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13.  Race and Human Variation

Michael B. C. Rivera, Ph.D., University of Cambridge

Learning Objectives

Review the illustrious and (at times) troubling history of “race”

concepts.

Recognize human diversity and evolution as the thematic roots of our

discipline.

Critique earlier “race” concepts based on overall human diversity being

lower compared to other species and human genetic variation being

greater within a population than between populations.

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Preface

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Human Variation: An Adaptive Significance Approach

Explain how biological variation in humans is distributed clinally and in

accordance with both isolation-by-distance and Out-of-Africa models.

Identify phenotypic traits that re�ect selective and neutral evolution.

Relate a more nuanced view of human variation with today’s ongoing

bioanthropological research, implications for biomedical studies, ap-

plications in forensic anthropology, and sociopolitical/economic

concerns.

Humans exhibit biological diversity. Cognitively, humans also have a natural desire

to categorize objects and other humans in to make sense of the world around

them. Since the birth of the discipline of biological anthropology, we have been in-

terested in studying how humans vary biologically and what the sources of this vari-

ation are. Before we tackle these big problems, this �rst begs the question: Why

should we study human diversity?

There are certainly academic reasons for studying human diversity. First, it is

highly interesting and important to consider the evolution of our species and how

our biological variation may be similar to (or different from) that of other species of

animals (e.g., other primates and apes). Such investigation can give us clues as to

how unique we are as a biological organism in relation to the rest of the animal king-

dom. Second, anthropologists study modern human diversity to understand how

different biological traits developed over evolutionary time. If we are able to grasp

the evolutionary processes that produce and affect diversity, we can make more ac-

curate inferences about evolution and adaptation among our hominin ancestors,

complementing our study of fossil evidence and the archaeological record. Third, as

will be discussed in more detail later on, it is important to consider that biological

variation among humans has biomedical, forensic, and sociopolitical implications.

For these reasons, the study of human variation and evolution has formed the basis

of anthropological inquiry for centuries and continues to be a major source of in-

trigue and inspiration for scienti�c research conducted today.

An even more important role of the biological anthropologist is to improve public

understanding of human evolution and diversity, outside of academic circles. Terms

such as race and ethnicity  are used in everyday conversations and in formal set-

tings within and outside academia. The division of humankind into smaller, discrete

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categories is a regular occurrence in day-to-day life. This can be seen regularly

when governments acquire census data with a heading like “geographic origin” or

“ethnicity.” Furthermore, such checkboxes and drop-down lists are commonly seen

as part of the identifying information required for surveys and job applications.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary (2018), race is a term that should be used

to describe one or more of the following:

a major division of the human species based on particular physical

characteristics;

the biological origin of a group of people, or ancestry;

the fact or condition of belonging to a racial division or group, or the social

qualities associated with this;

a group of people sharing the same culture and language;

any group of people or things with a common feature or features;

a population within a species that is distinct in some way, especially a

subspecies.

So many various de�nitions for one word already suggests that perhaps the con-

cepts or meanings behind biological diversity are complicated. Even though the

terms race and ethnicity are used often in commonplace settings, there is no con-

sensus among biological anthropologists as to what races are, whether they even

exist, and, if they do, how the term should be applied to the human species mean-

ingfully. If biological anthropologists cannot reach a consensus on how to view hu-

man diversity, how can we possibly expect there to be a clear perspective on the na-

ture and causes of biological variation outside of scienti�c academia? Ideas about

ethnicity that people hold have huge social and political impacts, and notions of race

have been part of the motivation behind various forms of racism and prejudice to-

day, as well as many wars and genocides throughout history. This is how the role of

the biological anthropologist becomes crucial in the public sphere, as we may be

able to debunk myths surrounding human diversity and shed light on how human

variation is actually distributed worldwide for the non-anthropologists around us

(Figure 13.1). Recent work in anthropological genetics has revealed the similarities

amongst humans on a molecular level and the relatively few differences that exist

between populations that one might be tempted to see as signi�cantly distinctive. Previous: Modern Homo sapiens

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Figure 13.1 Humans are biologically and culturally
diverse. (Top left: Hadzabe members in Tanzania; top
right: Inuit family in traditional seal and caribou
clothing; bottom left: Andean man in traditional dress
in Peru; bottom right: Dr. Jane Goodall.)

