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96-596: Negroid (less commonly called Congoid ) is an obsolete racial grouping of various people indigenous to Africa south of the area which stretched from the southern Sahara desert in the west to the African Great Lakes in the southeast, but also to isolated parts of South and Southeast Asia ( Negritos ). The term is derived from now-disproven conceptions of race as a biological category. The concept of dividing humans into three races called Caucasoid , Mongoloid , and Negroid (originally named "Ethiopian")

192-484: A common descent for all humans. The negation of monogenism is polygenism . This issue was hotly debated in the Western world in the nineteenth century, as the assumptions of scientific racism came under scrutiny both from religious groups and in the light of developments in the life sciences and human science . It was integral to the early conceptions of ethnology . Modern scientific views favor this theory, with

288-468: A "group of people belonging to the same family and descended from a common ancestor". It also introduces the first use of the word "race" as a term referring to an "ethnic group" in 1572. An earlier but etymologically distinct word for a similar concept was the Latin word genus meaning a group sharing qualities related to birth, descent, origin, race, stock, or family; this Latin word is cognate with

384-662: A child, normally good-natured and cheerful, but subject to sudden fits of emotion and passion during which he is capable of performing acts of singular atrocity, impressionable, vain, but often exhibiting in the capacity of servant a dog-like fidelity which has stood the supreme test." Since the 1920s, Franz Boas and his school of anthropology at Columbia University were criticising the concept of race as politically dangerous and scientifically useless because of its vague definition. In 1950, UNESCO published their statement The Race Question . It condemned all forms of racism , naming "the doctrine of inequality of men and races" among

480-453: A controversy about the correctness of Morton's measurements has been going on since the late 1970s, modern scientists agree that the volume of the skull and intelligence are not related. Darwin 's landmark work On the Origin of Species , published in 1859, eight years after Morton's death, significantly changed scientific discourse on the origin of humans. British biologist Thomas Huxley ,

576-783: A critical threshold from a more brutal to a more sapient state." He thought the Caucasoid race had passed the threshold to Homo sapiens about 200,000 years earlier than the Negroid race, thus giving segregationists in the southern US the opportunity to make political use of his thesis in their fight against the civil rights movement . Although Coon publicly assumed a neutral stance regarding segregation, some fellow anthropologists accused him of being racist because of his "clear insensitivity to social issues". In private conversations and correspondence with his cousin Carleton Putnam ,

672-574: A different orthography, and write this name Kághó. The last-named nation was followed by a people called Tekrúr. The people of Ghánah declined in course of time, being overwhelmed or absorbed by the Molaththemún (or muffled people; that is, the Morabites), who, adjoining them on the north towards the Berber country, attacked them, and, taking possession of their territory, compelled them to embrace

768-612: A historian of the 3rd century Han dynasty in the territory of present-day China describes barbarians of blond hair and green eyes as resembling "the monkeys from which they are descended". (Gossett, pp. 4) Dominant in ancient Greek and Roman conceptions of human diversity was the thesis that physical differences between different populations could be attributed to environmental factors. Though ancient peoples likely had no knowledge of evolutionary theory or genetic variability, their concepts of race could be described as malleable. Chief among environmental causes for physical difference in

864-415: A larger debate on evolution. Polygenism, in its biological form, asserted that different races corresponded to different species . Monogenism, therefore, attracted interest to the biological assertion of "specific unity", or single species theory of humankind. An argument brought against monogenism in its environmentalist form was that it involved a Lamarckian hypothesis on inheritance. This debating point

960-433: A logically and comprehensive fashion were known as classifiers and systematists. This process was a new trend in science that served to help answer fundamental questions by collecting and organizing materials for systematic study, also known as taxonomy . As the study of natural history grew, so did scientists' effort to classify human groups. Some zoologists and scientists wondered what made humans different from animals in

1056-541: A medieval idea that there was a hierarchical structure of life from the most fundamental elements to the most perfect, began to encroach upon the idea of race. As taxonomy grew, scientists began to assume that the human species could be divided into distinct subgroups. One's "race" necessarily implied that one group had certain character qualities and physical dispositions that differentiated it from other human populations. Society assigned different values to those differentiations, as well as other, more trivial traits (a man with

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1152-459: A myth. He wrote that black skin was due to the hot climate of sub-Saharan Africa and not due to the descendants of Ham being cursed. Independently of Ibn Khaldun's work, the question of whether skin colour is heritable or a product of the environment is raised in 17th to 18th century European anthropology. Georgius Hornius (1666) inherits the rabbinical view of heritability, while François Bernier (1684) argues for at least partial influence of

