Out of Asia: A Global History of the Scientific Search for the Origins of Humankind, 1800-1965 (2018)
Kern, Emily Margaret (Author)
Milam, Erika Lorraine (Advisor)
Gordin, Michael D. (Advisor)
Princeton University
Milam, Erika Lorraine
Gordin, Michael D.
Physical Details: 394 pp.
Language: English
From approximately 1800 until 1950, most evolutionists—as well as anatomists, philologists, and other men of science—agreed that the human race began in Asia (with the notable exception of Charles Darwin, who preferred Africa). Since the 1950s, however, essentially all paleoanthropologists have agreed that Homo sapiens evolved on the African continent. In my dissertation, I trace the intellectual and cultural genealogies of the 'out of Asia' and 'out of Africa' hypotheses of the geographic origins of humanity, framing both as sites for making knowledge claims about race, identity, human equality, and the history of humankind. In explaining this transition, I track the problem of human origins through diverse contexts, including nineteenth century theories of race and language, early twentieth century expeditions for the "missing link" in Java and Mongolia, interwar geological surveys in Kenya and Tanzania, and UNESCO's postwar quest to define a deracialized, unified, and peaceful humanity. The history of paleoanthropology has been strongly influenced by studies of material culture, and the methodological turn towards studying the creation of fossils as scientific objects – a methodological choice that renders invisible the theoretical frameworks that underpinned the acquisition and interpretation of the fossils. By elucidating the theoretical frameworks that guided where expeditions went, how research funds were distributed, and how fragmentary evidence was interpreted in a variety of ways, I offer a radically new interpretation of the history of paleoanthropology in the past two centuries. While grounded in the history of science, my study also intervenes in the study and practice of global history. Scientific efforts to make sense of human diversity and the natural history of the human species have been fundamentally shaped by the process of globalization over the past five hundred years. At the same time, I remain attentive to the reciprocal interactions between global or world history and paleoanthropology, which has been an important, if not always critically deployed, resource for global and world historians since the 1960s.
...MoreSimilar Citations
Article
Kjærgaard, Peter C.;
(2012)
The Fossil Trade: Paying a Price for Human Origins
(/isis/citation/CBB001250840/)
Article
Claudine Cohen;
(2017)
“How nationality influences Opinion”: Darwinism and palaeontology in France (1859–1914)
(/isis/citation/CBB709081900/)
Book
Blaszczyk, Regina Lee;
(2009)
American Consumer Society, 1865--2005: From Hearth to HDTV
(/isis/citation/CBB001201132/)
Book
Nina Möllers;
Bryan DeWalt;
(2016)
Objects in motion: globalizing technology
(/isis/citation/CBB100690339/)
Book
Dubow, Saul;
(2006)
A Commonwealth of Knowledge: Science, Sensibility, and White South Africa, 1820--2000
(/isis/citation/CBB000772117/)
Article
Hull, David L.;
(2011)
Defining Darwinism
(/isis/citation/CBB001023980/)
Chapter
Aldo Fasolo;
Davide Lovisolo;
(2015)
"The Cell in Development and Inheritance", centoventi anni dopo. E.B. Wilson, la teoria cellulare e il tassello mancante: la membrana plasmatica
(/isis/citation/CBB288072174/)
Book
Caporael, Linnda R.;
Griesemer, James R.;
Wimsatt, William C.;
(2014)
Developing Scaffolds in Evolution, Culture, and Cognition
(/isis/citation/CBB001510224/)
Article
Ricardo Ventura Santos;
Bronwen Douglas;
(2020)
‘Polynesians’ in the Brazilian Hinterland? Sociohistorical Perspectives on Skulls, Genomics, Identity, and Nationhood
(/isis/citation/CBB945326302/)
Book
Sepkoski, David;
(2012)
Rereading the Fossil Record: The Growth of Paleobiology as an Evolutionary Discipline
(/isis/citation/CBB001210043/)
Article
Alex Menez;
(2018)
The Gibraltar Skull: Early History, 1848–1868
(/isis/citation/CBB995042602/)
Article
Paige Madison;
(2020)
Characterized by Darkness: Reconsidering the Origins of the Brutish Neanderthal
(/isis/citation/CBB746767437/)
Article
Kjærgaard, Peter C.;
(2014)
Inventing Homo gardarensis: Prestige, Pressure, and Human Evolution in Interwar Scandinavia
(/isis/citation/CBB001420413/)
Chapter
Hochadel, Oliver;
(2009)
Das Postergirl der Paläoanthropologie: Lucy zwischen Wissenschaft und Öffentlichkeit
(/isis/citation/CBB001033080/)
Article
Corbey, Raymond;
(2012)
Homo habilis's Humanness: Phillip Tobias as a Philosopher
(/isis/citation/CBB001210309/)
Chapter
Proctor, Robert N.;
(2008)
Temporality as Artifact in Paleoanthropology: How New Ideas of Race, Brutality, Molecular Drift, and the Powers of Time Have Affected Conceptions of Human Origins
(/isis/citation/CBB000900014/)
Book
Cantor, G. N.;
Swetlitz, Marc;
(2006)
Jewish Tradition and the Challenge of Darwinism
(/isis/citation/CBB000772602/)
Book
Geoff Bender;
Rasmus R. Simonsen;
(2021)
Photography’s Materialities: Transatlantic Photographic Practices over the Long Nineteenth Century
(/isis/citation/CBB105087553/)
Article
Anna Jamieson;
(2021)
"Comforts in Her Calamity": Shopping and Consumption in the Late Eighteenth-Century Private Madhouse
(/isis/citation/CBB812067911/)
Book
Adrienne Edgar;
(2022)
Intermarriage and the Friendship of Peoples: Ethnic Mixing in Soviet Central Asia
(/isis/citation/CBB737096327/)
Science in Context
Journal of the History of Biology
Isis: International Review Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences
History of the Human Sciences
History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences
Be the first to comment!