Decas collectiones suae craniorum diversarum gentium illustra. & Nova pentas collectionis suae craniorum diversarum gentium tanquam complementum priorum decadum, (Decas 1-6 & Suppl.) (all publ.)

Blumenbach, Johann Friedrich

Publication Date: 1790

About this Item

Göttingen, apud Apud Ioann. Christ., Henricum Dieterich, 1793-1828, 4°, 30, 15, 16, 16, 20, 19, 11 pp., mit 65 Kupferstichtafeln, marmor. Halbledereinband d.Zt. fleckenfreies, feines Exemplar. First edition, first part 2nd impression, second to sixth part and supplement 1st impression! Blumenbach's most important anthropological work, containing his classical description of 65 human crania on 65 engraved copper plates. It includes a description of the uncinate ("Blumenbach's") process. Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (1752-1840) was essentially a comparative anatomist and "brought that science up to a high state of development. There is especially one branch of it in which he is a pioneer - namely, anthropology. Here, it is true, Buffon, with his descriptive and statistical method, and Camper, with his studies of the facial angle, had paved the way, but Blumenbach was the first who systematically worked at the subject, thereby laying the foundation on which all subsequent research has carried on its constructive work. He instituted a collection of skulls, skeletons, and illustrations of human beings of as many races as he could procure, and he methodically studied the peculiar characteristics of the material he thus got together or was able to borrow from other museums. The result was a close comparison of the characteristics, both external and internal, of different human types, and on that basis a division of mankind into races. A similar attempt had indeed been made before, such as Buffon's for instance, but Blumenbach's was the first that really proved successful, and his five races - Caucasian, Mongolian, Ehtiopian, American, and Malayan - have been the foundation on which all subsequent racial divisions have been based, just as his postulate that the races are varieties of one and the same species is also regarded as true, in spite of isolated attempts to create several species." Nordenskiold: The Hist, of Biology, pp.306ff. Garrison & Morton No. 198.

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Bibliographic Details

• Title: Decas collectiones suae craniorum diversarum gentium illustra. & Nova pentas collectionis suae craniorum diversarum gentium tanquam complementum priorum decadum, (Decas 1-6 & Suppl.) (all publ.)
• Publication Date: 1790
• Edition: 1st Edition
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  • Biologie