1248-435: A prominent supporter of white supremacy , he went much further, helping Putnam "hone his arguments against integration". Coon's evolutionary approach was criticized on the basis that such sorting criteria generally do not produce meaningful results, and that evolutionary divergence was extremely improbable over the given time-frames. Monatagu (1963) argued that Coon's theory on the speciation of Congoids and other Homo sapiens

1344-471: A second wind after the recognition of the antiquity of man , and the almost simultaneous publication of Darwin's theory of evolution. Once the biblical timescale of 6000 years was dropped, the objections to environmentalist monogenism were weakened, since the "unity and migration" hypothesis of the origins of human diversity could operate over tens of thousands of years. Since polygenists such as Hunt and Crawfurd were opponents of Darwin, monogenism became part of

1440-775: A significant role in the physical appearance of different peoples. He writes, "the forms and dispositions of mankind correspond with the nature of the country". He attributed physical and temperamental differences among different peoples to environmental factors such as climate, water sources, elevation and terrain. He noted that temperate climates created peoples who were "sluggish" and "not apt for labor", while extreme climates led to peoples who were "sharp", "industrious" and "vigilant". He also noted that peoples of "mountainous, rugged, elevated, and well-watered" countries displayed "enterprising" and "warlike" characteristics, while peoples of "level, windy, and well-watered" countries were "unmanly" and "gentle". The Roman emperor Julian factored in

1536-473: A single couple (Adam and Eve), and in his defense Agassiz often used what now sounds like a very "modern" argument about the need for independence between science and religion; though Agassiz, unlike many polygeneticists, maintained his religious beliefs and was not anti-Biblical in general. In the context of ethnology and anthropology of the mid-19th century, Agassiz's polygenetic views became explicitly seen as opposing Darwin's views on race, which sought to show

1632-527: A strong advocate of Darwinism and a monogenist, counted ten "modifications of mankind", dividing the native populations of sub-Saharan Africa into the "Bushmen" of the Cape region and the "Negroes" of the central areas of the continent. By the end of the 19th century, the influential German encyclopaedia , Meyers Konversations-Lexikon , divided humanity into three major races called Caucasoid , Mongoloid , and Negroid , each comprising various sub-races. While

1728-477: A strong chin was assumed to possess a stronger character than men with weaker chins). This essentially created a gap between races by deeming one race superior or inferior to another race, thus creating a hierarchy of races. In this way, science was used as justification for unfair treatment of different human populations. The systematization of race concepts during the Enlightenment period brought with it

1824-400: A whole forms one single species , and points out that the transition from one race to another is so gradual that the distinctions between the races presented by him are "very arbitrary". Blumenbach counts the inhabitants of North Africa among the "Caucasian race", grouping the other Africans as "Ethiopian race". In this context, he names the " Abyssinians " and " Moors " as peoples through which

1920-769: A yellow race. Thomas Huxley (1825–1895) wrote one paper, "On the Geographical Distribution of the Chief Modifications of Mankind" (1870), in which he proposed a distinction within the human species ('races'), and their distribution across the earth. He also acknowledged that certain geographical areas with more complex ethnic compositions, including much of the Horn of Africa and the India subcontinent, did not fit into his racial paradigm. As such, he noted that: "I have purposely omitted such people as

2016-549: Is a term applied to debate and research on the biblical accounts, both of the early patriarchs and migration after Noah's Flood , to explain the diverse peoples of the world. Monogenism as a Bible-based theory required both the completeness of the narratives and the fullness of their power of explanation. These time-honored debates were sharpened by the rise of polygenist skeptical claims; when Louis Agassiz set out his polygenist views in 1847, they were opposed on biblical grounds by John Bachman , and by Thomas Smyth in his Unity of

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2112-548: Is anyone who does not discern a reason for these differences among the nations, but rather declaims that all this so befell spontaneously, how, I ask, can he still believe that the universe is administered by a providence?" European medieval models of race generally mixed Classical ideas with the notion that humanity as a whole was descended from Shem , Ham and Japheth , the three sons of Noah , producing distinct Semitic ( Asiatic ), Hamitic ( African ), and Japhetic ( Indo-European ) peoples. Some critics have alleged that

2208-543: Is clear and unambiguous: no." Historical race concepts The word "race", interpreted to mean an identifiable group of people who share a common descent , was introduced into English in the 16th century from the Old French rasse (1512), from Italian razza : the Oxford English Dictionary cites the earliest example around the mid-16th century and defines its early meaning as

