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Carleton Stevens Coon, (23 June 1904 – 3 June 1981) was a American physical anthropologist noted for books on race. is the 174th day of the year (175th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... 1904 (MCMIV) was a leap year starting on a Friday (see link for calendar). ... is the 154th day of the year (155th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... AUGUST 25 1981 US Marine Sean Vance is Born on the 25th of August {ear nav|1981}} Year 1981 (MCMLXXXI) was a common year starting on Thursday (link displays the 1981 Gregorian calendar). ... Physical anthropology, sometimes called biological anthropology, studies the mechanisms of biological evolution, genetic inheritance, human adaptability and variation, primatology, primate morphology, and the fossil record of human evolution. ... For other uses, see Race. ...

Biography

Carleton Coon was born in Wakefield, Massachusetts. He developed an interest in prehistory, and attended Phillips Academy, Andover where he studied hieroglyphics and became proficient in ancient Greek. Coon went on to study at Harvard, where he began to study Egyptology with George Reisner. He was attracted to the relatively new field of anthropology by Earnest Hooton and he graduated magna cum laude in 1925. He became the Curator of Ethnology at the University Museum of Philadelphia.^[1] Wakefield is a town in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States located ten miles northeast of Boston. ... Phillips Academy (also known as Phillips Andover or P.A. or simply Andover) is a co-educational University preparatory school for boarding and day students in grades 9-12. ... A section of the Papyrus of Ani showing cursive hieroglyphs. ... Harvard University is a private university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, and a member of the Ivy League. ... The Great Sphinx of Giza against Khafres Pyramid at the Giza pyramid complex. ... George Andrew Reisner (November 5, 1867 – June 6, 1942) was an American archaeologist of Ancient Egypt. ... This article is about the social science. ... Earnest Albert Hooton (November 20, 1887, Clemansville, Wisconsin – May 3, 1954, Cambridge, Massachusetts) was a U.S. physical anthropologist known for his work on racial classification and his popular writings such as the book Up From The Ape. ... Year 1925 (MCMXXV) was a common year starting on Thursday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ...

Coon also continued with coursework at Harvard. In 1925 he made the first of many trips to North Africa to conduct fieldwork in the Rif area of Morocco, which was still politically unsettled after a rebellion of the local populace against the Spanish. He earned his Ph.D. in 1928^[2] and returned to Harvard as a lecturer and later a professor. His work from this period included a 1939 rewrite of William Z. Ripley's 1899 The Races of Europe. Year 1925 (MCMXXV) was a common year starting on Thursday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... RIF may refer to: Reading Is Fundamental, an organization promoting childrens literacy Reconnaissance in Force, a type of military operation used specifically to probe an enemys disposition Reduction in Force, a large-scale ending of employment Renju International Federation, Renju is the professional variant of board game Gomoku... William Z. Ripley was an economist who trained at the Massachussetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and at Columbia University. ... The Races of Europe is the title of two books related to the anthropology of Europeans. ...

Coon was a colorful character who undertook adventuresome exploits. Like his mentor Earnest Hooton, he wrote widely for a general audience. He published several novels and fictionalized accounts of his trips to North Africa, including The Riffians, Flesh of the Wild Ox, Measuring Ethiopia, and A North Africa Story: The Anthropologist as OSS Agent. Earnest Albert Hooton (November 20, 1887, Clemansville, Wisconsin – May 3, 1954, Cambridge, Massachusetts) was a U.S. physical anthropologist known for his work on racial classification and his popular writings such as the book Up From The Ape. ...

This last book was an account of his work during World War II, which involved espionage and the smuggling of arms to French resistance groups in German-occupied Morocco under the guise of anthropological fieldwork. Such a practice is generally condemned by working anthropologists today, as going against 21st century science ethics. During that time, Coon was affiliated with the United States Office of Strategic Services, the forerunner to the Central Intelligence Agency. Combatants Allied powers: China France Great Britain Soviet Union United States and others Axis powers: Germany Italy Japan and others Commanders Chiang Kai-shek Charles de Gaulle Winston Churchill Joseph Stalin Franklin Roosevelt Adolf Hitler Benito Mussolini Hideki Tōjō Casualties Military dead: 17,000,000 Civilian dead: 33,000... Spy and Secret agent redirect here. ... The Office of Strategic Services (OSS) was a United States intelligence agency formed during World War II. It was the wartime intelligence agency and was the predecessor to the Central Intelligence Agency, the Special Forces, and Navy SEALs. ... CIA redirects here. ...

