Anterior femoral curvature: Its probable basis and utility as a criterion of racial assessment

Abstract

Stewart ('62) and Walensky ('65) indicated that while the metrical expression of anterior femoral curvature alone will not always differentiate between Whites, American Negroes, and North American Indians, it was very useful as a racial criterion in combination with observed traits such as torsion, pilastry, and cross-sectional shape. Seven additional North American Indian groups reported here, representing both pre-Columbian and post-contact times, upheld the observation that anterior femoral curvature is a useful feature of racial assessment for Negroes, Whites and North American Indians. However, two South American groups studied (Ecuador and Peru) were only slightly more curved than American Negroes, and were less curved than Whites and North American Indians. The metrical expression of anterior femoral curvature therefore is not a useful feature of racial assessment for separating these two South American Indian groups from Whites and American Negroes. Femora of American Negro and White individuals with low ponderal indices were found to be less bowed than the norms for their race; individuals with high ponderal indices were more bowed than the norm for their race. The assumed genetic basis for expression of anterior femoral curvature suggested by Stewart ('62) and Walensky ('65) seems to be a feature of human plastic response to body weight rather than to temporal, clinal, postural or equestrian influences.