Posts

Showing posts from May, 2021

The man who measured skulls of living people

Image
Edgar Thurston (1855-1935), who was Superintendent of the Madras Government Museum from 1885 to 1908, was also perhaps the most flamboyant of the lot. He was a champion of the science of anthropometry and eyewitness accounts from the period testify that he would invite visitors to the anthropometric section of the museum to have their skulls measured. Today, Thurston is remembered for the monumental seven volume Castes and Tribes of Southern India (1909) that he compiled with the assistance of K. Rangachari. Though science has invalidated many of the anthropomoteric techniques he used, the work is still frequently consulted by scholars for the wealth of information it contains. He also authored a work on the omens and superstitions of southern India. As part of his research work into his Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Thurston took skull measurements of a few individuals from every caste/tribe. Based on these sample measurements, he would calculate cephalic indices (which i