ABSTRACT
European physical anthropologists in the long nineteenth century have mainly used physical characters, like skin color and skull form, to divide humankind into ‘races’. In this context, the history of Belgian anthropology was a peculiar case from the start. Whereas most scientists defended Aryanism, Jean-Baptiste d’Omalius d’Halloy was one of the first to question the Asian origin of humankind and formulated an ‘Out of Europe’ theory. Misleadingly modest, d’Omalius explained the necessary changes in his ‘small work’ as a result of both the ‘natural development of humankind’ and ‘the feeble progress that the author was able to realize in a science, still in his infancy, for which he have anything but the necessary knowledge. The position of d’Omalius was unique because he combined arguments that were usually used by monogenists or polygenists.
