‘Polynesians’ in the Brazilian hinterland? Sociohistorical perspectives on skulls, genomics, identity, and nationhood
History of the Human Sciences 33 (2):22-47 (2020)
Abstract
In 1876, Brazilian physical anthropologists De Lacerda and Peixoto published findings of detailed anatomical and osteometric investigation of the new human skull collection of Rio de Janeiro’s Museu Nacional. They argued not only that the Indigenous ‘Botocudo’ in Brazil might be autochthonous to the New World, but also that they shared analogic proximity to other geographically very distant human groups – the New Caledonians and Australians – equally attributed limited cranial capacity and resultant inferior intellect. Described by Blumenbach and Morton, ‘Botocudo’ skulls were highly valued scientific specimens in 19th-century physical anthropology. A recent genomic study has again related ‘the Botocudo’ to Indigenous populations from the other side of the world by identifying ‘Polynesian ancestry’ in two of 14 Botocudo skulls held at the Museu Nacional. This article places the production of scientific knowledge in multidisciplinary, multiregional historical perspectives. We contextualize modern narratives in the biological sciences relating ‘Botocudo’ skulls and other cranial material from lowland South America to Polynesia, Melanesia, and Australia. With disturbing irony, such studies often unthinkingly reinscribe essentialized historic racial categories such as ‘the Botocudos’, ‘the Polynesians’, and ‘the Australo-Melanesians’. We conclude that the fertile alliance of intersecting sciences that is revolutionizing understandings of deep human pasts must be informed by sensitivity to the deep histories of terms, classification schemes, and the disciplines themselves.DOI
10.1177/0952695119891044
My notes
Similar books and articles
Paleoclimatic Variation and Brain Expansion during Human Evolution.Jessica Ash & Gordon G. Gallup - 2007 - Human Nature 18 (2):109-124.
Biological Discourses on Human Races and Scientific Racism in Brazil.Juanma Sánchez Arteaga - 2017 - Journal of the History of Biology 50 (2):267-314.
Genomics and identity: the bioinformatisation of human life. [REVIEW]Hub Zwart - 2009 - Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy 12 (2):125-136.
Lieux-Dits d'Un Malentendu Culturel: Analyse Anthropologique Et Philosophique du Discours Occidental Sur l'Altérité Polynésienne.Bernard Rigo - 1997
“An Unusual and Fast Disappearing Opportunity”: Infectious Disease, Indigenous Populations, and New Biomedical Knowledge in Amazonia, 1960–1970.Rosanna Dent & Ricardo Ventura Santos - 2017 - Perspectives on Science 25 (5):585-605.
“I was stealing some skulls from the bone chamber when a bigamist cleric stopped me.” Karl Ernst von Baer and the development of physical anthropology in Europe.Erki Tammiksaar & Ken Kalling - 2018 - Centaurus 60 (4):276-293.
Skulls, science, and the spoils of war: craniological studies at the United States Army Medical Museum, 1868–1900.Elise Juzda - 2009 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 40 (3):156-167.
Skulls, causality, and belief.William James Earle - 1985 - Philosophy of the Social Sciences 15 (3):305-311.
Gould on Morton, Redux: What can the debate reveal about the limits of data?Jonathan Kaplan, Massimo Pigliucci & Joshua Banta - 2015 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 52:22-31.
The most brutal of human skulls: measuring and knowing the first Neanderthal.Paige Madison - 2016 - British Journal for the History of Science 49 (3):411-432.
The emergence of human population genetics and narratives about the formation of the Brazilian nation.Vanderlei Sebastião de Souza & Ricardo Ventura Santos - 2014 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 47:97-107.
Skulls and blossoms: Collecting and the meaning of scientific objects as resources from the 18th to the 20th century.Marianne Klemun, Marina Loskutova & Anastasia Fedotova - 2018 - Centaurus 60 (4):231-237.
What is Pragmatism in Brazil Today?Paulo Ghiraldelli & Cody Carr - 2005 - Studies in Philosophy and Education 24 (6):499-514.
A cup o’ controversy: coffee and health in 19th century Rio de Janeiro.Cristiana Loureiro de Mendonça Couto & Ana M. Alfonso-Goldfarb - 2016 - Circumscribere: International Journal for the History of Science 17:41-53.
“The Map of the Mexican’s Genome”: overlapping national identity, and population genomics. [REVIEW]Ernesto Schwartz-Marín & Irma Silva-Zolezzi - 2010 - Identity in the Information Society 3 (3):489-514.
Analytics
Added to PP
2020-06-19
Downloads
9 (#938,252)
6 months
1 (#454,876)
2020-06-19
Downloads
9 (#938,252)
6 months
1 (#454,876)
Historical graph of downloads
References found in this work
The emergence of human population genetics and narratives about the formation of the Brazilian nation.Vanderlei Sebastião de Souza & Ricardo Ventura Santos - 2014 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 47:97-107.
Biological Discourses on Human Races and Scientific Racism in Brazil.Juanma Sánchez Arteaga - 2017 - Journal of the History of Biology 50 (2):267-314.