In 1893, a physician named Cesare Lombroso published La Donna Delinquente (The Criminal Woman) in which he claimed to have discovered a new human subspecies: the “born criminal.”
Lombroso rejected the idea that crime was a product of social inequality or human nature. Instead, he argued that it was a throwback to a more primitive stage of our evolution.
Criminals could be identified by regressive or “atavistic” traits like left-handedness, an overabundance of moles, and even,