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16: - Modern Scientific Race and the Classical

from Part II - Modern Disciplinary Formations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 May 2026

By
Rebecca Futo Kennedy
Edited by
Rosa Andújar ,
Elena Giusti  and
Jackie Murray
Rosa Andújar
Affiliation:
Barnard College, Columbia University
Elena Giusti
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
Jackie Murray
Affiliation:
State University of New York, Buffalo
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Summary

Ancient theories of human diversity and identity strongly influenced most modern forms of scientific racism, including eugenics, tropicalism, craniometry, environmental theories of human development, social evolutionary theories, and theories connecting ‘race’ and intelligence. This chapter explores three of these areas of influence: (1) environmental determinism; (2) models of evolution and the ‘progress’ of civilisations; and (3) population management schemes linked to eugenic thinking. These ideas spread throughout Europe as part of the Enlightenment project to classify everything and throughout much of the globe under the influence of European imperialism and colonialism culminating in the Nazi eugenics program. But this chapter focuses on developments in the United States, the country that pioneered the colour-based bioracism that still dominates contemporary racist thinking between 1870 and 1930, the years when the ‘science of man’ became academic and political dogma.

Keywords

scientific racismeugenicsevolutionenvironmental determinismMadison GrantanthropologyWorld’s Fairsracecultureprogress

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The Cambridge Companion to Classics and Race , pp. 325 - 354
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2026

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References

Further Readings

For discussion of Dorian/Aryan issues in the nineteenth century, see Weidemann 2017. For the use of the Greek and Roman pasts in Nazi racial theories, see Chapoutot 2016 and Leoussi 2017. See Trubeta 2013 on eugenics and race science in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Greece, and Lefkaditou 2018 on Britain. The chapters in Varto 2018 explore the use of ancient Greek and Roman ideas in the development of the discipline of anthropology in multiple national traditions, especially as relates to race and ethnicity. Wheeler 2000 discusses the use of classical climate theory in the eighteenth-century development of racial theories. McMahon 2021 provides a good discussion of typical ‘national race’ maps before the First World War in Germany ascribing Germanic roots to ancient Greeks and Romans.

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