Meyers Blitz-Lexikon (Leipzig, 1932) divides “Europäid” types into: Nordic race, Dinaric race, Mediterranean race, Alpine race, East Baltic race, Turks, Bedouins, and Afghans.

The term Caucasian race (also Caucasoid, Europid, or Europoid^[1]) has been used to denote the general physical type of some or all of the populations of Europe, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, Western Asia (the Middle East), Central Asia and South Asia.^[2] Historically, the term has been used to describe many peoples from these regions, without regard necessarily to skin tone.^[3]

Origin of the concept[link]

The Georgian skull Blumenbach discovered in 1795, which he used to hypothesize origination of Europeans from the Caucasus.

The term "Caucasian race" was coined by the German philosopher Christoph Meiners in his The Outline of History of Mankind (1785).^[4] In Meiners' unique racial classification, there were only two racial divisions (Racen): Caucasians ("white and beautiful") and Mongolians ("brown and ugly"). These terms were used as a collective representative of what Meiners personally regarded as good looking and far less attractive, based solely on the appearance of the skin of the face, for example the Germans and the Tartars he considered Caucasian, and the best looking, while Jews, Slavs and Native Americans as Mongolian, and ugly in the face.^[5]

This racial classification did not receive much support. However, in 1795, a colleague of Meiners from the University of Göttingen, Blumenbach, one of the earliest anthropologists, adopted the term Varietas Caucasia ("Caucasian Variety"), for a new major hypothetical racial division.^[6] Blumenbach named it after the Caucasian peoples (from the Southern Caucasus region), whom he considered to be the archetype for the grouping.^[7][8] Unlike Meiners, Blumenbach based his classification of the Caucasian race primarily on craniology after coming to realise that there was more to racial difference than skin pigmentation.^[9][10]

Relation to White Race[link]

In his earlier racial typology, Meiners maintained that Caucasians had the "whitest, most blooming and most delicate skin".^[11] Europeans with darker skin he considered to be "dirty whites", admixed with Mongolian. Such views were typical of pre-anthropological attempts at racial classification, where skin pigmentation was regarded as the main difference between races. Meiners's view was shared by the French naturalist Julien-Joseph Virey, who believed that the Caucasians were only the palest-skinned Europeans.^[12]

The earliest anthropologists, such as Blumenbach however came to recognize that skin pigmentation within European populations differed, without explaining it with the obsolete idea of admixture with another race. Thus Blumenbach, in the 3rd edition of his On the Natural Variety of Mankind, recognized that poorer European people (such as peasants) whom he observed generally worked outside, often became darker skinned ("browner") through sun exposure.^[13] He also came to realize that darker skin of an "olive-tinge" was a natural feature of some European populations closer to the Mediterranean Sea.^[14] Alongside the anthropologist Georges Cuvier, Blumenbach classified the Caucasian race by cranial measurements and bone morphology rather than prioritizing skin pigmentation, and thus considered more than just the palest Europeans ("white, cheeks rosy") as archetypes for the Caucasian race.^[15]

Physical anthropology[link]

Blumenbach owned the greatest contemporary collection of human skulls, 245 whole skulls and fragments and two mummies. 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. Caucasian traits were recognised as: thin nasal aperture ("nose narrow"), a small mouth, facial angle of 100°-90°, and orthognathism, exemplified by what Blumenbach saw in most ancient Greek crania and statues.^[16][17] 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 Caucasian morphological features, such as prominent supraorbital ridges and a sharp nasal sill.^[18] Some anthropologists in the latter half of 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.^[19]

The physical traits of Caucasoid crania are still recognised as distinct (in contrast to Mongoloid and Negroid races) within modern forensic anthropology. A Caucasoid skull is identified, with an accuracy of up to 95%, by the following features:^{[20][21][22][23][24]}

• Little or no prognathism exhibited—an orthognathic profile, with minimal protrusion of the lower face.
• Retreating zygomatic bones (cheekbones), 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,^[3] with wavy (cymotrichous) hair most typical on average according to Coon (1962), in contrast to the Negroid and Mongoloid races. Individual hairs are also rarely as sparsely distributed and coarse as found in Mongoloids.^[3]

Skin color amongst Caucasoids ranges greatly from pale, reddish-white to dark brown tones.^[3]

Classification[link]

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 (Indo-European), Semitic (Semitic languages) and Hamitic (Berber-Cushitic-Egyptian).

