There has been an attack on the Enlightenment by anthropologists, many of whom are now abandoning the Enlightenment legacy, claiming falsely that the Enlightenment led to racism, slavery, and the Nazi atrocities of the Holocaust. Racism and slavery obviously predate the Enlightenment and are not unique to Western civilization.1 Nazis used a variety of justifications to engage in genocide; most of which had nothing to do with scientific research on race differences. Nazi literature tended to be firmly against the principles of the Enlightenment; and, Hitler did not cite any Enlightenment thinkers in Mein Kampf.
The founding figures of anthropology, many of them Enlightenment thinkers such as Johann Blumenbach (1752–1840), have often been maligned as racists for their interest in human diversity. The lessons that they have taught us, such as the importance of reason and separation of metaphysical beliefs from reality, are being erased and replaced with superstitions to appease minority and indigenous scholars in a race to “decolonize” the science and embrace current identity politics, a philosophy commonly referred to as wokeness.
The Enlightenment gave us anthropology. Anthropology is the comparative study of humans using cultural and biological comparisons both within the human species and between species. The conclusions that Enlightenment thinkers such as Blumenbach, Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), and Albert Gallatin (1761-1849), came to include: supernatural (or metaphysical) beliefs must be separated from the study of nature; all humans have one origin (i.e., monogenesis); humans are a part of nature; and, variation between races can best be explained by a combination of biology and environment.
These conclusions are essential to understanding humans’ place in nature, and in understanding modern human diversity. The ability to come to these conclusions was in large part a result of an even more basic concept—disconnecting the dead from the living. By separating the dead and the living, early anthropologists, including Blumenbach, who is often referred to as the founding father of anthropology, and Lewis Henry Morgan (1818–1881), could study the remains of humans with methods that help us understand our origins and diversity better than just studying living people. The University of Edinburgh was the first center where physical anthropology was conducted to help determine the phylogenies (family trees) of humans with comparisons of the living and dead; University of Edinburgh later becomes the academic home of Charles Darwin.2
In a 2022 book on paleopathology (which is the study of diseases in past peoples, usually using skeletal remains, ancient DNA, or fossilized feces called coprolites), Carlina de la Cova, in her chapter on ethics, tries to link Nazism, colonialism, and the Enlightenment as part of anthropology’s shameful past.3 In this chapter she wrote that anthropologists must, “Break Free of Our Enlightenment Chains,” and claimed that the disconnection between the living from the dead is the beginning of anthropology’s problematic past. This pre-Enlightenment idea that the dead and the living are not distinct is being embraced by anthropologists who work with indigenous communities. Anthropologists, working in universities and museums, are accepting beliefs that the dead can cause actual harm to the living. For instance, at the University of Illinois, anthropologists have stated that human remains in museums and universities are “widely recognized as causing active harm to Tribal communities, especially because of the cultural and spiritual dangers posed to Tribal citizens.”4
At the American Museum of Natural History, objects that contain human hair are treated as dangerous to both curators and indigenous visitors.5 The Museum has also stated in their guidelines on human remains that the bones will no longer be on display because of the “sanctity of human life” that these remains hold.
As the distinction between the dead and the living disappears among current anthropologists, other pre-Enlightenment ideas are being embraced. The supernatural is no longer being separated from the natural. At the American Museum of Natural History, “objects of power,” such as bird bone whistles that can summon evil spirits, are hidden away in curation rooms. The University of Arizona accepts that human spirits can enter animals, and thus, that these animal remains should be treated as sacred. At University of California, curators at the Fowler museum are talking to the dead and to artifacts to keep them from being lonely.6 This embrace of the supernatural is leading anthropologists away from being able to help understand the real causes of social woes (from alcoholism and domestic violence to murdered and missing women and children) in indigenous communities.
Prior to the Enlightenment, bodies were considered extremely susceptible to the influence of the environment and external events. This meant that most differences between races were seen as driven by the environment; but the Enlightenment changed this perspective. Bodies were seen more as machines with firm boundaries and a biological foundation that was separate from culture or external influences.7
As anthropologists continued to study skeletal remains and living people during the Enlightenment, they came to understand that biology and the environment worked together to shape the body and people—race differences were a mix of biology and culture. Albert Gallatin, for instance, stressed to Thomas Jefferson that if the government created new environments for Indians, the tribes would leave some of their primitive ways of life and embrace civilization.8 Lewis Henry Morgan, too, had faith in progress and viewed humans as progressing from savagery to civilization. These views may appear racist to modern anthropologists, but what the Enlightenment thinkers were really promoting was a uniformity of humanity, in which all peoples could attain civilization. It was a progressive perspective.
Now, once again, any biological connection to race has been eschewed by anthropologists and differences in disease, behavior, and culture are all seen as being a result of environmental influences—usually the negative effects of colonialism. Seen through this lens, the challenges in indigenous communities will remain unresolved, as they cannot be reduced to the effects of a past environment alone. Achieving the belief in the ability of man to progress was done through the rigorous study of human remains and living people. Such research revealed that humans were all of one species and shared a common origin.
