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125-639: Introduced in the 1780s by members of the Göttingen school of history , the term denoted one of three purported major races of humankind (those three being Caucasoid, Mongoloid , and Negroid ). In biological anthropology , Caucasoid has been used as an umbrella term for phenotypically similar groups from these different regions, with a focus on skeletal anatomy, and especially cranial morphology, without regard to skin tone . Ancient and modern "Caucasoid" populations were thus not exclusively "white", but ranged in complexion from white-skinned to dark brown. Since

250-524: A polygenist view, that human races had evolved separately from local varieties of Homo erectus . Dividing humans into five main races, and argued that each evolved in parallel but at different rates, so that some races had reached higher levels of evolution than others. He argued that the Caucasoid race had evolved 200,000 years prior to the "Congoid race", and hence represented a higher evolutionary stage. Coon argued that Caucasoid traits emerged prior to

375-487: A Caucasian physical stock existed. He divided this racial element into two main groups: a shorter and darker Mediterranean or Iberian race and a taller and lighter Nordic race. Wells asserted that Semitic and Hamitic populations were mainly of Mediterranean type, and Aryan populations were originally of Nordic type. He regarded the Basques as descendants of early Mediterranean peoples, who inhabited western Europe before

500-563: A change from the Supreme Court's earlier opinion in Ozawa v. United States , in which it had expressly approved of two lower court cases holding "high caste Hindus" to be "free white persons" within the meaning of the naturalization act. Government lawyers later recognized that the Supreme Court had "withdrawn" this approval in Thind . In 1946, the U.S. Congress passed a new law establishing

625-435: A critical threshold from a more brutal to a more sapient state." Since Coon followed the traditional methods of physical anthropology, relying on morphological characteristics, and not on the emerging genetics to classify humans, the debate over Origin of Races has been "viewed as the last gasp of an outdated scientific methodology that was soon to be supplanted." The fact that there are no sharp distinctions between

750-546: A description of "Mongoloid" skulls in her book on forensic facial reconstruction : "The Mongoloid skull shows a round head shape with a medium-width nasal aperture, rounded orbital margins, massive cheekbones, weak or absent canine fossae , moderate prognathism, absent brow ridges, simple cranial sutures, prominent zygomatic bones, broad, flat, tented nasal root, short nasal spine, shovel-shaped upper incisor teeth (scooped out behind), straight nasal profile, moderately wide palate shape, arched sagittal contour, wide facial breadth and

875-548: A famous debate , which is said to exemplify the two major deviations in biological thinking at the time – whether animal structure was due to function or (evolutionary) morphology. Cuvier supported function and rejected Lamarck's thinking. Cuvier also conducted racial studies which provided part of the foundation for scientific racism , and published work on the supposed differences between racial groups' physical properties and mental abilities. Cuvier subjected Sarah Baartman to examinations alongside other French naturalists during

1000-404: A flatter face." In 1950, Carleton S. Coon , Stanley M. Garn , and Joseph B. Birdsell proposed that the relative flatness of "Mongoloid" faces was caused by adaption to the extreme cold of subarctic and arctic conditions. They supposed that "Mongoloid" eye sockets have been extended vertically to make room for adipose tissue around the eyeballs, and that the " reduced " brow ridges decrease

1125-728: A foreign member of the Royal Society , and in 1812, a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences . In 1812, he became a correspondent for the Royal Institute of the Netherlands , and became a member in 1827. Cuvier was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1822. Cuvier then devoted himself more especially to three lines of inquiry: (i)

1250-475: A fossil skeleton known at that time as the "Ohio animal". In his second paper in 1796, he described and analyzed a large skeleton found in Paraguay , which he would name Megatherium . He concluded this skeleton represented yet another extinct animal and, by comparing its skull with living species of tree-dwelling sloths, that it was a kind of ground-dwelling giant sloth . Together, these two 1796 papers were

1375-547: A job at Fiquainville chateau in Normandy as tutor to the only son of the Comte d'Héricy , a Protestant noble. There, during the early 1790s, he began his comparisons of fossils with extant forms. Cuvier regularly attended meetings held at the nearby town of Valmont for the discussion of agricultural topics. There, he became acquainted with Henri Alexandre Tessier (1741–1837), who had assumed a false identity. Previously, he had been

