‘Collecting’ and Comparing – Skulls, Transatlantic Knowledge Production, and Racial Science

On May 29, 1793, Göttingen anthropologist Johann Friedrich Blumenbach received a Georgian woman’s skull. It would later become the most prominent representation of the so-called Caucasian variety of humankind. His Russian skull supplier, Georg Thomas von Asch, emphasized the “coincidence”¹ of finding this specific skull. Only due to her sudden death had the deceased woman received an autopsy.

The coincidental finding of the skull proved to be decisive in establishing the label Caucasian. Contingencies within the “collecting” processes of human skulls had a significant impact on comparative “racial” classifications. The lasting impact of the term Caucasian is particularly evident in the US.

This brief example shows how deeply “collecting” and comparing were intertwined in knowledge production. In this blogpost, I will show how the history of “race” science can be transformed into a history of knowledge by focusing on the “collecting” process. I will do so by concentrating on the endeavors of the anatomists Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (1752–1840), Samuel George Morton (1799–1851), and Paul Broca (1824–1880). Applying a praxeological approach, I am able to reveal invisible actors and hierarchical power structures as well as the contingency within classification processes.

“Collecting” Skulls

On the threshold of the nineteenth century, Blumenbach’s “collecting” network stretched across all continents. He tried to bring the world into order and prove monogenesis, a theory according to which all humans have the same origin. The fact that the British king was likewise the ruler of Hanover meant that there was an essential connection between Göttingen and the British Empire. Joseph Banks, the president of the Royal Society in London, provided Blumenbach with important skulls for his classification. In August 1787, Banks noted a prospective shipment of skulls:

A Ship is orderd for otaheite & will sail in the Course of a month. I have exhorted the Captain & will do the surgeon when he is appointed to collect Crania for me wherever he touches, which he will probably do in the South Sea Isles & New-Holland & I will not Fail Sir if I am so fortunate as to procure any to furnish you with good Specimens of Each ….²

The ship in question was the famous Bounty, which set sail in November 1787. Due to the mutiny, the ship never returned to England, leaving Blumenbach without the skulls he had explicitly “ordered.” Banks had to tell him about the misfortune:

The Loss of the Bounty which was bringing home bread fruit from the East to the West Indies & of the Guardian destind for the Releif of Botany bay have together deprivd me of the Fruits of requests on that subject made to both their Commanders.³

These unexpected events demonstrate the contingency involved in skull procurement. Another example shows the frequent reliance on local actors. Blumenbach did finally receive a Caribbean skull from the colonized island of St. Vincent through the director of the royal botanical garden, Alexander Anderson:

…it is a very dificult thing to get the Crania of the yellow Carribes or aborigines

the greater part of them have been extirpated by the black Carribes at present there are only 2 Families of them & these are in the most remote Part of the Island their burial places are not easily Found & an attempt to disturb them is lookd upon as the greatest of Crimes This I now send is the Skull of their Chief who died about 3 years ago he livd near an inhabited part of the Island where the time of his death was known & an intelligent negroe shewd me where his grave was.⁴

Without the help of the local actor, Anderson would hardly have been able to find the grave, let alone open it unnoticed. The quote also indicates the simplified generalizations and racial prejudices guiding the skull procurement processes.

Many skulls were taken during wars or from colonial sites, accidentally recovered while traveling, or became available through post-mortem examinations in anatomy departments. When skulls were removed from graves, they often decomposed on the surface and crumbled. Samuel George Morton’s “collecting” practices worked similarly a few decades later. Morton, a Philadelphian physician, based his theories about humankind directly on Blumenbach’s classification. Morton also received his skulls from colonial-imperial contexts, battlefields, or political actors abroad. He mainly “collected” skulls from Indigenous people on the American continent to prove their supposed intellectual inferiority. In doing so, he became directly involved in legitimizing the removal of Indigenous people from their native lands.

