Research Items

Abstract

BLOOD CHARACTERISTICS AND RACE.—The first number (Jan.-Feb.) of vol. 36 of Natural History, the publication of the American Museum of Natural History, is devoted to the study of the present races of man, and contains, in addition to descriptive articles of primitive peoples, several papers dealing with anthropological questions of more general bearing. Among these is a review by Mr. R. Otten-burg of the present position of the study of the characteristics of the blood as a test of race relationship. The suggestion put forward by Dr. Hirschfeld and his wife in 1918 that the constituents known as A and B originated in Europe and Asia respectively, no longer holds good in the light of further and more extended observation. It is found that there are races in Africa, Asia, Australia, and America which show as high a proportion of A to B as do the North Europeans, the supposed exceptionally high proportion of A in the last named being the basis of Hirschfeld's conclusion. Six fundamental types are to be recognised according to the proportion of the three more common blood-groups. The European type is characterised by a relatively high proportion of Blood-group II., while two of the Asiatic types, the Indo-Manchurian and the Afro - South Asiatic on the fringes of the Indian Ocean, have more of Blood-group III. The Pacific American type, consisting almost entirely of Australian and American Indians, shows an enormous preponderance of Blood-group I. The Hunan type is remarkable in that it shows an unusual proportion of Group IV., which in every other type is the lowest. The figures seem to indicate the existence of transition races formed by the mingling of two adjacent races. The Jews apparently do not form a homogeneous group, but tend to assimilate to a local group, e.g. Berlin Jews to German, Spanish Jews to Arab, Rumanian Jews to Hungarian, and so on. The gypsies, however, correspond to the Indo-Manchurian type, which seems significant in view of their tradition of non-intermarriage and Central Indian origin.