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BONES, BODIES, BEHAVIOR If the history of anthropology is defined in terms of "the systematic study of human unity-in-diversity" (HOA 1:6), then the history of thought about the physical variety of humankind, and about the relations of the biological and the cultural in the understanding of human behavior, must command attention (Spencer 1986). Although the essays in this volume focus on the last century and a half, the issues they treat go back to the beginning of the Western cultural tradition-which, from an overarching anthropological perspective , may be seen in terms of a continuing dialectical tension between human unity and diversity. Inheriting the assumption ofthe underlying unity of humankind from Greek and Hebrew thought, Western culture has developed in recurrent confrontation with "others"-stereotyped as Asiatic despots, barbarian invaders, Moslem infidels, American savages, African slaves, and unconverted heathen. While their "otherness" has been construed most often in religious terms (and thereby reducible by conversion), their obvious physical and behavioral differences have long posed a problem for anthropological interpretation. For the most part, these differences, too, have been interpreted in environmental or cultural terms, which made possible the ultimate reduction of variety back into the underlying unity. However, the historical experience of confrontation and conflict has sustained the possibility of a more radically pluralistic view, which has been periodically buttressed over the last several centuries by developments in anthropology and the biological sciences. And while the thrust of modern anthropological thought has been predominantly unitarian, there are still voices within science that speak in diversitarian tones. It is against a synthetic sketch of this broader background that the rather disparate essays of this volume may best be read. As early as the fourth century B.C. the Hippocratic corpus included an attempt to explain the physical and mental differences between the inhabitants ofEurope and Asia in terms ofthe environmental influences ofdifferent "Airs, Waters, and Places" (Lloyd 1978:159). And from the beginning, cultural custom and biological makeup were closely linked: thus, the long heads of the Macrocephali were at first acquired by the cultural practice of binding the heads of their infants, but "as time passed" became physically inherited (1613 4 BONES, BODIES, BEHAVIOR 62). Insofar as the Hippocratic corpus implied a racial typology, it seems to have ventured no farther from the Mediterranean littoral than the Scythians and the Egyptians. Beyond these, stretching the limits of humanity at the farther reaches ofthe European geographical imagination, were the "monstrous races" described in the first century A.D. in the elder Pliny's Natural History: the Androgini ofAfrica, the Blemmyae ofLibya (with their faces in their chests), the one-legged Sciopods and dogheaded Cynocephali of India, as well as several groups-notably, the Pygmies and the Ethiopians-who were actually to be found in the extra-European world. Pushing against the definitional limits of the human, these Plinian races provided medieval models for sixteenthcentury debates over the humanity ofthe "barbarians" of America: were they "monstra" of divine will, disruptions of the natural order, less than rational lower links in the Great Chain of Being; or were they Adam's seed corrupted and deformed by the sins of Cain and Ham, or perhaps extreme instances of the combined Hippocratic force of environment and culture? (Friedman 1981). Although the Plinian races were still part of the expectational a priori of Christopher Columbus, he found no "human monstrosities" in the New World, and the victory of Bartolome de las Casas in his debate with Cardinal Sepulveda at Valladolid in 1550 confirmed the common humanity ofthe Indiansat the level of church dogma, if not at that of colonial practice (Losada 1971; Pagden 1982). Within the new empirical sphere of human otherness that gradually emerged with the expansion of Europe, typology, explanation, and meaning were long constrained by an underlying "monogenetic" paradigm derived from the Bible: all humankind were descendants of a single family, divided by language at the tower of Babel, and had thence degenerated both physically and culturally during the ensuing four millennia as they movedor were driven-through inhospitable environments toward the farther corners of the earth (Stocking 1973, 1987). Within the underlying biblical paradigm , the original categories of human taxonomy were "tribes" or "nations" whose primary differentia were linguistic, and whose relationships could be reconstructed historically in a genealogical tree with three main branchesthe descendants of Shem, Ham, and Japheth. By the sixteenth century there was a flourishing tradition of national genealogy which sought to link the founders ofeach...

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