Pre-Adamism’s polygenism relegated Africans to animal proximity in European thought

Evidence

By the 1730s in Europe, monogenism was giving way to the likes of pre-Adamism and the view that differentiated kinds of human beings enjoyed multiple origins. Increasingly, the story of Adam was taken to account only for European origins and African origins were considered by a growing number of European intellectuals to be closer to those of animals. As such they could be variously devoured. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1355

Categorization

• XREF: Polygenism and ‘pre-Adamite’ theories connect to arguments that shaped 19th-century scientific racism and American slaveholding ideology.
• DEEPTHINKING: The chilling final clause — ‘as such they could be variously devoured’ — distills how theological anthropology licenses literal violence; dense causal logic from metaphysics to consumption.