In the 19th and 20th century, the mainstream science, after the discovery of the fact of biological evolution, became obsessed with applying the concept of evolution to human social groups. Evolution conceived of as a ladder of development, to their minds, became a master key to understanding all of the social and biological differences between various groups: rich and poor, races, men and women, respectable and criminal, etc.
Everywhere one looked, there was a hierarchy of differences: uneven economic development between nations; differences in literacy and educational attainment between classes, and on and on. The conventional prejudice of white scientists was this: there is a natural hierarchy, with white men at the top, and a gradation of inferiority below the top superior group. "Rank-order" was the guiding principle of how scientists set out to explain the tree of life: there are higher and lower forms. Nature is not egalitarian, but has advanced -- thus superior -- life forms, and primitive -- thus inferior -- life forms. Of course, this was not a big departure from the Medieval "chain of being" justifications for the caste system of Feudalism, or Aristotle's justifications for ancient slavery. Nor was it a big departure from Aristotle's philosophy of nature, or even the way Francis Bacon catalogued nature.
Evolutionary biology today no longer conceives of nature as a hierarchy of "higher" or "lower" forms; all organisms are equally evolved for their specific environments, representing a tree of life rather than a ladder. Evolution is a non-directional process driven by natural selection, adapting species for survival in their respective niches rather than aiming for superior complexity. Scientists today point out that early on, scientists were smuggling in their moral, political, and racial considerations -- that is, the interests of European colonial and imperialist powers -- as a guiding prejudice. Further, highly "complexity" does not necessarily correlate to imagined moral hierarchy people have (e.g. a human is morally more valuable than a gorilla, a dog is more morally valuable than a worm, etc.). An example, there are 46 chromosomes found in humans. However, many animals, insects, and so on have more than humans, with counts ranging from moderate increases in mammals to hundreds in some invertebrates and fish. The highest known chromosome count in an animal belongs to the Atlas blue butterfly (Polyommatus atlantica), boasting 229 pairs (448–452 chromosomes). Biologists would not say butterfly's are therefore more advanced and humans are therefore a more primitive lifeform.
However, this kind of thinking still often lives on in folk "wisdom". Often, what is happening is precisely what happened in the early 19th century-- political, social, and moral prejudices and interests are mixed together with with appeals to science, where science is instrumentalized to prove the conclusions one starts off with, rather than conclusions being drawn from data. But here: things become tricky because the "pure" collection of data free of guiding assumptions of what even counts as data becomes a topic for clarification, which I can't go into.
One concept which had come to hold sway in the mid 19th century was the idea of "recapitulation". In fancy biology jargon, the pithy slogan "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny". What is this idea? It's the biological hypothesis proposed by Ernst Haeckel, a German scientist, in the 1860s which claimed that an individual organism's development (ontogeny) mirrors the evolutionary history of its species (phylogeny). Scientists then -- like every third grader today -- we incubating eggs and studying the embryos with flashlights. As well as looking at the embryos of other animals. (Embryology is, of course, still an area of science today, but it has dropped many of these assumptions about applicability to social issues). According to this theory of recapitulation, the embryo passing through stages that represent the adult forms of its ancestors (having gills, a tail, et al.). Modern biology has shown this to be an oversimplification and largely false, though early embryos of related species do share some general similarities.
However, for almost 100 years, this theory came to hold sway for many highly educated biologists and social scientists. Lombroso developed a "criminal anthropology" claiming to discover criminal characteristics by examining faces and brain size. The idea was one could look for signs of apish (apes, according to this ranking, are "lower" than humans) physical features (morphology) in groups considered undesirable.
While maintaining this theory, scientists labored long and hard to collect shitloads of data while expressing the same message: adult blacks, women, and lower class whites (southern Europeans, Irish, Slavs) are like upper class male children.
With all this said, this brings me to the popular HBO series, the offshoot of the Game of Thrones series, "A Knight of Seven Kingdoms". A quick overview., which contains a minor spoiler: The show follows Ser Duncan the Tall ("Dunk"), a naive, and childlike but honorable hedge knight, and his diminutive squire, Egg. For the first half of the show, Dunk attempts to eschew Egg, who follows Dunk like a lost puppy begging for Dunk to accept him as a squire. Dunk eventually gives in and accepts Egg.
Throughout the show the juxtaposition of the slow-witted Dunk and the wise beyond his years Egg creates some comedic moments. It's obvious enough within the first few episodes, and is eventually revealed: Egg was not some poor, stable boy but secretly Prince Aegon Targaryen.
Here the prejudice of the show, which one might not even notice, is precisely this paternalistic idea that was contained in the idea of recapitulation: Dunk, even as an adult, represents a childish stage of development, whereas Egg, even as a prepubescent boy already surpasses in intelligence, wisdom, and mastery of everything he tries (taming and controlling horses, etc.), all of the lower class "little people" he comes into contact with. This is reinforced in the show when a fortune teller tells them Dunk will achieve great success and riches. For Egg, the prophecy: he will become king, die in a "hot fire," be reduced to ash, and have his passing rejoiced by many.
Egg and Dunk become close, Egg feels bad for so easily lying to and manipulating Dunk to get away from Royal obligations.
If one watches the other Game if Thrones series, the message always gets a bit monotonous: rulers rule (at least for awhile) because it is fate, destiny. It is simply who they are, and even if they try to resist this fate, they are inevitably, blindly drawn to their calling which rests in their blood. And the "people" are usually rather happy to serve and die their lords and masters, except when it comes to a few bad apples (House Bolton, House Lannister).
One has to wonder why a show series that presents the Medieval glorification of servitude, and politics as a purely top down affair, is so popular today.
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