Coon did physical anthropological studies abroad. He studied Albanians from 1929-1930; he traveled to Ethiopia for research in 1933; and in Arabia, North Africa and the Balkans, he worked on sites from 1925 to 1939, where he discovered a Neanderthal in 1939. The Arabian Peninsula The Arabian Peninsula is a mainly desert peninsula in Southwest Asia at the junction of Africa and Asia and an important part of the greater Middle East. ...  Northern Africa (UN subregion)  geographic, including above North Africa or Northern Africa is the northernmost region of the African continent, separated by the Sahara from Sub-Saharan Africa. ... Balkan redirects here. ...

In 1948, Coon left Harvard to take up a position as Professor of Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania, which had an excellent museum. Throughout the 1950s he produced academic papers, as well as many popular books for the general reader, the most notable being The Story of Man (1954). Coon's own interest was in attempting to use Darwin's theory of natural selection to explain the differing physical characteristics of various racial groups. Year 1948 (MCMXLVIII) was a leap year starting on Thursday (link will display the 1948 calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... This article is about the social science. ... This article is about the private Ivy League university in Philadelphia. ... For other people of the same surname, and places and things named after Charles Darwin, see Darwin. ... For other uses, see Natural selection (disambiguation). ...

From 1954-1957, Coon did photography work for the United States Air Force. He photographed areas where US planes might be attacked. This led him to travel throughout Korea, Ceylon, India, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Japan, Taiwan, Nepal, Sikkim, and the Philippines.

In 1962 he published The Origin of Races, but it was not well received. The field of anthropology was moving rapidly beyond theories of racial typing. Essentially Coon's ideas had been superseded. Coon continued to write and defend his work. He died on June 3, 1981, in Gloucester, Massachusetts. is the 154th day of the year (155th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... AUGUST 25 1981 US Marine Sean Vance is Born on the 25th of August {ear nav|1981}} Year 1981 (MCMLXXXI) was a common year starting on Thursday (link displays the 1981 Gregorian calendar). ... This article is about Gloucester, Massachusetts, U.S.A.; there are other places called Gloucester Location in Essex County in Massachusetts Coordinates: , Country State County Essex Settled 1623 Incorporated 1642 Government  - Type Mayor-council city  - Mayor Carolyn Kirk Area  - Total 41. ...

Racial theories

Coon concluded that sometimes different racial types had annihilated other types while in other cases warfare and / or settlement had only led to the partial displacement of racial types. He asserted that Europe was the refined product of a long history of racial progression. He stated that historically "different strains in one population have showed differential survival values and often one has reemerged at the expense of others (in Europeans)", in The Races of Europe, The White Race and the New World (1939).^[3] He also stated that the "maximum survival" of Europeans was increased by their replacement of the indigenous peoples of the New World.^[3] He asserted the history of the White race to have involved "racial survivals" of the different White subraces.^[4]

Study of the Caucasoid race

In his book The Races of Europe, The White Race and the New World (1939), Coon used the term "Caucasoid" and "White race" synonymously, as had become common in the United States (although not elsewhere). This is in contrast to many uses of the term "White race" that exclude Arabs and those from the Indian subcontinent. Typically Coon would include most people from the Middle East and South Asia within the "Caucasoid" and "White" definitions which he used interchangeably. In his introduction, he stated his interest was "the somatic character of peoples belonging to the white race". His first chapter was entitled, "Introduction to the Historical Study of the White Race", and his last chapter, "The White Race and the New World".^[5]

He considered the European racial type to be a sub-race of the Caucasoid race, one which warranted more study. In other sections of The Races of Europe, he mentioned people to be "European in racial type" and having a "European racial element."^[6] Coon suggested that the study of some major versions of European racial types was sadly lacking compared with other types, writing, "For many years physical anthropologists have found it more amusing to travel to distant lands and to measure small remnants of little known or romantic peoples than to tackle the drudgery of a systematic study of their own compatriots. For that reason the sections in the present book which deal with the Lapps, the Arabs, the Berbers, the Tajiks, and the Ghegs may appear more fully and more lucidly treated than those which deal with the French, the Hungarians, the Czechs, or the English. What is needed more than anything else in this respect is a thoroughgoing study of the inhabitants of the principal and most powerful nations of Europe."^[3] Sami flag The Sami People (there are other names and spellings including Sámi, Saami and Lapp) are an indigenous people of northern Sweden, Norway, Finland and Russia, covering a total area in the Nordic countries corresponding to the size of Sweden. ... For other uses, see Arab (disambiguation). ... The Berbers (also called Imazighen, free men, singular Amazigh) are a predominantly Muslim ethnic group indigenous to the Maghreb, speaking the Berber languages of the Afroasiatic family. ... Language(s) Persian (varieties of Dari and Tajiki) Religion(s) Islam (predominantly Sunni, with sizable Ithna Ashari and Ismaili minorities) TājÄ«k (Persian: ; UniPers: Tâjik; Tajik: ) is a term generally applied to Persian-speaking peoples of Iranian origin living east of Iran. ... Geg is a northern Albanian dialect. ...

