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Blumenbach argued that physical characteristics like skin color, cranial profile depended on geography, diet, and mannerism."Finally, I am of opinion that after all these numerous instances I have brought together of negroes of capacity, it would not be difficult to mention entire well-known provinces of Europe, from out of which you would not easily expect to obtain off-hand such good authors, poets, philosophers, and correspondents of the Paris Academy and on the other hand, there is no so-called savage nation known under the sun which has so much distinguished itself by such examples of perfectibility and original capacity for scientific culture, and thereby attached itself so closely to the most civilized nations of the earth, as the Negro. Blumenbach held to the "degenerative hypothesis" of racial origins. Blumenbach claimed that adam and eve were caucasian (Georgian) inhabitants of Asia, and that other races came about by degeneration from environmental factors such as the sun and poor diet. Thus, he claimed, Negroid pigmentation arose because of the result of the heat of the tropical sun, while the cold wind caused the tawny colour of the eskimos, while the chinese were fair-skinned compared to the other Asian stocks because they kept mostly in towns protected from environmental factors and that all forms of man could revert to the caucasian race.