That theory took a leap forward, enlisting the authority of religion, when Josiah Nott and George Gliddon popularized the science of racial inferiority in 1854 with their widely read book Types of Mankind. Their essays reframed the biblical story of creation: Adam and Eve were white; the other races were separate, lowly derivatives, placed by God in separate provinces. To make their point, Nott and Gliddon displayed the skulls of whites, Asians, and blacks side by side—highlighting differences that they suggest even an untrained eye could see:
