Craniometry is the technique of measuring the bones of the skull. It is distinct from phrenology, the study of personality and character, and physiognomy, the study of facial features. However, these fields have all claimed the ability to predict traits or intelligence. They were once intensively practised in anthropology, in particular in physical anthropology in the 19th century. Theories attempting to scientifically justify the segregation of society based on race became popular at this time, one of their prominent figures being Georges Vacher de Lapouge (1854-1936), who divided humanity into various, hierarchized, different "races", spanning from the "Aryan white race, dolichocephalic" (from the Ancient Greek kephalê, head, and dolikhos, long and thin), to the "brachycephalic" (short and broad-headed) race. Such attempts to relate the form of the skull to a particular character or intelligence are today unanimously denounced by the scientific community as pseudoscience, while historians study the influence and caution science provided for racially divisive ideologies in the late 19th and early 20th century, at the height of the New Imperialism period. On the other hand, craniometry and the study of skeletons were used to demonstrate Charles Darwin's theory of evolution first expressed in The Origin of Species (1859).The cephalic index
Swedish professor of anatomy Anders Retzius (1796-1860) first used the cephalic index in physical anthropology to classify ancient human remains found in Europe. He classified brains into three main categories, "dolichocephalic" (from the Ancient Greek kephalê, head, and dolikhos, long and thin), "brachycephalic" (short and broad) and "mesocephalic" (intermediate length and width).
These terms were then used by Georges Vacher de Lapouge (1854-1936), one of the pioneers of scientific theories in this area and a theoretician of eugenics, who in L'Aryen et son rôle social (1899 - "The Aryan and his social role") divided humanity into various, hierarchized, different "races", spanning from the "Aryan white race, dolichocephalic", to the "brachycephalic" "mediocre and inert" race, best represented by the "Jew [sic]." Between these, Vacher de Lapouge identified the "Homo europaeus (Teutonic, Protestant, etc.), the "Homo alpinus" (Auvergnat, Turkish, etc.), and finally the "Homo mediterraneus" (Napolitano, Andalus, etc.) Vacher de Lapouge became one of the leading inspirations of Nazi anti-semitism and Nazi ideology [1]. His classification was mirrored in William Z. Ripley in The Races of Europe (1899).
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