#johann blumenbach

[thechanelmuse]

Kendrick, Drake, and Ethnic/Cultural Identity

One of the most discussed topics during this exchange between the two is if Drake is a culture vulture. In short, yes. He's always been. It boils down to inherited cultural identity and respected history, not the upholding of a social construct of “race.” 

Race is a goofy non-biological caste system that operates in various countries and it’s a dumbass global push to get people to embrace a superior to inferior hierarchy in classifying the globe into 5 broad groups solely based on perceived skull sizes, hues of skin color, and perceived traits and phenotypic features via the teachings of François Bernier, Johann Blumenbach, Carl Linnaeus, and them other hoes. Get race tf outta here.

I’m gonna make this concise as possible, but fleshed out a bit for full understanding.

Kendrick Lamar is Black American on both sides with his roots most likely coming out of Mississippi and/or Alabama to Chicago to Cali by way of the Great Migration. (He may even descend from Duckworths from Louisiana). I haven’t done his genealogy, but now I may out of curiosity.

Black American is a double ethnicity. We’re citizens of America (nationality = US Citizen), and our ethnic group (Black) was created & descends from this land (ethnicity = American) through ethnogensis. It has nothing to do with one’s brown skin color or how the cops see us 🙃, but everything to do with the lineage of one’s parents and their parents, etc. (For info on lineage tracing, refer to my post here.) 

Black Americans are an ethnic group (the largest from this land and largest in this country after Germans), while “white Americans” are a self-identification race to remove ethnic identity and conflate numbers. I can break this down further in another post if y’all want since American history is complex and will explain why Black Americans have been reclassified seven times by the US government 🙃. 

Now.

Culture is largely passed down through your mother, and her mother, and her mother, and so forth for Black Americans (and I’m sure other ethnic groups). No matter if it’s a two-parent or single-parent household, she’s your ultimate teacher in setting the foundation of your cultural upbringing. It’s the same if one is raised by their grandparents. It largely stems from the grandmother. If one’s father is their main parent, that’s a different case of course. 

Drake falls in line with this as someone from a single-parent household. He is half Ashkenazi of Latvian and Russian descent (ethnicity) through his mother and of half Black American descent (ethnicity) through his father. He is a dual citizen of Canada and America (nationality), who was raised in Canada with his Ashkenazi Jewish mother and Ashkenazi relatives with an Ashkenazi upbringing. He went to a Jewish day school and was engulfed in all aspects at home. 

Kendrick is ethnically and culturally Black American. Drake is ethnically and culturally Ashkenazi. He is also ethnically Black American (through lineage), but not culturally Black American. Does that make Drake a culture vulture? No. He just didn’t have the cultural upbringing but could always immerse himself in learning, appreciating, and respecting the other half of his history and culture.

What makes him one is how he operates as an outsider. He participates in an aspect of Black American culture (Hip-Hop) for his monetary gain, adopts a manufactured image for his perception of believability, and disrespects the people of this culture. “…run to America to imitate culture.” It’s like a jacket to him. He takes it off to try on another (like a Jamaican accent) and swaps for another, etc. 

A few examples that’s been touched on: He blackened his face to depict blackface while wearing a Jim Crow t-shirt… That’s specific disrespect towards Black Americans, mocking our history and our ancestors. “Whipped and chained you like American slaves.” That’s specific disrespect towards Black Americans, mocking our history and our ancestors. “[You] always rappin' like you 'bout to get the slaves freed.” Do I even need to explain this? Hopefully it’s understood.

The muthafucka is not like us.