Wide networks were involved in skull procurement. The geologist Joseph Sullivan hired a person to “collect” skulls from mounds in Ohio: “I have employed a person to open some of the mounds which are numerous in this neighbourhood and if I am successful in procuring any skulls I will forward them to you.”⁵ Morton’s skull suppliers also often had difficulties finding well-preserved skulls, some falling apart directly when exposed to air. Another of Morton’s colleagues, Daniel Drake, also commissioned a helper, William Wood, who set off on a journey to extract skulls from mounds. The endeavor was challenging: “Agreeable to request,” wrote Wood, “I examined many of the aboriginal Mounds and burying grounds, in the vicinity of Big-bone Lick, for Crania, with but partial success.”⁶ With a few helping hands, he finally obtained some “specimens.” Accordingly, many hidden actors were involved in the production of scientific “racial” theories in book form.⁷ The burial mounds were of great interest to researchers because the myth of the “lost white race” had been sparked around them. Advocates of this theory assumed that the mounds were proof that an ancient “white” civilization populated the Americas.⁸

In February 1837, the US military’s medical director, Eugène Hilarian Abadie, also reported battlefield “findings” to Morton: “Lastly on our 2d visit to the battle ground of the 25th of Dec on the shores of the Lake Okee-Chobee I collected two fine sculls which were the only two out of the 12 Indians killed which could be taken.”⁹ Wartime plundering played an immanent role in skull “collecting.” Morton instructed several military doctors to obtain skulls from Indigenous people.

Furthermore, Morton ordered large-scale “collecting” in Egypt. He aimed to classify the ancient Egyptians as Caucasians and to show how old the morphological and intellectual differences between the people were. For Morton, this was proof of polygenesis, the theory assuming that various human races had different origins. Morton explained that “in order more fully to make my comparisons, it is very important that I should get a few heads of Egyptian mummies from Thebes, &c.”¹⁰

His acquaintance, Alexandria consul George Gliddon, had hired many helpers to cross the Egyptian deserts to “collect” skulls for Morton. When Gliddon had amassed 143 skulls, Morton still had to wait over a year to receive them, which also delayed the publication of his work. Gliddon wanted to send the skulls by a direct connection: “It will not do to ship them by intermediate ports, on account of Quarantines, Expense, and risk of stoppage or loss.”¹¹ The transatlantic crossings sometimes led to the loss of the skulls; either they were loaded incorrectly, or there were shipping accidents. Some transatlantic ships only traveled a few times a year anyway, often in the summertime.¹²

A look at “collecting” in the second half of the nineteenth century reveals that practices had shifted. The French anthropologist and anatomist Paul Broca had a different approach than Morten and Blumenbach. He went into the field himself and dug up skulls. He did this both illegally in cemeteries in Spain and France and also legally, taking part in state-authorized excavations in France. He had a different interest in research – he wished to ascertain the origins of his own nation’s people. Likewise, he had a different understanding of science. These differences prompted him to engage in alternate “collecting” practices, focusing especially on local areas.

By chance, Broca came across a large number of Parisian skulls from the twelfth century during urban excavations. This coincidence strengthened his research focus on the development of the skull shapes and sizes of the Parisian population. In this example, too, incidental findings informed scientific comparisons and stimulated new questions. It was now also necessary to “collect” whole series of similar skulls to be able to make quantitative statements and generate scientifically sound identity constructions. Broca’s aim was to place the French, especially the Parisians, in a direct line with the Celts.

Comparing Skulls

Comparison – examining the tension between differences and similarities – was inscribed into the scientific quest of ordering humankind.¹³ Blumenbach divided people into American, Ethiopian, Caucasian, Malay, and Mongolian varieties. While he mainly made descriptive comparisons and focused on various aspects to compare (tertia), such as the shape of the nose, forehead, or skull, Morton based his comparisons on measurements and numbers. For Morton, the skull’s volume served as the central tertium to compare different human varieties. Both comparative operations were based on skulls “collected” from around the world.

Blumenbach set up the “bildschönste Schädel” (most beautiful skull)¹⁴ of the Georgian woman mentioned above as a standard. He compared the representative Georgian skull with other skulls. For him, the Georgian skull was the original variety from which other human varieties had degenerated.¹⁵ He only named the first variety “Caucasian” when he received this skull. This “accidental find” played a central role in his soon well-known classification.

Morton used Blumenbach’s racial classification but hierarchized this order and – in contrast to Blumenbach – attributed different intellectual abilities to various “races.” According to Morton, the Caucasians had the largest cranial volume as, he was sure, many comparata would prove. Morton, requiring a sufficiently large sample, “collected” many skulls from the same “race.” The “collecting” practices, thus, legitimized the conclusions he drew from the comparative skull measurements. Morten and Blumenbach’s different approaches indicate a shift in racial science from focusing on ideal types of “races” to quantitative, statistical data.

