ANTH 1500 Notes / WMU PDF

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Nineteenth Century Views - Polygenesis: Pseudoscience of Economic Reasons - Idea that came in 19th century among Protestant colonies in North America that wanted to think of African slaves and Native Americans as unable to be fully “civilized.” It believed that races were created separately and at varying levels of intellectual ability. Researchers supported this idea using cranial measurements. - Monogenesis: - A notion that “races” were apart of one recently created species, with the associated idea that differences arose due to degeneration from the original creation. Strongly supported by Catholics who saw all “Raes” as having souls to be saved. - Polygeneism & Its Pseudoscientiic Apologists: - Louis Agassiz (1807-1873) He was a scientist & abolitionist, his ethnocentrism and fear of difference, led him to support polygenism & advocated that African Americans should be trained only for manual labor. - Samuel George Morton (1799-1851) He was the first to practice “craniometry”, or skull measurement. He wrongly assumed that different brain sizes predict intellect. He heavily based his sampling to ensure that his Caucasian skulls were the largest. This was used to political aims to justify racial discrimination. Twentieth Century Views - Frans Boas (1858-1942) - He was the father of Modern Anthropology. He was a colleague to W.E.D. DuBois, he challenged the “science” of skull measurements with study if head size of children born to immigrant families. - Phenotype plasticity: Argued that environmental and cultural factors, as children born in U.S. were different from European-born siblings....