[artthatgivesmefeelings]

Jaroslav Cermak (Czech, 1831-1878) Montenegrin Women in a Harem, 1877 National Gallery Prague Slavery gave rise to the figure of the Odalisque, that is the beautiful, white slave girl, a figure of quintessential beauty. In the late 18th century Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, the father of physical anthropology, the father of scientific anthropology, an 18th century German scholar, assigned the name Caucasian to the people living in western Europe, to the River Ob in Russia to northern Africa, and to India. He called the people in Europe, over to India, well into Russia and North Africa, Caucasians because they were the most beautiful in the world. Blumenbach enjoyed a scholarly reputation that gave his designation enormous heft and it got picked up very quickly. Immanuel Kant stated that the Caucasians, the Georgians, the Circassians, sell their children, particularly their girls to the Turks, the Arabs, and the Persians, for reasons of eugenics, that is, to beautify the race. Before the Atlantic slave trade to the western hemisphere shaped our ideas about what slave trades are all about, there was slave trade from this part of the world, that goes back to before the reaches of time. Herodotus writing in the fifth century BC, writing about the enumeration of taxes and tributes paid to the Persian kingdom, collected from the lands it had controlled and the lands even far away in the distance. He said that the voluntary contribution was taken from the Colchians, that is the Georgians, and the neighboring tribes between them and the Caucasus, and it consisted of and still consists of (that is in the 5th century BC) every fourth year 100 boys and 100 girls. This was before Herodotus could even see the beginnings of it. Herodotus also mentioned the tribute from the southern most part of the edges of the Persian world and that was for the people called Ethiopians, what they owed was gold and ivory, people were not mentioned. So, the Black Sea Slave trade was the slave trade in the western world until the 15th century when the Ottomans captured Constantinople and cut the Black Sea off from western Europe. At that point, 15th century, the Atlantic slave trade becomes the western slave trade. Daniel Edward Clarke, our Cambridge don, also located Circassian beauty, in the enslaved. “The Cicassians frequently sell their children to strangers, particularly to Persians and Turkish Seraglios.” He speaks of one particular Circassian female who was 14, who was conscious of her great beauty, who feared her parents would sell her according to the custom of the country. The beautiful young slave girl became a figure, and she had a name; Odalisque. She combines the powerful notions of beauty, sex, and slavery. Ingres, Jerome, Powers and Matisse specialized in Odalisque paintings. The figure of the Odalisque faded from memory as the Black Sea slave trade ended in the late 19th century, and the Atlantic slave trade overshadowed that from the Black Sea. Today, the word slavery invariably leads to people of African descent. Americans seldom associate the word Odalisque with with slavery in the Americas. Today many American painters use Odalisque figures, Michalene Thomas for instance who has done a series of what she calls American Odalisque. But the phrase and the figure of the Odalisque has lost its association with slavery. And now in American art history and in contemporary American art, Odalisque simply refers to a beautiful woman, usually unclothed. If you want to learn more, listen to professor Nell Painter of Princeton University in the YT lecture “Why White People are Called Caucasian.”

[realjaysumlin]

The term "Caucasian race" was popularized by Johann Friedrich Blumenbach in the late 18th century. However, it's important to understand that the concept of race is a social construct and not a biological reality. There is no scientific basis for dividing humans into distinct races. The concept of race has been used to justify discrimination and inequality throughout history.

I will never be able to comprehend why people don't realize that race is a very stupid invention that has caused so much harm to innocent people globally. This is why I don't acknowledge the idea of whiteness or the disenfranchisement of Dark Skin Humans worldwide.

Our Black Aboriginal People globally acknowledge that all humanity are the same people.

[arkipelagic]

filipinos and people speaking to/about filipinos suffer from the same illness and that is the pathological need to remind us that we have been colonized. we can not exist without being told we owe this or that to our colonizers or to some other foreign origin. solicited or unsolicited, they will do it. in an academic setting or under random throwaway comments online, they will always bring it up. we are subjected to measures of cultural, racial, and linguistic purity that does not exist anywhere and which no people on this earth could ever pass.

using spanish, english, malay, hokkien, sanskrit loanwords? that means our languages are nothing but creole to the core. cooking balbacua or caldereta? well, they’re not really “our” dishes; we just remixed them and then we eat them. practicing christianity or islam? i guess nothing about our faiths must be indigenous. we were colonized by the spanish? that makes us more latino than asian actually… or maybe we’re neither latino nor asian but a secret third thing - polynesian! et cetera, et cetera.

don’t even get these people started on popular race science (i.e. pseudoscience) about the so-called origins of filipinos. they sound like reincarnations of johann blumenbach and henry otley beyer with their nonsensical ramblings about the three waves of migration, “mongoloids,” and the “malay race.”