Science communication and education that centers upon race and our species’ vari-

ation is interesting and important. Throughout this chapter, I will highlight how hu-

mans cannot actually be divided into discrete “races,” because most traits instead

vary on a continuous basis and human biology is, in fact, very homogenous com-

pared to the greater genetic variation we observe in other closely related species.

The reason we know this now is thanks to technological developments that have

taken place over the last 50 or so years. Molecular anthropology, or anthropological

genetics, revolutionized and continues to add new layers to our understanding of

human biological diversity and the evolutionary processes that gave rise to the pat-

terns of variation we observe in contemporary populations. The study of human

variation has not always been unbiased, and thinkers and scientists have always

worked in their particular sociohistorical context. For this reason, this chapter

opens with a brief overview of race concepts throughout history, many of which re-

lied on unethical and unscienti�c notions about different human groups.
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THE HISTORY OF “RACE” CONCEPTS

“Race” in the Classical Era

The earliest classi�cation systems used to understand human diversity are evi-

denced by ancient manuscripts, scrolls, and stone tablets recovered through ar-

chaeological, historical, and literary research. The Ancient Egyptians had the Book of

Gates, dated to the New Kingdom between 1550 B.C.E. and 1077 B.C.E (Figure 13.2). In

one part of this tome dedicated to depictions of the underworld, scribes used pic-

tures and hieroglyphics to illustrate a division of Egyptian people into the four cate-

gories known to them at the time: the Aamu (Asiatics), the Nehesu (Nubians), the

Reth (Egyptians), and the Themehu (Libyans). Though not rooted in any scienti�c

basis like our current understandings of human variation today, the Ancient Egyp-

tians believed that each of these groups were made of a distinctive category of peo-

ple, distinguishable by their skin color, place of origin, and even behavioral traits.

Figure 13.2 ( from left to right) Depicting a
Berber (Libyan), a Nubian, an Asiatic
(Levantine), and an Egyptian, copied from a
mural of the tomb of Seti I.

The Roman philosopher Pliny the Elder (23‒79 C.E.) also wrote about different
groupings of people in his encyclopedia Naturalis Historia (Figure 13.3). In his opin-

ion, all people �t under one of three categories: civilized peoples, barbarians, and

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Figure 13.3 Front page of Pliny
the Elder’s Naturalis Historia.

monstrous individuals. Pliny the Elder’s work was

deeply problematic. He believed that only Europeans

were civilized and not monstrous-looking, while other

groups of people lacked the ideal character and ap-

pearance. In both the cases of the Book of Gates and

Naturalis Historia, the worldviews of those who wrote

these volumes were also limited by how few and in-

frequent their encounters were with peoples else-

where around the world—that is, those not residing in

Europe, the Near East, or northern Africa. When faced

with only the level of biological diversity they could

see around them, distinguishing factors identi�ed by

these prominent thinkers relied simply on readily visi-

ble phenotypic traits, such as body size, skin color,

and facial shape.

The most well-known of early documents is perhaps

the Bible, where it is written that all humankind de-

scends from one of three sons of Noah: Shem (the ancestor to all olive-skinned

Asians), Japheth (the ancestor to pale-skinned Europeans), and Ham (the ancestor to

darker-skinned Africans). Similar to the Ancient Egyptians, these distinctions were

based on behavioral traits and skin color. More recent work in historiography and

linguistics suggest that the branches of “Hamites,” “Japhethites,” and “Shemites” may

also relate to the formation of three independent language groups some time be-

tween 1000 and 3000 B.C.E. With the continued proliferation of Christianity, this

concept of approximately three racial groupings lasted until the Middle Ages and

spread as far across Eurasia as crusaders and missionaries ventured at the time.

