Hair weight as a racial criterion

Abstract

Topinard remarked that it is easy to confuse the fineness of hair with softness and the coarseness with harshness, and indeed well-cared-for straight or wavy hair often appears fine while crisp Negro hair appears coarse.Because of the marked differences in the size of hair from various racial groups some workers have attempted to give a numerical value to this by measurement of hair shaft diameters. Pruner-Bey, Latteux, Frederic and others have given tables showing the variation in certain races. Bernstein and Robertson in 1927 were the first to attempt to separate races by the weight of a given length although the technique as a type of hair study was suggested by Friedenthal in 1912. The results obtained by Bernstein and Robertson apparently have justified subsequent investigators in including weight among the other characteristics of racial hair samples. It would be simple indeed if the fineness or coarseness of the hair could be reduced to some convenient mathematical expression such as the weight of a given length. However, before we can assume valid conclusions from these findings, certain factors intimately related to hair weight must be considered. As Bernstein and Robertson pointed out and Trotter later verified by statistical correlations, the one most important factor in differences of weight is the size of the hair shaft. Bernstein and Robertson also believed that variations in the amount of pigment and air influenced the weight, that these were related to race, and that therefore the weight 'Part I1 of a study of human hair under the direction of Dr. Fay-Cooper Cole, department of anthropology, The University of Chicago.

Genetic basis of hair histomorphological variables

“…Duggins and Trotter (1950) in a cross-sectional study of American white children, Trotter et al (1956) in three island populations of Northern Australia, Banejee (1965) in different tribal populations of India, and Bhattacharjee (1975) in a Bengalee adult population reported sex differences in the incidence of medulation. Bernstein and Robertson (1927) observed sex differences in hair weight among Europeans; this was later confirmed by Trotter and Dawson (1934) and Kneberg (1936). Banerjee (1963) and Ghose (1969) studied hair weight in relation to sexual variation and found that the differences were not significant.…”

A Twin Study of the Structure of Human Hair Medulla

“…For microsco pic examination the whole length of each strand was scanned under 10 x ocular and 0.25-and 0.65-mm objectives. Following Kneberg [1936] 100 strands from each individual were examined. The diffculty of following the fourfold classification of Wynkoop [1929] was mentioned earlier by Banerjee [1963] whose modified threefold classification of medullary types: absent, discontinuous and continuous was also found not suitable in the present study due to almost total lack of the continuous1 type.…”