Abstract
A LETTER to The Times of March 13 puts forward on behalf of the Royal Anthropological Institute proposals for a comprehensive survey of the racial history and physical constitution of the inhabitants of Britain-a matter in which action is long overdue. It is a remarkable fact, and one which was not generally appreciated until necessity arose during the War, that so little should be known of the physical characters of the British population as a whole. The racial character of the British peoples in prehistoric and early historic times, as preserved in skeletal remains in museums, has received attention from time to time, but piecemeal; and more or less extended investigations of the present population have been carried out in parts of Scotland, Wales, England and Ireland; but no organised attempt has been made to correlate this material or to extend it systematically. The proposals now put forward provide for both the examination of the skeletal material preserved in museums and anatomical collections and the measurement by trained observers of groups of the existing population all over the country. Arrangements will also be made for the reduction and digestion of the material when collected, and for its publication.
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Racial History of Britain. Nature 135, 463–464 (1935). https://doi.org/10.1038/135463d0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/135463d0