In our last episode, we showed that pre-Columbian ideas about human differences weren't consistent with what we think of today as race. In this episode we try to answer the question of how race got culturally constructed after Columbus. We talk to Professor Rob Schwaller of the Department of History at the University of Kansas who tells us how notions of difference in 16th century colonial Mexico led to legal decisions by the Spanish crown that resulted in a process of racialization of difference. He describes a complex and messy process between indigenous peoples, Africans, and Spanish that played an important role in the development of scientific ideas about race.

​Here are some resources for this topic:

1. Schwaller, Robert C. Géneros de Gente in Early Colonial Mexico: Defining Racial Difference. University of Oklahoma Press, 2016.
2. Rob’s web page at Kansas: https://history.ku.edu/robert-c-schwaller.
3. Here’s the James Sweet article that Rob mentioned: Sweet, James H. "The Iberian roots of American racist thought." The William and Mary Quarterly 54, no. 1 (1997): 143-166. Available at: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2953315. 

​In this episode we go back to the beginning to kick off the history of race and science. First to ancient Egypt that played such a large role in the development of 19th century ideas on race, then on to ancient Greece and Biblical traditions to try to get a picture of what some of the ancients might have contributed to the race concept.
Here are some resources for this topic:

1. Mid-nineteenth century polygenist Samuel Morton on the ancient Egyptians: Morton, Samuel George. “Crania Aegyptiaca or Observations on Egyptian Ethnography, Derived from Anatomy, History, and the Monuments.” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 9, no. 1 (1846): 93-159.
2. Early 20th century ideas about the antiquity of race: Haddon, Alfred Cort, and Alison Hingston Quiggin. History of anthropology. G.P. Putnam’s Sons, The Knickerbocker Press, 1910.
3. Early 21st century “racial realists” making the case for ancient and “natural” racial categories: Sarich, Vincent, and Frank Miele. Race: The reality of human differences. Westview Press, 2005.
4. Analysis of ancient Egyptian skulls: Brace, C. Loring, David P. Tracer, Lucia Allen Yaroch, John Robb, Kari Brandt, and A. Russell Nelson. “Clines and clusters versus “race:” a test in ancient Egypt and the case of a death on the Nile.” American Journal of Physical Anthropology 36, no. S17 (1993): 1-31.
5. Analysis of Egyptian genes: Schuenemann, Verena J., Alexander Peltzer, Beatrix Welte, W. Paul van Pelt, Martyna Molak, Chuan-Chao Wang, Anja Furtwängler et al. “Ancient Egyptian mummy genomes suggest an increase of Sub-Saharan African ancestry in post-Roman periods.” Nature communications 8 (2017): 15694.
6. Seti I’s tomb: http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/seti1t.htm
7. The “Book of Gates” with its “hours” panels (including the race one): http://www.realhistoryww.com/world_history/ancient/Misc/Data/Book_of_Gates.htm
8. The original early-20th century book on Seti I’s tomb by the archaeologist E. A. W. Budge: http://www.hermetics.org/pdf/sacred/book_gates.pdf
9. The Hippocratic “On Airs, Waters, and Places”: http://classics.mit.edu/Hippocrates/airwatpl.html