ABSTRACT
Efforts to map the human genome require modern taxonomists to definenew, and sometimes unanticipated, categories of human variation. But human differences*/biological or otherwise*/have never been easy to define. Even Linnaeus, master taxonomist and father of modern scientific classification, dropped Ariadne’s thread when he entered the maze of cultural
characteristics of indigenous peoples, he constructed inaccurate, overinclusive folk categories and, in so doing, reinforced a self-authenticating
colonial world-view that justified savagery in the name of civilization. This is not because Linnaeus was an ill-intentioned or inferior scientist. Rather, despite good character and strong intellect, he was a product of his own cultural milieu, and his culturally determined knowledge*/like our own */was so deeply entrenched as ‘the way things are’, he was unable to grasp its arbitrary nature. It follows that, faced with the task of defining newly discovered genetic populations*/how to classify different groups at risk of heritable diseases, for example*/some of our modern, analytical categories may be nothing more than folk taxonomies in disguise.1
