Page 659 - Atlas of Creation Volume 3

Harun Yahya

Gender Discrimination Based on Skull Measurements

In order to demonstrate that women were "inferior," some evolutionist scientists sought to prove that

they had smaller brain capacities. Some resorted to such humiliating and illogical methods as measur-
ing women's skulls. They imagined that the greater the size of the brain, the more advanced the level of
intelligence (which is now known to be invalid), compared their skulls, and declared the women to be

inferior. This was actually one of the unscientific methods referred to in Darwin's book:
As the various mental faculties gradually developed themselves the brain would almost certainly become

larger. ... the large proportion which the size of man's brain bears to his body, compared to the same pro-
portion in the gorilla or orang, is closely connected with his higher mental powers ... that there exists in man
some close relation between the size of the brain and the development of the intellectual faculties is sup-

ported by the comparison of the skulls of savage and civilised races, of ancient and modern people, and by
the analogy of the whole vertebrate series. 149

According to the claim put forward by Darwin, studies on skull measurements and brain volumes
(under the primitive scientific conditions of his time) would furnish data supporting the theory of evo-
lution. Yet actually, the scientific results ran totally contrary to this claim. Different skull measurements
or brain volumes provided no information to support the theory of evolution. Indeed, it is now conclu-

sively accepted that such measurements do not constitute any valid comparison.
One scientist who imagined that he could allege that women were inferior by using craniology (the
science of skull measurement) was Paul Broca. Regarded as one of the founders of physical anthropolo-
gy, he was one of those who employed and supported such primitive methods as measuring the skulls

of human groups and attaching values to them. 150 In the light of these supposedly scientific measure-
ments, Broca went on to display the following distorted logic:

In general, the brain is larger in mature adults than in the elderly, in men than in women, in eminent men
than in men of mediocre talent, in superior races than in inferior races ... Other things equal, there is a re-
markable relationship between the development of intelligence and the volume of the brain. 151

Broca was particularly interested in the skull differences between men and women. In a prejudiced

manner, he analyzed the skull measurements he collected and came up with the assumption that women
were intellectually inferior. 152 Broca also claimed that the difference in brain size between men and
women was increasing. Yet he had not the slightest evidence to confirm or support that claim, and in or-
der to support it, he resorted to an equally unscientific assumption: that the increasing difference was "a

result of differing evolutionary pressures upon dominant men and passive women." 153
Today, even evolutionists admit that Broca's conclusions have no scientific value. Gould offers the
following comment:

… they [Broca's facts] were gathered selectively and then manipulated unconsciously in the service of prior
conclusions. 154

To put it another way, Broca had "unconsciously" interpreted the data he obtained in a preconceived

way, in light of the deceptive theory of evolution.
Another evolutionist who used skull measurements and regarded women as inferior was Gustave
Le Bon, one of the founders of social psychology. Le Bon said:

In the most intelligent races ... are a large number of women whose brains are closer in size to those of go-
rillas than to the most developed male brains. This inferiority is so obvious that no one can contest it for a

moment; only its degree is worth discussion. ... Women ... represent the most inferior forms of human evo-
lution and ... are closer to children and savages than to an adult, civilized man. They excel in fickleness, in-
consistency, absence of thought and logic, and incapacity to reason. Without a doubt there exist some distin-
guished women ... but they are as exceptional as the birth of any monstrosity, as, for example, of a gorilla
with two heads; consequently, we may neglect them entirely. 155

Adnan Oktar 657