[dreadflyer]

Early 19th century reconstruction of the wooly mammoth

The original sketch (which has since been lost, leaving only a copy made by Johann Friedrich Blumenbach) was initually drafted by Roman Boltunov, a Siberian Trader. After buying a pair of mammoth tusks from a local Reindeer farmer, he was led to the recently frozen body from which they were harvested.

After taking measurements of the remains, which had been exposed to scavengers and the elements, Bultanov made a sketch of what he believed the animal would have appeared like when it was alive.

The sketch and measurements were sent to the Russian Academy of Sciences, where it was rightfully labeled as "incorrect." Nevertheless, the drawing would be published in Russian Newspapers. The dessicated remains would eventually be sent to the Imperial Academy in 1807, almost a decade after they had initially been discovered.

[contentment-of-cats]

Further TL;DR rant on Eli Vanto

"Caucasian features."

It's been bugging the absolute f*ck out of me.

Yes, I am back on my Eli Vanto bullshit.

Break it down.

White America is a Color

First, I think that only in America is the word Caucasian used to mean white people. The American understanding of Caucasian as meaning white, European-descended people was upheld by the Supreme Court in 1923. The case of United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind ruled that under the Naturalization Act of 1906 that only "free white persons" - also called Caucasians - and "aliens of African nativity and persons of African descent" to become naturalized citizens. Bhagat Singh Thind's argument rested on the descent of Europeans and Indians from a common Proto-Indo-European origin. The court disagreed.

Excerpt below, full text here.

What we now hold is that the words "free white persons" are words of common speech, to be interpreted in accordance with the understanding of the common man, synonymous with the word "Caucasian" only as that word is popularly understood. As so understood and used, whatever may be the speculations of the ethnologist, it does not include the body of people to whom the appellee belongs. It is a matter of familiar observation and knowledge that the physical group characteristics of the Hindus render them readily distinguishable from the various groups of persons in this country commonly recognized as white. The children of English, French, German, Italian, Scandinavian, and other European parentage quickly merge into the mass of our population and lose the distinctive hallmarks of their European origin. On the other hand, it cannot be doubted that the children born in this country of Hindu parents would retain indefinitely the clear evidence of their ancestry. It is very far from our thought to suggest the slightest question of racial superiority or inferiority. What we suggest is merely racial difference, and it is of such character and extent that the great body of our people instinctively recognize it and reject the thought of assimilation.

It is not without significance in this connection that Congress, by the Act of February 5, 1917, 39 Stat. 874, c. 29, § 3, has now excluded from admission into this country all natives of Asia within designated limits of latitude and longitude, including the whole of India. This not only constitutes conclusive evidence of the congressional attitude of opposition to Asiatic immigration generally, but is persuasive of a similar attitude toward Asiatic naturalization as well, since it is not likely that Congress would be willing to accept as citizens a class of persons whom it rejects as immigrants.

So, in America, the term Caucasian means 'white people' and not people of the Caucasus, or a group of people who have 'Caucasian features.' This is still accepted and common usage, despite the science of race being on a par with the sciences of alchemy, astrology, phrenology, a flat earth and the sun orbiting it.

Who with the What, Now?

A German philosopher named Christoph Meiners started the whole shitshow. He divided the races into the 'Caucasian' or 'beautiful' race and the 'Mongoloid' or 'ugly' race. Johann Friedrich Blumenbach carried it further in 1795, dividing humanity into five races by skin color.

First, this image is all over the search results, no findable attribution, but I'm using it because it's accurate in terms of skin colors:

Other 'Caucasian features' included narrow noses with small nostrils and a sharp nasal sill, small mouths with thin lips, prominent supraorbital (above the eye socket) ridges, orthognathism and high cheekbones. Of course, in the late 1700s when all this was being quantified into 'racial features' not many Caucasoids fit into the categories. Not a lot of people do today. I'd love to have everyone in America take a 23-and-Me test, then make them sit down, shut the fuck up and think.

