Early Observations
Prior to research practices becoming logically strenuous, there where some individuals who would offer theories as to how and why humans had different physical and perhaps intellectual attributes. Their views were accepted because some did have knowledge of and/or experience in a scientific field. But there were also those who weren’t connected in any manner with a scientific field, but had a position of authority and/or notoriety giving them a platform that was respected by the general public. It should be noted that these theorists didn’t always assign superior/inferior characteristics to the classifications they proposed. But many times their studies were used by those who did want to find a rationale to oppress others because of skin color.
Francois Bernier, a French physician and world traveller, has been recognized as the first ‘fully qualified’ person to propose dividing humanity into what he called ‘races’ in a publication called The Journal des Savants in 1684. He titled the article “New Division of the Earth by the Different Species or ‘Races’ of Man that inhabit it”. Bernier proposed there were four different human categories: 1) the populations from Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, India, south-east Asia, and the Americas; 2) the people from sub-Saharan Africa; 3) the east- and northeast Asians; and, 4) the Sami (Lapps) people of Northern Scandinavia. His classifications never went beyond physical traits, and he thought that climate and diet were the primary reasons for human diversity. When Bernier wrote his study, scientific thinking was in the process of shifting from evidence based on analogies to one supported by fixed laws of nature. Bernier did not attempt to establish a cultural hierarchy among the ‘races’, but his commentary made it clear that he considered white Europeans as the norm from which other ‘races’ deviated.
Two of Bernier’s contemporary scientists were Robert Boyle, an English-Irish philosopher/naturalist, and Richard Bradley, an English botanist. Boyle was a proponent of monogenism which believes that all races, regardless of how diverse, came from the same source – Adam and Eve. From his studies he concluded that not only were Adam and Eve white, but that he had found credible evidence of white couples having colored children, which to his mind, proved his theory of monogenism. Boyle was not well accepted in the scientific community of the time, his views being thought of as disturbing and/or amusing. People did pay attention to Bradley’s work however, particularly his 1721 book titled Philosophical Account of the Works of Nature. The book, along with his other publications, primarily addressed botanic discoveries and experiments. In a short section of the book he claimed there were “five sorts of men” based on their skin color and other physical characteristics: one – white Europeans with beards; two – white men in America without beards; three – men with copper-colored skin, small eyes, and straight black hair; four – blacks with straight black hair; and five – blacks with curly hair. As with Francois Bernier, Bradley reported what he observed as characteristics, much as he would have described various types of tulips, without assigning a superior rank to any of the five categories.
It is possible that Bradley’s five categories inspired Carl Linnaeus to create his own five ‘varieties’ of the human species almost 50 years later. Linnaeus was a Swedish physician, botanist, and zoologist who is renown for his work establishing scientific standards for ‘fauna and flora’ some of which are still in place today. In the twelfth edition of his influential book Systema Naturae published in 1767 Linnaeus listed and defined the following human classifications:
- The Americanus: red, ill-tempered, upright; black, straight, thick hair; nostrils flared; face freckled; beardless chin; stubborn, zealous, free; painting themself with red lines; governed by habit.
- The Europeanus: white, sanguine, muscular; with yellowish, long hair; blue eyes; gentle, acute, inventive; covered with close vestments; governed by customs.
- The Asiaticus: yellow, melancholic, stiff; black hair, dark eyes; austere, haughty, greedy; covered with loose clothing; governed by beliefs.
- The Afer or Africanus: black, composed, relaxed; black, frizzled hair; silky skin, flat nose, puffy lips; female mammary glands give milk abundantly; sly, lazy, negligent; anoints themself with grease; governed by impulse.
- The Monstrosus: mythologic humans such as the “four-footed, mute, hairy” Homo feralis (Feral man); the animal-reared Juvenis lupinus hessensis (Hessian wolf boy); the Juvenis hannoveranus (Hannoverian boy); the Puella campanica (Wild-girl of Champagne); the agile, but faint-hearted Homo monstrosus (Monstrous man); the Patagonian giant; the Dwarf of the Alps.
Because Linnaeus was such a respected scientist, the definitions he presented have created considerable discussion over the years. His defenders argue that he was applying his skills to create neutral information with no attempt to establish superior or inferior categories and was not ‘race-centered’. Some feel he was influenced by the medical theory of humors which claimed a person’s temperament was caused by biological fluids. His detractors feel the classifications were not only ethnocentric and Eurocentric, but seem to be based solely on skin color using a white/colored polarity which strengthen subsequent racist beliefs that dominated many Colonization actions and events. Most of his critics agree that using today’s standards of research, Linnaeus’s classifications are stereotypical and his use of anthropological and non-biological features, such as customs and/or traditions to reach his conclusions, would not be accepted today.
Linnaeus’s final classification – Monstrosus – is reminiscent of Pliny, The Elder, a first century Roman Scholar who ‘documented’ monsters living at the edge of the world. It’s possible that the Monstrosus classification had more effect on the colonizers than the other four. Those first four were scholarly results that were likely discussed in educational, scientific, and perhaps, government venues. But for the colonizing commanders and their armies, the awareness that ‘monsters’ could be present in the lands they were invading probably created some tension and set their responses to a high level of defense when encountering new environments and people. Even if a situation did not appear to be threatening, the possibility of a monster being hidden or suddenly appearing, could easily instigate preemptive and drastic military action.