Physical anthropology and human «zoos»: The exhibition of natives as a scientific popularization practice on the threshold of the 20th century

Abstract

All along the nineteenth century different anthropological exhibitions were held in many countries, in which people from a number of indigenous communities, especially transported from their homeland for the occasion, were exhibited publicly, both for citizenship’s instruction and for specialist’s in vivo studies on Human Biology. This paper presents a brief description of some of these scientific shows, and tries to relate them to contemporary human biology theories.