Caucasian race is the general physical type of some or all of the populations of Europe,
North Africa, the Horn of Africa, Western Asia, Central Asia and South Asia. The term
was used in biological anthropology for many people from these regions, without regard
necessarily to skin tone. First introduced in early racial science and anthropometry,
the taxon has historically been used to denote one of the proposed major races of humankind.
Although its validity and utility is disputed by many anthropologists, Caucasoid as a biological
classification remains in use, particularly within the field of forensic anthropology.
Origin of the concept The term "Caucasian race" was coined by the
German philosopher Christoph Meiners in his The Outline of History of Mankind. Meiners'
term was given wider circulation in the 1790s by Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, a German professor
of medicine and member of the British Royal Society, who is considered one of the founders
of the discipline of anthropology.
Meiners' treatise was widely read in the German intellectual circles of its day, despite muted
criticism of its scholarship. Meiners proposed a taxonomy of human beings which involved
only two races: Caucasians and Mongolians. He considered Caucasians to be more physically
attractive than Mongolians, notably because they had paler skin; Caucasians were also
more sensitive and more morally virtuous than Mongolians. Later he would make similar distinctions
within the Caucasian group, concluding that the Germans were the most attractive and virtuous
people on earth. The name "Caucasian" derived from the Southern Caucasus region, because
he considered the people of this region to be the archetype for the grouping.
Meiners' classification was not grounded on any scientific criteria, and it was Blumenbach
who gave it scientific credibility and a wider audience, by grounding it in the new quantitative
method of craniology. Blumenbach did not credit Meiners with his taxonomy, however, claiming
to have developed it himself - although his justification clearly points to Meiners' aesthetic
viewpoint:
Caucasian variety—I have taken the name of this variety from Mount Caucasus, both
because its neighborhood, and especially its southern slope, produces the most beautiful
race of men, I mean the Georgian; and because all physiological reasons converge to this,
that in that region, if anywhere, it seems we ought with the greatest probability to
place the autochthones of mankind.
Relation to whiteness
In his earlier racial typology, Meiners put forth that Caucasians had the "whitest, most
blooming and most delicate skin". Europeans with darker skin he considered "dirty whites",
admixed with Mongolian. Such views were typical of early scientific attempts at racial classification,
where skin pigmentation was regarded as the main difference between races. This view was
shared by the French naturalist Julien-Joseph Virey, who believed that the Caucasians were
only the palest-skinned Europeans. In various editions of On the Natural Variety
of Mankind, Blumenbach expanded on Meiners' popular idea and defined five human races
based on color, using popular racial terms of his day, justified with scientific terminology,
cranial measurements, and facial features. He established Caucasian as the "white race,"
as well as Mongoloid as the "yellow race," Malayan/"brown race," Ethiopian/"black race,"
American/"red race." In the 3rd edition of his On the Natural Variety of Mankind, Blumenbach
moved skin tone to second tier importance after noticing that poorer European people
whom he observed generally worked outside, often became darker skinned through sun exposure.
He also noticed that darker skin of an "olive-tinge" was a natural feature of some European populations
closer to the Mediterranean Sea. Alongside the anthropologist Georges Cuvier, Blumenbach
classified the Caucasian race by cranial measurements and bone morphology in addition to skin pigmentation,
and thus considered more than just the palest Europeans as archetypes for the Caucasian
race. There was never any scholarly consensus on
the delineation between the Caucasoid race, including the populations of Europe, and the
Mongoloid one, including the populations of East Asia. Thus, Carleton S. Coon and Franco
Bragagna included the populations native to all of Central and Northern Asia under the
Caucasoid label. However, many scientists maintained the racial categorizations of color
established by Meiners' and Blumenbach's works, along with many other early steps of anthropology,
well into the late 19th and mid-to-late 20th centuries, increasingly used to justify political
policies, such as segregation and immigration restrictions, and other opinions based in
prejudice. Such as Thomas Henry Huxley who classified all populations of Asian nations
as Mongoloid, and Lothrop Stoddard who classified the populations of the Middle East, North
Africa, and the Horn of Africa, as well as those of Central Asia and South Asia, as "brown",
and counted as "white" only the European peoples. Physical anthropology
Drawing from Petrus Camper's theory of facial angle, Blumenbach and Cuvier classified races,
through their skull collections based on their cranial features and anthropometric measurements.
