The Children of Israel routinely exterminated enemies, whom they considered inferior, and in the tenth book of Joshua, they enslaved the entire Hivite people. In the more technical sections that follow, Dr. Baker draws on his scientific training to treat homo sapiens as just one more member of the animal kingdom. By this he means that without a thorough grounding in biology and taxonomy it is impossible to view man with the detachment that science requires. In this, Dr. Baker is out of step with many contemporary social scientists who seem to believe that humans are uniquely exempt from the laws of heredity and from the kind of scrutiny to which all other animals are subject. Dr. Baker leads us firmly back to biology with an account of how evolution gave rise to different species, how species are classified, the nature of hybridity, and the circumstances under which animals can be made to mate with differing species.
Anthropology indeed becomes a branch of zoology.
The contrast with the seven kinds of European mosquito, for example, could not be greater. Their eggs can be distinguished because of slight differences, but adults are so similar that not even experts can tell them apart under a microscope. Dr. Baker likewise reports that Grant's gazelle and Thompson's gazelle live together in mixed herds and are so similar in appearance that it takes a trained eye to tell them apart. They, too, never interbreed. Domesticated dogs breed indiscriminately with widely different types but wild dogs like wolves, foxes, and coyotes breed only with their own kind.