One Race or Several Species
Samuel Morton's followers, especially Dr Josiah C. Nott and George Gliddon, extended Morton's notion of Polygenism, that different races adhere from different ancestries and races are evolutionarily unrelated. Based on Morton’s craniometry of the different angles and measurements of Caucasians vs Africans skulls, Nott theorized that different races originated from different ancestors. Exemplified by his 1854 catalogue of different human species, Nott put forth the notion that races are distinct biological species because they hybridize unsatisfactorily. He further argued in an article in the American Journal of the Medical Sciences, that mulattos and racially mixed offspring suffer from depressed stature and intelligence. Writing in opposition of allowing whites and blacks to intermarry or any other diverse racial couple for the matter, Nott’s writings influenced the passing of anti-miscegenation laws, banning marriage and sexual encounters between whites and non-whites. He campaign these as promoting scientific, opposed to Biblical explanations of the origins of races. Charles Darwin, the father of evolutionary theory, feverously opposed polygenist evolutionary thinking. Citing the single origin hypothesis as essential to his theory of evolution, Darwin voiced his criticism of Nott and argued for monogenism.
