Phothiworn 1

Kanlayanee Phothiworn
Evelyn Susna Galives
BIOL 1615
November 15, 2016
Summary
Impact of work performance on body proportion in Blacksmiths: A somatometric
analysis
Although all humans who are on this earth belong to the specie Homo sapiens, they are not
alike. Morphologically and genetically there are some differences. These differences in
proportion occur from birth to death, influenced by a number of factors producing differences in
skeletal proportions between different geographical areas of living and even in health and
disease. Consequently, many scientific disciplines try to quantify those changes to give them
some meaning. That is, through somatometric analysis the measurement of human beings could
be used as a basic tool for biological anthropology. The need to measure and organize human
body development began with the military by the mid-eighteenth century. The need of large-scale
classifying and identifying men within military units and the practices for assessing people
coming into the military service has to be established. Later, during the nineteenth century the
change of childrens rights mandated the regulation of legislation for government aid policies. In
the early 70s, the first works are recognized in the spirit of modern historical anthropometrics.
The stature among French recruits varied with their socio-economic characteristics and was
documented. Eventually medicine began using it to determine whether physiological,
anthropometric, and other skill test results could discriminate between healthy, unhealthy, and the
factors that influenced it.
Dr. AjitPals professional expertise is recorded as: epidemiological nutritional anthropometry,
somatotyping techniques, body composition assessment, nutritional status analysis, growth

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standards & percentiles, craniofacial anthropometry, and osteometry. He published several
articles describing somatometric variations as a consequence of traditional occupations.
The measurement of the human body for use in anthropological classification and
comparison of some peoples body involved in certain occupations offers evidences about the
developmental adaptations these people experienced in reaction to a variety of work influences
They found that the anthropometric measurements of Blacksmiths indicated skinfold
thicknesses of the biceps were more developed than the thickness seen on their thighs. They also
found bilateral differences on right and left side of skinfold thickness of triceps is maximum
while in the forearms it is minimum. Similar situations between the maximum value of
asymmetry found in biceps (14.08%) in comparison with the suprailiac skin thickness difference
is minimum (5.97%). Bilateral differences were observed between thigh circumference where the
maximum is 3.16 while the minimum in calf circumference difference is only 1.83%. The article
also shows a maximum relative bilateral asymmetry (RIA) between right and left side in upper
arm and femur lengths.
The results indicated that blacksmiths who experience hard physical labor are heavily
endomorphic body type (Mean 5.5) with larger appearance and heavier fat accumulation with
little muscle definition. They are followed by mesomorphic (Mean 3.39) with a larger bone
structure and low body fat percentage where the labor is easier. Last is the ectomorphic (Mean
2.99), who are below the average weight and skinny appearance when the labor is easiest. About
the body mass index (BMI), according to the table 4 on Body Mass Index -classification of Black
smiths criteria, 42.5% of the subjects were classified as grade-1: overweight range and 5.51%
suffer from grade-1 thinness. Waist Hip Ratio (WHR) classification results showed that although
BMI results placed most subjects in the normal to grade-1 overweight range only 7% of them

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were under the risk of developing cardiovascular disease or even a congenital heart defect.
Anthropometric parameters indicated that the upper regions of the body were more developed if
compared to lower regions of the body, for example in the thighs and calves. In general, subjects
were discovered to be more developed in the upper body contrasted to the lower body and the
right side of the body compared to the left (on those subjects who were right handed).
The sample of individuals was limited to 200 individuals. It appeared that the researchers
faced some resistance from the potential sampled subjects. Since the study is limited to a region
in India, the mesomorphic considerations could be a consequence of genetic factors as well as
occupational. That part is not well developed in the research, especially when heart diseases are
being considered more prevalent among these Blacksmith workers.

Work Cited

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AjitPlal Singh, S.P. Singh and Jeevanjot Sekhon. Impact of Work Performance on Body
Proportions in Blacksmiths: A Somatometric Analysis. Human Biology Review (ISSN
2277 4424). 26 April 2012. Original scientific paper (Singh et al. pp. 138-150). Accessed
15 November 2016.