The plurality of the human racePouchet, G. (Georges)
Philosophy
The plurality of the human race
Pouchet, G. (Georges)
Monogenism and polygenism
Craniology was anthropology itself, whilst this science was being
cultivated merely by learned men in their studies. If a skull does
not always bear about it the stamp of the race to which it belongs,
we must nevertheless own that it is the best representative of the
dead individual. Craniology obtains all its weight and powers from the
study of ancient races and extinct peoples. There it ought to intervene
with an unequalled importance, for want of better points of reference.
By its means anthropology can search in the past, clearing up those
questions which history is incapable of explaining. In this manner
Morton has been able to prove better than by any historical document
that Ancient Egypt was inhabited by very mixed races, and composed of
the most different elements, exactly as in our own days. But there
remained a problem even more interesting: that of knowing if the
different races who then inhabited the banks of the Nile were as much
divided into various occupations as at the present day: the Albanians
are all soldiers, the Copts all scribes and officials, the Fellahs
all labourers, etc. Doubtless it would be possible, if not easy, to
arrive at the solution of this new problem by collecting skulls and
mummies with more care than has hitherto been done, and, above all,
by assisting the researches of the Egyptiologists, who can read upon
the coffin that such and such a body is that of a workman, a priest, or
a king. We may thus be able to ascertain if the kings of such or such
a dynasty were black or yellow; if the dominant population of such or
such a _nome_ had the Coptic, Berberine, or Fellah type. Here we have a
large field for study, which has been almost entirely neglected by the
American school of anthropology, precisely because Morton found himself
without information about the production and true age of the immense
materials which he had at his disposal.
But we must not be forgetful: the classification of skulls by their
shape, of hairs by their colour, or skins by their hue, is not the
classification of races of mankind. We only perceive here one order of
phenomena. A classification established upon such bases has its point
of departure only in the mind of him who conceived it, and not in the
nature of things.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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