Where We Came From

Truly the time period between 1850 and 1910 was a tumultuous one for science and for the political processes of the United States and other Western Countries. However, in the field of anthropology the debates were just beginning to start. In the years that surrounded the Neandertal finds, the debate on human origins was comparatively simple to the debate that would ensue. The story from this point gets quite complex.

By 1830 it was becoming clear that evolution was a idea that would eventually spring forward to explain mankind’s arrival on the planet. However, most scientists at the time would simple not agree with this concept. The head defender of creationism was a talented anatomist named Sir Richard Owen. His position in science was so revered, that when Darwin had returned from his worldly voyages, he asked Owen to evaluate his samples. Owen did. For a short time Darwin was only confused by his finds. Owen stated the samples of exotic animals were only extinct variations of animals that presently live in South America. Poor record keeping with regard to location created further confusion with his bird samples. If Darwin was to announce his concept of evolution, he was certainly not ready to do it then. With such disdain of the idea held by Owen and with the weaknesses of poor recorded keeping Darwin felt it wise to keep his thoughts to himself. At the same time Darwin was sketching trees in his notebook that clearly depicted old species changing into new ones. So radical and controversial was his concept of evolution that Darwin himself began to have heart palpitations, stomachaches and night terrors during sleep. At the time Darwin published privately:

"It is absurd to talk of one animal being higher than another. People often talk of the wonderful event of intellectual Man appearing – the appearance of insects with other senses is more wonderful… Who with the face of the earth, covered with the most beautiful savannas and forests dare say that intellectuality is the only aim in the world?"


Thomas Huxley on the other hand felt the scientific information was there to begin the discussion of evolution. Huxley unlike Darwin was willing to confront Owens and other scientist that clung to the concept of Man being the dominant creation ordained by God. While Huxley debated with Owens for more than 20 years, Darwin expanded his research. First Darwin began with pigeons then oysters and other mollusks. In 1859 Charles Darwin is credited with publishing his famous work "On the Origins of the Species". However, publishing this document was only done when Darwin realized that if he did not do it, Alfred Russel Wallace would. Wallace was a young anatomist that had read many of the same pieces of literature that Darwin, and Huxley had read and agreed with. Furthermore, Wallace had also read much of Darwin’s work and was in contact with Darwin during his travel. When Darwin realized that Wallace was about to publish a discussion on evolution, Darwin realized it was time to present his fastidious research. After 20 years of virtual silence on the topic, Darwin released a bombshell on society. With the work so well researched and document only one scientist was able to provide any form of refute.

Many scientists attacked Darwin’s position. The overwhelming evidence in the writings led to very spirited discussions and by the 1870’s virtually all scientist had come to agree that Darwin was correct in his basic thoughts on evolution. This did not preclude scientists from disagreeing with how the evolution had occurred. Amazingly enough the one scientist that could refute Darwin’s position was not an anatomist but rather a leading Physicist of the time - Lord Kelvin. William Thomson Kelvin was a leader in Thermodynamics research. Today Physics still teach the Kelvin temperature scale and many of the principles Lord Kelvin developed. His contributions, were in many cases so significant and well developed, they have endured 150 plus years without change. Kelvin used his theories to determine the rate of heat transfer. With that information Kelvin determined the thermal flow of temperature within the Earth. In 1862, Kelvin used strong scientific evidence to show that the Earth could be no more than 100 million years old. His final estimate was almost reduced to 20 million years. Darwin had gone to great length to use geology to show that natural selection would occur over a time much greater than that demonstrated by Kelvin. Given the detail provided by Darwin and the requirement for the extended periods trouble began to brew with how evolution had taken place. Kelvin’s research at best completely refuted Darwin’s argument and at worst demonstrated some form of higher being influence in a rapid change. Darwin died a recluse, bitter about religion and seemingly defeated in his theory. Despite all this his position in science was high enough that he was buried in the court yard of West Minister Abbey near Isaac Newton.

