The Galton Lecture 1968: The race concept in human biology

Extract

Until very recently physical anthropology has been more or less exclusively concerned with the study of the evolutionary origins of man and with race. During the first half of this century a vast body of literature accumulated describing the physical characteristics of the world's many populations, both past and present, and classifying these populations into races. Innumerable classifications appeared, which not only varied according to their authors' views as to which race a particular population should be ascribed but also, very strikingly, in the number of races that were considered as compounding the human species. Some recognized as few as three or four, others as many as thirty or more. No small effort was spent in searching for methods to ascribe individuals to one race or another and some people were regarded as being more ‘typical’ of a particular race than others.