Racial Differences in Palm and Sole Configurations II. - Palm and Sole Prints of Liberian Natives

Abstract

WHEN, about ten years ago, my early studies of human palm and sole prints began to reveal the great individual differences in the configuration of the palmar and plantar friction ridges, there naturally suggested itself the hope that differences, sufficiently distinctive to serve as racial criteria, could be found in the representatives of the different human races. My first observations along this line were made, naturally, upon American negroes, by the help of a set of prints collected at Providence, R. I., by Miss Inez Whipple (Mrs H. H. Wilder); soon after which came the unusual opportunity of studying prints of the Maya-Quichis, afforded me through the kindness of Dr A. M. Tozzer of Harvard University, who collected them during his first visit to Yucatan. The results of those studies, which, to a very limited extent, afforded an opportunity for the comparison of three distinct human varieties, were published in the American Anthropologist for April-June, 1904, and yielded fairly satisfactory results. The next work on this subject was that of Schlaginhaufen,' on the people of Farther India, and this was followed by a paper by Loth2 on Poles from the vicinity of Warsaw. So far as I am able to learn, this completes the literature on the subject. In my first paper, even with the small collection of prints at my disposal, certain rather definite results were obtained, such as the high percentage of occurrence of the thenar pattern in Maya