The fight was not over with Darwin’s death. Fourteen years after Darwin’s death a physicist, Henri Becqueral, conducted research regarding radiation. Seven years later the famous Marie Curie and her husband published the ramifications of that research. Lord Kelvin had published his results based on the theory that the Earth had no source of heat. He was wrong. Coupled with the help of Rutherford and Patterson, an exposure of the Acasta rocks in the Northwest Territories of Canada and a meteor crater in Arizona, we now speculate the earth’s age to be roughly 4.55 billion years old. These numbers are commensurate with the research done by Darwin.

Although this may seem to be a detailed discussion on evolution and not a discussion on the political ramifications of racial classification some critical insight is available within these thoughts.

First, let us again review the concept of specificity versus generality in scientific assessment. Although Owen had gone to great length to explain taxonomic differences he could not obtain a most general case example for the theory we now know as evolution or natural selection. Despite Owens resources and availability to information, he was unwilling to "call the emperor naked".

Secondly, despite recognizing the "emperor naked", Darwin spent years to prove it before announcing it. Once it was proven, those unwilling to accept the theory, such as Kelvin created hurried theories to seemingly clothe the emperor. It would take almost 70 years of research and argument before virtually all members of the science area would accept the basis of the information. One hundred years later court cases declared the information acceptable for the classroom. Almost 150 years later, the conversation will still create disdain amongst some groups. It is interesting to note that while researching information for this section, I personally checked out a book from the local county library. On every picture of Darwin within that book, someone had drawn "666" and an upside down cross on his forehead.

Thirdly, it is interesting to note the quote made by Darwin in his writings. "It is absurd to talk of one animal being higher than another… Who with the face of the earth, covered with the most beautiful savannas and forests dare say that intellectuality is the only aim in the world?" In a future segment called do we really want to climb this tree, I will use this quote to provide an odd but I think effective refute to cranial volume and intellectual correlation.

The forth and final point that we will now expand on is the information regarding Wallace, Owen, and Huxley. Unknowingly, I believe these three men provided much of the intellectual impetus that justified racial classification

Chapter 2 – The History of the Classification - A Valley of Evidence

A Valley of Evidence

Over the years I have been in many research and development projects. It is odd how things in life seem to have a recurring theme. The experience a researcher obtains after several projects mirrors the experience of growing from childhood to being an adult. When you are a child you think you have a good understanding of what is going on around you. You believe that as you grow you are mastering all the problems that present themselves. It is not until later in life that you begin to realize how really ignorant you were as a child and how all the additional learning has made you just more acutely aware of your inadequacy. My research career has certainly been that way. When I was a young graduate student at Clemson University, I can remember riding my bicycle to the Physics lab thinking hard about why I had obtained the answers that I had. I would labor over my research results, over manuscripts, papers and textbooks trying to fund a thread that connected them all. Where within these mounds of data was the answer that I knew in my heart was waiting to jump off the page? As a young officer in the United States Air Force I was then tasked with several more projects that I spent large potions of my waken hours pouring over. By the time I had started my own company developing software and computer security solutions, I began to see why my labors had always been so difficult. I had always started my projects with a clear set of established thought. The thoughts that I had were fomented through years of education, During my education I listened and repeated what I had heard and seen. By graduate school the problems I was facing were problems that could not be solved by the already established thoughts. If they could be solved that way it is likely they would have already had been. I was looking for common threads of established knowledge within my problems. I often found them but they never satisfied the complete rigors of testing. When I started my own company we chose a quote by Albert Einstein as our credo

“You can not solve the problems of today with the logic that was used to create them in the past”

After reading Gary Zukav’s book the Dancing Wu Li Masters I finally came to realize how important the quote by Einstein is. At some point the child in you must be willing to say the Emperor is not wearing clothes. But when you stand up to say this, you risk the threat of being beheaded. The Emperor does not like to be called into question and when he is he becomes upset.