Finally, there is also the “Great Chain of Being,” conceived by ancient Greek philoso-

phers like Plato (427‒348 B.C.E.) and Aristotle (384‒322 B.C.E.). They played a key
role in laying the foundations of empirical science, whereby observations of every-

thing from animals to humans were noted with the aim of creating taxonomic cate-

gories. Aristotle describes the Great Chain of Being as a ladder along which all ob-

jects, plants, animals, humans, and celestial bodies can be mapped in an overall hier-

archy (in the of existential importance, with humans placed near the top, just

beneath divine beings) (Figure 13.4). Where he writes about humans, Aristotle ex-
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Figure 13.4 The Great Chain of
Being from the Rhetorica
Christiana by Fray Diego de
Valades (1579).

Figure 13.5 Carl Linnaeus.

pressed the belief that certain people are inherently

(or genetically) more instinctive rulers, while others

are more natural �ts for the life of a worker or slave.

Nowadays, based on research by biological anthropol-

ogists, we currently recognize that these early sys-

tems of classi�cation and hierarchization are unhelp-

ful in studying human biological diversity. Both behav-

ioral traits and physical traits are coded for by multi-

ple genes each, and how we exhibit those traits based

on our genetics can vary signi�cantly even between

individuals of the same population.

“Race” during the Scienti�c Revolution

The 1500s and 1600s saw the beginnings of the “

Scienti�c Revolution” in European societies, with thinkers like Copernicus, Galileo,

and Da Vinci publishing some of their most important �ndings. While by no means

the �rst or only scholars globally to use observation and experimentation to under-

stand the world around them, early scientists living at the end of the medieval pe-

riod in Europe increasingly employed more experimentation, quanti�cation, and ra-

tional thought in their work. This is the main difference between the work of the an-

cient Egyptians, Romans, and Greeks, and that of workers like Isaac Newton and

Carl Linnaeus in the 1600s and 1700s.

Linnaeus is the author of Systema Naturae (1758), in which

he classi�ed all plants and animals he could observe un-

der the �rst formalized naming system known as

binomial nomenclature (i.e., how all organisms can be

named by their genus and species, such as Homo sapiens

or Pan troglodytes) (Figure 13.5). What was most anthro-

pologically notable about Linnaeus’s taxonomy was that

he was one of the �rst to group humans with apes and

monkeys, after noting the anatomical similarities between

humans and nonhuman primates. Linnaeus viewed the

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Figure 13.6 Discovery of the Mississippi by Spanish
colonialist explorer Hernando DeSoto in 1541 (painted in
1853 by William H. Powell).

world in line with essentialism, a concept which dictates that there are a unique set

of characteristics that organisms of a speci�c kind must have—organisms would fall

outside taxonomic categorizations if they lacked any of the required criteria.

Despite these useful contributions to the biological sciences, Linnaeus still subdi-

vided the human species into four varieties, with overtly racist categories based on

skin color and “inherent” behaviors. According to him, Africans are all “black-

skinned” and ruled by an erratic nature; Native Americans are “red” in skin tone and

ruled by habit; Asians are “yellow-” or “brown-skinned” and ruled by belief; and Eu-

ropeans are “white” and regulated by custom. These standards for categorization

imply that Europeans are governed by carefully considered culture and custom, un-

like the unthinking Asians and Indigenous Americans in his framework who normally

act out of “habit” or “belief.” Moreover, Linnaeus’s traditional ranking also places

sub-Saharan, dark-skinned Africans inferior to the other three. Wrongly so, Euro-

pean scientists during this period were not aware of their own biases skewing their

interpretations of biological diversity. The conclusions and claims they came to,

consciously or subconsciously, often �t such an age when the superiority of Euro-

pean cultures over others was a pervasive idea throughout these scientists’ social

and political lives.

Occurring alongside this Scien-

ti�c Revolution was also the “

Age of Discovery.” Although

much of Eurasia was linked by

spice and silk trading routes,

the European colonial period

between the 1400s and 1700s

was marked by many new and

intentionally violent encounters

overseas (Figure 13.6). When

Europeans arrived by ship on

the shores of continents that

were already inhabited, it was

their �rst meeting with the indigenous peoples of the Americas and Australasia, who

looked, spoke, and behaved differently from peoples with whom they were familiar.