Broca adopted Morton’s measurement method but modified it in certain aspects. If the individual skulls delivered measurements that did not correspond to his presuppositions, Broca often changed the tertia to find other explanations. For instance, he changed the main tertium from the cranial volume to the anterior cranial volume. The measurement results of the “collected” skulls thus often led to searching for new aspects to compare. Quantitative findings Broca obtained partly by chance enabled him to investigate specific research problems. Even if the data he produced appeared unbiased, his comparisons and interpretation of the results were not.

Conclusion – The Tension between Contingency and Purposefulness

“Collecting,” measuring, and comparing influenced one another. Looking at these practices in combination leads to new insights through the lens of the history of knowledge that expand our understanding of craniological “racial” sciences. It reveals how the “collecting” processes influenced and legitimized the classifications on distinct levels. For example, in Blumenbach’s work, particular skull finds changed the naming of the classification; in Morton’s work, only a large number of skulls made quantitative comparisons possible; and Broca was able to obtain entire skull series by chance through urban construction work, which strengthened his research focus on his own “nation.”

My focus here on the “collecting” processes, in particular, broadens the perspective beyond a mere history of science as it brings various non-academic actors involved in producing knowledge into view. In addition, this perspective highlights the colonial structures and global contexts underpinning “racial science” and the dissemination of its theories.

Although, as this blogpost has shown, there was a contingency in the composition of the “materiality” and production of “racial” theories, the thrust of the theories was by no means accidental. “Racial” theories can be explained through their different contexts. To varying degrees, they all shared specific functions, namely, to create a hierarchical order of the world, to elevate “white” identities, and to justify a supposedly “natural” social stratification.

This blog post is based on Malin Wilckens’s dissertation, which will be published in German next year. It deals with the contextually embedded connection between Johann Friedrich Blumenbach’s, Samuel George Morton’s, and Paul Broca's global collecting networks and the classifications developed in their study rooms. Wilckens is a postdoc at the Leibniz Institute of European History in Mainz.

1. Von Asch to Blumenbach, May 29, 1793, in Frank William Peter Dougherty, The Correspondence of Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, Vol. 4 (Göttingen, 2012), no. 811, 256–57. ↩︎
2. Banks to Blumenbach, August 24, 1787, ibid., Correspondence III, no. 471, 119–20. ↩︎
3. Banks to Blumenbach, May 18, 1790, ibid., no. 613, 306–307. ↩︎
4. These are the words of Anderson; Banks to Blumenbach, July 15, 1789, ibid., no. 560, 236–38. ↩︎
5. Sullivant to Morton, August 29, 1839, Samuel George Morton Papers (SGMP), Series I. Correspondence 1819–1850, Box 1, Mss.B.M843, American Philosophical Society (APS).
6. Wood to Drake, September 28, 1833, SGMP, APS. ↩︎
7. On the different value attached to skulls by anatomists, see Malin S. Wilckens and Jonathan Kurzwelly, “Wert und Verwendung menschlicher Überreste: Vergangene und gegenwärtige Perspektiven im interdisziplinären Dialog,” Historische Anthropologie 30, no. 3 (2022): 329–49. ↩︎
8. Jason Colavito, The Mound Builder Myth: Fake History and the Hunt for a ‘Lost White Race’ (Norman, 2020). ↩︎
9. Abadie to Morton, February 3, 1837, SGMP, APS. ↩︎
10. Morton to Gliddon, November 2, 1837, cited in Henry S. Patterson, Memoir of the Life and Scientific Labors of Samuel George Morton (Philadelphia, 1854), xxxv–xxxvi. ↩︎
11. Gliddon to Morton, March 31, 1839, ibid. ↩︎
12. For Morton’s collection, see, e.g., Ann Fabian, The Skull Collectors: Race, Science, and America’s Unburied Dead (Chicago, 2010). ↩︎
13. Angelika Epple, Walter Erhart, and Johannes Grave, eds., Practices of Comparing: Towards a New Understanding of a Fundamental Human Practice (Bielefeld, 2020). ↩︎
14. Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, in Göttingische Anzeigen von gelehrten Sachen, April 13, 1795, 601–604, here 601–602. ↩︎
15. For the term “denegeration” and its meaning, see Thomas Junker, “Blumenbach’s Theory of Human Races and the Natural Unity of Humankind,” in Johann Friedrich Blumenbach: Race and Natural History, 1750–1850, ed. Nicolaas Rupke and Gerhard Lauer, 96–112 (Abingdon, 2020), 105–106. ↩︎