The period between 1850 and 1910 was a significant time for scientific upheaval in the world. The inventions and discoveries that began around 1850 made conscious humans take another look at their surroundings. Today, we are still trapped by the legacy of these thoughts. Consider for a moment between 1876 and 1879 Edison introduced everything from the telephone to the electric light bulb. In 1865 Maxwell published his famous equations that began the rethinking of Newtonian Mechanics. Boolean algebra, the speed of light, Darwin’s Origin of the Species, the automobile, first flight, radio and movies they all came about during this period. But this is just the start. The advances in medicine, biology and the understanding of ourselves as humans became drastically different. With all these changes it is no wonder the US erupted in civil war and things such as slavery began to be dismantled across the globe. Even those that practiced it like those in the Old Confederacy changed their notions of it. Little known but significant in noting the Confederacy outlawed at least the International slave trade process.

With all the new scientific understandings emerging it is hard to believe that the interpretations of Blumenbach’s racial classification scheme would go unchanged. With our hindsight we see the changes that occurred are little more than embarrassing for noted anatomist, biologists and anthropologists of the time. When we look at the events that unfolded and the discoveries that were made, we find that those that were willing to “call the emperor naked” publicly were attacked with great vigor. Today the Anthropology community still argues over a set of bones found in a valley in 1856. As much as I would like to think that today the arguments are grounded in science without political and religious bias, I fear that statement is still too bold. Although there had been earlier finds, it was in the German valley of Neander that the first serious anthropologic quest of early humans began. To this day, I believe that a quote attributed to F.A. Montagu still encapsulates the most popular collective thought –

“Descended from the apes? Let us hope that it is not true. But if it is, let us pray that it may not become generally known.”

In 1856 an industrial quarrying operation discovered the skeletal remains of what appeared to be a human skeleton –mixed with the bones of a bear they were collectively referred to bear bones by the foreman. The team had come across an opening to a cavern located 20 meters above the valley floor now called the Feldholf caves. To get to the remains the team climbed the ridge effacement and blasted open a small opening to reveal not only the remains of the individual but also many other animal bones. By February of 1857 a local German anatomist named Hermann Shauffhasen took the bold step of declaring to the world that he had uncovered the remains of a primitive form of human. The find in general was not actually the first of its kind in fact. However, it was the first event to trigger a radically collective difference of perception in the origins of mankind. In the three decades leading up to the Neander Valley (Thal is German for Valley) ancient human skeletal remains and ancient stone tools had been unearthed and refuted as being of prehistoric stature. In this case Shauffhasen had enough of pieces of one individual to conclusively show that something or someone had lived and died in some ancient time in the Neanderthal. Osteomorphology of the bones is so significantly different than any other known human structure it is hard to cast the skeletal remains as then modern humans. However, those unwilling to call “the Emperor Naked” attempted to do just that. The well known German anatomist of the times, Rudolph Virchow, called the skeletal remains those of a deceased bow-legged pathological idiot suffering from rickets. Furthermore, others attempted to attribute the bones to a left behind Russian Cossack from the Napolenonic wars. The first anatomist of any stature to conclude that the Neanderthal bones were more than left over remains from recent history was a gentleman from Britain named Thomas Huxley. His publication of Man’s Place in Nature originally circulated the scientific community in 1863. Huxley had studied the bones in great detail and through correlation with Darwin’s theory of evolution Huxley determined the bones were some forms of lesser human along the evolutionary chain to present day Homo Sapiens.

Today we know the Neanderthal groups as Homo Sapien Neandertalensis. (It is worth noting here the spelling of the formal name of classification. The proper German spelling includes an ‘h’, however, this pronunciation caused considerable consternation in British publications. Therefore the ‘h’ has been removed and future reference within the manuscript will adhere to that notation.) Let us consider now for a moment the significance of this classification. Placing the term Homo and Sapien before the term Neandertal suggested that these bones were very close to human, but not quite. This suggests an evolutionary tree that present day man grew from some lower order of animals. A sort of suggestions that nature through time allowed some quadropedal ape to leave the trees and begin to walk upright. I ask the adroit reader trained in anthropology or those trained in religious philosophies to bear with me on these thoughts. Certainly we are not reaching any conclusion based on one set of bones but are rather attempting to show the behavior of the development of these theories.