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1500-418: A long time would produce only by multiplying what a lesser time produces. Since a lesser time produced no organic changes, neither, he argued, would a much longer time. Moreover, his commitment to the principle of the correlation of parts caused him to doubt that any mechanism could ever gradually modify any part of an animal in isolation from all the other parts (in the way Lamarck proposed), without rendering

1625-839: A map published based on racial classifications in South Asia conceived by Herbert Hope Risley classified inhabitants of Bengal and parts of Odisha as Mongolo-Dravidians , people of mixed Mongoloid and Dravidian origin. Similarly in 1904, Ponnambalam Arunachalam claimed the Sinhalese people of Sri Lanka were a people of mixed Mongolian and Malay racial origins as well as Indo-Aryan , Dravidian and Vedda origins. Howard S. Stoudt in The Physical Anthropology of Ceylon (1961) and Carleton S. Coon in The Living Races of Man (1966) classified

1750-418: A moment bear the examination of anyone who has dissected a hand, a viscus, or even a feather. Instead, he said, the typical form makes an abrupt appearance in the fossil record, and persists unchanged to the time of its extinction. Cuvier attempted to explain this paleontological phenomenon he envisioned (which would be readdressed more than a century later by " punctuated equilibrium ") and to harmonize it with

1875-581: A pearl in the dunghill of Normandy", he wrote his friend Antoine-Augustin Parmentier . As a result, Cuvier entered into correspondence with several leading naturalists of the day and was invited to Paris. Arriving in the spring of 1795, at the age of 26, he soon became the assistant of Jean-Claude Mertrud (1728–1802), who had been appointed to the chair of Animal Anatomy at the Jardin des Plantes . When Mertrud died in 1802, Cuvier replaced him in office and

2000-422: A period in which she was held captive in a state of neglect. Cuvier examined Baartman shortly before her death, and conducted a dissection following her death that disparagingly compared her physical features to those of monkeys. Cuvier's most famous work is Le Règne Animal (1817; English: The Animal Kingdom ). In 1819, he was created a peer for life in honour of his scientific contributions. Thereafter, he

2125-707: A physician and well-known agronomist, who had fled the Terror in Paris. After hearing Tessier speak on agricultural matters, Cuvier recognized him as the author of certain articles on agriculture in the Encyclopédie Méthodique and addressed him as M. Tessier. Tessier replied in dismay, "I am known, then, and consequently lost."—"Lost!" replied M. Cuvier, "no; you are henceforth the object of our most anxious care." They soon became intimate and Tessier introduced Cuvier to his colleagues in Paris"I have just found

2250-457: A popular legend that Cuvier could reconstruct the entire bodily structures of extinct animals given only a few fragments of bone. At the time Cuvier presented his 1796 paper on living and fossil elephants, it was still widely believed that no species of animal had ever become extinct. Authorities such as Buffon had claimed that fossils found in Europe of animals such as the woolly rhinoceros and

2375-603: A rule, gradually change into a succeeding, distinct fossil form. A deep-rooted source of his opposition to the gradual transformation of species was his goal of creating an accurate taxonomy based on principles of comparative anatomy. Such a project would become impossible if species were mutable, with no clear boundaries between them. According to the University of California Museum of Paleontology, "Cuvier did not believe in organic evolution, for any change in an organism's anatomy would have rendered it unable to survive. He studied

2500-404: A scholar at the then modern Göttingen University . Meiners divided humanity into two races he labeled "Tartar-Caucasians" and "Mongolians", believing the former to be beautiful, the latter to be "weak in body and spirit, bad, and lacking in virtue". His more influential Göttingen colleague Johann Friedrich Blumenbach borrowed the term Mongolian for his division of humanity into five races in

2625-412: A second usage, now generally avoided as highly offensive: until the late 20th century, people with Down syndrome were often referred to as "Mongoloids", or in terms of " Mongolian idiocy " or "Mongolian imbecility". The term was motivated by the observation that people with Down syndrome often have epicanthic folds . Coined in 1908, the term remained in medical usage until the 1950s. In 1961, its use

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2750-490: A seminal or landmark event, becoming a turning point in the history of paleontology , and in the development of comparative anatomy , as well. They also greatly enhanced Cuvier's personal reputation and they essentially ended what had been a long-running debate about the reality of extinction . In 1799, he succeeded Daubenton as professor of natural history in the Collège de France . In 1802, he became titular professor at