Star Wars and Mis-coloring

I am old enough to remember when Lando Calrissian was the only black man in the galaxy.

Eli Vanto.

Tan.

Really.

The definition of 'tan' is a yellowish brown color, or the processing of leather, but we're going with the classic "brown or darkened shade of skin developed after exposure to the sun." In short a tan is acquired and not an innate skin color. It doesn't help that one of the most referenced fandom resources repeatedly characterizes brown people as 'tan.'

Even Breha Organa is miscolored as 'golden tan.' These guys did not acquire a goddamn tan hanging out on Scarif. Luke Skywalker was mighty white even after living his whole life on a desert planet, and Obi Wan had not a trace of tan despite living there as long as Luke. These are brown people. Black characters such as Adi Gallia and Mace Windu are characterized as "dark."

For shit's sake. Is everyone at Wookiepedia afraid of the word 'brown?'

Light brown. Medium brown. Dark brown.

I realize that the GFFA doesn't have Earth's definitions of ethnicity, nationality, or race but miscoloring is miscoloring. Tacking on 'Caucasian features' is adding a racist trope to insult. Structural racism in the US is deeply ingrained and often the default setting when it comes to media. It is important to give people their representation when it is right fucking there.

Eli Vanto is brown. His canon appearance is in the comics, and while he might have been originally storyboarded as a white redhead, he did not stay that way. His voice actor in the audiobooks gave him a Texas twang, but maybe in other versions of the audiobook, he speaks with a different accent.

Turkish Eli? Sure.

Brazilian Eli? Absolutely.

Oaxacan Eli? Why not.

Desi Eli? Heck yes.

Mizrahi Eli? Bring it.

He's brown. Not white. Not tan with Caucasian features. He is as brown as Thrawn is blue.

[collymore]

Can logic ever play a cogent role in the existence of really lowlife racist scum?

By Stanley Collymore How can anybody either singly or even more grotesquely literally collectively, as a plethora of dimwitted jerks claim that emphatically as well as distinctively, quite fervently they're unalterably, and simply implacably British monarchists, but who'll nevertheless very permanently cease to be at all, obviously specifically supportive of Britain actually having a monarchy if unquestionably, its present monarchical family; and literally crucially, undoubtedly specifically so its incumbent monarch, don't openly come out and fervidly fittingly unquestionably support their actual authentically white Caucasian subjects in whatsoever they basically do, relative to the latter's own communicated thoughts, outrageously preposterous and significantly actually deeply ingrained biases, very specious hatred, and equally unrelenting racism towards non-whites, and thus, actually perceived by their vile critics as aliens, whether they were really lawfully, born in or crucially how long they've simply clearly legitimately, been resident and rather conscientiously, commendably, paying their way effectively unlike the overwhelming majority of these quite discernibly and specifically obviously thoroughly distinctly workshy benefit claimants, basically vociferously and vitriolically literally spouting out their endemic, but obviously rather clearly in denial of evilly entrenched racism!

(C) Stanley V. Collymore 11 August 2024.

Author's Remarks: The very first inhabitants of England and indeed Britain were the Homo heidelbergenis, who very much so in turn were evidently themselves the descendants of African Homo register and who moved to Britain during the early expansions of hominins out of Africa beginning roughly around 2 million years ago. And significantly for the true benefit of you basically delusional racists these people were irrefutably Black and African!

Meanwhile, the term Caucasian obviously as a racial category was actually initially introduced in the 1780s irrefutably then by members of the Goettigen School of History, and notably so by Christoph Meiners in 1785 and Johann Friedrich Blumenbach in 1795, and was a term originally referred to in a narrow sense to the inhabitants of the Caucasus region.

Those now regarded as English were descended from three main west German tribes, principally the Angles, Saxons and the Jutes, who actually didn't settle in England, and  who only did so in south of the country following the withdrawal of the Roman's and the partially Romanised Celtic Britons who already lived there.

