atavism

Examples of atavism in the following topics:

• Biological Theories of Deviance

  • The term Lombroso used to describe the appearance of organisms resembling ancestral forms of life is atavism.
  • He belived that atavism was a sign of inherent criminalities, and thus he viewed born criminals as a form of human sub-species.
  • Lombroso believed that atavism could be identified by a number of measurable physical stigmata—a protruding jaw, drooping eyes, large ears, twisted and flattish nose, long arms relative to the lower limbs, sloping shoulders, and a coccyx that resembled "the stump of a tail. " The concept of atavism was glaringly wrong, but like so many others of his time, Lombroso sought to understand behavioral phenomena with reference to the principles of evolution as they were understood at the time.

• Culture and Biology

  • Lombroso coined the term atavism to suggest that some individuals were throwbacks to a more bestial point in evolutionary history.