2875-404: A sharp nasal sill. Many anthropologists in the 20th century used the term "Caucasoid" in their literature, such as William Clouser Boyd , Reginald Ruggles Gates , Carleton S. Coon , Sonia Mary Cole , Alice Mossie Brues and Grover Krantz replacing the earlier term "Caucasian" as it had fallen out of usage. In the 19th century Meyers Konversations-Lexikon (1885–1890), Caucasoid was one of

3000-532: 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 resulted in confusion about whether American Hispanics are included as "white", as the term Hispanic originally applied to Spanish heritage but has since expanded to include all people with origins in Spanish speaking countries . In other countries,

3125-531: 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 James Cowles Prichard , Charles Pickering , Broca , Paul Topinard , Samuel George Morton , Oscar Peschel , Charles Gabriel Seligman , Robert Bennett Bean , William Zebina Ripley , Alfred Cort Haddon and Roland Dixon came to recognize other Caucasoid morphological features, such as prominent supraorbital ridges and

3250-524: A species. This differed widely from Cuvier's theory, which seemed to propose that animal extinction was catastrophic. However, Cuvier's theory of extinction is still justified in the case of mass extinctions that occurred in the last 600 million years, when approximately half of all living species went completely extinct within a short geological span of two million years, due in part by volcanic eruptions, asteroids, and rapid fluctuations in sea level. At this time, new species rose and others fell, precipitating

3375-603: A way, his chronological dating of Earth's history somewhat reflected Lamarck's transformationist theories. Cuvier also worked alongside Alexandre Brongniart in analyzing the Parisian rock cycle. Using stratigraphical methods, they were both able to extrapolate key information regarding Earth history from studying these rocks. These rocks contained remnants of molluscs, bones of mammals, and shells. From these findings, Cuvier and Brongniart concluded that many environmental changes occurred in quick catastrophes, though Earth itself

3500-405: Is also remembered for strongly opposing theories of evolution, which at the time (before Darwin 's theory) were mainly proposed by Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck and Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire . Cuvier believed there was no evidence for evolution , but rather evidence for cyclical creations and destructions of life forms by global extinction events such as deluges . In 1830, Cuvier and Geoffroy engaged in

3625-522: Is clear and unambiguous: no." The last edition of the German encyclopedia Meyers Konversations-Lexikon (1971–79, 25 volumes) lists the following characteristics of the "Mongoloid" populations of Asia: "Flat face with a low nasal root, accentuated zygomatic arches , flat-lying eyelids (which are often slanting), thick, tight, dark hair, dark eyes, yellow-brownish skin, usually short, stocky build." In 2004, British anthropologist Caroline Wilkinson gave

3750-646: Is from these generalized type peoples, who kept more nearly the ancient type, that peoples such as the Chinese gradually diverged , who added the oblique eye , and a "certain generic refinement of physique." Kroeber said that, according to most anthropometrists , the Eskimo is the most particularized sub-variety out of the American Mongoloids. Kroeber said that in the East Indies, and in particular

3875-454: Is known as the principle of the correlation of parts. He writes: This idea is referred to as Cuvier's principle of correlation of parts, which states that all organs in an animal's body are deeply interdependent. Species' existence relies on the way in which these organs interact. For example, a species whose digestive tract is best suited to digesting flesh but whose body is best suited to foraging for plants cannot survive. Thus in all species,

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4000-533: The Jardin des Plantes ; and in the same year, he was appointed commissary of the institute to accompany the inspectors general of public instruction. In this latter capacity, he visited the south of France, but in the early part of 1803, he was chosen permanent secretary of the department of physical sciences of the Academy, and he consequently abandoned the earlier appointment and returned to Paris. In 1806, he became

4125-624: The Ainu people , 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. For example, Thomas Henry Huxley (1870) classified all populations of Asian nations as Mongoloid. Lothrop Stoddard (1920) in turn classified as "brown" most of

4250-579: The Americas , and some regions in Europe and Oceania . The term is derived from a now-disproven theory of biological race. In the past, other terms such as " Mongolian race", "yellow", "Asiatic" and " Oriental " have been used as synonyms. The concept of dividing humankind into the Mongoloid, Caucasoid , and Negroid races was introduced in the 1780s by members of the Göttingen school of history . It