Britain was part of the Roman Empire for clearly over three and a half centuries, effectively from AD 43. Roman rule however ended in the early 5th Century. The province of Britannia which in effect Britain was, being effectively a part of the political union that covered most of Europe. In the meantime and for absolute clarification of the facts, the term English undoubtedly did not originate until the late 13th Century when it was categorically applied without discrimination to all the Germanic invaders of England.

Significantly also, unequivocally subsequent to the original Black settlement actually of Britain there were African in Britain long before these belatedly named English came here and I do in effect distinctly suggest that you research this information fully and unbiased, as well as really acquaint yourselves with the Academic work as well as excellent writing of Tre Ventour Griffiths in his acclaimed work: Afro-Romans: There were Africans in Britain before the English - distinctly and effectively so the Angles, Saxons and also the Jutes tribes from Germany - arrived here.

So those of you whites and specifically the very ignorant, intellectually challenged ones evidently idiotically talking about you being ludicrously the indigenous population of Britain, my discernibly succinct and unequivocal advice to the odiously coterie of you is get real; as you're no such thing anymore than you are similarly very delusionally the absolute indigenous inhabitants of Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the USA or Palestine the countries you barbarically acquired by evidently through genocidal means eradicating their very own indigenous populations through your quite accustomed and cherished art of genocide!  

And to the far right and other clowns you state they won't be fighting for Britain if it were clearly attacked as Britain is no longer their country as it's given over to immigrants; that's rich coming from the likes of you, the detritus of numerous European pogroms, the European holocaust as well as immigration to Britain under all sorts of dubious guises. Anyway, your sort are basically lily livered cowards who categorically love to, in essence, flaunt your vainglorious and  obviously clearly bogus patriotism, which effectively boils down to delusionally, and heroically, defending Britain to the last drop of someone else's blood but NEVER your own.

Consequently, no sensible and intelligent person would ever expect your sort to militarily defend Britain, nor any of the other racist and similarly keyboard warriors. For you're irrefutably scum, significantly also workshy benefit recipients and equally so lowlife scum, who for the most part don't have a basic clue, of who you really and effectively biologically are and quite evidently why programmes like Long Lost Families exist and are so popular, for your sort haven't a clue who you really are, any more so than your own mothers ever did when they shared it around rather liberally, and you in due course have in effect done the same with your own surfeit of bastards.

And all indications are from type casting really are that if serious war ever broke out between Britain and a major world power leading also to World War 3, that your odious and very cowardly sort will piss off helter leather as far away as you can get, to either the Antipodes, Canada, USA or even South America as Germany's Nazi did both during and after the end of World War 2! Leaving others to clear up your mess!

Finally, just stop and think, if you're really that capable of doing so, which is very questionable, if as you say you're diehard monarchists but the ones you favour don't do as you demand and in essence turn the UK into an all-white land which it never was, who are you then going to worship, fawn over and brownnose to? Lol! But then who ever, apart from your sort, ever said you were clever?

[realjaysumlin]

Johann Blumenbach Claims White as Most Civilized

I have been telling all of you how dumb and stupid it is for anyone living on our planet today that believes skin colors represent race for humans are dumb as hell. Since most of you need someone who considers themselves to be white to validate what most of us Black Indigenous People globally have been telling you about the ignorance of scientific racism and you don't listen to us or you are filled with cognitive dissonance.

Melanin is dominant and depigmentation is recessive which means that light skin humans are inferior to anyone who is melanated. This is because depigmented humans have less melanin in the brain than melanated humans.

Black Africans are the only people who live on earth today and racial categorizing is totally false and destructive. The men who invented race and fake science have most of the world believing in their lies instead of people learning from the original Black African Scientists who said that humankind is born in Africa, they didn't invent racist ideologies because they know that we are all the same group of humans.

