INNOCENT SKULLS & MALICIOUS IDEAS

     Many of history’s encounters with racism such as slavery, the Jewish holocaust, the expulsion of Native Americans, and colonialism in Africa and Asia can be attributed to beliefs of Eurocentric racial superiority over non-whites. Craniology, the study of differences between skulls of different races involving measuring the braincase, angle of face, and length of the head, is one of the biggest culprits for promoting a discriminatory belief.

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     Johann Blumenbach (1752-1840) promoted this study when he first identified five cranial racial classifications: Caucasian, Aethiopians (Negros), Americans, Mongolians, and Malays in 1795. He concluded that these differences were not a case of races being a separate species, but a matter of effects from the environment; however, many scientists began to use the idea of separate races as evidence for the existence of inferior humans, such as French naturalist Georges Cuvier. He reported from his dissection of Sara Hottentot that she had a small brain and looked like a monkey, which cemented his view of Africa’s inferiority and inability for civilization.

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          Soon, craniology would be used as a weapon to justify racial thinking, or scientific racism, as well as oppressing non-White populations throughout the nineteenth century to the early twentieth century. For example, Samuel George Morton used measurements over a vast collection of skulls to support the notion that there are physical differences present in each race. His work over cranial racial differences was vital in arguments of racial totem poles with Whites on top, Blacks on the bottom, and Native Americans in between.

     Craniology was used as the answer to questions about the morality and politics of slavery and colonialized populations. Some believed that it was moral to treat “inferior” humans cruelly and enslave them. Andrew Jackson and settlers saw this as justification for removing the Native Americans off their land or enslaving Black Africans. Although, craniology was also used to speak against this outlook on different races. Friedrich Tiedemann gave a scientific basis for ending slavery after he saw that the measurements of the skull of different races were similar to each other, suggesting that all races descended from a common ancestor, rather than evolve from different species.

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     After the emancipation of slaves after the Civil War, Craniology was soon used as a weapon for eugenics as there were fears over misfits and the feebleminded overpopulating society while the White race would die out; thus soon, craniology was put into overdrive. No longer were only skulls measured out.  Differences of nose and ear shapes, color and texture of hair, among many other facial features were also tested.

     Ultimately, craniology had a huge guiding hand in all the racial violence and institutionalized discrimination that this country has seen; however, it has now evolved into physical anthropology that does not just promote but celebrates the diversity found in human beings as well as their origins. On top of that, it is now used to disprove “racial differences” between different groups and show why differences in appearances are only a matter of just that-appearances—not intelligence.

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Sources:

Blumenbach, Johann. “De generis humani varietate nativa.” (1795). Accessed April 4, 2020

https://www.penn.museum/sites/morton/img/craniologyFig02.jpg

Josiah, Nott C. “A scientific demonstration from 1868 that the Negro is as distinct from the Caucasian as the Chimpanzee.” (1868). Accessed April 2, 2020. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/332395881/figure/fig4/AS:747139072290816@1555143244395/Types-of-mankind-or-ethnological-researches-based-upon-the-ancient-monuments.ppm

University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. “A History of Craniology in Race Science and Physical Anthropology.” University of Pennsylvania. Accessed March 28, 2020. https://www.penn.museum/sites/morton/craniology.php

Gould, Stephen Jay. “Morton’s Ranking of Races by Cranial Capacity.” Science 200, no. 4341 (May 5, 1978): 503–509. Accessed April 1, 2020.

Thomas, Jamie & Christina Jackson. Embodied Difference Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2019.