Page:The World's Most Famous Court Trial - 1925.djvu/239

Rh and Malays, and of their social organizations. He was a member of various expeditions to the American southwest, excavating the ruined cities of cliff dwellers in the southwest and carried on investigations among the Pueblo and Navajo Indians. From 1907 to 1912 he was special investigator for the Philippine Bureau of Science, codifying the laws and making a study of the social, economic and mental life of the uncivilized tribesmen. During the last three years of connection with the field museum he was also lecturer in anthropology at Northwestern university. He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, fellow of the American Geographical society, member of the council of this association and now one of the vice-presidents of the American Anthropological association, and member of the Social Research council of this association. He is author of four monographs and various scientific papers dealing with the folk lore, physical types, social, religious and economic life of the primitive tribes of the Philippine islands.)

Anthropologists accept evolution as the most satisfactory explanation of the observed facts relating to the universe, to our world and all life on it. They hold that evidence abundantly justifies us in believing that development has been from the simple to the complex and that present forms of life, including man, have been produced from earlier existing forms, but through immense periods of time.

The field of the anthropologist is man, man's body, and man's society, and in this study he finds himself working side by side with the biologist and the geologist. For the study of man's body he has worked out a set of instruments and has selected a series of points for observation, by means of which he can accurately describe each individual of a group, the length, breadth and height of head, the facial proportions, the length of limbs and so on.

In this way the anthropologist determines the average of a group or tribe or race, and to determine its normal variation. Anything strikingly beyond the normal at once becomes the subject of inquiry to determine its cause. In addition to the mathematical description there are added observations—color of skin, shape of teeth, the form of the hair, and many others.

On man's skeleton these observations are even more exact and are so definite that given a single skull or skeleton it is possible to tell with considerable certainty the age, sex and race of the individual, while for a series of skeletons the results are definite. The skeletons tell much of man's history, for the articulation of the bones and the lines of attachment of the muscles reveal how he walked, how he held his head and many other details of his life. It also reveals the fact that man presents many variations difficult to explain without referring to similar conditions found in the animal world. To gain further light on these variations the anthropologist works with the anatomist and comparative anatomist and he quickly finds that every human being of today possesses many muscles for which there is no apparent use, such muscles are those behiind the ears, those going to the tail, the platysma—a muscle going from the chin to the Clavicle. These are but a few among many which today are functionless in man, but are still in use by certain animals. Going to the human embryo we find these vestiges of an earlier condition much more developed while others appear for a time and then vanish before birth. Such a case is the free tail possessed by every human embryo, a few weeks before its birth.

It is difficult to explain the presence of these useless organs in man unless we believe that sometime in his development they were in use.

This study also reveals the fact that man closely resembles certain members of the animal world in every bone and organ of his body. There are differences, but they are