inferences. World War II slowed the trend in several countries, including Brazil, but the trend was stronger in the post-war period than in the beginning of the century. Finally, we observed that data from military anthropometry are the most common source for estimating secular height trends.

Heights of U.S. Presidents: a trend analysis for 1948-1996

A Mann Trend Test yielded a trend in increased height for 10 U.S. Presidents from 1948-1996, consistent with previous findings that height is a heuristic for dominance.

1918: Three perspectives on race and human variation

Race was an important topic to the physical anthropologists of 1918, but their views were not monolithic. Multiple perspectives on race are expressed in the first volume of the AJPA, which encompass biological determinism and assumptions about evolutionary processes underlying the race concept. Most importantly, many of the significant alternative approaches to the study of human variation were already expressed in 1918. This paper examines race from the different perspectives of three key contributions to the first volume of the AJPA: papers from Hrdlicka, Hooton, and Boas. The meaning of race derived from this work is then discussed. Despite new understandings gained through the neo-Darwinian synthesis and the growth of genetics, the fundamentals of the modern discussions of race were already planted in 1918.

Habits, habitats, and heredity: a brief history of studies in human plasticity

There has long been controversy concerning the relative importance of environment and ancestry in determining the characteristics of living creatures including members of the human species. At the beginning of the present century most biologists and anthropologists seem to have assumed that environment had little or no effect upon our bodily traits. We inherited them. The studies of Franz Boas on Changes in bodily Form of Descendants of Immigrants cast doubts upon this assumption, and provoked considerable resentment. Since 1911, however, quite a few scholars have confirmed and elaborated upon the findings of Boas. At the same time, many other studies have demonstrated secular changes in bodily size and shape within quite a few different populations. The idea of bodily plasticity has therefore, by this decade, become quite acceptable. This paper recounts the historical sequence of events leading to the change in anthropological assumptions, mentioning the scholars whose work contributed to this important advance in scientific understanding.

Height cycles in the 18th and 19th centuries

Spectral analysis of the physical stature of Americans and Europeans in the 18th and 19th centuries reveals a cyclical structure similar to the traditional view of the business cycle: a longer cycle with a length of 7-10 years, and a shorter cycle with a length of 3-5 years. The correlation between height cycles and cycles of economic variables such as grain prices indicates an influence of economic cycles on physical stature. The phase shift between the cycles indicates that economic conditions are especially important for growth in infancy. In part, this result is due to a cumulative effect: born into a recessionary period, a child is likely to face several cyclical downturns during the growing years.

Lack of secular change in male adult stature in rural Mali (West Africa)

A study has been carried out on a sample of 2,158 male subjects between 20 and 50 years old representative of the rural Malian population (West Africa), and the results are compared with historic data obtained since 1885. This comparison suggests that there has been no modification in stature during this century. The analysis of each ethnic group does not show any disparity. Our results are in agreement with the theory that certain factors lead to the secular increase of stature in developed countries. These etiologic factors are not found in our West African population.

Advances in body composition: a 100-year journey

Knowledge of human body composition at the dawn of the twentieth century was based largely on cadaver studies and chemical analyses of isolated organs and tissues. Matters soon changed by the nineteen twenties when the Czech anthropologist Jindřich Matiegka introduced an influential new anthropometric method of fractionating body mass into subcutaneous adipose tissue and other major body components. Today, one century later, investigators can not only quantify every major body component in vivo at the atomic, molecular, cellular, tissue-organ, and whole-body organizational levels, but go far beyond to organ and tissue-specific composition and metabolite estimates. These advances are leading to an improved understanding of adiposity structure-function relations, discovery of new obesity phenotypes, and a mechanistic basis of some weight-related pathophysiological processes and adverse clinical outcomes. What factors over the past one hundred years combined to generate these profound new body composition measurement capabilities in living humans? This perspective tracks the origins of these scientific innovations with the aim of providing insights on current methodology gaps and future research needs.

Economic growth and the biological standard of living in China, 1880-1930

Recent scholarship has revised the once pessimistic view of the Chinese economy in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but controversy surrounds the distribution effects of economic growth. Did livelihoods improve? Who benefited from the growth? Which regions were better off? Past studies infer an improved standard of living based on sparse data for wages, the output of cotton textiles and movements in grain prices. Height data provide an additional measure of the change in welfare, specifically the biological standard of living. This paper draws on the health examination records conducted at various Chinese government enterprises and agencies during the 1930s and 1940s, and shows a modest improvement in this measure of human welfare in some regions of China from the 1890s to the 1920s.