Multiregional model

Main article: Multi-regional origin

Carleton Coon believed Caucasians had followed a separate evolutionary path from other humans. He believed, "The earliest Homo sapiens known, as represented by several examples from Europe and Africa, was an ancestral long-headed white man of short stature and moderately great brain size." Further, he wrote, "The negro group probably evolved parallel to the white strain." (The Races of Europe, Chapter II) Coon hypothesized that modern humans, Homo sapiens, arose five separate times in five separate places from Homo erectus, "as each subspecies, living in its own territory, passed a critical threshold from a more brutal to a more sapient state". The multiregional origin hypothesis of human origins holds that some, or all, of the genetic variation between the contemporary human races is attributable to genetic inheritance from hominid species, or subspecies, that were geographically dispersed throughout Asia, and possibly Europe and Australasia, prior to the evolution of modern Homo sapiens... This article is about modern humans. ... Binomial name (Dubois, 1892) Synonyms † Pithecanthropus erectus † Sinanthropus pekinensis † Javanthropus soloensis † Meganthropus paleojavanicus Homo erectus (Latin: upright man) is an extinct species of the genus Homo. ...

In 1999 discovery of a possible hybrid Homo sapiens X neanderthalensis fossil child at the Abrigo do Lagar Velho rock-shelter site in Portugal made some anthropologists think there might be evidence for Coon's Multiregional hypothesis. Further review of the findings, however, did not change the 20th century consensus about the origins of man. Conclusions were carried in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.^[7] The site and the Upper Paleolithic human burial The Lagar Velho site is a rock-shelter in the Lapedo valley, a limestone canyon ca. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ...

In his 1962 book, The Origin of Races, Coon theorized that some races reached the Homo sapiens stage in evolution before others, resulting in the higher degree of civilization among some races.^[8] He had continued his theory of five races. He considered both what he called the Mongoloid race and the Caucasoid race to be racially superior to what he called the Australoid, Capoid and Congoid races.^[9] In his book Coon contrasted a picture of an Australian Aborigine called "Topsy" with one of a Chinese professor. His caption "The Alpha and the Omega" succinctly expressed his racism. Homo sapiens (Latin: wise man) is the scientific name for the human species. ... Language(s) Several hundred Indigenous Australian languages (many extinct or nearly so), Australian English, Australian Aboriginal English, Torres Strait Creole, Kriol Religion(s) Primarily Christian, with minorities of other religions including various forms of Traditional belief systems based around the Dreamtime Related ethnic groups see List of Indigenous Australian group... Uncle Toms Cabin, or Life Among the Lowly, is American author Harriet Beecher Stowes fictional anti-slavery novel. ...

The racial classification scheme of Carleton S. Coon after the Pleistocene.

The racial classification scheme of Carleton S. Coon during the Pleistocene.   Caucasoid race   Congoid race   Capoid race   Mongoloid race   Australoid race

Typical Caucasoid skull Caucasoid is a racial classification usually used as part of a phenotypal system, also including other classifications such as Australoid, Mongoloid, Negroid, and sometimes others such as Capoid. ... Congoid was used instead of Negroid by controversial anthropologist Carleton Coon in some versions of his classification of humanity into five races, the other four being Mongoloid, Caucasoid, Australoid, and Capoid. ... Main article: Khoisan One of the five macro-racial groups often recognized by physical anthropologists (along with Negroids, Australoids, Caucasoids and Mongoloids). ... Typical Mongoloid Skull A portrait of the Mongol ruler Genghis Khan; the Mongolians, for which the term Mongoloid was named after, are an example of the prototype Northern Mongoloid. ... Australoid is a broad racial classification, no longer used by many anthropologists, of Australasian peoples, most notably the Indigenous Australians and Melanesians. ...