2304-871: Is not a single physical characteristic, including skin color, which all the Negro stars have in common which definitely classify them as Negroes." Today, suggestions of biological differences in athletic ability between racial groups are considered unscientific. The Oxford Dictionary of English states: "The term Negroid belongs to a set of terms introduced by 19th-century anthropologists attempting to categorize human races. Such terms are associated with outdated notions of racial types, and so are now potentially offensive and best avoided." In his 2016 essay Evolution and Notions of Human Race , Alan R. Templeton discusses various criteria used in biology to define subspecies or races. His examples for traits traditionally considered to be racial include skin colour: "[T]he native peoples with

2400-610: The Australoid race and the Capoid race in some cases the Mongolian (East Asian) and American collapsed into a single group. Among the 19th century naturalists who defined the field were Georges Cuvier , James Cowles Pritchard , Louis Agassiz , Charles Pickering ( Races of Man and Their Geographical Distribution , 1848). Cuvier enumerated three races, Pritchard seven, Agassiz twelve, and Pickering eleven. The 19th century saw

2496-457: The Hominidæ descend from a single precursor, secondly, that their differences are comparatively slight, or not sufficiently pronounced to be regarded as specific. These assumptions, Keane argued, would justify putting race on the same footing as the botanical concept of variety . He described his own views as "unorthodox monogenesis". Monogenism was compatible with racial discrimination , via

2592-876: The Mohammedan religion. The people of Ghánah, being invaded at a later period by the Súsú, a nation of Blacks in their neighbourhood, were exterminated, or mixed with other Black nations." Ibn Khaldun suggests a link between the rise of the Almoravids and the decline of Ghana. However, historians have found virtually no evidence for an Almoravid conquest of Ghana. Scientists who were interested in natural history, including biological and geological scientists, were known as " naturalists ". They would collect, examine, describe, and arrange data from their explorations into categories according to certain criteria. People who were particularly skilled at organizing specific sets of data in

2688-479: The " Hamites " of northern Africa were seen as Caucasoid , " Australians ", " Melanesians ", and " Negritoes " were seen as Negroid sub-races, although living outside the African continent. The only sub-races attributed to Africa were the "African Negroes" and the " Hottentots ". The justification for racist Jim Crow laws was provided by pseudo-scientific opinions on "negro" psychology like those expressed by

2784-528: The "Ethiopian race" gradually "flows together" with the "Caucasian race". The development of Western race theories took place in a historical situation where most Western nations were still profiting from the enslavement of Africans and therefore had an economical interest in portraying the inhabitants of sub-Saharan Africa as an inferior race. A significant change in Western views on Africans came about when Napoleon 's 1798 invasion of Egypt drew attention to

2880-657: The "four quarters" of the globe as the basis for providing labels for human differences. The four subgroups that Bernier used were Europeans, Far Easterners, Negroes (blacks), and Lapps. As noted earlier, scientists attempted to classify Homo sapiens based on a geographic arrangement of human populations. Some based their hypothetical divisions of race on the most obvious physical differences, like skin color, while others used geographic location, shape, stature, food habits, and other distinguishing characteristics to delineate between races. However, cultural notions of racial and gender superiority tainted early scientific discovery. In

2976-486: The 18th century, scientists began to include behavioral or psychological traits in their reported observations—which traits often had derogatory or demeaning implications—and researchers often assumed that those traits were related to their race, and therefore, innate and unchangeable. Other areas of interest were to determine the exact number of races, categorize and name them, and examine the primary and secondary causes of variation between groups. The great chain of being ,

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3072-579: The 9th century, Al-Jahiz , an Afro-Arab Islamic philosopher , attempted to explain the origins of different human skin colors , particularly black skin , which he believed to be the result of the environment. He cited a stony region of black basalt in the northern Najd as evidence for his theory. In the 14th century, the Islamic sociologist Ibn Khaldun , dispelled the Babylonian Talmud' s account of peoples and their characteristics as

3168-766: The Abyssinians and the Hindoos, who there is every reason to believe result from the intermixture of distinct stocks." By the late nineteenth century, Huxley's Xanthochroi group had been redefined as the Nordic race , whereas his Melanochroi became the Mediterranean race . His Melanochroi thus eventually also comprised various other dark Caucasoid populations, including the Hamites (e.g. Berbers, Somalis, northern Sudanese, ancient Egyptians) and Moors . Huxley's paper

3264-488: The Greek words "genos", ( γένος ) meaning "race or kind", and "gonos", which has meanings related to "birth, offspring, stock ...". In many ancient civilizations, individuals with widely varying physical appearances became full members of a society by growing up within that society or by adopting that society's cultural norms . (Snowden 1983; Lewis 1990) Classical civilizations from Rome to China tended to invest

