In the 1800's the scientific community believed that Negroes were lower on the evolutionary chain that Caucasians. Not only were Darwin and Thomas Huxley racists, but virtually all the leading evolutionists and anthropologists - Osborn, Hooton, Hrdlicka, and Haeckel. (Morris 1989, 61, 63) Consider this quote:
"The Negroid stock is even more ancient that the Caucasian and Mongolian, as may be proved by an examination not only of the brain, of the hair, of the body characters, such as teeth, the genitalia, the sense organs, but the instincts, the intelligence. The standard of intelligence of the average adult Negro is similar to that of the eleven-year-old youth of the species Homo Sapiens." (Henry Fairfield Osborn, "The Evolution of Human Races", Natural History Jan/Feb 1926. Reprinted in Natural History 89 (April 1980):129) (Morris, 1989, 62)H. F. Osborn was the most prominent American anthropologist of the first half of the twentieth century and director of the American Museum of National History. These remarks were not based on innate prejudice, but on the evolutionary science of the day. (Morris, 1989, 62)
The idea that some races had progressed further than others was rationalized by Ernst Haeckel's "recapitulation theory" or "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" where stages of embryonic development express the evolutionary sequence. Here the activities of children (of advanced races) were equated to the activities of adults of the lower races. (Morris 1989, 61, 62)
It should be noted that today anthropologists agree that the different human races have a common origin - a Biblical doctrine. (Morris 1989, 64)
References: (Morris 1989, 60-68).Continue with: Evolution and Racism: Bodysnatching