Race & medicine
What was the human Wallace Line?
Open access · cc by · source: Europe PMC
Besides the famous faunal break, Wallace drew a human line that later physical anthropologists, trained in medicine, tried to quantify—and that haunted West Papua politics.
Key findings
The line moved on the map but the Malay/Papuan binary stuck. Anthropometry could not lock difference to the cephalic index. Indonesia both used and rejected European racial classification when convenient.
Methodology
The article tracks Forsters and Dumont d’Urville, Wallace’s maps, craniology around Timor, cephalic-index fieldwork, and Sukarno-era arguments over whether Papuans belonged with Indonesia.
Limitations
This is a history of a racial-spatial idea, not a genetic proof of two peoples. It does not resample living populations.
How this study connects
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