Boas and

Plasticity - the
Challenge?
In todays world of Anthropology, skull morphology raises many topics of high debate
and has done so for a long time. The most recent research in the field of quantitative variation
within skull shape and size concludes that the major influences for variation are solely
environmental and genetic - according to the Smithsonian 1 and other major publications. The
amount of genetic vs environmental influence is one of the topics of which has been heated.
Franz Boas back in the early 1900s had concluded that the morphology of ones cranial variation
had a significant correlation to natural/environmental influences. Through his immigration study,
he took into account things such as looking at a child at the age of 15 who's parents had
immigrated before 15 years ago and a child at the age of 15 of who's parent had immigrated
greater than 15 years ago.2 It was clear to Boaz that there had been a significant difference in the
cranial morphology of the children. He would use this to show plasticity of the cranium - that is,
that the skulls index could change based on environmental influence - in and out of utero. This
theory of plasticity is being challenged today by the likes of Corey Jantz and Richard Sparks. In
this essay we will examine the claims of Jantz and Sparks - which is that Boas was wrong in his
assertion about environmental plasticity being a significant factor in skull morphology - and
what impact that it may have, if any.
1 http://osteoware.si.edu/guide/craniometrics

2 American Anthropology, Volume 14 (1912) pg. 531

Boas and
Plasticity - the
Challenge?
Modern defenders of Boaz's finding's in support for cranial plasticity are highly critical of
the work of modern day Morphologists in the field of social studies and forensic settings. By
thoroughly measuring a skull though, some morphometricians believe they can correctly identify
its owner's continent of ancestral origin with up to 90 percent accuracy: They can state that a
skull comes from a person whose forebears originated in Africa, Europe, or Asia. 3 Corey Jantz
and Richard Sparks, as physical anthropologists, (Corey Jantz is one of the 8 Anthropologists
suing the Federal Government in the Kennewick Man case) defend the claim that heritability and
not environment is the primary cause for skull variation. Despite their own admittance in their
paper, "A reassessment of human cranial plasticity: Boas revisited" published by PNAS, that
research on this topic has shown major influences of changing environmental conditions on
human stature and body-fat patterning4, they contend that it is not the case, based on their own
reanalysis of Boas' study, that cranial development shows such a pattern.
In Jantz' and Sparks' research paper, they contend that through modern forms of analysis
not available to Boas in his time, that they have shown the faulty nature of his conclusions
3 http://news.psu.edu/story/140739/2003/05/01/research/boas-bones-and-race Charles Furgus (2003) "Boas, Bones
and Race"

4 http://www.pnas.org/content/99/23/14636.full
Corey Jantz and Richard Sparks (2002): "A reassessment of human cranial plasticity: Boas revisited"
Section.

Discussion

Boas and
Plasticity - the
Challenge?
through their reanalysis using these more "modern" methods. In their reanalysis, they use a set of
t tests that were limited to a standardization of sex and not age. They also limit the amount of t
tests from 448 possible tests to 156, due to what they claim a "small sample size," effectively
cutting out 2/3s of Boas' sample. In a follow up paper by Clarence Gravlee, H. Russell Bernard,
and William R. Leonard (in response to Jantz and Sparks) they are very critical of this type of
analysis and its strength of determination within such a small sample.5
Jantz and Sparks go on to use as another example - the relative time of when the children
had immigrated here and subtracted the time. "We calculated environmental exposure as the
difference between immigration year and 1910 for the European-born children and as age for the
American-born children."6 This was never Boas' intent. As referenced in the first paragraph of
this essay, Boas' interest was in the exposure time of the mother to the environment. In this way,
he would be able to see the environmental impacts from what he understood as "in utero"
environmental impacts as well the impact from vital stages of the child's development.

5
Gravlee, C. C., Bernard, H. R. and Leonard, W. R. (2003), Boas's Changes in Bodily Form: The
Immigrant Study, Cranial Plasticity, and Boas's Physical Anthropology. American Anthropologist, 105:
326332.

