ABSTRACT
How scientific were European attempts to classify peoples in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries? The problem has a particular significance because, while such classification was not a new phenomenon, the recent discovery of the Americas posed fundamental questions about the nature of the peoples encountered there, and, consequently, mankind in general. As has often been pointed out, the main sources for medieval anthropology were Herodotus’ Histories (fifth century BC) and Pliny the Younger’s Natural History (first century AD). It was generally believed that all the peoples of the world created by God were known to Christian Europe either through direct encounter or eye-witness accounts. A thorough search through the works preserved in libraries would reveal accounts of all of God’s people.1 Works such as the Mappa Mundi, preserved in Hereford Cathedral, divide the world neatly into a tripartite structure, half of the circle being taken up by Asia, and the other half split neatly into Europe and Africa. All known peoples are contained within the circle of the world; strange and bizarre creatures of uncertain human status, such as the men whose heads grow beneath their shoulders, and the sciapods, who find shelter under their huge feet, inhabit the shadowy margins.2