Caucasoid traits were recognised as: thin nasal aperture, a small mouth, facial angle
of 100°–90°, and orthognathism, exemplified by what Blumenbach saw in most ancient Greek
crania and statues. Later anthropologists of the 19th and early 20th century such as
Pritchard, Pickering, Broca, Topinard, Morton, Peschel, Seligman, Bean, Ripley, Haddon and
Dixon came to recognise other Caucasoid morphological features, such as prominent supraorbital ridges
and a sharp nasal sill. Many anthropologists in the 20th century, used the term "Caucasoid"
in their literature, such as Boyd, Gates, Coon, Cole, Brues and Krantz replacing the
earlier term "Caucasian" as it had fallen out of usage.
The physical traits of Caucasoid crania are still recognised as distinct within modern
forensic anthropology. A Caucasoid skull is identified, with an accuracy of up to 95%,
by the following features: Little or no prognathism exhibited—an orthognathic
profile, with minimal protrusion of the lower face.
Retreating zygomatic bones, making the face look more "pointed".
Narrow nasal aperture, with a tear-shaped nasal cavity.
Other physical characteristics of Caucasoids include hair texture that varies from straight
to curly, with wavy hair most typical on average according to Coon, in contrast to the Negroid
and Mongoloid races. Individual hairs are also rarely as sparsely distributed and coarse
as found in Mongoloids. Skin color amongst Caucasoids ranges greatly
from pale, reddish-white, olive, through to dark brown tones.
Classification
Conceived as one of the great races, alongside Mongoloid and Negroid, it was taken to consist
of a number of "subraces". The Caucasoid peoples were usually divided in three groups on linguistic
grounds, termed Aryan, Semitic, and Hamitic. The postulated subraces vary depending on
the author, including but not limited to Mediterranean, Atlantid, Nordic, Alpine, Dinaric, Turanid,
Armenoid, Iranid, Arabid, and Hamitic. 19th century classifications of the peoples
of India considered the Dravidians of non-Caucasoid stock as Australoid or a separate Dravida
race, and assumed a gradient of miscegenation of high-caste Caucasoid Aryans and indigenous
Dravidians. In his 1939 The Races of Europe, Carleton S. Coon thus described the Veddoid
race as "possess[ing] an obvious relationship with the aborigines of Australia, and possibly
a less patent one with the Negritos" and as "the most important element in the Dravidian-speaking
population of southern India". In his later The Living Races of Man, Coon considerably
amended his views, acknowledging that "India is the easternmost outpost of the Caucasoid
racial region". However, he still recognized an Australoid substrate throughout the subcontinent,
writing that "the earliest peoples who have left recognizable survivors were both Caucasoid
and Australoid food gatherers. Some of the survivors are largely Caucasoid; others are
largely Australoid." There was no universal consensus of the validity
of the "Caucasoid" grouping within those who attempted to categorize human variation. Thomas
Henry Huxley in 1870 wrote that the "absurd denomination of 'Caucasian'" was in fact a
conflation of his Xanthochroi and Melanochroi types.
In 1920, H. G. Wells referred to the Mediterranean race as the Iberian race. He regarded it as
a fourth sub-race of the Caucasoid race, along with the Aryan, Semitic, and Hamitic sub-races.
He stated that the main ethnic group that most purely represented the racial stock of
the Iberian race was the Basques, and that the Basques were the descendants of the Cro-Magnons.
Over the European and Mediterranean area and western Asia there are, and have been for
many thousand years, white peoples usually called the Caucasians, subdivided into two
or three subdivisions, the northern blonds or Nordic race, an alleged intermediate race
about which many authorities are doubtful, the so-called Alpine race and the southern
dark whites, the Mediterranean or Iberian race.
Origin
Physical anthropologists generally consider the Cro-Magnons, who emerged during the Upper
Paleolithic, as the earliest or prototype representatives of the Caucasoid race. In
a study of Cro-Magnon crania, Jantz and Owsley have noted that: "Upper Paleolithic crania
are, for the most part, larger and more generalized versions of recent Europeans."
