Blumenbach: A Very Brief Summary

Prior to diving into the many new insights that can be comprehended while viewing history through a natural lense, it is important to define nature in this context. While man is technically a creation of nature, and therefore nature himself, he shall be excluded from this brief definition of what composes nature. Here, nature will be considered everything living or otherwise on this earth that is not a creation or product of humanity. All other creatures and parts of the environment are to be considered nature.

Eventually, more scientific advances were made, that led to race. Initially, a classification system was created by

textures and color, nose, lips, and muscles, sexual habits, morals, and religion were also considered as criteria to assign a "race" to a human being. Fundamental systems based mainly on physical characteristics allowed scientists to justify racial group placement.

What he means by this is that traits vary independently of other traits. Since race only really correlates with skin, hair, and eye color, there is no basis for the claim that certain diseases go along with a certain race. Sickle cell anemia may affect equatorial Africans, but also Greeks and Turks. This shows how the traits vary independently.

This book has been molded to be a breakdown of how various fields in science have progressed over centuries as mankind has advanced. The book starts off introducing the idea that the telling of natural history has changed numerous times as humans have evolved. We also learn to agree that our knowledge has been shaped by the tools available and the perceptions of its users. In the earliest stages of life, Muehlbauer states “…observers of the natural world had only their senses to work with, and were limited to visual, auditory, tactile, and olfactory descriptions perceived by the unaided

Years ago, biologists made research on the biological variations between individuals and they made inferences that the distinctive characteristics of members of a particular race are a result of their inherited genes. They often limited their understanding of race to skin color and physical attributes until 1758 where a Swedish botanist named Carolus Linnaeus established the classification system still in use for various

over Germany. Her dad was killed right after they got liberated. She was starved ing the

To understand the question, we must first familiarize ourselves with the definition of race. Race is defined as “An arbitrary classification of modern humans, sometimes, especially formerly, based on a combination of various physical characteristics, as skin color, facial form, or eye shape, and now frequently based on such genetic markers as blood groups” (dictionary.com).

Mark D. Shriver (professor of anthropology and genetics at Penn State University) created this system by analyzing the DNA along with the face of people mixed with Western African and European ancestry. When creating this system Dr. Shriver studied these ancestry’s because it conducted an easier analysis. “This leads to a technology that is better able to make faces that are African-American,” Dr. Fullwiley added. The essence of Dr. Fullwiley argument is that because of the analysis conducted on Western Africans and mixed Europeans and the fact that the system is not to its full potential is puts a high risk of racial

Usually when you look at someone you see their physical characteristics, a lot has to do with skin color, usually black or white, their hair color and texture, and how their face looks. All of these characteristics show how different people are but also it shows how they are similar to other people of their “race”. “Race refers to a group of people who share a set of characteristics – typically, but not always, physical ones- and are said to share a common bloodline.” (Conley, 2015) The text says that “to speak of the myth of race is to say that it is largely a social construction, a set of stories we tell ourselves to organize reality and make sense of the world, rather than a fixed biological or natural reality.” (Conley, 2015) I believe

The assumptions made about race are often superficial assumption based on features in a person that are attempted to be used as an identifier of someone’s race such as hair texture, complexion, eye shape, etc. in contrast to popular belief science has proven that there is no specific feature that genetically Is attributed to a certain race.

Concordance is the basis of the belief of biological race. This belief was proved to be false when concordance was disproven. Without concordance, it is easy to see all races are remarkably similar except for the superficial visual differences like hair texture and skin color. Most complex traits have nothing to do with race. The video points out that three of the students, two white and one asian, all have exceptional musical ability, despite their differences in race,

Due to the way natural selection and evolution take place, human variation occurs outside of the static racial categories that has persisted throughout history. These categories are based on variable physical traits that give no reliable information about the group as a whole. The idea that these categories are biologically meaningful is not only false, but can be harmful as well. When racial paradigms are applied in the real world, the results are sometimes harmful. Understanding that racial categories are arbitrary in a biological sense is beneficial to society as a

As Europeans began to explore they were in need of a way to categorize their findings, including other humans (Race).

Starting over 500 years ago with Nicolaus Copernicus, Galileo Galilei, Francis Bacon, and Isaac Newton paving the way for the possibility of new scientific exploration into studies such as “stratigraphy, the study of the rock and soil layers of the earth” by Robert Hooke and Carolus Linnaeus’ study of taxonomy, “the system of naming and classifying organisms” based on morphological similarities and differences, humanity would begin to uncrack the code of where life came from in a nonbiblical sense. (Fuentes, 26) Further studies by George-Louis Leclerc – Comte du Buffon, Erasmus Darwin (Charles’ grandfather), Georges Cuvier, James Hutton and Charles Lyell as well as Jean Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet – Chevalier de Lamarck’s studies in which he “correctly identified the environment as a challenge to organisms and adaptation as the result of changing to meet environmental challenges” helped prompt the formulation of the current understanding of evolution by Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace each in their own special way.