Racial Anthropology Literature

[Etelfrido]

I haven't found any deep discussion about this topic, so I ask you: which anthropology authors which address racial questions are worth reading, and which books? Some authors disagreed with each other, which do you consider more reliable? I know the SNPA and Humanphenotypes have a bibliography list, but do all the references hold up?

Also, some of them wrote after WWII, are those works more accurate because of the more advanced technology and scientific methods or are they more watered-down given the taboo regarding racial anthropology after the war?

I'd like your thoughts on the authors and works you know and have read.

[Etelfrido]

I think this sort of discussion would be beneficial for those who don't know what do read and suffer from decision paralysis.

[Smeagol]

Coon is the best, and generally books written before WW2 are more accurate because writers could be honest back then.

[Token]

Coon is one of the very few anthropologists who was also a very talented writter.

[Melkiirs]

Coon is one of the very few anthropologists who was also a very talented writter.

The original Races of Europe by William Z. Ripley of which Coon replaced in 1939, was not written by a dedicated academic anthropologist but rather a professional economist with anthropological interests looking for extra income for his children’s education.


Do you think Coon’s work is a significant improvement over the original 1899 Races of Europe?

[Token]

The original Races of Europe by William Z. Ripley of which Coon replaced, was not written by a dedicated academic anthropologist but rather a professional economist with anthropological interests looking for extra income for his children’s education.

Do you think Coon’s work is a vast improvement over the original 1899 Races of Europe?

Yes, Ripley's work was incipient as it relied only on living Europeans. Coon was the first to synthesize the racial history of Europe from the Palaeolithic to the present-day using several thousands of skulls sampled by hundreds of anthropologists, and craft a logical classification system out of this huge mess.

[parsley]

Yes, Ripley's work was incipient as it relied only on living Europeans. Coon was the first to synthesize the racial history of Europe from the Palaeolithic to the present-day using several thousands of skulls sampled by hundreds of anthropologists, and craft a logical classification system out of this huge mess.

Do you think Coon has misclassifications?

[Melkiirs]

Yes, Ripley's work was incipient as it relied only on living Europeans. Coon was the first to synthesize the racial history of Europe from the Palaeolithic to the present-day using several thousands of skulls sampled by hundreds of anthropologists, and craft a logical classification system out of this huge mess.

Also consider that substantial research in European physical anthropology took place in the forty years between the two editions. There are fallacious conclusions Ripley came to in part by being limited to 19th century data such as Beddoe.

[Token]

Do you think Coon has misclassifications?

Not misclassifications but oversimplifications. He may call "Borreby" an individual who is mixed but predominantly Borreby, which may be confusing.

Coon writes several times that he does not believe that any European alive today is pure race, so when he classifies someone as "Borreby" what he actually mean is that the individual resembles the old Borreby race more than anything else, and not that the individual is a unmixed descendant of Cromagnons. This is still a source of a lot of confusion here in TA.

[parsley]

Not misclassifications but oversimplifications. He may call "Borreby" an individual who is mixed but predominantly Borreby, which may be confusing.

Coon writes several times that he does not believe that any European alive today is pure race, so when he classifies someone as "Borreby" what he actually mean is that the individual resembles the old Borreby race more than anything else, and not that the individual is a unmixed descendant of Cromagnons. This is still a source of a lot of confusion here in TA.

Thank you for the information