1 Divisions of Humanity

François Bernier

New Division of the Earth by the Different Species or Races of Man that Inhabit It

In 1684, French physician and philosopher, François Bernier became the first to introduce a classification of humankind. Prior to Bernier’s assignment of race, most sixteenth and seventeenth-century anthropological and travel literature described people of the known world in terms of religion, morals, customs, language, and politics, and by making only incidental use of physical or “racial’ criteria ^[1].

Bernier asserted that there was a scientific, objective way of classifying human beings according to their geographic origin and physical characteristics such as skin color, facial type, and bodily shape. Bernier proposed 4 distinct races:

Although Bernier did not create a ranking of the races, his descriptions established White Europeans as “normal” and all other races as deviations from this “normal”.

Carl Linnaeus

Systema naturae

Carl Linnaeus, an eighteenth-century Swedish biologist, also placed human beings into categories based on both physical appearance and geographic location. In his classification, Linnaeus used the term “variety” to describe humans as a species within the animal kingdom.

He divided the human “species” into four varieties that corresponded to the four continents of the world: Europe, America, Asia, and Africa.

1. Europaeus albus: European white
2. Americanus rubescens: American reddish
3. Asiaticus fuscus: Asian tawny
4. Africanus niger: African black

Linnaeus deemed humans “manlike” primates in the first edition of his Systema Naturae. His classifications were based chiefly on environmental and geographic factors and remained as such for the first 9 editions of Systema Naturae.

In the 10th edition of Systema Naturae, Linnaeus expanded his classification of humans to include the four temperaments, incorporating information on personality traits and behaviors that reflected deviations from his earlier system, which had been based solely on environment and geography. The concept of temperament originated in ancient Greece, where philosophers correlated human behavior with varying levels of biological substances, blood, phlegm, and yellow or black bile. Each of the four humors was associated with a specific temperament, which was believed to be linked to distinct physical and psychological traits. In healthy individuals, the humors were thought to be balanced with one slightly predominating. This predominance determined temperament and predisposed an individual to certain illnesses over others. ^[2]. 

In addition to environment, geography, and humors, Linnaeus used the following to further classify man: 

Linnaeus’s use of the four temperaments and humors in his racial classification system marked a turning point in how people began to think about race. In this new framework, he not only divided humans by geography but also assigned traits to each group based on outdated medical theories, creating one of the first direct links between race and biology. The message was clear: Europeans were attributed the most favorable qualities and placed at the top of a hierarchy, while others, especially Africans, were described in the most negative terms and portrayed as the least rational or civilized. By correlating behavior, intellect, and morality with race, Linnaeus implied that these traits were biologically fixed and shared by all members of a group. This idea laid the foundation for racial hierarchies and fueled scientific racism that has endured across cultures and centuries. The negative stereotypes assigned to people of African descent did not simply persist; they became a standard for justifying perceived inferiority, particularly in contrast to Europeans.