644 American Anthropologist [70, 19681 proved the malaria hypothesis; however, the hy- pothesis has not been disproved either.

Professor Livingstone is to be congratulated on his effort, for such a compilation is vital for the testing of theories in human population ge- netics. Hopefully, new editions will be printed frequently. Taiwan Aborigines: A Genetic Study of Tribal

Variations. CHEN KANO CHAI. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1967. xvi, 238 pp., bibliography, 40 figures, index, 58 tables. $9.00.

Reviewed by EUGENE GILES Harvard University

In a period of less than six months in 1962-1963, Chai and two qualified assistants obtained anthropometric measurements, anthro- poscopic observations, finger and palm prints, systolic and diastolic blood pressures, PTC taste sensitivity determinations, and intelligence scores on representatives of the Atayal, Saisiat, Bunun, Tsou, Paiwan, Rukai, Puyuma, and Ami (and intelligence scores only on the Yami) of Taiwan. In presenting his material, Chai gives an engagingly candid view of his op- erations in the field and a summary of demo- graphic data on Taiwans aboriginal population (numbering about 218,000) from Chinese and Japanese language sources. He provides an ex- tensive bibliography of physical anthropological research on these people in addition to refer- ences cited in the text. All this, plus a compre- hensive and sophisticated analysis of data, makes his book useful, welcome, and impor- tant.

The volume is organized around a presenta- tion of the results of each type of test. The an- throposcopic evidence (notable for the discus- sion of eyefolds), the blood pressures, the der- matoglyphic patterns (no ridge counting was at- tempted), and the PTC tests are competently and fully reported, although little justification is made for the choice of tests-not a new failing in physical anthropology. Children were admin- istered the Elementary School Intelligence Test, type 11, forms A and B-a pictorial test consist- ing of figure discrimination, Agure substitution, and block counting discrimination developed by the Ministry of Education of the Republic of China. Not surprisingly, Chai found intelligence scores correlated positively with apparent tribal acculturation. Chai is at his best with the 19 anthropometric measurements on approximately 100 adult subjects of each sex in each aborigi- nal group (the sample size is not always made clear in this section). He describes and evalu- ates his analyses of the measurements singly and jointly by multivariate discriminant func-

tion and Mahalanobis D statistic. With these statistical tools he perceives a correlation be- tween the biological associations and the geo- graphical distributions that makes sense.

Some remarks might be questioned: why, for example, is it particularly surprising that the D analysis indicates a closer relationship between the Rukai and the Puyuma than between the Ami and the Puyuma? The average distance be- tween the tested villages of the former pair a p pears less than that between the latter pair and, similarly, some linguistic evidence suggests the same alignment. Just how effective as gene flow barriers are the mountains and the often con- siderable dialect differences within the group- ings Chai uses?

Chai was not well served by his editor. The text is often marred by unfortunate words and errors (e.g., populations contaminated geneti- cally, contradictions between Table 1 and Fig- ure 1, a conclusion [p. 2091 that intelligence tests were administered to 2600 school children in nine tribes when the figure should be 1704) and by oversimplification and careless expres- sion (e.g., In classifying living races, one school uses blood groups and the other fossils and head and body forms. Poor understanding of these genes [sic] is a basic source of contro- versies and discrepancies regarding studies of racial relationships [pp. 7-81).

Chai never makes clear the relevance of his discussion of the historic Chinese invasions of Taiwan. This space might better have been de- voted to summarizing archeological and linguis- tic evidence for the origins and interrelations of the Taiwan aborigines. Other criticisms could easily be made, but these and the foregoing strictures should not be allowed to outweigh the merit of the book: a problem-oriented, imagi- native, and productive treatment of essentially traditional physical anthropological data gath- ered from an understudied population. Dentition o f Meroitic, X-Group, and Christian

Populations from Wadi Halfa, Sudan. DAVID LEE GREENE. Foreword by Gordon W. Hewes. Preface by Jesse D. Jennings. (An- thropological Papers, Number 85, January 1967; Nubian Series Number 1.) [Salt Lake City]: Department of Anthropology, Univer- sity of Utah, 1967. xi. 71 pp., abstract, 2 appendices, bibliography, 12 figures, 1 map, 16 tables. $4.00 (paper).