William Howells has pointed out that Cro-Magnons were Caucasoid based on their cranial traits:
... the Cro-Magnons were already racially European, i.e., Caucasoid. This has always
been accepted because of the general appearance of the skulls: straight faces, narrow noses,
and so forth. It is also possible to test this arithmetically. ... Except for Predmosti
4, which is distant from every present and past population, all of these skulls show
themselves to be closer to "Europeans" than to other peoples — Mladec and Abri Pataud
comfortably so, the other two much more remotely.
Proponents of the multiregional origin of modern humans argue that Caucasoid traits
emerged prior to the Cro-Magnon, and are present in the Skhul and Qafzeh hominids or in the
Neanderthals. Carleton Coon, for example, considered the Skhul IV specimen as a proto-Caucasoid.
He further argued that the Caucasoid race is of dual origin, consisting of Upper Paleolithic
types and Mediterranean types. Medical sciences
In the medical sciences, where response to pharmaceuticals and other treatment can vary
dramatically based on ethnicity, there is great debate as to whether racial categorizations
as broad as Caucasian are medically valid. Several journals have issued guidelines stating
that researchers should carefully define their populations, and avoid broad-based social
constructions—because these categories would more likely measure differences in socioeconomic
class and access to medical treatment that disproportionately affect minority groups,
rather than racial differences. Nevertheless, there are journals that continue to use racial
categories such as Caucasian. Usage in the United States
In the United States, the term "Caucasoid" is used in disciplines such as anthropology,
craniometry, epidemiology, forensic medicine and forensic archaeology. It is also sometimes
associated with notions of racial typology. Besides its use in anthropology and related
fields, the term "Caucasian" has often been used in the United States in a different,
social context to describe a group commonly called "White people". "White" also appears
as a self-reporting entry in the U.S. Census. Between 1917 and 1965, immigration to the
United States was restricted by a national origins quota. The Supreme Court in United
States v. Bhagat Singh Thind decided that Asian Indians were ineligible for citizenship
because, though deemed "Caucasian" anthropologically, they were not white like European descendants
since most laypeople did not consider them white people. This represented a change from
the court's earlier decision Ozawa v. United States, wherein it had declared skin colour
irrelevant in determining whether or not a person could be classified as "white" and
instead emphasized ancestry. In 1946, the U.S. Congress passed a new law establishing
a small immigration quota for Indians, which also permitted them to become citizens. Major
changes to immigration law, however, only later came in 1965, when many earlier racial
restrictions on immigration were lifted. This is where the confusion on whether American
Hispanics are included as "white" comes from, as some American Hispanics are European in
descent, while others are of mixed racial origins. In other countries, the term Hispanic
is not nearly as associated with race, but with the Spanish language, and cultural affiliation.
The United States National Library of Medicine often used the term "Caucasian" as a race
in the past. However, it later discontinued such usage in favor of the more narrow geographical
term "European", which traditionally only applied to a subset of Caucasoids.
See also Anthropometry
Race and genetics Race
Historical definitions of race Peoples of the Caucasus
Notes
References
Literature Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, On the Natural
Varieties of Mankind — the book that introduced the concept
Gould, Stephen Jay. The mismeasure of man. New York: Norton. ISBN 0-393-01489-4. — a
history of the pseudoscience of race, skull measurements, and IQ inheritability
Piazza, Alberto; Cavalli-Sforza, L. L.; Menozzi, Paolo. The history and geography of human
genes. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-02905-9. — a major
reference of modern population genetics Cavalli-Sforza, LL. Genes, peoples and languages.
London: Allen Lane. ISBN 0-7139-9486-X. Augstein, HF. "From the Land of the Bible
to the Caucasus and Beyond". In Harris, Bernard; Ernst, Waltraud. Race, science and medicine,
1700–1960. New York: Routledge. pp. 58–79. ISBN 0-415-18152-6.
Baum, Bruce. The rise and fall of the Caucasian race: a political history of racial identity.
New York: New York University Press. ISBN 0-8147-9892-6. Guthrie, Paul. The Making of the Whiteman:
From the Original Man to the Whiteman. Chicago, IL: Research Associates School Times. ISBN 0-948390-49-2.
Wolf, Eric R.; Cole, John N.. The Hidden Frontier: Ecology and Ethnicity in an Alpine Valley.
Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-21681-4.
External links "Caucasian race". Collier's New Encyclopedia.
1921.