Abstract: A somatological survey on 232 adults of Lahu nationality, including 127 males and 105 females, living in Yunnan was carried out in 1995. The results are as follows: Comparing the major mean values of measurements of Lahu with those of Han and other nationalities living in Yunnan, we found that Lahu have the same features as other modern minorities living in Yunnan. They have narrower head breadth, face breadth and bigonial breadth but wider mouth breadth than Han nationality. Lahu nationality belongs to yellow race judged from their morphological features.
Lahu nationality is the descendants of the Qiang nationality of ancient time.The results from the cluster g raph of kinship matrix show that Lahu nationality is closer to Achang and Lishu nationalities than to other nationalities in physical character.

Key words: Somatoscopy; Anthropometry; Lahu nationality; Yunnan province