11 Pre - Columbian Ideas About Race

Speaking of Race

In this episode we go back to the beginning to kick off the history of race and science and to show that race is NOT an ancient concept. First to ancient Egypt that played such a large role in the development of 19th century ideas on race, then on to ancient Greece and Biblical traditions to try to get a picture of what some of the ancients might have contributed to the race concept. Here are some resources for this topic: Mid-nineteenth century polygenist Samuel Morton on the ancient Egyptians: Morton, Samuel George. “Crania Aegyptiaca or Observations on Egyptian Ethnography, Derived from Anatomy, History, and the Monuments.” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 9, no. 1 (1846): 93-159. Early 20th century ideas about the antiquity of race: Haddon, Alfred Cort, and Alison Hingston Quiggin. History of anthropology. G.P. Putnam’s Sons, The Knickerbocker Press, 1910. Early 21st century “racial realists” making the case for ancient and “natural” racial categories: Sarich, Vincent, and Frank Miele. Race: The reality of human differences. Westview Press, 2005. Analysis of ancient Egyptian skulls: Brace, C. Loring, David P. Tracer, Lucia Allen Yaroch, John Robb, Kari Brandt, and A. Russell Nelson. “Clines and clusters versus “race:” a test in ancient Egypt and the case of a death on the Nile.” American Journal of Physical Anthropology 36, no. S17 (1993): 1-31. Analysis of Egyptian genes: Schuenemann, Verena J., Alexander Peltzer, Beatrix Welte, W. Paul van Pelt, Martyna Molak, Chuan-Chao Wang, Anja Furtwängler et al. “Ancient Egyptian mummy genomes suggest an increase of Sub-Saharan African ancestry in post-Roman periods.” Nature communications 8 (2017): 15694. Seti I’s tomb: http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/seti1t.htm The “Book of Gates” with its “hours” panels (including the race one): http://www.realhistoryww.com/world_history/ancient/Misc/Data/Book_of_Gates.htm The original early-20th century book on Seti I’s tomb by the archaeologist E. A. W. Budge: http://www.hermetics.org/pdf/sacred/book_gates.pdf The Hippocratic “On Airs, Waters, and Places”: http://classics.mit.edu/Hippocrates/airwatpl.html