Editing Carleton S. Coon (section)

===Racial origins===

Coon first modified [[Franz Weidenreich]]'s polycentric (or multiregional) theory of the origin of races. The Weidenreich Theory states that human races have evolved independently in the Old World from [[Homo erectus]] to Homo sapiens sapiens, while at the same time there was gene flow between the various populations. Coon held a similar belief that modern humans, ''Homo sapiens'', arose separately in five different places from [[Homo erectus]], "as each subspecies, living in its own territory, passed a critical threshold from a more brutal to a more ''sapient'' state", but unlike Weidenreich stressed gene flow far less.<ref>"The Origin of Races: Weidenreich's Opinion", S. L. Washburn, ''American Anthropologist'', New Series, Vol. 66, No. 5 (Oct. 1964) (pp. 1165–1167).</ref><ref>"An Attempted Revival of the Race Concept", Leonard Lieberman, ''American Anthropologist'', New Series, Vol. 97, No. 3 (Sep. 1995), pp. 590–592.</ref> Coon's modified form of the Weidenreich Theory is referred to as the Candelabra Hypothesis (parallel evolution or [[polygenism]]) that minimizes gene flow.<ref name="multiregional">{{cite journal |last1=Wolpoff |first1=M. H. |last2=Hawks |first2=J. D. |author2-link=John D. Hawks |last3=Caspari |first3=R. |date=2000 |title=Multiregional, not multiple origins |journal=[[American Journal of Physical Anthropology]] |volume=112 |issue=1 |pages=129–136 |url= http://www-personal.umich.edu/~wolpoff/Papers/Multiregional.PDF |doi=10.1002/(SICI)1096-8644(200005)112:1<129::AID-AJPA11>3.0.CO;2-K |pmid=10766948 |hdl=2027.42/34270 |hdl-access=free}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Hawks |first1=J. |author1-link=John D. Hawks |last2=Wolpoff |first2=M. H. |date=2003 |title=Sixty years of modern human origins in the American Anthropological Association |url= https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/65197/1/aa.2003.105.1.89.pdf |journal=American Anthropologist |volume=105 |issue=1 |pages=89–100 |doi=10.1525/aa.2003.105.1.89 |hdl=2027.42/65197 |hdl-access=free}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Eckhardt |first1=R. B. |last2=Wolpoff |first2=M. H. |last3=Thorne |first3=A. G. |date=1993 |title=Multiregional Evolution |doi=10.1126/science.262.5136.973-b |journal=Science |volume=262 |issue=5136 |page=974 |pmid=8235634}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Caspari |first1=R. |last2=Wolpoff |first2=M. H. |date=1996 |title=Weidenreich, Coon, and multiregional evolution |journal=Human Evolution |volume=11 |issue=3–4 |pages=261–268 |doi=10.1007/bf02436629 |s2cid=84805412}}</ref>

In his 1962 book, ''The Origin of Races'', Coon theorized that some races reached the [[Homo sapiens]] stage in evolution before others, resulting in the higher degree of civilization among some races.<ref>Coon, Carleton S. (1962). ''The Origins of Races''. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.</ref>{{Secondary source needed|date=October 2020}}  He had continued his theory of five races.  He considered both what he called the [[Mongoloid race]] and the [[Caucasoid race]] had individuals who had adapted to crowding through evolution of the endocrine system, which made them more successful in the modern world of civilization. This can be found after page 370, in the illustrative serie of number XXXII of The Origin of Races. Coon contrasted a picture of an [[Indigenous Australian]] with one of a Chinese professor.  His caption "The Alpha and the Omega" was used to demonstrate his research that brain size was positively correlated with intelligence.

{{blockquote|Wherever Homo arose, and Africa is at present the most likely continent, he soon dispersed, in a very primitive form, throughout the warm regions of the Old World....If Africa was the cradle of mankind, it was only an indifferent kindergarten.  Europe and Asia were our principal schools.}}

By this he meant that the Caucasoid and Mongoloid races had evolved more in their separate areas after they had left Africa in a primitive form.{{Secondary source needed|date=October 2020}} He also believed, "The earliest Homo sapiens known, as represented by several examples from Europe and Africa, was an ancestral long-headed white man of short stature and moderately great brain size."{{Citation needed|date=November 2021}}

Coon also acknowledged the variation in head and nasal forms in Mongoloid populations and even considered some groups to exhibit 'Caucasoid features', such as [[Ainu people|Ainu]], [[Gilyaks]], [[Atayal people|Atayal]], [[Miao people|Miaos]] etc.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Coon |first=Carleton S. |url=https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.533641/page/n194/mode/1up?q=Japan |title=Living Races Of Man |date=1966 |pages=}}</ref>