5. Codifying a Diagrammatics of 'Race'

Samuel George Morton’s work was not only foundational for an American physical anthropology that was associated with polygenism; Morton’s crania atlases that instantiated his development of a seemingly rigorously diagrammatic and metric approach triggered follow-up projects internationally and generally were a stepping stone in the development of a polygenist physical anthropology. The final chapter of the first part deals with the role of diagrams in this development up to the detailed diagrammatic and metric system of the influential French anthropologist Paul Broca. With Crania ethnica (1882) by Jean Louis Armand de Quatrefages and Jules Ernest Théodore Hamy, newly discovered ‘fossil human races’ were integrated into the existing systems of contemporary ‘races’.