At the time of these findings Biblical scholars in the west were working ardently to shore up declining control of the Christian Church. Scientist of the 17th, 18th and 19th century spent countless hours deriving the time of the origins of man (long has the soul of man wanted to make discreet that, which is really a continuum). Many intellects of the time pointed out that clearly the Noachian tales placed recent man approximately 3500 years in age. Some were even so bold as to declare the precise day of creation, the Noachian flood and other significant events of the Bible. Arch Bishop Ussher declared in his work Annales Veteris et Novi Testamenti, Adam and Eve were driven from Paradise on a Monday November 10th in 4004 BC. Furthermore he also calculated that the ark touched down on Mt Ararat on Wednesday the 5th of May 1491 BC. Given the acts of the past it only made since to concur with these notions. How could such great scholars that agreed with common Religious norms be incorrect. As early as 1655, a Frenchman, Isaac de la Peye’re published his thoughts entitled A Theological System Upon the Pre-supposition that Men Were Before Adam. For this act of “heresy” Peye’re was imprisoned by the Church forced to recant and his book was publicly burnt in Paris. Despite the mounting physical evidence it was difficult to declare man had evolved from a lesser order. Armed with the bone record evidence found in Germany, France, and England, the scientific papers of Darwin and the genetic research of Mendel, the notion of creation began to loose favor amongst the scientific community.

Neandertal man introduced quite the conundrum to accepted beliefs. Evolutionary theory was beating on the door of religious creationism. With more and more Neandertal bones and artifacts being found throughout Southern Europe the visitor did not appear to be leaving. It is not easy to accept that the original understanding of an idea is incorrect. Furthermore, when the idea challenges the basis of the religious structure of society the response is tumultuous. In this case the visitors were storming the castle and within the castle stood the cultural identity of Western man. Westerners specifically had a couple of choices at the time. Ignore the knocking at the door and hope the visitor left. However, the knocking grew louder and it was only a matter of time that the walls of the castle and understanding of mankind fell to the incessant pounding. Another choice was to attack the visitor at the door. To this day some still choose this path. However, the visitor seems only to grow in strength and the attacks to him seem only to deplete the resources of the original castle. The final alternative was to accept the visitor, dress him up and claim that he was a lost noble relative that supported the polices of the castle after all. Although today there are those hold outs that want to attack the prehistoric finds, by enlarge westerners have begun to accept in some form this ancient find is a relative to us and should be accepted into our family. But the introduction of the Neandertal visitor has not been that easy.





By 1908 Marcellin Boule, a French Anthropologist reviewed a burial from La-Chapelle-aux-Saints rock shelters in Vezere Valley in southwest France. In his publication of his study he characterized the bones of Neandertal as a brutish caveman that was an extinct slow-witted slouched hunter with limited intellectual ability. Boule attempted to show through osteomorphology that the Neandertal skeletal finds proved no relation to present day humans. In time Molecular Biology would provide insight into Boule’s opinion based on the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) research conducted in the late 1990s. However, the opinion is still out on the relation of Neandertal to present day humans. Any review of Milford Wolpoff’s works will quickly demonstrate a very different opinion and set of theories. In 1908 Boule did not have enough information to solidify his positions. Yet, again crainiology came into play, specifically with the discussion of the limited frontal lobe area. It is important to note here that the average cranial volume of Neandertal is commensurate in some cases larger with that of present day humans. However, the shape of the typical Neandertal skull is very different from present day skulls. We will explore this artifact of information in more detail in the future.

