Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} The Living Races of Man by Carleton S. Coon The Living Races of Man by Carleton S. Coon. Hooray! You've discovered a title that's missing from our library. Can you help donate a copy? If you own this book, you can mail it to our address below. You can also purchase this book from a vendor and ship it to our address: When you buy books using these links the Internet Archive may earn a small commission. Benefits of donating. When you donate a physical book to the Internet Archive, your book will enjoy: Beautiful high-fidelity digitization Long-term archival preservation Free controlled digital library access by the print-disabled and public † Open Library is a project of the Internet Archive, a 501(c)(3) non-profit. Prejudice. Edmund Leach’s review of my book The Living Races of Man in your February 3 number is inaccurate and silly. He says, for example: “It is to Professor Coon’s discredit that he should seek to support his purportedly scientific classification with 128 photographs in which the Caucasians are posed in shirt-sleeves and ‘civilized’ hair-cuts whereas most of his other categories appear as bare-arsed savages.” The photographic supplement contains 183 photographs, not 128. None of the persons depicted have haircuts that could not be found on allegedly civilized individuals in London today. If we add conservative to civilized , we find only 15 unusual coiffures, nine of which are on Caucasoid heads and not one on a non-Caucasoid African. As for shirt-sleeves, the upper body is clothed in all but 35 pictures, and in most of these only the face, neck, and portions of the upper chest are showing. Bare female breasts appear in seven, mostly inhabitants of warm regions. Only four are bare- arsed: one Negrito baby whose mother is fully clothed; two pictures of Andamanese; and one of a Hottentot. Even if Professor Leach’s statement were true, what difference would it make? His argument reminds one of people who propose to put clothing on nude statues. Aside from scanning the pictures there is no evidence that he read the book except for a few pages of the introduction. Otherwise he could not have failed to see the chapters of genetics and physiology, or to have known that I did not discuss mental agility or musical capacity. His quotation of a sentence from The Origin of Races could not have been taken from the book itself, but only from Montagu’s book, because he repeats Montagu’s error in citing the page. It is not on page 656, as both Montagu and Leach state, but on page 657. This mistake makes a critical difference. Page 656 is about Africa, page 657 about mankind in general. Also Leach’s innuendo that I may have cribbed my ideas about racial classification from the lecture of John Augustine Smith delivered in 1809 is false and misleading. I had never before heard of either Smith mentioned in the review. His main argument against the pursuit of racial studies is that since everyone belongs to a race, and each person secretly or openly considers his own race superior to all others, all writers on race are therefore “racists” and works such as mine a waste of time. By the same token, Professor Leach participates in a culture, secretly or openly considers that culture superior to all others, and is thus a “culturist.” By his logic, his earlier works, which I have been quoting and recommending for many years as models of procedure and objectivity in cultural anthropology, are also a waste of time. I cannot bring myself to believe that they are and shall go on recommending them. Carleton S. Coon. Edmund R Leach replies: The issues are so contentious that it is almost impossible to offer criticism without appearing to imply hostility. The point I sought to make that the making of taxonomies is “a waste of time” unless the resulting classification will provoke illuminating questions is a very general one. It has its negative side in that any particular taxonomy tends to inhibit the asking of various kinds of possibly interesting questions. I would criticize all systems of human race classification on both these grounds, namely that by cutting up the human cake into slices as it were they tend to inhibit the asking of precisely those questions about humanity which might be most interesting. I readily accept the point made at the end of Professor Coon’s letter. As an Englishman speaking English I am a highly prejudiced person who finds it extremely difficult not to believe my English culture is superior to all others. I would on this account deplore any attempt to set up a worldwide classification of cultures on precisely the same grounds that I object to a classification of human races. My writings have been quite consistent on this point since one of the main themes in my anthropological writing has been that the tribal distinctions of ordinary ethnographic literature tend to inhibit precisely the kind of inquiries which are most interesting. This is the main theme of my book Political Systems of Highland Burma . Although my criticism of Professor Coon’s photographs was exaggerated in its condensation, the point I made is one which I would adhere to. Since the book is concerned with physical anthropology in a strict sense, that is with human beings as physical animals unmodified by culture, the only fair kind of visual comparison would be a set of posed photographs in which the individuals concerned are in the nude with similar haircuts and posed in similar positions. As a student of culture, I am well aware of how tremendously prejudiced people can be about small differences of appearance. In Borneo for example, where the different tribes distinguish themselves by their haircuts, it would be easy to select photographs which would convince the unsuspecting layman that a Kayan was of entirely