ABSTRACT
Had I been in London a century ago, I could have met Francis Galton, the founder of anthropometry, busy with his measurements of human growth and performance. Galton also had some intense experiences in other societies which he detailed in his Art of travel (1872) and other reports. In his account of an excursion in Namibia, he described ‘shifts and contrivances in hot climates’. Galton looked upon the Namibians as primitive people who were quite below the English whom Galton used as a base. This patently racist outlook is rejected by modern social scientists, but in Galton’s time it was taken for granted that preliterate people were inferior. None the less, I believe that Galton should be required reading for all cross-cultural psychologists. He was imaginative beyond anyone to be found today, developing finger-printing, the Galton whistle, composite photography, etc.
