Polygenesis denied common human ancestry and posited distinct unequal races

Evidence

“Louis Agassiz was a proponent of a scientific theory that was regarded as one of the most cutting-edge ideas of his day. The theory of polygenesis. That theory denied that all humans shared common ancestry and instead posited that different races were actually distinct and unequal species.” — Tamara Lanier, From These Roots, 604

Louis Agassiz was a proponent of a scientific theory that was regarded as one of the most cutting-edge ideas of his day. The theory of polygenesis. That theory denied that all humans shared common ancestry and instead posited that different races were actually distinct and unequal species. — Tamara Lanier, From These Roots, 604

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the polygenesis doctrine central to Agassiz’s reputation as father of scientific racism.
• XREF: The claim that Africans formed a separate species is what the photographic evidence was gathered to prove; connects to the reading purpose of understanding what the Agassiz images were made to demonstrate. — connects to: Founding myths silently bury inconvenient facts of shared ancestry — Neil DeVotta, Sinhalese Buddhist Nationalist…, 73
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Tamara Lanier, From These Roots: My Fight with Harvard…, 604