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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
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| Arthur Keith | 1/3 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Keith | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T17:02:56.552176+00:00 | kb-cron |
Sir Arthur Keith FRS FRAI (5 February 1866 – 7 January 1955) was a British anatomist and anthropologist, and a proponent of scientific racism. He was a fellow and later the Hunterian Professor and conservator of the Hunterian Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons of England. He was a strong proponent of the Piltdown Man, but conceded it to be a forgery shortly before his death.
== Career == A leading figure in the study of human fossils, Keith became President of the Royal Anthropological Institute. The latter role stimulated his interest in the subject of human evolution, leading to the publication of his book A New Theory of Human Evolution, in which he supported the idea of group selection. Where others had postulated that physical separation could provide a barrier to interbreeding, allowing groups to evolve along different lines, Keith introduced the idea of cultural differences as providing a mental barrier, emphasising territorial behaviour, and the concept of the "in-group" and "out-group." Keith claimed that humans had evolved through their tendency to live in small competing communities, which was at root determined by racial differences in their "genetic substrate." Writing just after World War II, he particularly emphasised the racial origins of anti-Semitism, and in A New Theory of Evolution he devoted a chapter to the topics of anti-Semitism and Zionism in which he argued that Jews had survived by developing a particularly strong sense of community between Jews worldwide based around cultural practices rather than homeland, while applying the "dual code" in such a way that perceived persecution strengthened their sense of superiority and cohesion. He is also famous for discovering the sinoatrial node, the component of the heart which makes it beat, with his student Martin Flack in 1906.
== Life == He was born at Quarry Farm near Old Machar in Aberdeenshire, the son of John Keith, a farmer, and his wife, Jessie Macpherson. He was educated at Gordon's College in Aberdeen. He obtained a Bachelor of Medicine at the University of Aberdeen in 1888. He travelled to Siam on a gold mining trip in 1889 where he gathered plants for Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew in London in his capacity as a plant collector assistant for the Botanical Survey of the Malay Peninsula. On returning to Britain in 1892, Keith studied anatomy at University College London and at the University of Aberdeen. It was at Aberdeen where Keith won the first Struthers Prize in 1893 for his demonstration of ligaments in humans and other apes. In 1894, he was made a fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of England. In 1908, as he says in A New Theory of Evolution, he was "put in charge of the vast treasury of things housed in the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons," which brought about a shift in his interest from anatomy to the pursuit of "the machinery of human evolution." He studied primate skulls, and in 1897 he published An Introduction to the Study of Anthropoid Apes. Other works include Human Embryology and Morphology (1902), Ancient Types of Man (1911), The Antiquity of Man (1915), Concerning Man's Origins (1927), and A New Theory of Human Evolution (1948). Keith was editor of the Journal of Anatomy between 1915 and 1936 and elected President of the Anatomical Society of Great Britain and Ireland for 1918 to 1920. He gave the 1927 presidential address ("Darwin's Theory of Man's Descent As It Stands To-day") to the British Association meeting in Leeds. The same year the University of Leeds awarded him an honorary doctorate. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1913. He was knighted in 1921, and published New Discoveries in 1931. He was elected an International Member of the American Philosophical Society that same year. He was also an International Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and an International Member of the United States National Academy of Sciences. In 1932, he helped found a research institute in Downe, Kent, where he worked until his death. In 1899 he married Cecilia Caroline Gray (d.1934). They had no children. He died at his home in Downe, Kent on 7 January 1955.
== European hypothesis == British anthropologists Keith and Grafton Elliot Smith were both fixed on European origin of humankind and were in opposition to models of Asian and African origin. In 1925 Raymond Dart announced the discovery of Australopithecus africanus, which he claimed was evidence for an early human ancestor in Africa. The British anthropologists of the time, who firmly believed in the European hypothesis, did not accept finds outside of their own soil. Keith, for example, described "Darts child" as a juvenile ape and nothing to do with human ancestry.
== Racial views == In conjunction with his Eurocentric view on human evolution in Europe as being separate from Africa, Keith shared scientific racist views with a number of other intellectuals and writers during the 1920s, often based on Galtonism and the belief that opposition to cross-breeding in animals could be applied to miscegenation. In 1931, with John Walter Gregory, he delivered the annual Conway Hall lecture entitled "Race as a Political Factor". The lecture contained as its abstract: The three primary racial groups within the human species are the Caucasian, mongoloid and negroid. From analogy with cross-breeding in animals and plants, and from experience of human cross-breeding, it can be asserted that inter-marriage between members of the three groups produces inferior progeny. Hence racial segregation is to be recommended. However, the different races can still assist, and co-operate with, each other, in the interests of peace and harmony.