[mightyflamethrower]

A wallcreeper. Abbildungen naturhistorischer Gegenstände - Johann Friedrich Blumenbach - c.1797-1810 

[5-7-9]

Nah see i googled it a few years ago and put it in my notes, the racist theory book writer’s name was *checks notes* Johann Friedrich Blumenbach

That’s a whole name i dun wanna say everytime i talk about american race 😒 I’m just gonna say that one racist theory book but jsyk ik the actual name 👀

[the-chomsky-hash]

1. [Historically,]

a. The word "anthropology", [first] used by

Ernst Planer in 1772 (Anthropologie für Ärzte und Weltweise [Anthropology for Physicians and World Wise Men]),

Johann Friedrich Blumenbach

was subsequently used by

Immanuel Kant

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Maine de Biran

in a strictly philosophical sense.

– Michel Foucault, Knowledge of Man and Transcendental Reflection, (Introduction), d'apres La Question Anthropologique, Cours 1954-1955, edited by Ariana Sforzini

[realjaysumlin]

Everyone must remember that shit people who call themselves white invented themselves and they think they can tell everyone who and what we are as humans. Sure we share the same Black Indigenous People problems globally because remember these shit people hate everything Black and Indigenous.

If you ask these stupid mother fuckers where do whiteness come from? You get stupid and ignorant answers and not one ever mentions race science because this is the exact source of where their shit race of whiteness came from.

Johann Blumenbach invented the white people and it's an unscientific ideology that is not true, so why would we as Black Indigenous People globally listen to people who don't even know themselves?

My monthly reminder to Tumblr that Black people exist all over the world. This implication that whenever a Black person's experience is brought up it "must be US centric" is ridiculous and low-key a dogwhistle atp. Black people are global. Antiblackness is global. I assure you that even if the Black people in your country don't deal with race the same exact way they do in the US, does not mean there aren't similarities in experience. Perhaps look for them in your spaces and LISTEN.

[realjaysumlin]

Johann Friedrich Blumenbach - Wikipedia

This is the man who invented white people and if you don't want to know the truth about yourselves and want everyone else to accept this idea as being real, you are wrong, dead wrong. This is something that we all should reject due to all the harm it has caused our world.

[artthatgivesmefeelings]

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (French, 1780 - 1867) Petite Baigneuse, 1828 Musée du Louvre - Slavery gave rise to the figure of the Odalisque, that is the beautiful, white slave girl, a figure of quintessential beauty. In the late 18th century Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, the father of physical anthropology, the father of scientific anthropology, an 18th century German scholar, assigned the name Caucasian to the people living in western Europe, to the River Ob in Russia to northern Africa, and to India. He called the people in Europe, over to India, well into Russia and North Africa, Caucasians because they were the most beautiful in the world. Blumenbach enjoyed a scholarly reputation that gave his designation enormous heft and it got picked up very quickly. Immanuel Kant stated that the Caucasians, the Georgians, the Circassians, sell their children, particularly their girls to the Turks, the Arabs, and the Persians, for reasons of eugenics, that is, to beautify the race. The idea of ​​the beauty of Caucasians is linked with the idea of ​​the slavery of Caucasians. Before the Atlantic slave trade to the western hemisphere shaped our ideas about what slave trades are all about, there was slave trade from this part of the world, that goes back to before the reaches of time. Herodotus writing in the fifth century BC, writing about the enumeration of taxes and tributes paid to the Persian kingdom, collected from the lands it had controlled and the lands even far away in the distance. He said that the voluntary contribution was taken from the Colchians, that is the Georgians, and the neighboring tribes between them and the Caucasus, and it consisted of and still consists of (that is in the 5th century BC) every fourth year 100 boys and 100 girls. This was before Herodotus could even see the beginnings of it. Herodotus also mentioned the tribute from the southern most part of the edges of the Persian world and that was for the people called Ethiopians, what they owed was gold and ivory, people were not mentioned. So, the Black Sea Slave trade was the slave trade in the western world until the 15th century when the Ottomans captured Constantinople and cut the Black Sea off from western Europe. At that point, 15th century, the Atlantic slave trade becomes the western slave trade. Daniel Edward Clarke, our Cambridge gift, also located Circassian beauty, in the enslaved. “The Cicassians frequently sell their children to strangers, particularly to Persians and Turkish Seraglios.” He speaks of one particular Circassian female who was 14, who was conscious of her great beauty, who feared her parents would sell her according to the custom of the country. The beautiful young slave girl became a figure, and she had a name; Odalisque. She combines the powerful notions of beauty, sex, and slavery. Ingres, Jerome, Powers and Matisse specialized in Odalisque paintings. The figure of the Odalisque faded from memory as the Black Sea slave trade ended in the late 19th century, and the Atlantic slave trade overshadowed that from the Black Sea. Today, the word slavery invariably leads to people of African descent. Americans seldom associate the word Odalisque with with slavery in the Americas. Today many American painters use Odalisque figures, Michalene Thomas for instance who has done a series of what she calls American Odalisque. But the phrase and the figure of the Odalisque has lost its association with slavery. And now in American art history and in contemporary American art, Odalisque simply refers to a beautiful woman, usually unclothed. If you want to learn more, listen to professor Nell Painter of Princeton University in the YT reading “Why White People are Called Caucasian.”

