The comparative study of the dimensions of the human body and their change with time. The main dimensions examined include weight, height, skinfold thickness, mid-arm circumference, relative limb lengths, and waist-to-hip ratios. Standard charts exist to allow a comparison of an observed anthropometric value with the range of normality within a group (eg the growth of a child). The study also sheds light on human evolution, nutrition, and climatic adaptability, and influences the design of many products, such as clothes, car seats, and space capsules.
Anthropometry (Greek ανθρωπος, man, and μετρον, measure, literally meaning "measurement of humans"), in physical anthropology, refers to the measurement of living human individuals for the purposes of understanding human physical variation.
Today, anthropometry plays an important role in industrial design, clothing design, ergonomics, and architecture, where statistical data about the distribution of body dimensions in the population are used to optimize products. Changes in life styles, nutrition and ethnic composition of populations lead to changes in the distribution of body dimensions (e.g., the obesity epidemic), and require regular updating of anthropometric data collections.
History
Bertillon, Galton, and criminology
The French savant, Alphonse Bertillon (b. He found by patient inquiry that several physical features and the dimensions of certain bones or bony structures in the body remain practically constant during adult life.
There were eleven measurements:
1 - Height
2 - Stretch: Length of body from left shoulder to right middle finger when arm is raised
3 - Bust: Length of torso from head to seat, taken when seated
4 - Length of head: Crown to forehead
5 - Width of head: Temple to temple
6 - Length of right ear
7 - Length of left foot
8 - Length of left middle finger
9 - Length of left cubit: Elbow to tip of middle finger
10 - Width of cheeks
11 - Length of left little finger.
From this great mass of details, soon represented in Paris by the collection of some 100,000 cards, it was possible, proceeding by exhaustion, to sift and sort down the cards till a small bundle of half a dozen produced the combined facts of the measurements of the individual last sought.
Anthropometrics was first used in the 19th and early 20th century in criminalistics, to identifying criminals by facial characteristics. Bertillon's system originally measured variables he thought were independent—such as forearm length and leg length—but Galton had realized were both the result of a single causal variable (in this case, stature).
Bertillon's goal was to use anthropometry as a way of identifying recidivists—what we would today call "repeat-offense" criminals. Bertillon's hope was that through the use of measurements of the body, all information about the individual criminal could be reduced to a set of identifying numbers which could be entered into a large filing system.
Bertillon also envisioned the system as being organized in such a way that even if the number of measurements was limited the system could drastically reduce the number of potential matches, through an easy system of body parts and characteristics being labeled as "small", "medium", or "large".
Anthropometry, however, gradually fell into disfavour, and it has been generally supplanted by the superior system of finger prints.
Measures inaccurately taken, or wrongly read off, could seldom, if ever, be corrected, and these persistent errors defeated all chance of successful search.
Anthropology and anthropometry
During the early 20th century, anthropometry was used extensively by anthropologists in the United States and Europe. The wide application of intelligence testing also became incorporated into a general anthropometric approach, and many forms of anthropometry were used for the advocacy of eugenics policies. During the 1920s and 1930s, though, members of the school of cultural anthropology of Franz Boas also began to use anthropometric approaches to discredit the concept of fixed biological race. Anthropometric approaches to these types of problems became abandoned in the years after the Holocaust in Nazi Germany, who also famously relied on anthropometric measurements to distinguish Aryans from Jews.
During the 1940s anthropometry was used by William Sheldon when evaluating his somatotypes, according to which characteristics of the body can be translated into characteristics of the mind. This use of anthropometry is today also outdated.
Modern anthropometry and biometrics
Anthropometric studies are today conducted for numerous different purposes. Human populations exhibit similar climatic variation patterns to other large-bodied mammals, following Bergmann's rule, which states that individuals in cold climates will tend to be larger than ones in warm climates, and Allen's rule, which states that individuals in cold climates will tend to have shorter, stubbier limbs than those in warm climates. On a microevolutionary level, anthropologists use anthropometric variation to reconstruct small-scale population history. For instance, John Relethford's studies of early twentieth-century anthropometric data from Ireland show that the geographical patterning of body proportions still exhibits traces of the invasions by the English and Norse centuries ago.
Outside academia, scientists working for private companies and government agencies conduct anthropometric studies to determine what range of sizes clothing and other items need to be manufactured in.
The US Military has conducted over 40 anthropometric surveys of U.S. Military personnel between 1945 and 1988, including the 1988 Army Anthropometric Survey (ANSUR) of men and women with its 240 measures.
Today people are performing anthropometry with three-dimensional scanners. The subject has a three-dimensional scan taken of their body, and the anthropometrist extracts measurements from the scan rather than directly from the individual.
Notes and references
DOD-HDBK-743A, Anthropometry of US Military Personnel (1991) ISO 7250: Basic human body measurements for technological design, International Organization for Standardization, 1998. ISO 8559: Garment construction and anthropometric surveys — Body dimensions, International Organization for Standardization, 1989. ISO 15535: General requirements for establishing anthropometric databases, International Organization for Standardization, 2000. ISO 15537: Principles for selecting and using test persons for testing anthropometric aspects of industrial products and designs, International Organization for Standardization, 2003. ISO 20685: 3-D scanning methodologies for internationally compatible anthropometric databases, International Organization for Standardization, 2005.Historic References
Lombroso, Antropometria di 400 delinquenti (1872) Roberts, Manual of Anthropometry (1878) Ferri, Studi comparati di antropometria (2 vols., 1881-1882) Lombroso, Rughe anomale speciali ai criminali (1890) Bertillon, Instructions signalétiques pour l'identification anthropométrique (1893) Livi, Anthropometria (Milan, 1900) Fürst, Indextabellen zum anthropometrischen Gebrauch (Jena, 1902) Report of Home Office Committee on the Best Means of Identifying Habitual Criminals (1893-1894)Resources
Books
Bodyspace - Stephen Pheasant - A classic review of human body sizes.
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