4375-679: The Bible . He attributed the different time periods he was aware of as intervals between major catastrophes, the last of which is found in Genesis . Cuvier's claim that new fossil forms appear abruptly in the geological record and then continue without alteration in overlying strata was used by later critics of evolution to support creationism, to whom the abruptness seemed consistent with special divine creation (although Cuvier's finding that different types made their paleontological debuts in different geological strata clearly did not). The lack of change

4500-555: The Bureau of Immigration and Naturalization was using the term "Mongolic grand division," not only to include Mongols , but "in the widest sense of all," to include Malays , Chinese , Japanese , and Koreans . In 1911, the Bureau of Immigration and Naturalization was placing all "East Indians," a term which included the peoples of " India , Farther India , and Malaysia ," in the "Mongolic" grand division. In 1985, Michael P. Malone of

4625-567: The Dravidians and the Sinhalese were Caucasoid or a separate Dravida race, but by and in the 20th century, anthropologists predominantly declared Dravidians to be Caucasoid. Historically, the racial classification of the Turkic peoples was sometimes given as " Turanid ". Turanid racial type or "minor race", subtype of the Europid (Caucasian) race with Mongoloid admixtures, situated at

4750-677: The FBI Laboratory said that the FBI Laboratory is in a good position for the examination of Mongoloid hairs, because it does most of the examinations for Alaska , which has a large Mongoloid population , and it conducts examinations for the majority of Indian reservations in the United States. In 1987, a report to the National Institute of Justice indicated that the following skeletal collections were of

4875-736: The Mesolithic and Neolithic (e.g. Afalou , Hvellinge, Fjelkinge). Coon's theories on race were much disputed in his lifetime, and are considered pseudoscientific in modern anthropology. After discussing various criteria used in biology to define subspecies or races, Alan R. Templeton concludes in 2016: "[T]he answer to the question whether races exist in humans is clear and unambiguous: no." 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 ("nose narrow"),

5000-467: The Paris Basin named Palaeotherium and Anoplotherium based on fragmentary remains alone, although more complete remains were later uncovered. He named the pterosaur Pterodactylus , described (but did not discover or name) the aquatic reptile Mosasaurus , and was one of the first people to suggest the earth had been dominated by reptiles, rather than mammals, in prehistoric times. Cuvier

5125-556: The Philippines , there can at times be distinguished a less specifically Mongoloid strain, which has been called the " Proto- Malaysian," and a more specifically Mongoloid strain, which has been called the " Deutero- Malaysian." Kroeber said that Polynesians appear to have primary Mongoloid connections by way of the Malaysians. Kroeber said that the Mongoloid element of Polynesians is not a specialized Mongoloid. Kroeber said that

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5250-530: The Ptero-Dactyle in 1809, (later Latinized as Pterodactylus antiquus )—the first known member of the diverse order of pterosaurs . In 1808 Cuvier identified a fossil found in Maastricht as a giant marine lizard, the first known mosasaur . Cuvier speculated correctly that there had been a time when reptiles rather than mammals had been the dominant fauna. This speculation was confirmed over

5375-538: The native inhabitants of the Caucasus region. In his The Outline of History of Mankind (1785), the German philosopher Christoph Meiners first used the concept of a "Caucasian" ( Kaukasisch ) race in its wider racial sense. Meiners' term was given wider circulation in the 1790s by many people. Meiners imagined that the Caucasian race encompassed all of the ancient and most of the modern native populations of Europe,

5500-454: The " Lapps ". Discussions on race among Western scholars during the 19th century took place against the background of the debate between monogenists and polygenists , the former arguing for a single origin of all humankind, the latter holding that each human race had a specific origin. Monogenists based their arguments either on a literal interpretation of the biblical story of Adam and Eve or on secular research. Since polygenism stressed

5625-491: The "Mediterranean type" which he considered to be distinct from Caucasians, rather than a subtype of it as others had done. While Blumenbach had erroneously thought that light skin color was ancestral to all humans and the dark skin of southern populations was due to sun, Coon thought that Caucasians had lost their original pigmentation as they moved North. Coon used the term "Caucasoid" and "White race" synonymously. In 1962, Coon published The Origin of Races , wherein he proposed

5750-541: The "Mongoloid" " Ethnic Group ": Arctic Eskimo , Prehistoric North American Indian , Japanese , and Chinese. In 2005, an article in a journal by the FBI Laboratory defined the term "Mongoloid," as the term is used in forensic hair examinations. It defined the term as, "an anthropological term designating one of the major groups of human beings originating from Asia , excluding the Indian subcontinent and including Native American Indians ." "Mongoloid" has had