3360-637: The Human Races . According to Kuhl, the eugenicists believed that nations were political and cultural constructs, not race constructs, because nations were the result of race mixtures. Georges Vacher de Lapouge 's "anthroposociology", asserted as self-evident the biological inferiority of particular groups (Kevles 1985). In many parts of the world, the idea of race became a way of rigidly dividing groups by culture as well as by physical appearances (Hannaford 1996). Campaigns of oppression and genocide were often motivated by supposed racial differences. During

3456-500: The Human Races . The debates also saw the participation of Delany, and George Washington Williams defended monogenesis as the starting point of his pioneer history of African-Americans. Environmentalist monogenism describes a theory current in the first half of the nineteenth century, in particular, according to which there was a single human origin, but that subsequent migration of groups of humans had subjected them to different environmental conditions. Environmentalism in this sense

3552-511: The Paris Academy; and on the other hand, there is no so-called savage nation known under the sun which has so much distinguished itself by such examples of perfectibility and original capacity for scientific culture, and thereby attached itself so closely to the most civilized nations of the earth, as the Negro." These five groups saw some continuity in the various classification schemes of the 19th century, in some cases augmented, e.g. by

3648-713: The Rockies); Tropical Asiatic (south of the Himalayas); Temperate Asiatic (east of the Urals and north of the Himalayas); South American Temperate (South America); New Holland (Australia); Arctic (Alaska and Arctic Canada); Cape of Good Hope (South Africa); and American Tropical (Central America and the West Indies). Agassiz denied that species originated in single pairs, whether at a single location or at many. He argued instead multiple individuals in each species were created at

3744-493: The ancient Indo-European culture, also known as " Aryan ". Gobineau originally wrote that the white race's miscegenation was inevitable. He attributed much of the economic turmoils in France to the pollution of races. Later on in his life, he altered his opinion to believe that the white race could be saved. To Gobineau, the development of empires was ultimately destructive to the "superior races" that created them, since they led to

3840-519: The ancient period were climate and geography. Though thinkers in ancient civilizations recognized differences in physical characteristics between different populations, the general consensus was that all non-Greeks were barbarians. This barbarian status, however, was not thought to be fixed; rather, one could shed the 'barbarian' status simply by adopting Greek culture. (Graves 2001) Hippocrates of Kos believed, as many thinkers throughout early history did, that factors such as geography and climate played

3936-446: The argument on disposition to accept " civilization ". The interfertility of human races was debated, applying to human speciation arguments advanced already by Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon . The criterion of interfertility for a single human species was not universally accepted, being rejected, for example, by Samuel George Morton . Charles Darwin regarded the evidence of interfertility as conclusive and substantiating

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4032-530: The association between the sons of Noah and skin color dates back at least to the Babylonian Talmud , which some have argued states that the descendants of Ham were cursed with black skin. In the seventh century, the idea that black Africans were cursed with both dark skin and slavery began to gain strength with some Islamic writers, as black Africans became a slave class in the Islamic world. In

4128-469: The author of the 'Book of Roads and Realms' (El Bekri), is divided into two parts, standing on both banks of the Nile, and ranks among the largest and most populous cities of the world. The people of Ghánah had for neighbours, on the east, a nation, which, according to historians, was called Súsú; after which came another named Máli; and after that another known by the name of Kaǘkaǘ; although some people prefer

4224-430: The biological similarities between the different races were "too great" for the polygenist thesis to be plausible. He also used the idea of races to argue for the continuity between humans and animals, noting that it would be highly implausible that man should, by mere accident acquire characteristics shared by many apes. Monogenism Monogenism or sometimes monogenesis is the theory of human origins which posits

4320-440: The biological unity of humankind. He rejected claims of Paul Broca concerning the lack of fertility of unions of European settlers and Aboriginal Australians , and relied on data of John Bachman of the fertility of mulatto (mixed race) persons. On the other hand, Darwin's theory admitted the idea of "varieties of man": it was neither purely monogenist (in the sense of the term previously used), nor polygenist. In modern times,

4416-456: The causes of World War II and proposing to replace the term "race" with "ethnic groups" because "serious errors   ... are habitually committed when the term "race" is used in popular parlance." American anthropologist Carleton S. Coon published his much debated Origin of Races in 1962. Coon divided the species Homo sapiens into five groups: Besides the Caucasoid , Mongoloid , and Australoid races, he posited two races among

4512-647: The common origin of all human races and the superficiality of racial differences. Darwin's second book on evolution, The Descent of Man , features extensive argumentation addressing the single origin of the races, at times explicitly opposing Agassiz's theories. Arthur de Gobineau (1816–1882) was a successful diplomat for the Second French Empire . Initially he was posted to Persia , before working in Brazil and other countries. He came to believe that race created culture, arguing that distinctions between

