Atavism originated form the work of Dr. Cesare Lombroso the father of modern criminology .

It is the
grounded on the belief that criminals are identifiable through their physical anomalies or stigmata.
Atavism is a genetic trait that reoccurs after skipping several generations. If a person has blue eyes like
her great grandmother but her mother, grandmother, and great grandmother have brown eyes, then
having blue eyes is an example of an atavism.

Let us tackle the different type of Criminological Theory. First, let’s know who Cesare Lombroso is.
Cesare Lombroso was an Italian Criminologist and founder of the Italian School of Positivist Criminology.
Cesare Lombroso‘s theory which is the Anthropological theory essentially stated that criminality was
inherited and that someone born criminal could be identified physically which confirmed that a criminal
as savage or atavistic. Cesare Lombroso called these abnormalities atavistic characteristics. Atavistic
comes from the word “avatus”, which means ancestor in Latin. According to Cesare Lombroso, the
physical abnormalities that offenders have occurred because offenders were the products of an earlier
stage of human evolution, a stage where more primitive humans and apes existed. Thus, offenders are
basically throwbacks to earlier phases of human history. Connected to the idea of atavistic
characteristics is the idea of degeneration. According to Lombroso, offenders have certain physical and
mental characteristics of primitive humans, and they commit crime because of these biological
abnormalities. His different type of human had a variety of physical characteristics that made him or her
different from “regular” people. A couple of examples of these physical characteristics were an
asymmetric face, a large jaw, excessively long arms, and epilepsy. People who had these characteristics
were atavistic and thus were criminal in nature. Lombroso even thought that one could recognize
different types of offenders, with thieves having different physical characteristics than violent offenders.