Analysis of Resemblance between Parents and Children: Genetic Study on the Anthropological Measurements

Abstract

Thanks to the recent development of human genetics, we now have a lot of characters which are known to be hereditary in accordance with Mendelian laws. Indeed, it is certain that many characters depend on the existence of dominant, recessive, isostatic or multiple genes, but about such quantitative characters as anthropological measures, what we can do at best is either to test the fitness of hypothesis that may depend, for example, on multiple genes or calculate the correlation coefficients from the data of parents and their children. The fact that genetics has been directing their effort more to the experimental studies than to the problems of population genetics, seems to be a reason that the normal quantitative characters of man, who is inadequate to genetic study because of his short duration of life, few progenies and impossibility of random mating, are not clarified sufficiently in geneticcontext. Statistical data of anthropological characters, however, are increasing and some of them can be examined on the principles of genetics. If they are analysed from the stand point of population genetics, much light will be thrown upon the problems of human heredities. We can already enumarate such good examples as estimations of mutation ratio and the effect of consanguineous marriage on the distribution of malign genes.