Skin color seemed trivial to medieval Europeans absorbed in myths of monsters

Evidence

“In Western Europe, where the majority of the population lived in villages and hamlets and were preoccupied with the problems of survival In a world in which lived giants such as Gog and Magog, headless men with eyes in their stomachs, and the troglodytes of Libya—single-footed cave-dwellers who shielded themselves from the heat of the sun by lying on their backs and using their huge feet as umbrellas—the fact that some variations of skin color were also reported among foreigners must have appeared as a minor detail.” — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1748

Categorization

• XREF: Supports the reader’s search for the origins of racial consciousness — shows race was not a primary axis of difference in premodern European folk cosmology. — connects to: Medieval Europeans did not view dark-skinned Africans as naturally inferior. — Rebecca A. Martusewicz, Jeff Edmundson, and John Lupinacci, EcoJustice Education: Toward Diverse,…, 1119