Races Ideas

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Zorara's writings were widely circulated among the elite in portugal. By the 15 hundreds, you had other ideologues expressing similar ideas about african people. Linnaeus named four human races, blumenbach five. That was just the beginning of an unending argument how to separate humanity neatly into distinct groups. And this has always been a problem for racial science, racial science that will be hearing more about in a future episode.

For much of human history, people viewed themselves as members of tribes or nations but had no notion of “race.” Today, science deems race biologically meaningless. Who invented race as we know it, and why? By John Biewen, with guest Chenjerai Kumanyika.

Photo: The Monument to the Discoveries, Lisbon, Portugal. The highlighted figure in the center is an effigy of Gomes Eanes de Zurara. The figure at the top right is Prince Henry the Navigator. Photo by Harvey Barrison.