He would have filled the inside of the skull bones with lead shot. He also measured the angle of the face and said that it went from flat face to very projecting faces, which he called the orangutan type. What was he up to? The question he was trying to answer and how was he doing it?
Scientists weren’t the first to divide humanity along racial – and and racist – lines. But for hundreds of years, racial scientists claimed to provide proof for those racist hierarchies – and some still do.
Resources for this episode:
Fatal Invention, by Dorothy Roberts
The History of White People, by Nell Irvin Painter