4608-477: The conflict between monogenism (a single origin for all human races) and polygenism (the hypothesis that races had separate origins). This debate was originally cast in creationist terms as a question of one versus many creations of humanity, but continued after evolution was widely accepted, at which point the question was given in terms of whether humans had split from their ancestral species one or many times. Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (1752–1840) divided

4704-742: The constitutions, laws, capacities, and character of peoples: "Come, tell me why it is that the Celts and the Germans are fierce, while the Hellenes and Romans are, generally speaking, inclined to political life and humane, though at the same time unyielding and warlike? Why the Egyptians are more intelligent and more given to crafts, and the Syrians unwarlike and effeminate, but at the same time intelligent, hot-tempered, vain and quick to learn? For if there

4800-428: The darkest skins live in tropical Africa and Melanesia ." While those two groups would traditionally be classified as "black", in reality Africans are more closely related to Europeans than to Melanesians. Another example is malarial resistance , which is often found in African populations, but also in "many European and Asian populations". Templeton concludes: "[T]he answer to the question whether races exist in humans

4896-571: The debate were William Benjamin Carpenter , Charles Darwin , Edward Forbes , Henry Holland , Charles Lyell , and Richard Owen . The direction of the Ethnological Society was challenged by James Hunt , a polygenist who became a secretary in 1859, and John Crawfurd , who was president two years later, who believed in a large number of separately created racial groups. In the face of advocates of polygenism, monogenism received

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4992-413: The differences between the races were too broad to have stemmed from a single common ancestor, but were instead consistent with separate racial origins. In Crania Aegyptiaca , he reported his measurements of internal skull capacity grouped according to Blumenbach's five races, finding that the average capacity of the "Caucasian race" was at the top, and that "Ethiopian" skulls had the smallest capacity, with

5088-494: The entry for "Negro" in the Encyclopædia Britannica, 11th edition (1910–1911): "Mentally the negro is inferior to the white   ... the arrest or even deterioration of mental development [after adolescence] is no doubt very largely due to the fact that after puberty sexual matters take the first place in the negro's life and thoughts.   ... the mental constitution of the negro is very similar to that of

5184-563: The environment. Ibn Khaldun's work was later translated into French, especially for use in Algeria, but in the process, the work was "transformed from local knowledge to colonial categories of knowledge" . William Desborough Cooley 's The Negro Land of the Arabs Examined and Explained (1841) has excerpts of translations of Khaldun's work that were not affected by French colonial ideas. For example, Cooley quotes Khaldun's describing

5280-528: The founder of anthropology in the United States, analyzed over a hundred intact crania gathered from the Nile Valley, and concluded that the ancient Egyptians were racially akin to Europeans. Discussions on race among Western scholars during the 19th century took place against the background of the debate between monogenists and polygenists , the former arguing for a single origin of all mankind,

5376-680: The great African civilization of Ghana (in Cooley's translation): "When the conquest of the West (by the Arabs) was completed, and merchants began to penetrate into the interior, they saw no nation of the Blacks so mighty as Ghánah, the dominions of which extended westward as far as the Ocean. The King's court was kept in the city of Ghánah, which, according to the author of the 'Book of Roger' (El Idrisi), and

5472-506: The high civilization of Ancient Egypt could be separated from the allegedly inferior African "race". As historian Edith Sanders writes, "Perhaps because slavery was both still legal and profitable in the United States   ... there arose an American school of anthropology which attempted to prove scientifically that the Egyptian was a Caucasian, far removed from the inferior Negro". In his Crania Aegyptiaca (1844), Samuel George Morton ,

5568-522: The human species into five races in 1779, later founded on crania research (description of human skulls), and called them (1793/1795): Blumenbach argued that physical characteristics like the collective characteristic types of facial structure and hair characteristics, skin color, cranial profile, etc., depended on geography and nutrition and custom. Blumenbach's work included his description of sixty human crania (skulls) published originally in fascicules as Decas craniorum (Göttingen, 1790–1828). This

5664-413: The impressive achievements of Ancient Egypt , which could hardly be reconciled with the theory of Africans being inferior. In this context, many of the works published on Egypt after Napoleon's expedition "seemed to have had as their main purpose an attempt to prove in some way that the Egyptians were not Negroes", but belonged to a " Hamitic race ", which was seen as a subgroup of the "Caucasian race". Thus

5760-504: The indigenous populations of sub-Saharan Africa: the Capoid race in the south, and the Congoid race . In 1982, he used Negroid and Congoid as synonyms. Coon's thesis was that Homo erectus had already been divided into five different races or subspecies. " Homo Erectus then evolved into Homo Sapiens not once but five times, as each subspecies, living in its own territory, passed