Meyers Konversations-Lexikon (1885–90).

Caucasoid race:   Aryan   Semitic   Hamitic Negroid race:   African Negro   Hottentot   Melanesian   Negrito   Australoid Uncertain:   Dravida & Sinhalese

Mongoloid race:   North Mongol   Chinese & Indochinese   Japanese & Korean   Tibetan   Malay   Polynesian   Maori   Micronesian   Eskimo   American

The postulated subraces vary depending on the author, including but not limited to Nordic, Mediterranean, Alpine, Dinaric, East Baltic, Arabid, Turanid, Iranid and Armenoid subraces.

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. By contrast, Carleton S. Coon in his 1939 The Races of Europe classified the Dravidians as Caucasoid as well, due to his assessment of what he called their "Caucasoid skull structure" and other physical traits (e.g. noses, eyes, hair). In his The Living Races of Man, Coon stated that "India is the easternmost outpost of the Caucasian racial region".

In reference to Coon's postulated five basic races (Caucasoid, Mongoloid, Australoid, Negroid, Capoid), Sarah A Tishkoff and Kenneth K Kidd write: "Despite disagreement among anthropologists, this classification remains in use by many researchers, as well as lay people."^[25]

There was no universal consensus of the validity of the "Caucasian" 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.^[26]

In 1920, H. G. Wells referred to the Mediterranean race as the Iberian race. He regarded it as a fourth subrace of the Caucasian race, along with the Aryan, Semitic, and Hamitic subraces. 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.^[27] In 1994, in his book The History and Geography of Human Genes, population geneticist L. Luca Cavalli-Sforza stated that “there is support from many sides” for the hypothesis that the Basques are the descendants of the original Cro-Magnons.^[28]

A 1989 article in Scientific American by Colin Renfrew classifies the Dravidian race, along with the Semitic race and the Aryan race, as the three major subdivisions that emerged from the Proto-Caucasian race, which he states separated into the aforementioned three groups about 9,000 BCE after migrating from North Africa—-the Semitics (i.e., Proto-Semitics) establishing themselves in and radiating from Jericho, the Aryans (i.e., Proto-Indo-Europeans) establishing themselves in and radiating from Catal Huyuk, and the Dravidians (i.e., Proto-Dravidians) establishing themselves in and radiating from what is now southern Iran.^[29]

Origin[link]

Anthropologists generally consider the Cro-Magnons to be the earliest or "proto" representatives of the Caucasoid race, who emerged during the Upper Paleolithic. In a study of Cro-Magnon crania, Jantz and Owsley (2003) have noted that: "Upper Paleolithic crania are, for the most part, larger and more generalized versions of recent Europeans."^[30]

William Howells (1997) 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."^[31]

Proponents of the multiregional origin of modern humans argue that Caucasoid traits emerged prior to the Cro-Magnon, in the Skhul and Qafzeh hominids or Neanderthals. Carleton Coon (1962) for example considered the Skhul IV specimen as a proto-Caucasoid.^[32] He further argued that the Caucasoid race is of dual origin, consisting of Upper Paleolithic (mixture of H. sapiens and neanderthalensis) types and Mediterranean (purely H. sapiens) types.

Medical sciences[link]

In the medical sciences, where response to pharmaceuticals and other treatment can vary dramatically based on ethnicity,^[33][34] there is great debate as to whether racial categorizations as broad as Caucasian are medically valid.^[35][36] Several journals (e.g. Nature Genetics, Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, and the British Medical Journal) have issued guidelines stating that researchers should carefully define their populations and avoid broad-based social constructions, because these categories are more likely to be measuring differences in socioeconomic class and access to medical treatment that disproportionately affect minority groups, rather than racial differences.^[37] Nevertheless, there are journals (e.g. the Journal of Gastroentorology and Hepatology and Kidney International) that continue to use racial categories such as Caucasian.^[33][38]

Usage in the United States[link]

In the United States the term Caucasoid is commonly associated with notions of racial typology and modern usage is generally associated with racial notions and therefore discouraged, as it is potentially offensive. The term "Caucasoid" is still used in certain disciplines such as anthropology, craniometry, epidemiology, forensic medicine and forensic archaeology.