Building on the idea of species and “subspecies,” natural historians of this time in-

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vented the term race, from the French rasse meaning “local strain.” The idea behind

this terminology was rooted in the observation that geography plays a signi�cant

role in producing the biological traits we observe today. Naturalists like Comte de

Buffon and Johann Blumenbach did believe that all people have a single origin, but

they also believed that differences in environment could lead to biological changes

between different groups of people (i.e., races). However, as they had no under-

standing of genetics, they were incorrect in assuming that factors such as skin color

could change in a single lifetime depending on climate and diet and, essentially, be-

havior. Again, while drawing links between external physical characteristics and be-

havior is not scienti�c, differences in both were used to justify the Othering of

“nonwhite” cultures. Establishing “otherness” and “inferiority” in other people’s cul-

tures was necessary at the time for colonialists to enforce European domination and

the subordination of non-European people. Without genetic technologies, little was

known at the time about the hereditary or evolutionary basis of skin color having lit-

tle to do with innate differences between various “races.”

Another such scientist at the time, Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (1752‒1840), classi-
�ed humans into �ve races based on his observations of cranial form variation as

well as skin color. He thus dubbed the “original” form of the human cranium the

“Caucasian” form, with the idea that the ideal climate conditions for early humans

would have been in the Caucasus region near the Caspian Sea. The key insight Blu-

menbach presented was that human variation in any particular trait should be more

accurately viewed as falling along a gradation (Figure 13.7). While some of his theo-

ries were correct according to what we observe today with more knowledge in ge-

netics, workers like him and Buffon believed erroneously that human “subspecies”

were “degenerated” or “transformed” varieties of an ancestral Caucasian or Euro-

pean race. According to them, the Caucasian cranial dimensions were the least

changed over human evolutionary time, while the other skull forms represented ge-

ographic variants of this “original.” As will be discussed in greater detail later in this

chapter, we have genetic and craniometric evidence for sub-Saharan Africa being

the origin of the human species instead. Based on work that shows how most bio-

logical characteristics are coded for by nonassociated genes, it is not reasonable to

draw links between individuals’ personalities and their skull shapes.

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Figure 13.7 Five skull drawings representing specimens for Blumenbach’s “Mongolian,” “American,”
“Caucasian,” “Malayan,” and “Aethiopian” races.

“Race” and the Dawn of Scienti�c Racism

Between the 1800s and mid-1900s, and contrary to what you might expect, an in-

creased use of scienti�c methods to justify racial schemes developed in scholarship.

Differing from Blumenbach and Buffon’s views in earlier centuries, which saw all hu-

mans as environmentally deviated from one “original” humankind, classi�cation sys-

tems after 1800 became more polygenetic (viewing all people as having separate

origins) rather than monogenetic (viewing all people as having a single origin). In-

stead of moving closer to our modern-day understandings of human diversity, there

was increased support for the notion that each race was created separately and with

different attributes (intelligence, temperament, and appearance).

The 1800s were an important precursor to modern biological anthropology as we

know it, given that the scienti�c measurement of human physical features (anthro-

pometry) truly became popularized then. However, whether it was skin color, skull

shape, or observations of behavior being analyzed as the data, empirical studies in

the 1800s pushed the idea even further that Europeans were culturally and biologi-

cally superior. The leading �gures in craniometry at this time, focusing on measure-

ments of the skull, were also linked heavily with powerful individuals and wealthy

sociopolitical institutions and �nancial bodies. Therefore, polygenetic ways of think-

ing were particularly in�uenced by sociohistorical and economic factors at the time.

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Theories in support of hierarchical racial schemes certainly helped continue the ex-

ploitative and unethical transatlantic slave trade between the 1500s and 1800s by

justifying the transport and enslavement of African people on a “scienti�c” basis.

While considered one of the pioneers of American “physical” anthropology, Samuel

George Morton (1799‒1851) was a scholar who had a large role in 1800s scienti�c
racism. By measuring cranial size and shape, he calculated that “Caucasians,” on av-

erage, have greater cranial volumes than other groups, such as the Native Americans

and “Negros.” Today, we know that cranial size variation depends on such factors as

Allen’s and Bergmann’s rules, which give the more likely explanation for the largest

heads being found in people living among colder regions (i.e., Europeans) being cli-

matic adaptation (Beals et al. 1984). In colder environments, it is advantageous for

those living there to have larger and rounder heads because they conserve heat

more effectively than slenderer heads (Beals et al. 1984).