It was during the Enlightenment that some of the first tools to measure man were created. Petrus Camper (1722-1789), for example, provided tools to measure facial angle.9 He also started the study of craniometry, which is the collection of metrics of the crania. Craniometry is still used in forensic anthropology to identify homicide victims.
Johann Blumenbach collected over 200 human skulls, and he undertook some of the first accurate measurements and rigorous studies of human remains.10 He determined through his study of skeletal remains that all humans derive from a single origin. Blumenbach focused on morphology, but Immanuel Kant, focusing on genealogy, came to the same conclusion about monogenesis.11 Although monogenesis was previously promoted by Judeo-Christian religions—as in the Adam and Eve story—polygenesis (different origins for different people) was promoted by scientists prior to the Enlightenment and it was held on to by people of animistic religions, such as Native Americans. During the Enlightenment, monogenesis and polygenesis were debated; most anthropologists during the Enlightenment supported a monogenesis narrative, which is now proven through a wealth of data—from ancient DNA, to fossils, to genetic studies on living people.
Anthropologists are once again embracing polygenesis when working with indigenous communities.12 Many Native Americans believe that not only were their people created separately from Europeans, but also separately from all the other tribes on the continent! Now, anthropologists, who dare not disagree with their indigenous collaborators, are supporting such narratives in their research and in museum exhibits.
Johann Blumenbach defended the unity of mankind while realizing the diversity of man. Blumenbach acknowledged that although cranial race differences can be measured, humans belong to one species.13 He even acknowledged that classification of human diversity into races is in part arbitrary. Ironically, Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) —known as Charles Darwin’s bulldog—criticized Blumenbach for some of these views and for not emphasizing evolution enough.
If anthropologists abandon the lessons of the Enlightenment—that the supernatural must be separated from reality; that all humans have one origin; that humans are a part of nature; and that variation between races can be best explained by a combination of biology and environment—we lose our ability to understand humans. This will lead to blaming the dead for the woes of the living, ushering in a new Dark Age where science and reason are replaced with animism and superstition.
Elizabeth Weiss is Professor Emeritus, San José State University and a National Association of Scholars Board Member. She last appeared in AQ with her review of the “Stanford Academic Freedom Conference” (Winter 2023).
1 Elizabeth Weiss, “Slavery: It’s All Bad,” History Reclaimed, August 12, 2021.
2 Lucile E. Hoyme, “Physical anthropology and its Instruments: an Historical Study,” Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 9, no. 4 (1953): 408-430.
3 Carlina de la Cova, “Ethical Considerations for Paleopathology,” In The Routledge Handbook of Paleopathology, (Routledge, 2022), 381-396.
4 Bethany G. Anderson, Krystiana L Krupa, Elizabeth A Sutton, Oliver G Tapaha, “Beyond Acknowledgement: Indigenous-centered Projects on Reclamation at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign,” IFLA Journal, March 13, 2025. https://doi.org/10.1177/03400352251321195
5 Elizabeth Weiss, “The American Museum of Supernatural History.” Reality’s Last Stand, December 28, 2023. https://www.realityslaststand.com/p/the-american-museum-of-supernatural
6 James Drexel, “UCLA staff ‘talk to’ Lonely Native American Museum Pieces at Tribe’s Request,” The College Fix, February 16, 2026.
7 Gisli Palsson, “Unstable Bodies: Biosocial Perspectives on Human Variation,” The Sociological Review 64, no. 1_suppl (2016): 100-116.
8 Raymond J. DeMallie, review of Science Encounters the Indian, 1820-1880: The Early Years of American Ethnology, by Robert E. Bieder, American Indian Culture and Research Journal 11, no. 1 (1987).
9 Hoyme, loc. cit.
10 Mario Marino, “Natural History, Racial Classification and Anthropology in JF Blumenbach’s Work and Reception,” (2020), https://www.openstarts.units.it/bitstream/10077/30264/1/2_Human_Diversity_online.pdf
11 Phillip R. Sloan, “Buffon, German Biology, and the Historical Interpretation of Biological Species,” The British Journal for the History of Science 12, no. 2 (1979): 109-153. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007087400017027
12 Elizabeth Weiss, James W. Springer, Repatriation and Erasing the Past (University Press of Florida, 2020).
13 John S. Michael, “Nuance Lost in Translation: Interpretations of JF Blumenbach’s Anthropology in the English Speaking World,” NTM Zeitschrift für Geschichte der Wissenschaften, Technik und Medizin, 25, no. 3 (2017): 281-309, https://doi.org/10.1007/s00048-017-0173-8
Photo by Johann Friedrich Blumenbach – Treatise on “De generis humani varietate nativa,” unnumbered page at the end of the book titled “Tab II”, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2065863