Everything about Polygenism totally explained
Polygenism is a theory of human origins positing that the human
races are of different lineages, either from a scientific or a religious basis. This is opposite to the idea of
monogenism, which posits a single origin of humanity.
From the point of view of religion, polygenism is an uncommon
Biblical interpretation. Until the mid-
1800s it was largely considered
heretical. It was first raised by
Isaac La Peyrère, a French
polymath seeking to reconcile the limited number of generations between Adam and Eve and modern day by positing
pre-Adamites. It wasn't believed that the number of races could have developed within the commonly accepted biblical timeframe.
Voltaire even brought the subject up in his
Essay on the Manner and Spirit of Nations and on the Principal Occurrences in History in
1756 (which was an early work of comparative history), although Voltaire made no attempt to solve the problem.
Polygenism came into mainstream scientific and religious thought due to the work of
Samuel George Morton and more prominently
Louis Agassiz in the
United States. The issue of race was polemical, and
slave owners attempted to justify their treatment of slaves using claimed empirical
science such as Morton's work. They argued that each race was a different
species, and that black Africans were mentally inferior to
Caucasians. Agassiz believed that each race was unique, but could still be classified as the same species. Contemporary geological discoveries described the earth as far older than strict interpretation of
Genesis allows, and among some thinkers, polygenism was a way to reconcile the new discoveries with their faith.
In the race debates of the 1860s and 1870s,
Charles Darwin and his supporters argued for a monogenism of the species — seeing the common origin of all humans as essential for
evolutionary theory. This is called the
single-origin hypothesis, although it's no longer acknowledged as crucial to evolution by the
scientific community.
In the late 20th century, the work of the
paleoanthropologist Carleton Coon was the closest to what can be perhaps considered a "modern" polygenism by positing that the individual races of the earth separately evolved into modern
homo sapiens. This hypothesis, called the
multiregional hypothesis, wasn't very popular when it was presented in the mid-1960s, though there continue to be some vocal advocates for it within the scientific community.
Many
oral traditions feature polygenesis in their
origin stories.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Polygenism'.
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