polygenism

[puh-lij-uh-niz-uhm]

noun

1. the theory that the human race has descended from two or more ancestral types.

Other Word Forms

• polygenist noun
• polygenistic adjective

Word History and Origins

Origin of polygenism¹

First recorded in 1875–80; poly- + -gen(y) + -ism

Example Sentences

He espoused polygenism, a now debunked belief that human races evolved separately.

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A proponent of “polygenism,” he sought to prove that Black people had no common origins with other races and were thus inherently inferior.

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From the 1830s to 1840s, Morton, a physician and anatomist often referred to as the founder of the “American school of ethnology,” collected the skulls from around the world, compiling his craniometric research into a racial hierarchy that argued for “polygenism”—the idea that different races constituted different species and had different origins.

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The images were made at the behest of Louis Agassiz, the famous Swiss American scientist and Harvard professor, who was studying what was called “polygenism.”

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Instead, they contended that black and white people were created separately and that black people were inferior, a theory called polygenism.

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