6
http://www.pnas.org/content/99/23/14636.full
Corey Jantz and Richard Sparks (2002): "A reassessment of human cranial plasticity: Boas revisited"
Section.

Methods

Boas and
Plasticity - the
Challenge?
Gravlee, Bernard and Leonard are also critical of Sparks' and Jantz' use of heritability to
make predictions or to use in such a study. They contend that heritability is a relative measure of
variability and the use of the word in this context confuses its meaning. An example that they
give is this - "Consider, for example, an estimate of heritability for human height. If the specific
population we are looking at has little variation in diet, disease, and other environmental factors
that can affect height, then the environmental variation will be low. As a result, the heritability
will be high. If, however, the environmental variation changes, resulting in greater differences
within the population in terms of diet and other factors, then the environmental variation
increases and heritability will be lower. Heritability, then, is a relative measure that can vary
from one population to the next. It is not a measure of the extent to which genetics controls a
trait; it is only a relative measure of variation."7
They continue to evaluate Sparks' and Jantz' reanalysis as nothing novel but that their
results are drastically similar with their own study along with the study that Boas had conducted,
but that they largely differed in their conclusions based on a faulty assumption of what Boas'
taught. According to Gravlee and bunch, the idea of creating an either/or case out of Genetics
and Environment is a faulty assumption. Sparks and Jantz had taken the fact that different
ethnicities having different ranges of differentiation in response to the environment was proof
7
Gravlee, C. C., Bernard, H. R. and Leonard, W. R. (2003), Boas's Changes in Bodily Form: The
Immigrant Study, Cranial Plasticity, and Boas's Physical Anthropology. American Anthropologist, 105:
pg. 328

Boas and
Plasticity - the
Challenge?
against plasticity and a proof for heritability being the main cause of changes in morphology,
whereas Gravlee, Bernard and Leonard demonstrate that - "such patterning is to be expected for
a plastic phenotype that is the product of interactions between genotype and the environment
during development."8
In other words, environment and genetics play a role in the morphology of cranial traits which only goes to show the significance of the biological plasticity of the skull. Skull shape and
even size can be and is influence by environment, from diet to relationships and other factors. In
a modern study with prairie deer mice, it was demonstrated that when fed a differential diet
between soft foods and hard foods, those with the hard foods diet, "showed a slight anterior shift
in the incisor tips, a narrowed zygomatic plate, a reduction in size of the masseteric tubercles, an
overall decrease in skull size in lateral view, and an increase in overall size in ventral view." 9
Admittedly, the authors of the study state that there are disparities between their own results and
those of others before them. They contemplate that these differences may be a result of the free
8
Ibid pg. 329

9
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8755340?report=abstract Myers P1, Lundrigan BL,
Gillespie BW, Zelditch ML (1996) Phenotypic plasticity in skull and dental morphology in the prairie deer mouse
(Peromyscus maniculatus bairdii).

Boas and
Plasticity - the
Challenge?
range, active mice that they used and the inbred, highly inactive mice of the other studies. If this
is a factor, it goes to further prove the plasticity of the skull in showing that different genetics
react differently to the environment. They also make comment that they had taken into account
familial relationships between the mice, as to not over dramatize the effects of the change in diet.
Relationships between family members having a possible factor in the morphological changes
would only enhance the idea of environmental plasticity.
One of the main criticisms that Cravlee, Bernard and Leonard give of Sparks and Jantz is
that they had attributed a stance to Boas that he had never held. Boas himself never suggested, as
Sparks and Jantz state, that "the cranium can be shaped primarily by environmental forces." He
(Boas) had stated himself that although the changes in environment were small, they were real.
When Sparks and Jantz make the assertion that "In America, both Blacks and White have
experienced significant change in cranial morphology over the past 150 years but have not
converged to a common morphology as might be expected if environmental plasticity plays a
major role,"10 they made a vital error in their understanding of Boas' ideas. Boas had said himself
- "It would be saying too much to claim that all the distinct European types become the same in
America, without mixture, solely by the action of the new environment... Although the longheaded Sicilian becomes more round-headed in New York and the round-headed Bohemian and
Hebrew more long-headed, the approach to a uniform general type can not be established,
10
Ibid. Pg. 330