different “race” from an Iban. Professor Coon himself would not support such an argument; nevertheless by exhibiting photographs in which “Congoids” are naked while “Caucasoids” are clothed, seems to me to lend quite unjustifiable support to the thesis which runs through both his books that Caucasoids are a more developed subspecies of humanity than are Congoids. Had his Europeans been posed naked this impression would not have been given. The rest of Professor Coon’s letter is surely simply polemic. I have read his earlier work; I did not check Professor Montagu’s page reference; I did not imply that the new book discusses “mental agility and musical capacity,” but only that these are factors which may be worth classifying for some purposes—though they are no more likely to demonstrate the descendants of the “original races of mankind” than are Professor Coon’s own criteria. I did not suppose that Professor Coon was familiar with the work of John Augustine Smith; my point rather was that the illusion that some men are by nature “more brutal” than others is a very ancient dogma and that Professor Coon’s modern-dress version of the story suffers from all the defects of prejudice which have been embedded in the argument right from the start. “In Ways Unacademical”: The Reception of Carleton S. Coon's The Origin of Races. This paper examines the controversy surrounding anthropologist CarletonS. Coon's 1962 book, The Origin of Races . Coon maintained that thehuman sspecies was divided into five races before it had evolved into Homo sapiens and that the races evolved into sapiens at different times. Coon's thesis was used by segregationists in the United States as proof that African Americans were “junior” to white Americans and hence unfit for full participation in American society. The paper examines the interactions among Coon, segregationist Carleton Putnam, geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky, and anthropologist Sherwood Washburn. The paper concludes that Coon actively aided the segregationist cause in violation of his own standards for scientific objectivity. This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution. Access options. Buy single article. Instant access to the full article PDF. Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout. Subscribe to journal. Immediate online access to all issues from 2019. Subscription will auto renew annually. Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout. 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Formal zoologists may feel that since a whale is a mammal it cannot possibly be a fish; mariners might hold that its fishlike aptitudes are entirely obvious. Communication between the two sides is very difficult. Much of the argument about human races is like that and things have been that way for nearly two centuries. The persistence of such cross-talk is especially unfortunate because in the case of human classification, true objectivity is quite impossible. If Professor X maintains that human beings fall into n natural kinds (races) then one of those races contains Professor X himself. Professor X is then bound to believe that, in some perhaps not very clearly defined way, that particular race is superior to all others. In short, Professor X becomes almost without knowing it a “racist” in the most derogatory sense. One of the very early proponents of the view that the varieties of man are so different from one another as to be virtually distinct species was a certain John Augustine Smith who, in a lecture delivered in New York in 1809, claimed to demonstrate that the anatomical structure of the European was superior to that of the Asiatic, Indian, and Negro “or at least that it is farther removed from the brute creation.” In 1962, amid a formidable apparatus of non-science, Processor Coon advanced an almost identical theory, only substituting Bushman for Indian and throwing in the Australian Aborigenes for good measure. Coon’s formula was: “ Homo Erectus evolved into Homo Sapiens not once but five times, as each sub-species, living in its own territory, passed a critical threshold from the more brutal to the more sapient state.” In Coon’s system the Negro (Congoid) is apparently even now “more brutal” than the European (Caucasoid) because he evolved later into Homo Sapiens . This particular passage from Coon’s The Origin of Races (1962, p. 656) has been the object of much derisive comment (see e.g., Montagu, supra , Chapter 4). The Living Races of Man is a sequel to the earlier book and takes its argument as proven. Since Coon explicitly denies adherence to “any dogma, cause, emotion, personal interest or preconceived idea” we must conclude that his repetition of Dr. Smith’s phraseology is just another case of independent and convergent evolution! Like any good Jesuit, Professor Coon cites his scientific authorities in profusion; must be most comforting to find that all the new evidence so consistently supports his 150-year-old hypothesis. His book is a mine of heavily interpreted (or misinterpreted?) information, but he is scrupulous in indicating his sources. Any skeptic can always look up the original; alternatively he can seek his information from some other more frankly prejudiced expert such as Professor Montagu. The Dr. Smith who pronounced on the brutality of Negroes and the multiple genesis of mankind was the contemporary and opponent of the Rev. Samuel Stanhope Smith, President of Princeton. The latter believed passionately in the natural unity of Man on strictly theological grounds. He did not delude himself into thinking that he ought on that account to treat the Negro as his social equal, but, even so, in order to defend himself against the attacks of his namesake, he was forced to develop a surprisingly modern style of cultural relativism. He