Craniofacial affinities of Mariana Islanders and circum-Pacific peoples

Metric craniofacial variation was studied in a number of skeletal samples that originated from the Mariana Islands and circum-Pacific regions. The broad comparisons including East/Southeast Asians, Polynesians, Melanesians, and Australians confirm the relationships between Mariana Islanders and East/Southeast Asians on the one hand and Polynesians on the other hand. A transformation of Melanesians into western Micronesians is not supported. The result of the principal component analysis indicates that the cranial morphological pattern of Mariana people shares the intermediate characteristics between those of typical East/Southeast Asians and several groups falling as outliers to more predominant Asian populations.

The height of Tennessee convicts: another piece of the "antebellum puzzle"

Average height of the free population in the United States born in the mid-1830s began to decline despite growing per capita incomes. Explanations for this "antebellum puzzle" revolve around a possibly deteriorating disease environment promoted by urban agglomeration and increases in the relative price of protein-rich foods. However, several groups were immune to the effect, including members of the middle class, whose income was high enough, and increased enough to overcome the adverse developments and maintain their nutritional status. Although at the opposite end of the social spectrum, the height of male slaves also increased, as it was in their owners' interest to raise their slaves' food allotments. The height of Tennessee convicts, analyzed in this article, also increased in the late-1830s, being the third exception to the "antebellum puzzle." Mid-19th century Tennessee was integrated into interstate commerce in cotton and tobacco and experienced considerable movement of people who would have brought with them diseases from elsewhere, hence, it would have been integrated into the US disease pool, and the fact that heights did not decline in the 1830s is therefore an indication that the antebellum puzzle cannot be explained exclusively by the spread of diseases. Yet, Tennessee's economy was quite different to that of the rest of the country. Although it did export live swine to the South, these exports did not increase during the antebellum decades. Hence, Tennessee remained self-sufficient in pork, and consumption of pork did not decline. Thus, the evidence presented here is consistent with the economic interpretation of the "antebellum puzzle": self-sufficiency in protein production protected even the members of the lower-classes of Tennessee from the negative externalities associated with the onset of industrialization.

The anthropometric history of Argentina, Brazil and Peru during the 19th and early 20th century

This anthropometric study focuses on the histories of three important Latin American countries - Brazil, Peru, and Argentina - during the 19th century, and tests hypotheses concerning their welfare trends. While non-farm Brazil and Lima, Peru, started at relatively low height levels, Brazil made substantial progress in nutritional levels from the 1860s to the 1880s. In contrast, Lima remained at low levels. Argentinean men were tall to begin with, but heights stagnated until 1910. The only exception were farmers and landowners, who benefited from the export boom.

A brief history of body composition-from F. D. Moore to the new Reference Man

The history of applying body composition measurements to physiology is short, well less than a century. Progress has been phenomenal, on three different fronts: tracer dilution methods, neutron activation methods, and imaging methods. The latter have seen the most recent and exciting advances, and we have probably just "scratched the surface" for the futures of imaging, with spectroscopy showing great promise. However the physiological principles established in the 1950-1980 era are the reason we are here; measurements that lead to diagnosis, treatment, and understanding of disease mechanisms. The future is very bright.

Facial anthropometry in cleft patients: a historical appraisal

OBJECTIVE

To present a historical appraisal of the use of anthropological and cephalometrical facial soft tissue measurements in cleft patients.

DESIGN

The McDowell Indexes and a Medline search were used to trace references up to 1999. Also, references listed with chapters and articles on facial clefts were searched for anthropometrical studies. Twenty-six retrieved articles and book chapters on soft tissue anthropometry and 12 cephalometric publications on soft tissue measurements on radiographs and plaster casts of cleft patients were reviewed.

RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS

Since 1931, the facial soft tissue appearance of cleft patients has been evaluated by means of anthropometric and cephalometric techniques. Not all of the older studies were performed in a statistically correct fashion. Many of the conclusions of the studies overlap despite differences in technique of assessment. Most studies demonstrate the deficient growth of the maxilla and the deformities of the facial profile in cleft patients.

Stature and body-mass index among mid-nineteenth century south Chinese immigrants

Mean values of anthropometric measurements of 150 Chinese men, taken in 1864 or 1865, were recovered. The subjects had emigrated to California and were returning to China when they were measured. Comparisons were made to measurements of other Chinese men of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The men of this sample were much taller than those in other South Chinese samples, and about as tall as those in North Chinese samples.

The making of giants in a welfare state: the Norwegian experience in the 20th century

The population of Norway has become one of the tallest in the world even overtaking Americans during the course of the second half of the 20th century-not in terms of income, but in terms of physical stature and other indicators of biological welfare, such as longevity. This is also the case in several other west-European welfare states. Both income and physical stature have converged across Norwegian counties since the 1930s. We formulate the hypothesis that the west-European and Scandinavian welfare states perform well in mitigating spatial inequality in well being, in the sense that they translate income quite effectively into the biological well being of the population as a whole.