The Mind of Primitive Man; A Course of Lectures Delivered before the Lowell Institute, Boston...and the National University of Mexico 1910-1911

New York: The Macmillan Company, 1921. Reprint. Octavo. 19.5cm. Publisher's bottle green cloth, titled and ruled in gilt and blind to spine and front board. [x]; 294pp. Light bumping and scuffing to the spine ends and corners, a little dulling and rubbing of the gilt; internally clean, ink ownership to front flyleaf, very occasional pencil underlining in places; a very good, clean copy.

One of the most influential early 20th century works of cultural anthropology, Boas' lectures and research challenged a number of strongly held contemporary beliefs in the now discredited fields of eugenics and racial intelligence, and espoused a form of cultural (truncated) relativism in attempts to understand societal development. At the time the popular position was very much one of white racial superiority; Boas illustrated that the metrics used to bolster that missplaced sense of superiority were not based in scientific or anthropological fact. Boas' conclusion regarding the idea that race correlates with cultural development was that creative cultural advancement is "essentially a phenomenon dependent upon historical causes, regardless of race." he concluded that the ratio of "intelligent" people within a society was only marginally a measure of possible advancement and not technically necessary for a culture to thrive and succeed. Perhaps Boas' most controversial idea at the time was his support for racial intermarriage as a requirement for distributing evolutionary advantages more evenly through populations. (Inventory #: 85194)