5856-503: The intrinsic physical and mental characteristics of races. This work was a major influence to the anti-environmentalist and polygenist case on race and origins. In The Effect of Circumstances upon the Physical Man (1854) Frederick Douglass argued for an environmentalist monogenism, following Prichard, Bachman, and Robert Gordon Latham , but also in the tradition of Hosea Easton and James McCune Smith . For Douglass, monogenesis

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5952-475: The introduction of anthropological techniques such as anthropometrics , invented by Francis Galton and Alphonse Bertillon . They measured the shapes and sizes of skulls and related the results to group differences in intelligence or other attributes. Stefan Kuhl wrote that the eugenics movement rejected the racial and national hypotheses of Arthur Gobineau and his writing An Essay on the Inequality of

6048-552: The late 1860s, however, Darwin's theory of evolution had been thought to be compatible with the polygenist thesis (Stepan 1982). Darwin thus used Descent of Man to disprove the polygenist thesis and end the debate between polygeny and monogeny once and for all. Darwin also used it to disprove other hypotheses about racial difference that had persisted since the time of ancient Greece, for example, that differences in skin color and body constitution occurred because of differences of geography and climate. Darwin concluded, for example, that

6144-400: The late 19th century and early 20th century, the tension between some who believed in hierarchy and innate superiority, and others who believed in human equality, was at a paramount. The former continued to exacerbate the belief that certain races were innately inferior by examining their shortcomings, namely by examining and testing intelligence between groups. Some scientists claimed that there

6240-461: The latter holding that each human race had a specific origin. Monogenists based their arguments either on a literal interpretation of the biblical story of Adam and Eve or on secular research. Since polygenism stressed the perceived differences, it was popular among white supremacists , especially slaveholders in the US . Through craniometry conducted on thousands of human skulls, Morton argued that

6336-410: The mixing of distinct races. This he saw as a degenerative process. According to his definitions, the people of Spain , most of France , most of Germany , southern and western Iran as well as Switzerland , Austria , Northern Italy , and a large part of Britain , consisted of a degenerative race that arose from miscegenation. Also according to him, the whole population of North India consisted of

6432-426: The most importance in familial or tribal affiliation rather than an individual's physical appearance (Dikötter 1992; Goldenberg 2003). Societies still tended to equate physical characteristics, such as hair and eye colour, with psychological and moral qualities, usually assigning the highest qualities to their own people and lower qualities to the "Other", either lower classes or outsiders to their society. For example,

6528-507: The most widely accepted model for human origins being the "Out of Africa" theory . The belief that all humans are descended from Adam is central to traditional Judaism , Christianity and Islam . Christian monogenism played an important role in the development of an African-American literature on race, linked to theology rather than science, up to the time of Martin Delany and his Principia of Ethnology (1879). Scriptural ethnology

6624-583: The nose, narrower ears, narrower joints, frontal skull eminences, later closure of premaxillary sutures , less hairy, longer eyelashes, [and] cruciform pattern of second and third molars." He also suggested that in the extinct Negroid group termed the " Boskopoids ", pedomorphic traits proceeded further than in other Negroids. Additionally, Montagu wrote that the Boskopoids had larger brains than modern humans (1,700 cubic centimeters cranial capacity compared to 1,400 cubic centimeters in modern-day humans), and

6720-473: The other "races" ranging in between. He concluded that the "Ethiopian race" was inferior in terms of intelligence. Upon his death in 1851, when slavery still existed in the southern United States, the influential Charleston Medical Journal praised him with the words: "We of the South should consider him as our benefactor for aiding most materially in giving to the negro his true position as an inferior race." While

6816-428: The primate family. Furthermore, they contemplated whether homo sapiens should be classified as one species with multiple varieties or separate species. In the 16th and 17th century, scientists attempted to classify Homo sapiens based on a geographic arrangement of human populations based on skin color, others simply on geographic location, shape, stature, food habits, and other distinguishing characteristics. Occasionally

6912-489: The projection of their mouth was less than in other Negroids. He believed the Boskopoids were the ancestors of the Khoisan . In the context of prominent successes of African-American athletes like Jesse Owens during the 1936 Summer Olympics , the speed advantage of the "Negroid type of calf, foot and heel bone" was discussed. Black Anthropologist W. Montague Cobb joined the debate in the same year, pointing out that "there

7008-485: The publication of his second great book on evolution, The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex . Darwin's publication of this book occurred within the heated debates between advocates of monogeny, who held that all races came from a common ancestor, and advocates of polygeny, who held that the races were separately created. Darwin, who had come from a family with strong abolitionist ties, had experienced and

7104-415: The questions of who, why and with what effect social significance is attached to racial attributes that are constructed in particular political and socio-economic contexts', and thus, addressing the "folk" or "mythological representations" of race. After Louis Agassiz (1807–1873) traveled to the United States, he became a prolific writer in what has been later termed the genre of scientific racism. Agassiz