remarked that children of “White” families captured by Indians and reared to an Indian way of life became almost indistinguishable from Indians. Smith’s inference was not that our racial judgments are really based on social and cultural criteria but rather that genuine racial attributes can adapt rapidly to their environment. He also claimed that Negro servants in White households were coming to look more and more like their White masters. He predicted that as a result of further improvement they would ultimately become White! The paradox is plain. Smith was prepared to affirm as a matter of dogma that the human species is a unity capable of rapid modification, but he felt quite satisfied that, as things now stand, human races form a hierarchy with White men at the top and Black men at the bottom. President Smith can hardly be defended as an outstanding scientist but many of the views that he advanced are advocated today (for quite different reasons) not only by Professor Montagu, who is primarily an anatomist, but also by a wide spectrum of biologists and genetically orientated physical anthropologists for whom he here stands as spokesman. They too believe in the unity of the species and its continuing adaptive plasticity and sometimes they too, even if unwittingly, are inclined to write as if the only solution to the black man’s problems is that he should get himself a white skin. This last comment does not apply to Montagu himself but it does apply to a number of eminent authorities who might ordinarily be expected to hold liberal opinions (see e.g., Montagu, supra , p. 229). M an’s Most Dangerous Myth was first published in 1942 and each of the three subsequent editions has been radically revised. It remains a splendid piece of liberal polemic but in the course of developing a two-sided battle against the illusions of popular prejudice on the one hand and the delusions of the “scientific” racists on the other the book has become tougher to read and rather out of balance. It remains a marvelous source book—the bibliography alone now runs to sixty pages—but the reader of this review who wants to understand just why he should not accept Professor Coon’s persuasively lucid arguments would do better to look elsewhere, in particular to a collection of essays edited by Professor Montagu himself and published under the title The Concept of Race (The Free Press of Glencoe, 1964). Needless to say the whole matter is very complicated. Taxonomists of the human species have varying interests and proceed from different premises. If you set out to classify men into groups the result will depend upon the criteria you use. Unsophisticated laymen naturally go by what they can directly observe. Secular racial theory relies heavily on such attributes as language, skin color, hair form, gesture, and general appearance. It is to Professor Coon’s discredit that he should seek to support his purportedly scientific classification with 128 photographs in which the Caucasians are posed in shirt sleeves and “civilized” hair-cuts whereas most of his other categories appear as bare-arsed savages. As propaganda this may be effective; as science it is indefensible. Professional physical anthropologists, because of their links with archaeology and their interest in human origins have traditionally laid stress on the criteria which their skeletal evidence provides—e.g., skull shape, limb form, peculiarities of dentition. Geneticists, who are scientists in an altogether more sophisticated sense, concern themselves with characters which are mostly quite inaccessible to direct observation, such as the chemistry of the blood, taste responses, resistance to particular diseases. It is perfectly right that scholars should investigate all these characteristic ways in which men may differ from one another. They can also properly study many other variables—e.g., mental agility, musical capacity, physical endurance. But the fundamental error, which is shared both by unsophisticated laymen and by professionals of Professor Coon’s way of thinking, is to suppose that these various styles of classification can somehow be superimposed so as to produce an end result which is a true set of natural kinds—the original races of Mankind. Professor Montague calls this the “omelet conception of race” and he affirms that it is meaningless because it is inapplicable to anything real. I myself would not denounce it for quite this reason. A great many other classifications, including the fundamental ones of geometry, do not correspond to “anything real.” My objection is on the different ground that this view of race is utterly useless for any purpose whatsoever except as ammunition for deplorable political causes. That being so, and despite all his protestations of sincerity, I judge Professor Coon’s volume to be a total waste of time. Let me end this sour review on a not of commendation. The production and editing of the reprint of President Smith’s essay is a model of what such things should be. For anyone interested in the history of scientific thought at the end of the eighteenth century the volume is a veritable gold mine. The Living Races of Man by Carleton S. Coon. Hooray! You've discovered a title that's missing from our library. Can you help donate a copy? If you own this book, you can mail it to our address below. You can also purchase this book from a vendor and ship it to our address: When you buy books using these links the Internet Archive may earn a small commission. Benefits of donating. When you donate a physical book to the Internet Archive, your book will enjoy: Beautiful high-fidelity digitization Long-term archival preservation Free controlled digital library access by the print-disabled and public † Open Library is a project of the Internet Archive, a 501(c)(3) non-profit.