Carleton S. Coon

Carleton S. Coon (born June 23, 1904, Wakefield, Massachusetts, U.S.—died June 3, 1981, Gloucester, Massachusetts) was an American anthropologist who made notable contributions to cultural and physical anthropology and archaeology. His areas of study ranged from prehistoric agrarian communities to contemporary tribal societies in the Middle East, Patagonia, and the hill country of India.

Coon taught at Harvard University from 1927 to 1948, earning a Ph.D. there in 1928. During World War II he served with the Office of Strategic Services in Africa. In 1948 he joined the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania and became curator of ethnology at the University Museum, Philadelphia, serving in those two positions until 1963. Coon spoke 10 languages, including some used by the peoples he studied.

Coon often conducted anthropological studies in conjunction with archaeological investigations and was the author of the highly controversial work Origin of Races (1962). In 1949 Coon unearthed approximately 31,000 agricultural artifacts—some dating to about 6050 bce—while exploring Belt Cave in northern Iran. Two years later he returned to Iran and excavated Hotu Cave, which contained thick rock deposits that revealed an unbroken cultural sequence encompassing the Iron Age, the Bronze Age, and the New Stone Age. Beneath a layer of rock that had fallen from the ceiling of the cave, Coon found layers of sand and gravel from the last glacial period. Thirty-nine feet (12 metres) down he discovered the fossilized bones of human beings. Those findings culminated in the publication of The Story of Man (1954), which traced the history of humans 50,000 years from the Ice Age to modern times. Coon set forth the controversial theory that five distinct major races of humans existed before the emergence of Homo sapiens as the dominant species. That theory was disputed and then largely ignored by the scientific community. Coon was a prolific writer. Some of his other noteworthy works include Tribes of the Rif (1931), The Races of Europe (1939), A Reader in General Anthropology (1948), and The Seven Caves (1957). His autobiography, Adventures and Discoveries, was published posthumously in 1981.