ANT2000 10 4 16 Historical Perspectives on Human Classification Early Perspectives o Classical Antiquity Physical differences mostly attributed to the environment o Middle Ages Classical view melded with Biblical story of Noah and the Great Flood o 17th Century Fran ois Bernier first comprehensive attempt to classify all peoples into a few discrete categories 1684 Humans in Linnaean Taxonomy o Carl Linnaeus included humans in his taxonomy of animals in the order Primata o Humans classified as Homo sapiens and subdivided in to 4 geographic subspecies Subspecies a population of a particular region that is genetically distinguishable from other such populations of the same species but capable of successfully interbreeding o Linnaeus s Four Human Subspecies American natives of the Americas Ruled by habit Red ill tempered subjugated obstinate European Ruled by laws White serious strong active smart inventive African Ruled by caprice Black impassive lazy crafty slow foolish o o o o 2 Asian Ruled by opinion Yellow stiff melancholy greedy severe haughty 18th 19th Century Two Primary Perspectives Monogenism w Traced all humans to a single divine source Accounted for diversity through degeneration Blumenbach Polygenism Held that races were separate biological species the descendants of different progenitors Agassiz Polygenists at Work Efforts to quantify morphological differences among presumed species of humans centered on analysis of skulls The practice of craniotomy revealed a disturbing racial bias in the ways data were developed Samuel Morton Father of physical anthropology Convinced of inferiority of Africans and just about everyone else Measured skulls by filling with mustard seed or lead pellets Developed tripartite racial classification based on measurements Influenced the racist thinking of both academics and the public Scientific Racism in the 20th Century Shift from metric morphological definitions of race to genetic ones Miscegenation studies The mixing of different racial groups through marriage cohabitation sexual relations or procreation o o o o o 3 Charles Davenport Intelligence Testing The Bell Curve 1994 Social Applications of Scientific Racism Native American removal genocide Slavery Segregation Eugenics Popular early 20th century social philosophy advocating for the improvement of the human race by careful selection of those Franz Boas Father of American Anthropology Argued against inherently racist elements of social evolutionary models Measured heads of immigrants and their children to show how racial characteristics change in response to environment Ashley Montagu In Mans Most Dangerous Myth The Fallacy of Race 1942 called biological race a social myth Stephan Jay Gould 1941 2002 The Mismeasure of Man 1981 1996 Gould s devastating refutation of biological determinism the idea that social and economic differences between human groups primarily races classes and sexes arise from biologically inherited inborn distinctions On Craniotomy Morton manipulated Questioning Race Study of human variation always goes beyond mere biology Problems arise when biological differences are reified and conflated with cultural social environmental ones Despite discipline s racist past contemporary anthropologists question reality of biological race 4