Reviewed by PATRICIA SMITH Chicago, Illinois

The reports of the University of Colorados Nubian Expeditions are being published under the general title of The Nubian Series of the University of Utah Anthropological Papers.

Book Reviews 64 5 Dr. Greene's monograph, the first of the series, deals with the biological relationship of three culturally distinguishable groups from the North Sudan, employing the comparative fre- quencies of genetically determined dental traits as criteria.

The concept and method of approach are clearly expounded and provide a good illustra- tion of the potential value of dental studies in anthropological investigations of this nature but reveal, only too clearly, the limitations of pres- ent-day knowledge.

The author undertakes to redefine some of the presently used dental terminology and es- tablish the nature of right-left concordance, sexual dimorphism, and interrelatedness of some of the commoner dental traits before pro- ceeding to the subject of his paper-variability in remains identified as Meroitic, X-group, and Christian.

In view of the wide range of topics covered, it is hardly surprising to find that Dr. Greene has committed some of the solecisms he so carefully warns against, defining mesial as that aspect of the tooth nearest the midsagittal plane, and buccal as that nearest the cheek; and dentine and cementum should surely be in- cluded with pulp as specialized connective tis- sue.

More indefensible is the statistical treatment of the data. Although he himself states that the pooling of data from different groups eliminates the possibility of uncovering intergroup varia- tions, he proceeds to do just this when attempt- ing to establish independence of inheritance for the traits utilized. All of the sixteen traits cho- sen are assigned equal weight as indicators of racial distance, despite the fact that three relat- ing to root fusion may not be genetically deter- mined at all, and others, such as 5-cusped first molars, are remarkably constant for widely sep-

arated groups. Lastly, the small size of his sam- ples results in confidence intervals covering so wide a range as to preclude the possibility of discriminating between all but the most widely differing groups. This is, perhaps, best illustrated by a glance

at some comparative data, namely the fre- quency of Carabelli's trait as defined by Dr. Greene, in four widely differing groups: Pima Indians of Southwest Arizona, Tarahumarans from Central Mexico, Greenland Eskimo, and Karluk Eskimo from Kodiak Island, Alaska (unpublished data, A. A. Dahlberg) (see Table below).

The table illustrates how the male-female ra- tio and sample size affect the conclusions. It fur- ther demonstrates the similarity of frequency of this trait in groups that are widely separated as breeding isolates, even though all form part of the Mongoloid group of peoples.

The final equation of race with breeding population seems somewhat open to discussion. And, supposing that G. Elliot Smith's hypothe- sis of a Christian group from Syria (The Arch- eological Survey of Nubia for 19074) is cor- rect, I would wonder just how different the Syrian and Meroitic groups would be with respect to the traits enumerated here, and yet I would propose that they do represent distinct populations.

Despite its deficiencies, this monograph should provide a valuable model for future work. Indeed the deficiencies themselves indi- cate the need and direction of future studies. The reports to be published on other aspects of the anthropological findings should provide an interesting comparison with the conclusions re- corded here.

Primates: Comparative Anatomy and Taxon- omy. Volume VI: Catarrhini Cercopitheco-

Karluk Greenland Pima Tarahumara

Incidence Frequency Range

Incidence Frequency Range

Incidence Frequency Range

18/22 0.82

0.74-0.90

12/13 0.92

0.854.99

30/35 0.85

0.79-0.91

Mule (right only) 8/14 33/37 0.57 0.89

0.44-0.70 0.84-0.94

Female (right only) 7/10 34/36 0.70 0.94

0.56-0.84 0 . 9 0 . 9 8

Male plus Female (right only) 52/82 67/73 0.'63 0:91

0.58-0.68 0.88-0.94

50/50 1 .oo 1.00

32/33 0.96

0.93-0.99

82/83 0.98

0.98-0.98