7200-411: The reach of our dusky cousins, though it is by no means necessary that they should be restricted to the lowest". (Stepan, p. 79–80). Though Charles Darwin 's evolutionary theory was set forth in 1859 upon publication of On the Origin of Species , this work was largely absent of explicit reference to Darwin's theory applied to man. This application by Darwin would not become explicit until 1871 with

7296-510: The same time and then distributed throughout the continents where God meant for them to dwell. His lectures on polygenism were popular among the slaveholders in the South, for many this opinion legitimized the belief in a lower standard of the Negro. His stance in this case was considered to be quite radical in its time, because it went against the more orthodox and standard reading of the Bible in his time which implied all human stock descended from

7392-494: The term "Negroid" came in 1859. Johann Friedrich Blumenbach , a scholar at the then modern Göttingen University developed a concept dividing mankind into five races in the revised 1795 edition of his De generis humani varietate nativa ( On the Natural Variety of Mankind ). Although Blumenbach's concept later gave rise to scientific racism , his arguments were basically anti-racist, since he underlined that mankind as

7488-767: The term "race" was used, but most of the early taxonomists used classificatory terms, such as "peoples", "nations", "types", "varieties", and "species". Italian philosopher Giordano Bruno (1548–1600) and Jean Bodin (1530–1596), French philosopher, attempted a rudimentary geographic arrangement of known human populations based on skin color. Bodin's color classifications were purely descriptive, including neutral terms such as "duskish colour, like roasted quinze", "black", "chestnut", and "farish white". German and English scientists, Bernhard Varen (1622–1650) and John Ray (1627–1705) classified human populations into categories according to stature, shape, food habits, and skin color, along with any other distinguishing characteristics. Ray

7584-437: The theory that each race is actually a separate species with separate sites of origin. Despite Huxley's monogenism and his abolitionism on ethical grounds, Huxley assumed a hierarchy of innate abilities, a stance evinced in papers such as "Emancipation Black and White" and his most famous paper, "Evolution and Ethics". In the former, he writes that the "highest places in the hierarchy of civilization will assuredly not be within

7680-513: The three "black", "white", and "yellow" races were natural barriers, and that " race-mixing " breaks those barriers down and leads to chaos. He classified the populations of the Middle East , Central Asia , the Indian subcontinent , North Africa , and southern France as being racially mixed. Gobineau also believed that the white race was superior to all others. He thought it corresponded to

7776-545: The turn of the millennium described "Negroid" skulls as having a broad and round nasal cavity ; no dam or nasal sill; Quonset hut -shaped nasal bones ; notable facial projection in the jaw and mouth area ( prognathism ); a rectangular-shaped palate ; a square or rectangular eye orbit shape; a large interorbital distance; a more undulating supraorbital ridge ; and large teeth. Ashley Montagu lists " neotenous structural traits in which   ... Negroids [generally] differ from Caucasoids   ... flattish nose, flat root of

7872-505: The woolly or the frizzly type; a greater or less tendency to prognathism ; eyes dark brown with yellowish cornea ; nose more or less broad and flat; and large teeth". The Encyclopædia Britannica sees a tendency towards a "tall stature" and " dolichocephaly " (long-headedness), with the exception of the Negritos who are described as showing "short stature" and " brachycephaly " (short-headedness). Forensic anthropologists writing around

7968-787: Was a biological determinant of race by evaluating one's genes and DNA . Different methods of eugenics, the study and practice of human selective breeding often with a race as a primary concentration, was still widely accepted in Britain, Germany, and the United States. On the other hand, many scientists understood race as a social construct . They believed that the phenotypical expression of an individual were determined by one's genes that are inherited through reproduction but there were certain social constructs, such as culture , environment , and language that were primary in shaping behavioral characteristics. Some advocated that race 'should centre not on what race explains about society, but rather on

8064-747: Was a founding work for other scientists in the field of craniometry . Further anatomical study led him to the conclusion that 'individual Africans differ as much, or even more, from other individual Africans as Europeans differ from Europeans'. Furthermore, he concluded that Africans were not inferior to the rest of mankind 'concerning healthy faculties of understanding, excellent natural talents and mental capacities'. "Finally, I am of opinion that after all these numerous instances I have brought together of negroes of capacity, it would not be difficult to mention entire well-known provinces of Europe, from out of which you would not easily expect to obtain off-hand such good authors, poets, philosophers, and correspondents of