Races in India

In his 1962 book, Coon wrote that within the Caucasoid race there was a "third division [Mediterraneans which]... included... southern India," but remarked this group had "facial features of a Veddoid character which in some instances suggest Australoid affinities."^[10] He further elaborated that in India there were "Veddoids... individuals who are to all extents and purposes Australoid." Regarding the exact racial composition of India, Coon noted, "[T]he racial history of southern Asia has not yet been thoroughly worked out, and it is too early to postulate what these relationships may be...[I] shall leave the problems of Indian physical anthropology in the competent hands of Guha and of Bowles."^[10]

Criticism

When Coon published his magnum opus The Origin of Races in 1962, the field of physical anthropology had changed markedly, and his book was not well received. Contemporary researchers such as Sherwood Washburn and Ashley Montagu were heavily influenced by the modern synthesis in biology and population genetics. In addition, they were influenced by Franz Boas, who had moved away from typological racial thinking. Rather than supporting Coon's theories, they and other contemporary researchers viewed the human species as a continuous serial progression of populations. Ashley Montagu (June 28, 1905, London, England - November 26, 1999, Princeton, New Jersey), was an English anthropologist and humanist who popularized issues such as race and gender and their relation to politics and development. ... The modern evolutionary synthesis (often referred to simply as the modern synthesis), neo-Darwinian synthesis or neo-Darwinism, brings together Charles Darwins theory of the evolution of species by natural selection with Gregor Mendels theory of genetics as the basis for biological inheritance. ... Population genetics is the study of the distribution of and change in allele frequencies under the influence of the four evolutionary forces: natural selection, genetic drift, mutation, and migration. ... Franz Boas Franz Boas (July 9, 1858 – December 21, 1942[1]) was one of the pioneers of modern anthropology and is often called the Father of American Anthropology. Born in Germany, Boas worked for most of his life in North America. ...

An early 21st c. article published in The Journal of the History of Biology^[11] reviewed the controversy around the reception of Coon’s 1962 book, The Origin of Races. In it Coon had theorized that the human species divided into five races before it had evolved into Homo sapiens. Further, he suggested that the races evolved into Homo sapiens at different times.

The article abstract concluded:

Segregationists in the United States used Coon’s work as proof that African Americans were “junior” to white Americans, and thus unfit for full participation in American society. The paper examines the interactions among Coon, segregationist [and Coon relative] Carleton Putnam, geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky, and anthropologist Sherwood Washburn. The paper concludes that Coon actively aided the segregationist cause in violation of his own standards for scientific objectivity.

The Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and changing social attitudes challenged racial theories like Coon's that had been used by segregationists to justify discrimination and depriving people of civil rights. In 1961 non-fiction writer Carleton Putnam, who had founded an airline and was not an academic, had published Race and Reason: A Yankee View, a popular theory of racial segregation. In a sign of rejection of such unscientific thinking, the American Association of Physical Anthropologists voted to censure Putnam's book. Carleton S. Coon, President of the association, resigned in recognition that times had changed.^[12] African Americans, also known as Afro-Americans or black Americans, are an ethnic group in the United States of America whose ancestors, usually in predominant part, were indigenous to Sub-Saharan and West Africa. ... Theodosius Dobzhansky, ca. ... The 1960s decade refers to the years from the beginning of 1960 to the end of 1969. ... Racial segregation characterised by separation of different races in daily life, such as eating in a restaurant, drinking from a water fountain, using a rest room, attending school, going to the movies, or in the rental or purchase of a home. ... The American Association of Physical Anthropologists (AAPA) is a American-based international scientific society of physical anthropologists. ...

Brief overview of The Races of Europe^[3]

Coon's book concludes the following:

1. The Caucasian race is of dual origin consisting of Upper Paleolithic (mixture of sapiens and neandertals) types and Mediterranean (purely sapiens) types.
2. The Upper Paleolithic peoples are the truly indigenous peoples of Europe.
3. Mediterraneans invaded Europe in large numbers during the Neolithic period and settled there.
4. The racial situation in Europe today may be explained as a mixture of Upper Paleolithic survivors and Mediterraneans.
5. When reduced Upper Paleolithic survivors and Mediterraneans mix, then occurs the process of dinarization which produces a hybrid with non-intermediate features.
6. The Caucasian race encompasses the regions of Europe, South Asia, the Middle East, North Africa, and Northeast Africa.
7. The Nordic race is part of the Mediterranean racial stock, being a mixture of Corded and Danubian Mediterraneans.

