Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
Development Team
Prof. Anup Kumar Kapoor
Principal Investigator
Department of Anthropology, University of Delhi
Module Id 17
Learning Outcomes
1. The student will come to know about the history and earlier classification of somatotypes and
the development of Sheldons classification.
2. The learner will also be able to comprehend the M.4 Deviation of Richard Parnell, factors
which affect somatotyping and further works after Sheldon and Parnell.
1.0 Introduction
Somatotypes refer to the outer-most, morphological forms of human bodies whose classification is based on
appearance characteristics and change according to physical constitution, environment, disease, nutrition and
exercise. Somatotypical studies have contributed to our understanding of diversity of human builds and been
applied to specific diseases, osteoporosis, relations between musculoskeletal system and ageing, exercise
programs for individual athletes, and potentials of athletes. In fact, Sheldon developed the idea of somatotype in
his search to find the relationship between human physique and behavior. Somatotypes are affected by
environmental factors such as occupation, nutrition, housing, medical support, and lack of primary health
medicine. They are important in our daily life for their useful application in industries of electronics and clothes
as well as anthropology, bio-engineering, medicine, and sports. Especially, in the area of physical therapy,
somatotype studies related to thermal and integumentary physical therapy, musculoskeletal system exercise
treatment, obesity control physical therapy, and sports physical therapy were diligently pursued.
Experts of medicine, philosophy and psychology found that human somatotypes were related to personality or
physical characteristics and classified somatotypes into various forms. This study explored the changes and
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Parnells effort was to describe a short physical anthropometric method for obtaining with the following
purposes (Singh & Mehta, 2009):
1. To provide objective guidance on the dominance of somatotype components in a healthy person.
2. To estimate the Sheldonian somatotype objectively and as accurately at least as the agreement achieved
between experts in photoscopic somatotyping.
3. To make an estimate of womens somatotype possible although in the absence of a published reference
somatotype data estimate cannot be compared.
4. To reduce on cost, labour and time while doing somatotypes.
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