"If the holocaust comes and a small tribe deep in the New Guinea forests are the only survivors, almost all of the genetic variation now expressed among the innumerable groups of four billion people will be preserved."

Racial indicators

Anders Retzius invented the cephalic index, which differentiated people with round heads (those with high ratios of skull width to length) from those with long heads (those with low ratios of skull width to length). Long-headed (dolichocephalic) populations were interpreted to be more advanced than round-headed people (brachycephalic).

Paul Broca (round headed himself) used quantitative methods of determining races according to phrenological (the study of skulls for the purpose of determining personality traits and talents of individuals and entire ethnic populations) assumptions. Invented instruments used by craniometrists in the science of anthropometry (the science of measuring bodies).

Other possible means of dividing the human family (taxonomy) include: sickle-cell gene providing more resistance to malaria; enzyme lactase making it possible to digest the milk sugar lactose; body shape giving ability to inhibit or encourage heat loss; sex appeal determinants such as size of breasts and buttocks, among of body hair, nipple color; fingerprints (arches, loops, and whorls) which provide no survival or sexual function at all.

"Color pigment is to be found in the dermis, and is a substance called melanin. Melanin is usually black, although some granules of it are as light as bright yellow. The color of the skin is determined not by the color of the pigment so much as by the quantity of it - the same coloring matter, in different amounts, colors the skin of all the races. The same pigments also color the eye and the hair."

"In a study of Swedish army recruits of forty years ago, . . . five 'Nordic traits' were taken, and it was discovered that less than ten percent of the recruits had all the traits. . . .Similar studies were made in Switzerland. Six percent of the Swiss were 'pure' Alpine racial types. No more than six percent fitted the stereotype . . . ."

"Dividing people by the amount of melanin in their skin and then asserting that this correlates with intelligence or behavior patterns make no more sense than suggesting that intelligence correlates with one's blood type - which certainly constitutes a more fundamental physical difference. As Erika Vora notes, 'About 95% of DNA molecules are identical for all human beings. The remaining 5% are responsible for all the differences in appearance . . . . The differences that do exist between [races] are few and for the most part superficial.'"