Meyers Blitz-Lexikon (Leipzig, 1932) shows a Tyrolian woman as an example of the Dinaric type. ... For other uses, see Europe (disambiguation). ... Map of South Asia (see note on Kashmir). ... A map showing countries commonly considered to be part of the Middle East The Middle East is a region comprising the lands around the southern and eastern parts of the Mediterranean Sea, a territory that extends from the eastern Mediterranean Sea to the Persian Gulf. ...  Northern Africa (UN subregion)  geographic, including above North Africa or Northern Africa is the northernmost region of the African continent, separated by the Sahara from Sub-Saharan Africa. ... The Horn of Africa. ...

Falling into disfavor

Coon's ideas faded from acceptance as new work superseded his. New types of evidence brought forward in work by scientists such as Franz Boas, Stephen Jay Gould, Richard Lewontin, Leonard Lieberman and others, played down and dismissed race as a valid concept with which to classify biodiversity.^[13] Franz Boas Franz Boas (July 9, 1858 – December 21, 1942[1]) was one of the pioneers of modern anthropology and is often called the Father of American Anthropology. Born in Germany, Boas worked for most of his life in North America. ... Stephen Jay Gould (September 10, 1941 – May 20, 2002) was an American paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, and historian of science. ... Richard Lewontin Richard Charles Dick Lewontin (born March 29, 1929) is an American evolutionary biologist, geneticist and social commentator. ...

Works by Carleton S. Coon

Science

• The Origin of Races (1962)
• The Story of Man (1954)
• The Races of Europe (1939)
• Caravan: the Story of the Middle East (1958)
• Races: A Study of the Problems of Race Formation in Man
• The Hunting Peoples
• Anthropology A to Z (1963)
• Living Races of Man (1965)
• Seven Caves: Archaeological Exploration in the Middle East
• Mountains of Giants: A Racial and Cultural Study of the North Albanian Mountain Ghegs
• Yengema Cave Report (his work in Sierra Leone)
• Racial Adaptations (1982)

Fiction and Memoir The Races of Europe is the title of two books related to the anthropology of Europeans. ...

• Flesh of the Wild Ox (1932)
• The Riffian (1933)
• A North Africa Story: Story of an Anthropologist as OSS Agent (1980)
• Measuring Ethiopia
• Adventures and Discoveries: The Autobiography of Carleton S. Coon (1981)

Quotes

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:

Carleton S. Coon

"It is the retention by twentieth-century, Atom-Age men of the Neolithic point of view that says: You stay in your village and I will stay in mine. If your sheep eat our grass we will kill you, or we may kill you anyhow to get all the grass for our own sheep. Anyone who tries to make us change our ways is a witch and we will kill him. Keep out of our village." —The Story of Man, 1954, page 376 Image File history File links This is a lossless scalable vector image. ... Wikiquote is one of a family of wiki-based projects run by the Wikimedia Foundation, running on MediaWiki software. ...

Further reading and sources

• The Lagar Velho 1 Skeleton

• Hybrid Humans? Archaeological Institute of America Volume 52 Number 4, July/August 1999 by Spencer P.M. Harrington [1]

• Carleton Steven Coons, 23 June 1904 - 3 June 1981 (obituary). 1989. W.W. Howells in Biographical Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, v.58 108-131.

• Two Views of Coon's Origin of Races with Comments by Coon and Replies. 1963. Theodosius Dobzhansky; Ashley Montagu; C. S. Coon in Current Anthropology, Vol. 4, No. 4. (Oct., 1963), pp. 360-367.

• In Ways Unacademical: The Reception of Carleton S. Coon's "The Origin of Races" by JOHN P. JACKSON JR. Journal of the History of Biology 34: 247–285, 2001. Retrieved 17 November 2006.

• The Races of Europe (1939) by Carleton S. Coon - physical anthropological information on the indigenous peoples of Europe.^[3]

is the 174th day of the year (175th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... 1904 (MCMIV) was a leap year starting on a Friday (see link for calendar). ... is the 154th day of the year (155th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... AUGUST 25 1981 US Marine Sean Vance is Born on the 25th of August {ear nav|1981}} Year 1981 (MCMLXXXI) was a common year starting on Thursday (link displays the 1981 Gregorian calendar). ...

External links

• Carleton Stevens Coon Papers, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution

References