In the United States, the term Caucasian has been mainly used to describe a group commonly called Whites, as defined by the government and Census Bureau.^[39] Between 1917 and 1965, immigration to the US was restricted by a national origins quota. The Supreme Court in United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind (1923) decided that Asian Indians – unlike Europeans– were Caucasian, but were not white, because most laypeople did not consider them to be white people. This was important for determining whether they could become naturalized citizens, then limited to free whites. This was followed by the Immigration Act of 1924 which prohibited immigration of Asian Indians, Middle Easterners and all non-Caucasian groups. In 1965 major changes were made to immigration law, lifting many earlier restrictions on immigrants from Caucasoid Asia.^[40]

The United States National Library of Medicine has used the term "Caucasian" as a race in the past, but has discontinued its usage in favor of the term "European".^[41]

See also[link]

• Anthropometry
• Race and genetics
• Race (U.S. Census)
• Historical definitions of race
• Peoples of the Caucasus

Diaspora[link]

• Ethnic groups in Europe
• White people
• White American
• European American
• White Hispanic and Latino Americans
• European Australian
• White Latin American
• White Brazilian
• White Mexican
• White Africans of European ancestry

Notes[link]

References[link]

Literature[link]

• Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, On the Natural Varieties of Mankind (1775) — the book that introduced the concept
• Gould, Stephen Jay (1981). 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 (1996). 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 (2000). Genes, peoples and languages. London: Allen Lane. ISBN 0-7139-9486-X. 
• Augstein, HF (1999). "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 (2006). 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 (1999). 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. (1999). The Hidden Frontier: Ecology and Ethnicity in an Alpine Valley. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-21681-4. 

External links[link]

•  "Caucasian race". Collier's New Encyclopedia. 1921. 

This article may contain original research. Please improve it by verifying the claims made and adding references. Statements consisting only of original research may be removed. More details may be available on the talk page. (September 2007)

Johann Friedrich Blumenbach
Johann Friedrich Blumenbach
Born	(1752-05-11)11 May 1752 Gotha
Died	22 January 1840(1840-01-22) (aged 87) Göttingen
Nationality	German
Fields	physiology
Alma mater	University of Jena University of Göttingen
Doctoral advisor	Ernst Gottfried Baldinger
Doctoral students	Peter Wanderfalke
Known for	comparative anatomy

Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (11 May 1752 – 22 January 1840) was a German physician, naturalist, physiologist, and anthropologist. He was one of the first to explore the study of mankind as an aspect of natural history, and whose teachings in comparative anatomy were applied to classification of what he called human races of which he determined five.

Biography[link]

Johann Friedrich Blumenbach was born at his house in Gotha, studied medicine at Jena, and then Göttingen. He graduated from the latter in 1775 with his M.D. thesis De generis humani varietate nativa (On the Natural Variety of Mankind, University of Göttingen, which was first published in 1775, then re-issued with changes to the title-page in 1776). It is considered one of the most influential works in the development of subsequent concepts of "human races."^[1][2] It contained the germ of the craniological researches to which so many of his subsequent inquiries were directed.^[3]

He was appointed extraordinary professor of medicine and inspector of the museum of natural history in Göttingen in 1776 and ordinary professor in 1778.^[2] He soon began to enrich the pages of the Medicinische Bibliothek, of which he was editor from 1780 to 1794, with various contributions on medicine, physiology, and anatomy. In physiology, he was of the school of Haller, and was in the habit of illustrating his theory by a careful comparison of the animal functions of man with those of other animals.^[3]

