Biological anthropology

About: Biological anthropology is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 1126 publications have been published within this topic receiving 12757 citations. The topic is also known as: biological anthropology & somatology.

Hommage À Anténor Firmin (1850-1911), éGyptologue haïtien1/Homage to Anténor Firmin (1850-1911), Haitian Egyptologist

Abstract: Introduction Antenor Firmin is part of the Haitian Intelligentsia. He was a lawyer by profession, a pan-Africanist by political choice. He was also, in my opinion, an Egyptologist, one of the first among the Black people of Africa and the Diaspora. This article will focus on Firmin the Egyptologist. The Influence of Haitian intelligentsia The name of Antenor Firmin remains attached to a major work of the 19th century, still relevant today, bearing the title: The Equality of the Human Races (Positive Anthropology) (2) This book is dedicated to Haiti, a historical and political symbol for all Children of the Black race; as Firmin writes, "In dedicating this book to Haiti, I bear them all in mind, both the downtrodden of today and giants of tomorrow" the disinherited of this and the giants of the future." (3) Haiti has indeed given much to the black world and humanity: a) Spiritual leaders with Boukman; b) Statesmen with Pierre Dominique Toussaint L'Ouverture (1743-1803), Jean-Jacques Dessalines (1758-1806); c) Powerful writers, in large number. Among these creators of literary aesthetics include Jean Price-Mars (Ainsi parla I'Oncle [Thus Spoke the Uncle], Port-au-Prince, 1929), (4) the first president of the Society of African Culture (SAC)-Presence Africaine, founded by the Senegalese Alioune Diop. Price-Mars is considered the "Founding Father of Negritude" His interest in physical anthropology probably had its source (or inspiration) in Antenor Firmin; Jacques Roumain (Gouverneurs de la Rosee [Masters of the Dew] Port-au-Prince, Paris, 1944); Jacques Stephen Alexis (Compere General Soleil [General Sun, My Brother], Paris, 1955), and Les Arbres musiciens [The Music-Making Trees] Paris, 1957); and many other talented writers such as Jean-F. Briere, Laleau, Camille Cineas, Trouillot, Saint-Amand. Physical Anthropology and Its illusions Also called "descriptive anthropology," this scientific discipline studies the anatomical facts and external characteristics of human beings, then classifies them into different "races," and ultimately makes value judgment on the superiority or inferiority of a particular human race. Having studied the different human races, scholars of the white race could not classify the white race as an inferior race; in the same line of reasoning, anthropologists of the black race could not classify the black race as inferior, primitive, and savage. Thus, the inequality of the human races means strictly nothing. However, Arthur Comte de Gobineau wrote his unfortunate book Essai sur l'inegalite des races en 1853 (An Essay on The Inequality of the Human Races). The surgeon Paul Broca (1824-1880) founded the Society of Anthropology in Paris in 1859. Europe is fully committed to the idea of the inferiority of the black race: Blacks are inferior human beings, savages, uncivilized, and still on the threshold of the universal history as observed in Hegel's philosophy. Cephalic, nasal, osteological, and craniological indices as well as the culturally-derived psychological testing were falsely conceived or designed. All of these data were used to classify hierarchically the different varieties of the human species, particular those of African origin. The doctrine of the inferiority of the black race as decreed by Western scientific anthropology is linked to a fundamental issue: the question of the Pharaonic Egypt. Africanists, orientalists, Australians, Americanists (specialists on the native primitive tribes of the American continent), without exception, had placed Egypt in the Middle East, in Asia Minor, or the Eastern Mediterranean, and not on the African continent of the inferior black races. Antenor Firmin had strongly criticized the racist theories of physical anthropology. He had also defended the black Africanity of the Pharaonic Egypt. The issue of the Pharaonic Egypt has an interesting historiography worth to know. We can make now some observations about the most significant dates on the historiography of the "Egyptian-African Dossier": * 1831: Hegel professes in Berlin, explaining to his audience that Egypt--having passed the Spirit of the East to the West--does not belong to the African spirit (aber es ist nicht dem afrikanischen Geiste zugehorig); that is to say, Pharaonic Egypt is not part of the black African cultural universe. …