5875-470: The "founding father of paleontology". Cuvier was a major figure in natural sciences research in the early 19th century and was instrumental in establishing the fields of comparative anatomy and paleontology through his work in comparing living animals with fossils. Cuvier's work is considered the foundation of vertebrate paleontology , and he expanded Linnaean taxonomy by grouping classes into phyla and incorporating both fossils and living species into

6000-567: The "white race" as superior, he claimed that the "yellow race" was physically and intellectually mediocre but had an extremely strong materialism that allowed them to achieve certain results. According to the Meyers Konversations-Lexikon (1885–90), peoples included in the Mongoloid race are North Mongol , Chinese and Indochinese , Japanese and Korean , Tibetan and Burmese , Malay , Polynesian , Maori , Micronesian , Eskimo , and Native American . In 1909,

6125-626: The Bible states that humanity is descended – and the location for the suffering of Prometheus , who in Hesiod 's myth had crafted humankind from clay. In addition, the most beautiful humans were reputed by Europeans to be the stereotypical " Circassian beauties " and the Georgian people ; both Georgia and Circassia are in the Caucasus region. The "Circassian beauty" stereotype had its roots in

6250-752: The Chair changed its name to Chair of Comparative Anatomy . The Institut de France was founded in the same year, and he was elected a member of its Academy of Sciences . On 4 April 1796 he began to lecture at the École Centrale du Pantheon and, at the opening of the National Institute in April, he read his first paleontological paper, which subsequently was published in 1800 under the title Mémoires sur les espèces d'éléphants vivants et fossiles . In this paper, he analyzed skeletal remains of Indian and African elephants , as well as mammoth fossils , and

6375-759: The Cro-Magnons, and were present in the Skhul and Qafzeh hominids . However, these fossils and the Predmost specimen were held to be Neanderthaloid derivatives because they possessed short cervical vertebrae , lower and narrower pelves, and had some Neanderthal skull traits. Coon further asserted that the Caucasoid race was of dual origin, consisting of early dolichocephalic (e.g. Galley Hill , Combe-Capelle , Téviec ) and Neolithic Mediterranean Homo sapiens (e.g. Muge , Long Barrow , Corded ), as well as Neanderthal-influenced brachycephalic Homo sapiens dating to

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6500-516: The Indian peninsula, and North Africa. This usage later grew into the widely used color terminology for race , contrasting with the terms Negroid , Mongoloid , and Australoid . There was never consensus among the proponents of the "Caucasoid race" concept regarding how it would be delineated from other groups such as the proposed Mongoloid race. Carleton S. Coon (1939) included the populations native to all of Central and Northern Asia, including

6625-526: The Middle Ages, while the reputation for the attractiveness of the Georgian people was developed by early modern travellers to the region such as Jean Chardin . The term Caucasian as a racial category was introduced in the 1780s by members of the Göttingen school of history – notably Christoph Meiners in 1785 and Johann Friedrich Blumenbach in 1795—it had originally referred in a narrow sense to

6750-532: The Mongoloid element in Polynesians appears to be larger than the definite Caucasian strain in Polynesians. Speaking of Polynesians, Kroeber said that there are locally possible minor Negroid absorptions, as the ancestral Polynesians had to pass by or through archipelagoes which are presently Papuo-Melanesian Negroid to get to the central Pacific . American anthropologist Carleton S. Coon published his much debated Origin of Races in 1962. Coon divided

6875-581: The Reformation. His mother was Anne Clémence Chatel; his father, Jean-Georges Cuvier, was a lieutenant in the Swiss Guards and a bourgeois of the town of Montbéliard. At the time, the town, which would be annexed to France on 10 October 1793, belonged to the Duchy of Württemberg . His mother, who was much younger than his father, tutored him diligently throughout his early years, so he easily surpassed

7000-529: The Sinhalese as partly Mongoloid. German physical anthropologist Egon Freiherr von Eickstedt , an influential proponent of Rassenkunde (racial studies) in Nazi Germany , classified people from Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, East India, parts of Northeast India, western Myanmar and Sri Lanka as East Brachid , referring to people of mixed Indid and South Mongolid origins. Eickstedt also classified