Boas and
Plasticity - the
Challenge?
because we do not know yet how long the changes continue and whether they would all lead to
the same result. I confess I do not consider such a result as likely, because the proof of the
plasticity of types does not imply that the plasticity is unlimited. The history of the British types
in America, of the Dutch in the East Indies, and of the Spaniards in South America favors the
assumption of a strictly limited plasticity. Certainly our discussion should be based on this more
conservative basis until an unexpectedly wide range of variability of types can be proved."11
As pointed out by Cravlee, Bernard and Leonard, as is often the case in analyzing
anything with a significant past, ( in anthropological studies and others) the historical context of
Boas' findings must be taken into account when assessing the significance of his work. Through
his Immigration Study, he was able to break the common perception of the time - that cranial
proportions were a fixed set in 'race' and that they weren't malleable. Boas' findings that showed
that change occurred at all were a breakthrough in the way we viewed change in human beings.
That he was able to show that environment had an effect on its own, was a step in the direction of
removing racial sciences that he loathed so much from the equation to looking more at biology,
language and culture - taking into account how these aspects affect all aspects of human
development - not just through skull morphology and body morphology but the ways that
societies have progressed and developed throughout history.

11
Franz Boas 1912 "Changes in the Bodily Form of Descendants of Immigrants." Pg 76

Boas and
Plasticity - the
Challenge?
Sparks and Jantz claim to not make any claims that Boas had made deceptive or illcontrived conclusions. Prior to making this claim however, they do assert that it is possible that
Boas' disdain for the scientific racism of the day my have influence his conclusion of drastic
change.12 It is worth noting here that Jantz is one of the physical anthropologists in charge or
working on Kennewick man. He believes that through the study of the morphology of
Kennewick man's skull it can be proven that other's may have migrated to America by other
methods, such as by canoe. He states that from what he was able to observe, Kennewick man
most closely resembles the Ainu (a people thought to be among the first inhabitants of Japan). 13
Charles Fergus who wrote about Jantz and Sparks study noted that "Some scientists, including
David Thomas in Skull Wars, have cited Boas's head-form studies in contending that
environmental factors could have caused skull shape to change significantly over 9,000 years.
Such evolution implies that Native Americans could have descended directly from humans like
Kennewick Man and the 15 to 20 other early North American skeletons, all of them 9,000 to

12
http://www.pnas.org/content/99/23/14636.full
Corey Jantz and Richard Sparks (2002): "A reassessment of human cranial plasticity: Boas revisited"
Section.

Discussion

13

http://news.psu.edu/story/140739/2003/05/01/research/boas-bones-and-race Charles Furgus (2003) "Boas, Bones

and Race"

Boas and
Plasticity - the
Challenge?
12,000 years old, that possess similar skulls."14 This goes to show that it is also possible that
Jantz and Sparks are influenced by their own line of work - for them, if they can show a greater
influence of genetics, they can prove certain theories of their own.
In my opinion, Boas was right in his ill feelings towards the race based science of his
day and because of his work, we have come a far way in the last century in our understanding of
human nature and development. As has been demonstrated in quoting the man Boas himself, he
had never asserted that it was as dramatic of a change as Sparks and Jantz accredit to him
asserting, but only that it was significant. I believe that through this essay that it has been well
demonstrated how and why it is significant. As Gravlee and others stated in their conclusion - "If
they don't recognize the small but real differences in head form between U.S. - and foreign-born
descendants of immigrants as significant, then it is because we have come to take for granted
Boas's revolutiony proof of human biological plasticity - proof that stands reevaluation..."15

14

Ibid.
15

Gravlee, C. C., Bernard, H. R. and Leonard, W. R. (2003), Boas's Changes in Bodily Form: The
Immigrant Study, Cranial Plasticity, and Boas's Physical Anthropology. American Anthropologist, 105:
pg. 330
9