Quiet conversations held amongst confidants reveal the essence of the typical understanding of these ancient bones. “Blacks might be evolved from monkeys – look at ‘em. Whites though are different.” This is the trouble with the evolutionary theory as an introduction of how mankind understands himself. In order to dress up the visitor and declare him noble began with the Neandertal finds. With Boule declaring Neandertal a brute, and attempting to show the lack of relation with present day mankind placed the scientific community in a sense of schizophrenia. Did Westerners evolve from apes or not? At the turn of the century it seemed clear that Darwin’s theory of evolution had at least basic legitimacy. If that was the case and westerners had evolved from some lower order, certainly it was not from the same lower order animal from which the other races had evolved. It became by enlarge the position of European scientist that the separation of the races had occurred during the time when our forefathers were still prosimian in nature. Given this level of separation was so far in the distant past it was still okay to modify other cultures. Thinking that the evolutionary position of other races was still a lower order of that of pale skinned Western Europeans provided a way to allow evolutionary theory to continue within the constructs of political processes. Some scientists of the time were so determined to maintain their own understanding of mankind that they engaged in perhaps the greatest scientific forgery and hoax of all time – The Pilt-down Man. By 1910, with the introduction of the Pilt-down man in Britain it was clear, Europeans had evolved from a different ape, at a far earlier time than any other race. The races differed so significantly that court cases in America even ruled it a requirement for whites and “negro” be separated to insure “public peace and good order”. Then came Dubois and eventually the exposure of Pilt-down.

Chapter 2 – The History of the Classification - The Right to Kill

“Emotions can produce wonderful speeches and stirring op-ed pieces. But emotions alone cannot produce policies that will achieve what they promise.”
Capitol Hill hearing on tensions in U.S.-U.N. relations by Madeline Albright

The Right to Kill

Consider for a moment the history of racial and ethnic differences of the past. It is simple to review historical evidence and recall quickly the German Holocaust of an estimated 6 million Jews. But that is certainly not the only episode of ethnic cleansing. Facts demonstrate that actually as distasteful as it may sound, the Jewish Holocaust pales in considerations of more recent genocide. In Rwanda during the spring of 1994, Hutu military forces began attacking people of the Tutsis ethnic group. The Red Cross estimated that within a one month period more than 500,000 Rwandan’s (both Hutu and Tutsis) died in the conflict. The attacks started after an April 6th plane crash in 1994. A crash that killed Rwandan President Habyarimana set off an ethnic conflict between two groups so similar that we as Westerners can find no real difference. The attacks and killings began the very night of the crash, suggesting an already established distrust or disagreement between the two groups. By late June the killing had stopped only after international interdiction from the French and Belgium governments. The total death toll exceeded 800,000 people within a 100-day conflict. The totals suggest 8000 people a day. Had Hitler and the German nation employed this level of genocide from 1936 until the end of World War II, one could calculate more than 24 million Jews would have been killed. The Rwandan conflict showed ethnic-cleansing processes combined with modern technology enabled people to kill each other at a rate more than 4 times that during the 1930s and 1940s. Atrocities of this level should cry out to the people of the world. Why? What historical or biological process compels people of the same basic biologic design to commit such horrific acts of mass killing? Certainly the answer is not easy, however, I believe the basis for the separation lies in a history of classification. We can not change our history. Furthermore, recognizing our history as distasteful is also not enough to stop this behavior. One only need watch human behavior from, the Crusades, the Native American Holocaust, the destruction of the Zulu nation, Russian attacks on Armenia, conflicts in Bosnia, Rwanda, recent attacks on farms in Zimbabwe and the list goes on. Do not let this list fool you. There is no group that can stand innocent as victims or as perpetrators. These discussions are not to blame or lament. Rather these discussions are to understand. Either we must find a clear separation that can be respected or we must see the role of racial and ethnic classification as a dated misunderstood process.

We may have to first look to the past to understand the present. Doing as was done by Hitler and the Hutu military we will first create a scapegoat to our problems. We can quickly place the blame on a German Biologist from 1795, Johann Friedrich Blumenbach. He was the first to propose the classification process. At least as we understand it today. Can he really be the scapegoat? No – ultimately the failure resides within us. Like so many other scientists Blumenbach’s principles were more complex than the average individual can comprehend in totality. Consider for a moment the aforementioned example of Newton or Einstein. Newton set down his laws of motion and kinematics over 400 years ago. After 400 years, only a select few people in our world today understand his writings in their completeness. A few understand his writings to an introductory proficiency, but most either mis-construe the laws of motion or know little more than an apple will fall to the ground when it leaves a tree.