[pleistocene-pride]

Mammut americanum or more commonly known as the American mastodon is one of the best known and among the last surviving species of Mastodon with its earliest occurrences dating from the middle Pliocene around 3.5 million years ago. The first remains of this species are attributed to a 5.5 lb tooth recovered from Claverack, New York, in 1705. The mysterious animal became known as the "incognitum" with several speculations proposed for what it was ranging from monstrous predators, to dragons, to even giants from biblical myth. In 1739 French soldiers at present-day Big Bone Lick State Park, Kentucky, found the first bones to be collected and studied scientifically. Similar teeth to the 1705 specimen were found in South Carolina where some enslaved African people recognized them as being similar to the teeth of modern elephants.  After this People started referring to the "incognitum" as a "mammoth", like the ones that were being dug out of the Siberia permafrost and in 1796 the French scientist Georges Cuvier proposed the radical idea that mammoths were not simply elephant bones that had been somehow transported north, but species which no longer existed. Johann Friedrich Blumenbach assigned the scientific name Mammut to the American "incognitum" remains in 1799, under the assumption that they belonged to mammoths. Other anatomists noted that the teeth of mammoths and elephants differed from those of the "incognitum", which possessed rows of large conical cusps, indicating that they were dealing with a distinct species. In 1817 Cuvier named the "incognitum" Mastodon. Today the American Mastodon is known from fossil sites ranging from Alaska, Ontario and New England in the north, to Florida, southern California, and as far south as Honduras. Standing between 7 to 10 ft tall at the shoulder, and weighing between 7 and 9 tons, Mastodons were very similar in appearance to elephants and, to a lesser degree, mammoths, though not closely related to either one. Compared to mammoths, mastodons had shorter legs, a longer body, a denser, more robust skeleton, a low and long skull, and longer less curved tusks. However, the most significant difference is the shape and function of their teeth, in mammoths and elephants the teeth have a nearly flat surface, used for grinding and sheering grass. American mastodon molars instead sport rounded cusps covered in hard enamel that formed a pair of rows, which were instead used for snapping and chewing the branches and leaves of trees and shrubs. These forest dwelling proboscideans frequented the woodlands and forests of North and Central America until a combination of changing climate and overhunting by early humans drove them to extinction roughly 10,500 years ago.

Art can be found at the links below:

American Mastodon Herd: https://tr.pinterest.com/pin/67905906868556463/

American Mastodon: https://www.beringia.com/exhibit/ice-age-animals/american-mastodon

American mastodon herd under northern lights: https://www.courthousenews.com/as-earth-warmed-ancient-mastodons-headed-far-north/

[librarycompany]

Is this a zebra? No, why would we put a picture of a zebra on the page for Z?

No, this is a Ornithorhynchus paradoxus.

A what?

A paradoxical bird-snout!

The platypus was given that name by Johann Blumenbach in 1803. But three years earlier George Shaw had named it Platypus anatinus, which was a bit of an issue because the name platypus also referred to a genus of beetle. Thus it eventually became Ornithorhynchus anatinus, or duck-like bird-snout. A hybrid name for hybrid animal.

From: A Bad boy's first reader (NY: GW Carleton & Co., 1881)