His reputation was much extended by the publication of his Institutiones Physiologicae (1787), a condensed, well-arranged view of the animal functions, expounded without discussion of minute anatomical details. Between its first publication and 1821, it went through many editions in Germany, where it was the general textbook of the science. It was translated into English in America by Caldwell in 1798, and in London by Elliotson in 1807.^[3]

He was perhaps still more extensively known by his Handbuch der vergleichenden Anatomie (Handbook of comparative anatomy), of which the German editions were numerous, from its appearance in 1805 to 1824. It was translated into English in 1809 by the surgeon Lawrence, and again, with the latest improvements and editions, by Coulson in 1827. This manual, though slighter than the subsequent works of Cuvier, Carus, and others, and not to be compared with such later expositions as that of Gegenbaur, was long esteemed for the accuracy of the author's own observations, and his just appreciation of the labors of his predecessors.^[3]

Although the greatest part of Blumenbach's life was passed at Göttingen, in 1789 he visited Switzerland, and gave a curious medical topography of that country in the Bibliothek. He was in England in 1788 and 1792. In 1812 he was appointed secretary to the Royal Society of Sciences at Göttingen, in 1816 was appointed physician to the royal family in Hanover (German: Obermedizinalrat) by the prince regent, in 1821 was made a knight-commander of the Guelphic Order, and in 1831 was elected a member of the Academy of Sciences at Paris. In celebration of his doctoral jubilee (1825) traveling scholarships were founded to assist talented young physicians and naturalists. In 1813, he was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. In 1835 he retired. Blumenbach died in Göttingen in 1840.^[2][3]

Blumenbach's racial classification system[link]

Blumenbach's five races.

Blumenbach divided the human species into five races in 1779, later founded on crania research (description of human skulls), and called them (1793/1795):

• the Caucasian race or white race
• the Mongolian or yellow race
• the Malayan or brown race
• the Ethiopian, or black race
• the American or red race.

His classification of Mongolian race included all East Asians and some Central Asians. Blumenbach excluded peoples of Southeast Asian islands and Pacific Islanders from his definition in 1779, as he considered them to be part of the Malay race. He considered American Indians to be part of the American (Indigenous peoples) race. He did not think they were inferior to the Caucasian race, and were potentially good members of society. He included the peoples of sub-Saharan Africa in the Negro or black race.

Blumenbach argued that physical characteristics like skin color, cranial profile, etc., depended on geography, diet, and mannerism.

Blumenbach's work included his description of sixty human crania (skulls) published originally in fascicules as Decas craniorum (Göttingen, 1790–1828). This was a founding work for other scientists in the field of craniometry.

Further anatomical study led him to the conclusion that 'individual Africans differ as much, or even more, from other individual Africans as Europeans differ from Europeans'. Furthermore he concluded that Africans were not inferior to the rest of mankind 'concerning healthy faculties of understanding, excellent natural talents and mental capacities'.^[4]

"Finally, I am of opinion that after all these numerous instances I have brought together of negroes of capacity, it would not be difficult to mention entire well-known provinces of Europe, from out of which you would not easily expect to obtain off-hand such good authors, poets, philosophers, and correspondents of the Paris Academy; and on the other hand, there is no so-called savage nation known under the sun which has so much distinguished itself by such examples of perfectibility and original capacity for scientific culture, and thereby attached itself so closely to the most civilized nations of the earth, as the Negro."^[5]

These ideas were far less influential. His ideas were adopted by other researchers and encouraged scientific racism.^[6] Blumenbach's work was used by many biologists and comparative anatomists in the nineteenth century who were interested in the origin of races: Wells, Lawrence, Prichard, Huxley and William Flower are good examples of his influence on human biology.

Regarding human origins, Blumenbach believed the first humans had originated in Asia, (see Asia hypothesis).^[7]

Study of the platypus[link]

Blumenbach was also one of the first scientists to study the anatomy of the platypus. He gave the scientific name Ornithorhynchus paradoxus to the animal not knowing that George Shaw had given it the name Platypus anatinus. However, Platypus had already been shown to be used for the scientific name for a genus of Ambrosia beetles so Blumenbach's scientific name for the genus was used.^[8]

Study of natural history[link]

Blumenbach wrote a manual of natural history entitled Handbuch der Naturgeschichte; 12 editions and some translations. It was published first in Göttingen by J. C. Dieterich in 1779/1780.