Newton wanted to explain nature as it was observed. This desire determined his choice of axioms. Strictly speaking, the success of Newtonian dynamics rests not on the verification of individual axioms, but on the success of the entire scheme in predicting what we observe.
-- Jones / Childers Contemporary College Physics


Just as Newton wanted to explain the laws of observed motion, Blumenbach wanted to create a method to compare osteomorphological differences. Blumenbach recognized that humans were distinctly different animals. Specifically what he realized was that Homo Sapiens were the one group of animals capable of walking upright. Although Homo Sapiens share many osteomorphological similarities to apes, Blumenbach noted that the similarities certainly ended with any physical characteristics associated with locomotion. Blumenbach noted a marked difference between quadraped and bipedal activity, and that there was significant variation within the group of Homo Sapiens biped group. Darwin’s research and publication entitled the Origin of the Species would not be published for more than a half of a century. For Blumenbach to note humans as an object of Natural History was revolutionary for his time. As most revolutionary thoughts go it was also very mis-construed. Blumenbach was school, trained and placed emphasis on comparative anatomy. Specifically Blumenbach enjoyed studying cranial structures. Although Blumenbach traveled little he was able to create distinct classifications of cranial morphology amongst groups. Originally, in his work, De generis humani varietate nativa liber translated as On the Natural Varieties of Mankind, Blumenbach states cranial structure, skin color and hair texture can be used to create four classifications of mankind. By his third edition the breakout expanded to 5 groups and he provided us the terms - Caucasian, Mongolian, Ethiopian, American, and Malayan. At the same time Blumenbach divided people into sub classes of Homo, he made special emphasis to the gap between man and animal. Furthermore he ardently attacked all political or social abuses of his anthropological ideas that suggested that any group is on a lower level of humanity than any other group. As you will soon read, Blumenbach was astutely aware that superficial evaluation of phenotypic differences can easily classify a group, however, determining the measure of robustness of humanity is not as easily determined.

Too often, humanity as a whole looks at things for what they are and not what they are intended to be or even known to be. But to understand intention is not an easy process. This lack of understanding creates a situation of ambiguity amongst the masses that can result in terrible injustices, and wasted efforts. When I was in high school, I was selected as part of a group of students that would attend a college philosophy course for a day. Our role was to observe and then return to the school to discuss what we had heard, seen and experienced. Some 20 plus years later I remember the lecture. The lecture was addressing the works of Plato and a review of Socrates death. In the work Phaedo, Plato attempts to address the meaning and reality of a soul. The question at hand is what is a chair? The common answer is that a chair is something on which I sit. But can you not sit on a desk or a bed? In so doing does sitting on it alter its form? No. Sitting on a bed does not alter the intention that the bed was formed for the purpose of sleeping. Likewise standing on a chair to change a light bulb or using the chair to block a door does not make the chair a ladder nor a door stop. The chair was made for the purpose of sitting and we know a chair based on our knowledge. Blumenbach created groups to classify people. Placing people in these groups only serve as a method to classify within the group. Just as you could place chairs into groups by color, or comfort. It still remains a chair. The purpose of a distinct chair makes no chair less worthy than any other. Consider for a moment the following. A comfortable recliner heavily padded and made of soft material is not what you will find at mission control at NASA. The mission control experts need chairs that sit up right. They need chairs that role from point A to point B. In some cases these “Mission Control” chairs can be more expensive than a comfortable recliner. However, have you ever considered watching a 3-hour movie at your house in a up right desk chair on rollers? This may seem to be a ludicrous example, but now apply the information to racial classification. Blumenbach had knowledge of specific differences amongst cranial structure and he used this knowledge to extract groupings. I dare say the common individual does not know the exact meaning of cranium – That portion of a skull that encloses the brain – much less the dimensions which separate the races.

