I have mentioned before that I am reading, and enjoying, The Next Great Migration by Sonia Shah. In Chapter 3, she takes a bit of a detour to an area only marginally related to migration, and it concerns the figure of Carl Linnaeus.
I will take a leap of faith and assume that most people are at least superficially familiar with the so-called Father of Modern Taxonomy, the guy who spent his life categorizing and organizing all life into families and species and subspecies, etc, albeit based on the very incomplete knowledge of the 18th century. Science owes a debt of gratitude to the man. However, I was less aware of what an oddball he was, and just how far of the mark on some of his pronouncements.
Linnaeus was very much a product of his time and deeply religious, and his approach to science was shot through with this supremely unscientific underpinning. For example, he was not willing to accept that animals, birds and insects could migrate, as that would have suggested that God's initial plan was in some way incomplete or unfixed.
Out of his belief - call it faith or call it ignorance - that all of God's creatures were assigned an immutable home region, Linnaeus even divided the human species into several subspecies, assigning each its own characteristic features. Thus: Homo sapiens europaeus, the people of Europe (white, serious, strong, active, smart, inventive, covered by tight clothing, and ruled by laws); Homo sapiens asiaticus, the people of Asia (yellow, melancholy, greedy, severe, haughty, desirous, black hair, dark eyes, covered by loose garments, ruled by opinion); Homo sapiens americanus, the people of the Americas (red, ill-tempered, subjugated, obstinate, contented, free, black straight hair, wide nostrils, harsh face, scanty beard, painted with red lines, ruled by custom); and Homo sapiens afer, the people of Africa (black, impassive, lazy, crafty, slow, foolish, kinky hair, silky skin, flat nose, thick lips, women with large breasts and a "genital flap", anointed with grease, ruled by caprice).
Still others, Linaeus decided, were not even human. He designated some black people as Homo troglodytes (essentially cavemen), and some as Homo caudatus (referring to the "tailed men" of Borneo and Nicobar). Dwarves, "Patagonian giants", and the Laplanders (Sami) of northern Sweden for some reason, he lumped together under the heading Homo monstrosus.
Wow! Not only was Linnaeus the Father of Modern Taxonomy, he was probably the Father if Modern Racism, especially given the high esteem in which he was held across the civilized world and the outsized influence he wielded. These ideas persisted until the refutations of Charles Darwin in the late 19th century, and even well beyond that in some circles.
And about that "genital flap"... this is a strange one. Linnaeus, as well as several others in the European scientific community of the mid-18th century, was convinced, with no good evidence, that black women had a long flap of skin covering their genitals, which went by the Latin name "sinus pudoris", also known as a "Hottentot Apron" or "genital flap". It's not clear why he and many others believed this to be the case, but he went to great lengths to obtain (often to buy) black women and cadavers so as to be able to inspect and dissect their pudenda.
Now, I know, this was the 18th century. Our knowledge of the world was rudimentary, and the age of reason was just beginning. Many things were different back then, including, it seems, morality. But this, surely, was beyond the pale.
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