Study of the chimpanzee[link]

In his dissertation Blumenbach mentioned a name Simia troglodytes with a short description for the Common Chimpanzee. This dissertation was printed and appeared in September 1775, but only for internal use in the University of Göttingen and not for providing a public record. The public print of his dissertation appeared in 1776.^[9] Blumenbach knew that Linnaeus had already established a name Homo troglodytes for a badly known primate, and in 1779 he discussed this Linnean name and concluded correctly that Linnaeus had been dealing with two species, a human and an orangutan, none of them was a chimpanzee, and that by consequence the name Homo troglodytes could not be used. Blumenbach was one of the first scientists to understand the identities of the different species of primates, which were, excluding humans, orangutans and chimpanzees (gorillas were not known to Europeans at this time). In Opinion 1368 the ICZN Commission decided in 1985 that Blumenbach's view should be followed, and that his Simia troglodytes as published by Blumenbach in 1779 shall be the type species of the genus Pan and, since it was the oldest available name for the Common Chimpanzee, be used for this species.^[10] However, the Commission did not know that Blumenbach had already mentioned this name in his dissertation. Following the rules of the ICZN Code the scientific name of one of the most well-known African animals, currently known as Pan troglodytes, must carry Blumenbach's name comined with the date 1776.^[11]

Degeneration theory[link]

Blumenbach and other monogenists such as Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon were believers in the "degeneration theory" of racial origins. Blumenbach claimed that Adam and Eve were Caucasian(Georgian/Armenian) and that other races came about by degeneration from environmental factors such as the sun and poor dieting—for instance, he claimed Negroid pigmentation arose because of the result of the heat of the tropical sun, while the cold wind caused the tawny colour of the Eskimos, and the Chinese were fair skinned compared to the other Asian stocks because they kept mostly in towns protected from environmental factors. He believed that the degeneration could be reversed if proper environmental control was taken and that all contemporary forms of man could revert to the original Caucasian race.^[12]

Blumenbach did not consider his "degeneration theory" as racist and sharply criticized Christoph Meiners, an early practitioner of scientific racialism as well as Samuel Thomas von Sömmerring who concluded from autopsies that Africans were an inferior race.^[13]

He also wrote three essays claiming non-white peoples are capable of excelling in arts and sciences in reaction against racialists of his time who believed they couldn't.^[14]

See also[link]

• Scientific racism
• Craniometry

Notes[link]

References[link]

• Schmidt-Wiederkehr P (March 1973). "[J. F. Blumenbach–Chr. Girtanner–C. F. Becker: precursors of tissue theory of warmth production]" (in German). Medizinische Monatsschrift 27 (3): 122–6. PMID 4579732. 
• McLaughlin P (1982). "Blumenbach und der Bildungstrieb. Zum Verhältnis von epigenetischer Embryologie und typologischem Artbegriff". Medizinhistorisches Journal 17 (4): 357–72. PMID 11620622. 
• Wiesemann C (November 1990). "[Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (1752–1840)]" (in German). Der Pathologe 11 (6): 362–3. PMID 2290797. 
• Bhopal R (December 2007). "The beautiful skull and Blumenbach's errors: the birth of the scientific concept of race". BMJ 335 (7633): 1308–9. DOI:10.1136/bmj.39413.463958.80. PMC 2151154. PMID 18156242. //www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?tool=pmcentrez&artid=2151154. 
• Klatt N (2008). "Klytia und die »schöne Georgianerin« – Eine Anmerkung zu Blumenbachs Rassentypologie". Kleine Beiträge zur Blumenbach-Forschung 1: 70–101. urn:nbn:de:101:1-2008112813

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Johann Friedrich Blumenbach

•  "Blumenbach, Johann Friedrich". New International Encyclopedia. 1905. 
•  Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Blumenbach, Johann Friedrich". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.