ABSTRACT
The origins of physical anthropology as a discipline in Poland date back to the late 18th and early 19th centuries, when anthropological issues were first made the subject of lectures and texts published by scholars belonging to the university circles in Vilnius. First of all, one should mention the outstanding medical doctor, naturalist and philosopher Je˛drzej S´niadecki (1768-1838) who authored two works on man: Teoria jestestw organicznych (‘Theory of Organic Beings’) and O fizycznym wychowaniu dzieci (‘On Physical Education of Children’) (Malinowski 1985). In 1807, botanist Józef Jundziłł introduced to Polish science the definition of anthropology after Johann Friedrich Blumenbach as a discipline investigating the biology of man in relationship to his biocultural environment (Piontek 1997). Eleven years later the first Polish anthropological textbook was published under the title Antropologia czyli o własnos´ciach człowieka fizycznych i moralnych (‘Anthropology – on the Physical and Moral Properties of Man’) by medical doctor Józef Jasin´ski, who also came from the Vilnius province. Interest in anthropology surfaced also in other centres of scientific study, which was reflected in an 1824 work published by Wawrzyniec Surowiecki, a professor of linguistics at the University of Warsaw. His S´ledzenie pocza˛tków narodów Słowian´skich (‘Enquiry into the Origin of the Slavic Nations’) touched upon, among others, the geographical differentiation of the physical features of the Slavic peoples (Jasicki et al. 1962). The second half of the 19th century saw the rise of anthropology to the status of a fully-fledged
scientific discipline in Poland. It was taught at the Jagiellonian University (JU) in Cracow, first by Józef Majer, and then by Izydor Kopernicki, who also established the first Chair of Physical Anthropology at a Polish university. It was the second Chair of Anthropology in Europe, after the Parisian one, which had been established by Paul Broca (Bielicki et al., 1985). In 1874, in Cracow, the Anthropological Commission was founded (at the Academy of Learning, the predecessor of today’s Polish Academy of Sciences), which invited all people interested in anthropology, and which was responsible, for example, for collecting data on the population of south-eastern Poland. Beginning in 1877, the Commission published its own journal entitled Zbiór wiadomos´ci do antropologii krajowej (‘Collection of Studies for National Anthropology’), the first Polish periodical devoted to anthropology, which later changed its name toMateriały Antropologiczne, Archeologiczne i Etnograficzne (‘The Anthropological, Archaeological and Ethnographic Materials’) (Piontek 1997).
