The history of eugenics is the study of development and advocacy of ideas related to eugenics around the world. Early eugenic ideas were discussed in Ancient Greece and Rome. The height of the modern eugenics movement came in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Charles Darwin [1]. Prehistorically, eugenic pressures are often understood to have been what led to behavioral modernity. For, as founding figure of evolutionary psychology David Buss notes in his The Evolution of Desire : "In tribal societies, the headmen or leaders are inevitably among the most intelligent in the group".
Some indigenous peoples of Brazil are known to have practiced infanticide against children born with physical abnormalities long since precolonial times. According to Plutarch , in Sparta , every proper citizen's child was inspected by their council of elders, the Gerousia , which determined whether or not the child was fit to live. Further alleged trials to discern a child's fitness included bathing them in wine and exposing them to the elements to fend for themselves.
To Sparta, this would ensure only the strongest survived and procreated. The now archetypal form of utopian eugenics was most famously expounded by Plato's political philosophy , who believed human reproduction should be cautiously monitored and controlled by the state.
However, Plato understood this form of government control would not be readily accepted, and proposed the truth be concealed from the public via a fixed lottery. Mates, in Plato's Republic , would be chosen by a "marriage number" in which the quality of the individual would be quantitatively analyzed, and persons of high numbers would be allowed to procreate with other persons of high numbers. This would then lead to predictable results and the improvement of the human race.