Let us consider the time in which Blumenbach categories of classification were suggested. European cultures were expanding throughout the globe. Britain, France, Germany and Spain and a host of other European nations were beginning to populate places like the Americas, India, Asia and Africa. In each case of migration, the European settlers were meeting indigenous people like the American Indian and Zulu Warriors. In some cases the meetings were amicable but all too often they were not. In many cases the new European settlers were a taxing burden on societies that did not understand the European method of life and certainly the Europeans found these log isolated cultures to be tremendously different from themselves. In all cases the human variation and environmental adaptations in skin color, size, religion and cultural ornamentation beaconed a substantial difference. Given the relatively recent scientific success of the Enlighment Period of Europe, it seemed simple for Europeans to militarily overwhelm their opponents. Not to mention the blessing of a relatively fair climate of European homeland had enabled significant population growth of the Caucasian race. Remember this sentence for in the near future of this writing we will address population growth as a key factor in our understanding of classification. With the political and social powers of Europe suggesting that expansion was destined by God, and a strong Christian desire to proselytize the faith of Jesus Christ, Europeans set out to convert or kill those cultures not in agreement with their own. Imagine the concepts of this period placed on the more recent invasion on Iraq. Iraqis speak a odd language, they worship the “wrong” god. They clearly have not developed their resources as well as us. As a testament, they still ride donkeys and live in thatched huts in the country. Certainly we should either convert them or kill them. In a sense this is what we are doing. America is attempting to convert them to democracy and a method of capitalism. Many in America believe this is what is best for the people of Iraq. Many people in Iraq believe this is best for them. However, there are those that disagree. Right, wrong or indifferent (and certainly this book is not about political conflict in the middle east) it is happening. There is a cultural change that is occurring, and it is occurring at the expense of life. We can only hope that it does not occur with the same volume of death that occurred in Rwanda.

In all cases of cultural transformation there is sure to be conflict. This conflict in many cases results in death and violence. This supposed tenant of transformation conflict is in juxtaposition to the humane position of peace and love. To provide a sense of justification, people of the past and present have sought out religious, and scientific support for the action. Blumenbach through attempting to develop an anatomical and anthropological classification of humans inadvertently also created a basis for the political ministers to justify their actions.

Once Blumenbach provided a basis of scientific measurements associated with racial classification, it became simple for political and even religious leaders to extract the pieces that they needed to propel their cultural agendas. Consider Blumenbach position on cranial capacity. Blumenbach showed with tremendous success as well as others have after him a direct correlation between cranial size and race. It is been measured on many occasions that on average Asians have the largest cranial capacity when normalized to body mass, whites although smaller than Asians are larger than blacks. Although it is very tempting for me to launch into a discussion on intellectual ability and its correlation to cranial volumes, I must ask the reader to be patient. The story is still a bit to complex for that. For the reader that quickly sites the well-documented correlation and good science of study, I would ask that you continue to read. Without the full picture of these studies it is easy to accept the “right to kill” based almost solely on cranial differences. Recall the discussion above where we reviewed the discussion on Newton’s Axioms. “Strictly speaking, the success of Newtonian dynamics rests not on the verification of individual axioms, but on the success of the entire scheme”. Yes there is a correlation here, but it is long been accepted that there is a correlation between full moons and birth rates. However a study conducted by Daniel Canton at the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Appalachian State has provided strong evidence that full moon birth rate occurrence is a minimum whereas birthrates show a maximum during the third quarter. The Latin term for this form of reasoning is non sequitur. Literally interrupted this means it does not follow. However, the human mind is conditioned to associate any two significant events and thus extract from them a new reality. Specifically in our case of discussion Blumenbach showed a difference in both size and construct amongst the races. Adding later studies, perhaps first presented by the famous Anthropologist Dubois, that cranial capacity normalized for body mass demonstrates a direct correlation to intellectual ability, the political forces at hand obtained the fodder required to continue the cultural manipulations. These political and religious juggernauts that cranial capacity dictate a level of humanity have provided the much-needed impetus to implore methods of genocide throughout history. Imagine for a moment that this axiom of phenotypic measurement should be taken to the extreme. The murder case could be as follows. How big was the victim’s skull? How big is the defendant’s skull? Clearly he had the right to kill the victim because he has more cranial capacity. Thankfully, Blumenbach’s axiom of cranial capacity is not applicable for this general case.