Riddle-me-ree: what makes

variations in humans?

Mention race, in the sense of a class of persons with some common feature or in respect of an ethnic stock, and, more often than not, people will think of unjustifiable discrimination, slavery, or even genocide.

Nevertheless, even without attempting the daunting, perhaps impossible, task of defining what race is, one has to recognise that all human groups do not look alike.

There are, indeed, many startling differences between groups; sometimes, like in Papua New Guinea, even within one country.

How does one group of people come to be different from another? If groups are different with respect to one sort of physical character, eg blood types, are they likely to show similar differences in other physique? Can one predict the pattern or degree of physical differences among groups if the current pattern of inter marriage among them is known? And do linguistic or historical relationships among groups closely reflect the biological ones?

In Pattern-s of Human Variation, Professor Friedlaender tries to answer these questions in respect of one small but highly-diverse set of villages on Bougain ville Island.

In 1967, he surveyed 18 villages belong ing to the Nasioi, Eivo, Rotokas, Siwai, Uruava and Torau language groups 2311 people, with 49.4 per cent of them un der 1 5 years of age. (In that year the cor responding percentage in Australia was 29.1.) Thirty years earlier Douglas Oliver collected certain demographic, physical' and other data in the area, and Friedlaender and those who assisted him, herefore, had some useful material to start with.

The aim of this book is to help us un derstand the forces operating on genetic /ariation. The surveyed groups have, until recently, lived in isolation; there was ■datively little miscegenation, so that any genetic mutations are due to factors very Afferent from those obtaining in, say, Port Moresby or, to take it on a larger scale, \ustralia.

Using techniques of demography, blood

genetics, anthropometry (measurements of

icight, weight, arm length, nose, head,

;tc), dermatoglyphics (finger and hand

>rints) and dental variation, the author ried to establish the degree of relationship imong villages of a group of related

)eoples by reference to their language,

geographical position and patterns of novemenl, and then to ask whether the ;enetic differentiation among these illages reflects that history of elationship.

If it does not, then it must be assumed that natural selection, operating differently in different localities, has contributed significantly to the genetic variation. If it does, then one can assume that only migra tion and random population differentia tion have been involved.

Friedlaender found that even in this small area of Bougainville there is a rich human biological diversity. Some traits such as hand and finger prints differ little among the villages but vary enormously from one individual to the next. In con trast, many traits, such as skin colour, hair form, and eye colour, are monotonously uniform over the area. “If this is true for the village and small language area in Melanesia”, he concludes, “it is that much more certain for larger, more inclusive groupings of humans. People will probably persist in the naming of racial groups bas ed on simple physical and even social at tributes, but, at the very least, they should be made aware how grossly simplified any such taxonomic system has to be, and the diversity which a name such as ‘Melanesia’ masks”.

In the foreword, Professor Lewontin mentions that the great virtue of the study of human population is that it introduces history into evolution.

For pre-literate societies or societies which have only recently become literate, information obtained through studies like this one or work in certain other dis

ciplines, eg archaeological excavations

(with those involved rightly called pre

historians), recording of oral history

(genealogies, folk tales, myths, etc, passed on by word of mouth), is often of great

value when it comes to writing their history. And there are many good reasons, pride in citizenship being one of them, why new nations need a written history.

Another argument in favour of this kind of study is that evolutionary variation is one of the least understood of biological phenomena. Genetic variations reflect natural selection, especially in relation to environment, such as adaptation to sunlight, resistance to infectious diseases.

As other factors such as language, mode of dress, eating habits, are far more suscep tible to change than physical characteristics, eg blood group, the study of one of the few relatively isolated and minimally mobile groups remaining in the world is most pertinent. If you belong to the Judaeo-Christian tradition, the Tower of Babel is part of your world; and even if you do not, you will most likely agree that human ‘progress’ has been stimulated by

human diversity.

Patterns of Human Variation adds to the fund of human knowledge, even though we do not, at this stage, know exactly how to use the findings. Few readers of PIM will wish to spend $24.50 on what is a highly-specialised study, and most will find it difficult to grasp more than the threads running through this book’s preface, in troduction and synthesis. The main pur pose of this review is to show how work in a very specialised field can be of impor tance to something concerning everyone.

Harry Jackman

(PATTERNS OF HUMAN VARIATION. By J. S.

Friedlaender. Published by Harvard University Press; ob tainable in Australia from Australia S New Zealand Book Co, Sydney. 5A24.50).