7125-546: The aboriginal inhabitants of West Asia (including the Phoenicians, Hebrews and Arabs), the autochthones of Northern Africa (Berbers, Egyptians, Abyssinians and neighboring groups), the Indians, and the ancient Guanches . It was Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, a colleague of Meiners', who later came to be considered one of the founders of the discipline of anthropology , who gave the term a wider audience, by grounding it in

7250-458: The age of 10, soon after entering the gymnasium , he encountered a copy of Conrad Gessner 's Historiae Animalium , the work that first sparked his interest in natural history . He then began frequent visits to the home of a relative, where he could borrow volumes of the Comte de Buffon 's massive Histoire Naturelle . All of these he read and reread, retaining so much of the information, that by

7375-553: The age of 12, "he was as familiar with quadrupeds and birds as a first-rate naturalist." He remained at the gymnasium for four years. Cuvier spent an additional four years at the Caroline Academy in Stuttgart , where he excelled in all of his coursework. Although he knew no German on his arrival, after only nine months of study, he managed to win the school prize for that language. Cuvier's German education exposed him to

7500-472: The animal unable to survive. In his Éloge de M. de Lamarck ( Praise for M. de Lamarck ), Cuvier wrote that Lamarck's theory of evolution rested on two arbitrary suppositions; the one, that it is the seminal vapour which organizes the embryo; the other, that efforts and desires may engender organs. A system established on such foundations may amuse the imagination of a poet; a metaphysician may derive from it an entirely new series of systems; but it cannot for

7625-546: The arrival of Aryan Celts from the direction of central Europe. The "Northcaucasian race" is a sub-race proposed by Carleton S. Coon (1930). It comprises the native populations of the North Caucasus , the Balkars , Karachays and Vainakh ( Chechens and Ingushs ). An introduction to anthropology, published in 1953, gives a more complex classification scheme: Besides its use in anthropology and related fields,

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7750-544: The arrival of human beings. Cuvier's early work demonstrated conclusively that extinction was indeed a credible natural global process. Cuvier's thinking on extinctions was influenced by his extensive readings in Greek and Latin literature; he gathered every ancient report known in his day relating to discoveries of petrified bones of remarkable size in the Mediterranean region. Influence on Cuvier's theory of extinction

7875-658: The author, including but not limited to Mediterranean , Atlantid , Nordic , East Baltic , Alpine , Dinaric , Turanid , Armenoid , Iranid , Indid , Arabid , and Hamitic . Some authors also proposed a Pamirid race (or Pamir-Fergana race ) in Central Asia, named after the Pamir range and the Fergana valley . H.G. Wells argued that across Europe, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, West Asia, Central Asia and South Asia,

8000-495: The boundary of the distribution of the Mongoloid and Europid "great races". 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 (Nordic) and Melanochroi (Mediterranean) types. The postulated subraces vary depending on

8125-539: The causes of World War II and proposing to replace the term "race" with "ethnic groups" because "serious errors ... are habitually committed when the term 'race' is used in popular parlance". Alfred L. Kroeber (1948), Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley , referring to the racial classification of humankind on the basis of physical features, said that there are basically "three grand divisions." Kroeber indicated that, within

8250-544: The classification. Cuvier is also known for establishing extinction as a fact—at the time, extinction was considered by many of Cuvier's contemporaries to be merely controversial speculation. In his Essay on the Theory of the Earth (1813) Cuvier proposed that now-extinct species had been wiped out by periodic catastrophic flooding events. In this way, Cuvier became the most influential proponent of catastrophism in geology in

8375-499: The continents existing ten millennia ago collapsed, allowing the ocean floors to rise higher than the continental plates and become the continents that now exist today. The latter proposed that a massive tsunami hit the globe, leading to mass extinction. Whatever the case was, he believed that the deluge happened quite recently in human history. In fact, he believed that Earth's existence was limited and not as extended as many natural scientists, like Lamarck , believed it to be. Much of

8500-478: The deep past that had been destroyed by catastrophe. Cuvier came to believe that most, if not all, the animal fossils he examined were remains of species that had become extinct. Near the end of his 1796 paper on living and fossil elephants, he said: Contrary to many natural scientists' beliefs at the time, Cuvier believed that animal extinction was not a product of anthropogenic causes. Instead, he proposed that humans were around long enough to indirectly maintain

