Anthropometry

Anthropometry (from Greek ἄνθρωπος anthropos, 'human', and μέτρον metron, 'measure') refers to the measurement of the human individual. An early tool of physical anthropology, it has been used for identification, for the purposes of understanding human physical variation, in paleoanthropology and in various attempts to correlate physical with racial and psychological traits. Anthropometry involves the systematic measurement of the physical properties of the human body, primarily dimensional descriptors of body size and shape. Anthropometry (from Greek ἄνθρωπος anthropos, 'human', and μέτρον metron, 'measure') refers to the measurement of the human individual. An early tool of physical anthropology, it has been used for identification, for the purposes of understanding human physical variation, in paleoanthropology and in various attempts to correlate physical with racial and psychological traits. Anthropometry involves the systematic measurement of the physical properties of the human body, primarily dimensional descriptors of body size and shape. Today, anthropometry plays an important role in industrial design, clothing design, ergonomics and architecture where statistical data about the distribution of body dimensions in the population are used to optimize products. Changes in lifestyles, nutrition, and ethnic composition of populations lead to changes in the distribution of body dimensions (e.g. the rise in obesity) and require regular updating of anthropometric data collections. The history of anthropometry includes and spans various concepts, both scientific and pseudoscientific, such as craniometry, paleoanthropology, biological anthropology, phrenology, physiognomy, forensics, criminology, phylogeography, human origins, and cranio-facial description, as well as correlations between various anthropometrics and personal identity, mental typology, personality, cranial vault and brain size, and other factors. At various times in history, applications of anthropometry have ranged vastly—from accurate scientific description and epidemiological analysis to rationales for eugenics and overtly racist social movements—and its points of concern have been numerous, diverse, and sometimes highly unexpected. Auxologic is a broad term covering the study of all aspects of human physical growth. Human height varies greatly between individuals and across populations for a variety of complex biological, genetic, and environmental factors, among others. Due to methodological and practical problems, its measurement is also subject to considerable error in statistical sampling. The average height in genetically and environmentally homogeneous populations is often proportional across a large number of individuals. Exceptional height variation (around 20% deviation from a population's average) within such a population is sometimes due to gigantism or dwarfism, which are caused by specific genes or endocrine abnormalities. It is important to note that a great degree of variation occurs between even the most 'common' bodies (66% of the population), and as such no person can be considered 'average'. In the most extreme population comparisons, for example, the average female height in Bolivia is 142.2 cm (4 ft 8.0 in) while the average male height in the Dinaric Alps is 185.6 cm (6 ft 1.1 in), an average difference of 43.4 cm (1 ft 5.1 in). Similarly, the shortest and tallest of individuals, Chandra Bahadur Dangi and Robert Wadlow, have ranged from 1 ft 9 in (53 cm) to 8 ft 11.1 in (272 cm), respectively. Human weight varies extensively both individually and across populations, with the most extreme documented examples of adults being Lucia Zarate who weighed 4.7 pounds (2.1 kg), and Jon Brower Minnoch who weighed 1,400 pounds (640 kg), and with population extremes ranging from 109.3 pounds (49.6 kg) in Bangladesh to 192.7 pounds (87.4 kg) in Micronesia.