3 Nov 2022

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The Competing Theories of Monogenesis and Polygenesis as they apply to the Ethnic Branches of Mankind

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Academic level: College

Paper type: Research Paper

Words: 558

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In the mid-nineteenth century, scientists from the American School of ethnology challenged the biblical story of creation. According to Malcolmson (2016), they proposed that contrary to the teachings of Genesis, there are separate divine acts of nature that led to the appearance of more than one human species in the genus Homo and ranked the species as races or varieties. However, the African-multiregionalism advocates argue that Homo sapiens resulted from an ancestral hominid widespread in Africa, which separated into numerous isolated populations ( Stringer, 2016) . The groups mated with each other to form the modern hominids, such as the Homo Naledi. Further, the antebellum black ethnology produced by Fredrick Douglass is more impressive because it criticizes the mainstream white science that defends the concept of monogenesis, and slams the accomplishments of the blacks in Africa, which makes little sense to the modern reader. 

After the inception of Darwinian Evolution published in1859 through his works, The Descent of Man and The Origin of Species in 1871, two scientific theories (monogenesis and polygenesis) were at odds with one another ( Stewart, 2014) . According to Stewart (2014), monogenesis was a concept that implies that every living organism descends from a common ancestor and include different races of humans. On the other hand, polygenesis is a concept that means that all species of living organisms have various origins and distinct races have their common ancestor ( Stewart (2014) . The Theory of Evolutions supports the two concepts of origin through multiple experiments and direct and indirect observations of nature. 

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However, Evolution Theory is overlapped by the two hypothesis at the same time. According to Nichols (2011), although Darwin was a supporter of the monogenesis, he admitted that the two concepts complement the explanations of the origin of life including the pure biological races. The Theory of Evolution is explicitly monogenetic in theory and practice. Also, polygenesis is a scientific concept which is also valid in the Darwinian evolution theory because Alfred Russell Wallace worked jointly with Darwin in discovering the mechanism of Natural Selection and supported polygenesis in his work. 

The competing theories of monogenesis and polygenesis was a dispute between Russell and Darwin on the timing of Natural Selection. They wanted to specify different races and their ancestor millions of years ago. Both the two concepts do not deny the differences among the races of humanity. Furthermore, they help in solving the mystery of the researchers to understand that both the ideologies are valid and are a burden of proof to those who deny the existence of a pure and a distinct race. For instance, the white Aryans are pure and different from the Negro from the sub-Sahara Africa and the yellow man from China ( Ali 2016) . It is essential to challenge those propagating that race is a social construct but not a biological reality. 

Some people believe and accept the evolutionary scientific proof that race is a biological reality of the life of inequality. Therefore, both the monogenesis and the polygamous concluded in direct and indirect observation and repeated the experiment of the two concepts. The two ideas satisfy one another without disagreements on how different organisms diverged from their ancestors through the phylogenetic tree of life. They have also proved that inequality has always existed as a mechanism of Natural Selection that created the diversion evident today. 

References 

Ali, A. (2016).  The" Negro" in Afro-Arabian Muslim consciousness  (Doctoral dissertation, Graduate Theological Union). 

Malcolmson, C. (2016). Boyle, Biblical Monogenesis, and Slavery. In  Studies of Skin Color in the Early Royal Society (pp. 108-127). Routledge. 

Nichols, J. (2011). Monogenesis or polygenesis: a single ancestral language for all humanity? In  The Oxford handbook of language evolution

Stewart, A. (2014). From Monogenesis to Polygenesis in Pentecostal Origins: A Survey of the Evidence from the Azusa Street, Hebden, and Mukti Missions.  PentecoStudies: An Interdisciplinary Journal for Research on the Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements 13 (2), 151-172. 

Stringer, C. (2016). The origin and evolution of Homo sapiens.  Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B 371 (1698), 20150237. 

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StudyBounty. (2023, September 14). The Competing Theories of Monogenesis and Polygenesis as they apply to the Ethnic Branches of Mankind .
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