8625-616: The differences among the three divisions of the Mongoloid stock are not very large. Kroeber said that the Malaysian and the American Indian are generalized type peoples while the Mongolian proper is the most extreme or pronounced form. Kroeber said that the original Mongoloid stock must be regarded as being more like the current Malaysians, the current American Indians, or an intermediate type between these two. Kroeber said that it

8750-622: The early 19th century. His study of the strata of the Paris basin with Alexandre Brongniart established the basic principles of biostratigraphy . Among his other accomplishments, Cuvier established that elephant-like bones found in North America belonged to an extinct animal he later would name as a " mastodon ", and that a large skeleton dug up in present-day Argentina was of a giant, prehistoric ground sloth , which he named Megatherium . He also established two ungulate genera from

8875-430: The evidence he used to support his catastrophist theories has been taken from his fossil records. He strongly suggested that the fossils he found were evidence of the world's first reptiles, followed chronologically by mammals and humans. Cuvier didn't wish to delve much into the causation of all the extinction and introduction of new animal species but rather focused on the sequential aspects of animal history on Earth. In

9000-432: The fossilized records of ancient Earth. He also attempted to verify the water catastrophe by analyzing records of various cultural backgrounds. Though he found many accounts of the water catastrophe unclear, he did believe that such an event occurred at the brink of human history nonetheless. This led Cuvier to become an active proponent of the geological school of thought called catastrophism , which maintained that many of

9125-455: The functional significance of each body part must be correlated to the others, or else the species cannot sustain itself. Cuvier believed that the power of his principle came in part from its ability to aid in the reconstruction of fossils. In most cases, fossils of quadrupeds were not found as complete, assembled skeletons, but rather as scattered pieces that needed to be put together by anatomists. To make matters worse, deposits often contained

9250-444: The geological column, the ordered layers of sedimentary rock, of the Paris basin. They concluded that the layers had been laid down over an extended period during which there clearly had been faunal succession and that the area had been submerged under sea water at times and at other times under fresh water. Along with William Smith 's work during the same period on a geological map of England, which also used characteristic fossils and

9375-407: The geological features of the earth and the history of life could be explained by catastrophic events that had caused the extinction of many species of animals. Over the course of his career, Cuvier came to believe there had not been a single catastrophe, but several, resulting in a succession of different faunas. He wrote about these ideas many times, in particular, he discussed them in great detail in

9500-460: The grouping which was sometimes called "Mongolian" and sometimes "Mongoloid". For example, D. M. Warren in 1856 used a narrow definition which did not include either the "Malay" or the "American" races, while Huxley (1870) and Alexander Winchell (1881) included both Malays and indigenous Americans. In 1861, Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire added the Australian as a secondary race (subrace) of

9625-406: The human mummies and the skeletons of present-day men." Lamarck dismissed this conclusion, arguing that evolution happened much too slowly to be observed over just a few thousand years. Cuvier, however, in turn criticized how Lamarck and other naturalists conveniently introduced hundreds of thousands of years "with a stroke of a pen" to uphold their theory. Instead, he argued that one may judge what

9750-524: The idea that fossils came from those that are currently living. The idea that these bones belonged to elephants living – but hiding – somewhere on Earth seemed ridiculous to Cuvier, because it would be nearly impossible to miss them due to their enormous size. The Megatherium provided another compelling data point for this argument. Ultimately, his repeated identification of fossils as belonging to species unknown to man, combined with mineralogical evidence from his stratigraphical studies in Paris, drove Cuvier to

9875-531: The late twentieth century, however, has led to a resurgence of interest among historians of science and other scholars in this aspect of Cuvier's work. Cuvier collaborated for several years with Alexandre Brongniart , an instructor at the Paris mining school, to produce a monograph on the geology of the region around Paris. They published a preliminary version in 1808 and the final version was published in 1811. In this monograph, they identified characteristic fossils of different rock layers that they used to analyze

10000-492: The mammoth were remains of animals still living in the tropics (i.e. rhinoceros and elephants ), which had shifted out of Europe and Asia as the earth became cooler. Thereafter, Cuvier performed a pioneering research study on some elephant fossils excavated around Paris. The bones he studied, however, were remarkably different from the bones of elephants currently thriving in India and Africa. This discovery led Cuvier to denounce

10125-418: The most damaging elements in the human experience both today and in the past." The term Mongoloid has had a second usage referencing people with Down syndrome , now generally regarded as highly offensive. Those affected were often referred to as "Mongoloids" or in terms of " Mongolian idiocy " or "Mongolian imbecility". Mongolian as a term for race was first introduced in 1785 by Christoph Meiners ,