Morton went on to write in his publication Crania Americana (1839) a number of

views that �t with a concept called biological determinism. The idea behind biolog-

ical determinism is that an association exists between people’s physical characteris-

tics and their behavior, intelligence, ability, values, and morals. If the idea is that

some groups of people are essentially superior to others in cognitive ability and

temperament, then it is easier to justify the unequal treatment of certain groups

based on outward appearances. Based on his cranial measurements and observa-

tions of human nature, Morton claimed that Europeans were the most intelligent

and “well-proportioned,” while Asians were not �t for leadership and had short at-

tention spans, Native Americans were slow in acquiring knowledge and fond of war,

and Africans were superstitious, uninventive, and “barbarous.”

Another such problematic thinker was Paul Broca (1824‒1880), after which a region
of the frontal lobe related to language use is named (Broca’s area). In�uenced by

Morton, he likewise claimed that internal skull capacities could be linked with skin

color and cognitive ability. Considering his data taken from different parts of the

globe, Broca thought that factors such as gender, education, and social status could

have an in�uence on brain size for different groups, purporting that men had larger

brains than women and that “eminent” men were superior to men of “mediocre tal-

ent.” He went on to justify the European colonization of other global territories by

purporting it was noble for a biologically more “civilized” population to improve the

“humanity” of more “barbaric” populations. Today, these theories of Morton, Broca,

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Figure 13.8 Aleš Hrdlička (1869 ‒
1943), a Czech anthropologist
who founded the American
Journal of Physical
Anthropology.

and others like them are known to have no scienti�c basis. If we could speak with

them today, they would likely try to emphasize that their conclusions were based on

empirical evidence and not a priori reasoning. However, we now can clearly see that

their reasoning was biased and affected by prevailing societal views at the time.

“Race” and the Beginnings of Physical Anthropology

In the early 20th century, we saw a number of new �gures coming into the science

of human variation and shifting the theoretical focuses within. Most notably, these

included Aleš Hrdlička and Franz Boas.

Aleš Hrdlička (1869 ‒1943) was a Czech anthropologist
who moved to the United States. In 1903, he estab-

lished the physical anthropology section of the Na-

tional Museum of Natural History (Figure 13.8). In

1918, he founded the American Journal of Physical An-

thropology, one of the foremost scienti�c journals dis-

seminating bioanthropological research still today. As

part of his work and the scope of the journal, he dif-

ferentiated “physical anthropology” from other kinds

of anthropology—he wrote that physical anthropology

is “the study of racial anatomy, physiology, and

pathology” and “the study of man’s variation”

(Hrdlička 1918). In some ways, although the scope and

technological capabilities of biological anthropolo-

gists have changed signi�cantly, Hrdlička established

an area of inquiry that has continued and prospered

for over a hundred years.

Franz Boas (1858‒1942) was a German American anthropologist who established the
four-�eld anthropology system in the United States and founded the American An-

thropological Association in 1902. He argued that the scienti�c method should be

used in the study of human cultures and the comparative method for looking at hu-

man biology worldwide. Boas’s specialization was in the study of skull dimensions

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Figure 13.9 Logo of the Second International Exhibition of Eugenics
held in 1921.

with respect to race. After a long-term research project, he demonstrated how cra-

nial form was highly dependent on cultural and environmental factors and that hu-

man behaviors were in�uenced primarily not by genes but by social learning. He

wrote in one essay for the journal Science: “While individuals differ, biological differ-

ences between races are small. There is no reason to believe that one race is by na-

ture so much more intelligent, endowed with great willpower, or emotionally more

stable than another, that the difference would materially in�uence its culture” (Boas

1931�6). This conclusion directly contrasted with the theories of the past that relied

on biological determinism. Biological anthropologists today have found evidence

that corroborates Boas’s explanations: societies do not exist on a hierarchy or grada-

tion of “civilizedness” but instead are …