8160-546: Was a major French voice for monogenism of the period. The debate became entrenched with that on freethought . Around 1850 polygenism was a rising intellectual trend. On the other hand, monogenism retained support in London's learned societies. The Ethnological Society of London had the monogenist tradition of Thomas Hodgkin and James Cowles Prichard, continuing in Robert Gordon Latham . Others on that side of

8256-467: Was also the first person to produce a biological definition of species . François Bernier (1625–1688) is believed to have developed the first comprehensive classification of humans into distinct races which was published in a French journal article in 1684, Nouvelle division de la terre par les différentes espèces ou races l'habitant , (New division of Earth by the different species or races which inhabit it). (Gossett, 1997:32–33). Bernier advocated using

8352-487: Was closely related to egalitarianism and his politics of black humanity. In France of the 1850s, monogenism was an unfashionable point of view. Polygenism was supported by physicians, anthropologists, taxonomists and zoologists; and the biblical associations of monogenism held against it in scientific circles. Paul Topinard , an early physical anthropologist, associated monogenism with backwardness and narrow intellectual horizons. Jean Louis Armand de Quatrefages de Bréau

8448-523: Was disturbed by cultures of slavery during his voyage on the Beagle years earlier. Noted Darwin biographers Adrian Desmond and James Moore argue that Darwin's writings on evolution were not only influenced by his abolitionist tendencies, but also his belief that non-white races were equal in regard to their intellectual capacity as white races, a belief which had been strongly disputed by scientists such as Morton, Agassiz and Broca, all noted polygenists. By

8544-418: Was found in the writings of Samuel Stanhope Smith . The theory stated that perceived differences, such as human skin color , were, therefore, products of history. A proponent of this approach to monogenism was James Cowles Prichard . It was discussed in the context of the knowledge of the time of historical linguistics . Prichard died in 1848; in 1850 Robert Knox published his The Races of Men , arguing

8640-593: Was introduced in the 1780s by members of the Göttingen school of history and further developed by Western scholars in the context of " racist ideologies " during the age of colonialism . With the rise of modern genetics , the concept of distinct human races in a biological sense has become obsolete. In 2019, the American Association of Biological Anthropologists stated: "Race does not provide an accurate representation of human biological variation. It

8736-537: Was never accurate in the past, and it remains inaccurate when referencing contemporary human populations." Negroid has Portuguese or Spanish and Ancient Greek etymological roots. It literally translates as "black resemblance" from the Portuguese and Spanish word negro ( black ) from Latin nigrum , and Greek οειδές -oeidēs , equivalent to -o- + είδες -eidēs "having the appearance of", derivative of είδος eîdos "appearance". The earliest recorded use of

8832-493: Was obsolete by the 1960s, but was controversially revived by Diop in his work, "The African Origin of Civilizations" in 1974 and republished in 1989. The Encyclopædia Britannica, Eleventh Edition (1910–1911), lists the following "well-defined characteristics" of the "Negroid" populations of Africa, southern India , Malaysia , and Australasia : "A dark skin, varying from dark brown, reddish-brown, or chocolate to nearly black; dark, tightly curled hair, flat in traverse section, of

8928-546: Was rejected by the Royal Society , and this became one of the many theories to be advanced and dropped by the early exponents of evolution . Despite rejection by Huxley and the science community, the paper is sometimes cited in support of racialism. Along with Darwin, Huxley was a monogenist, the belief that all humans are part of the same species, with morphological variations emerging out of an initial uniformity. (Stepan, p. 44). This view contrasts with polygenism,

9024-418: Was specifically a believer and advocate in polygenism , that races came from separate origins (specifically separate creations), were endowed with unequal attributes, and could be classified into specific climatic zones, in the same way he felt other animals and plants could be classified. These included Western American Temperate (the indigenous peoples west of the Rockies); Eastern American Temperate (east of

9120-735: Was unlikely because the transmutation of one species to another was a markedly gradual process. Since Coon followed the traditional methods of physical anthropology, relying on morphological characteristics, and not on the emerging genetics to classify humans, the debate over Origin of Races has been "viewed as the last gasp of an outdated scientific methodology that was soon to be supplanted". Afrocentrist author Cheikh Anta Diop contrasted "Negroid" with "Cro-Magnoid" in his publications arguing for "Negroid" primacy. Grimaldi Man , Upper Paleolithic fossils found in Italy in 1901, had been classified as Negroid by Boule and Vallois (1921). The identification

9216-402: Was used, for example, by Agassiz. James Lawrence Cabell argued that reference to Lamarck was irrelevant to determining whether specific unity was a scientific fact. Cabell's view was of common creation of humankind, which had "permanent varieties" in the form of races. Augustus Henry Keane in 1896 wrote of: [...] two assumptions, both strenuously denied by many ethnologists, firstly, that

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