The long journey from anatomical anthropology to variant anatomy

Abstract

Introduction. Anatomical anthropology is a field of study that emerged in the last third of the 19th century to study the variability of human organ structure, considering body type and racial, ethnic, and social affiliation.

The purpose of this study was to review the history of the development of anatomical anthropology with a focus on the stages that led to the formation of the concept of typical and variant anatomy.

Materials and methods. This paper presents an essay on the development of anatomical anthropology. Publications from 1857 to 2024 were reviewed. To assess the place occupied by studies of bone structures, internal organs, and physique in modern Russian journals of anatomical profile, an analysis of 654 articles for 2019-24 was conducted.

Results and discussion. In the early stages of the formation of anthropology as a natural science direction (1860-70s), its connections with normal anatomy were strong. At that time, when studying the variability of the structure of organs and systems in different groups of people, the terms "anatomical anthropology" and "soft tissue anthropology" were adopted. 

As sciences evolved in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the variability of the structure of soft tissues became primarily a subject of study for medical anatomists, and anthropology departments were organizationally removed from the medical faculties of universities. Anatomical anthropology has found its place in medical morphology research. The works of V.N. Shevkunenko made it possible to move from the previous unsystematic accumulation of data on the variability of morphological structures to their systematization and analysis based on a single concept of typical and variant anatomy. This direction has been preserved and developed in medical universities in Russia.

Conclusion. Strengthening interdisciplinary interactions is a characteristic of current biological anthropology research. Anthropologists should pay attention to not only the latest high-tech methods but also the theoretical principles and methods of typical and variant anatomy, which allow them to obtain valuable results in classical morphological research. © 2025. This work is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 license

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