Abstract
FOR many years now it has been established beyond doubt that man is one of the terminal products of organic evolution, and that he achieved his humanity at a comparatively recent date in geological time. He was an animal dominated by the primitive instincts of the wild creature before he was a man capable of controlling his own destiny by his intellect. He must be studied as an animal before he can be properly appreciated and appraised as a human being. The subject which is concerned with the study of man from this point of view is physical anthropology, and it may perhaps be claimed that, of all the subdivisions of anthropological science, physical anthropology is the most fundamental, since it concerns itself with the physical nature of man, and the physical nature of man underlies ultimately all those intellectual, æsthetic, and social activities which supply the material for other branches of anthropological study.
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CLARK, W. Scope and Limitations of Physical Anthropology*. Nature 144, 804–807 (1939). https://doi.org/10.1038/144804a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/144804a0
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