10250-543: The mummified cats and ibises that Geoffroy had brought back from Napoleon's invasion of Egypt, and showed they were no different from their living counterparts; Cuvier used this to support his claim that life forms did not evolve over time." He also observed that Napoleon's expedition to Egypt had retrieved animals mummified thousands of years previously that seemed no different from their modern counterparts. "Certainly", Cuvier wrote, "one cannot detect any greater difference between these creatures and those we see, than between

10375-509: The new methods of craniometry and Linnean taxonomy . Blumenbach did not credit Meiners with his taxonomy, although his justification clearly points to Meiners' aesthetic viewpoint of Caucasus origins. In contrast to Meiners, however, Blumenbach was a monogenist—he considered all humans to have a shared origin and to be a single species. Blumenbach, like Meiners, did rank his Caucasian grouping higher than other groups in terms of mental faculties or potential for achievement despite pointing out that

10500-544: The notion of the whole world being composed of three distinct races, Caucasoid, Mongoloid, and Negroid, seemed credible because of the history of immigration to the United States with most immigrants coming from three areas, Southeast China , Northwest Europe , and West Africa . This made the point of view of three races appear to be "true, natural, and inescapable". In 1950, UNESCO published their statement The Race Question . It condemned all forms of racism , naming "the doctrine of inequality of men and races" among

10625-433: The number of races, with some proponents of the concept suggesting 300 or even more "races". Also, data are not reconcilable with the concept of a treelike evolution nor with the concept of "biologically discrete, isolated, or static" populations. After discussing various criteria used in biology to define subspecies or races, Alan R. Templeton concludes in 2016: "[T]he answer to the question whether races exist in humans

10750-457: The other children at school. During his gymnasium years, he had little trouble acquiring Latin and Greek, and was always at the head of his class in mathematics, history, and geography. According to Lee, "The history of mankind was, from the earliest period of his life, a subject of the most indefatigable application; and long lists of sovereigns, princes, and the driest chronological facts, once arranged in his memory, were never forgotten." At

10875-594: The people of central Myanmar, Yunnan, southern Tibet, Thailand and parts of India as Palaungid deriving from the name of the Palaung people of Myanmar. He also classified the Burmese, Karen, Kachin, Shan, Sri Lankans, Tai, South Chinese, Munda and Juang, and others as having "mixed" with the Palaungid phenotype. Commenting on the situation of the United States in the early 20th century, Leonard Lieberman said that

11000-637: The perceived differences, it was popular among white supremacists , especially slaveholders in the US . British biologist Thomas Huxley , a strong advocate of Darwinism and a monogenist, presented the views of polygenists in 1865: "[S]ome imagine their assumed species of mankind were created where we find them... the Mongolians from the Orangs ". During the 19th century, diverging opinions were pronounced whether Native Americans or Malays should be included in

11125-550: The populations of the Middle East, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, Central Asia and South Asia. He counted as "white" only European peoples and their descendants, as well as a few populations in areas adjacent to or opposite southern Europe, in parts of Anatolia and parts of the Rif and Atlas mountains. In 1939, Coon argued that the Caucasian race had originated through admixture between Homo neanderthalensis and Homo sapiens of

11250-400: The preliminary discourse (an introduction) to a collection of his papers, Recherches sur les ossements fossiles de quadrupèdes ( Researches on quadruped fossil bones ), on quadruped fossils published in 1812. Cuvier's own explanation for such a catastrophic event is derived from two different sources, including those from Jean-André Deluc and Déodat de Dolomieu . The former proposed that

11375-682: The principal race of Mongolian. In his Essai sur l'inégalité des races humaines ( Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races , published 1853–55), which would later influence Adolf Hitler , the French aristocrat Arthur de Gobineau defined three races which he called "white", "black", and "yellow". His "yellow race", corresponding to other writers' "Mongoloid race", consisted of "the Altaic, Mongol, Finnish and Tartar branches". While he saw

11500-462: The principle of faunal succession to correlate layers of sedimentary rock, the monograph helped establish the scientific discipline of stratigraphy . It was a major development in the history of paleontology and the history of geology . In 1800 and working only from a drawing, Cuvier was the first to correctly identify in print, a fossil found in Bavaria as a small flying reptile, which he named

11625-399: The proposition that the abrupt changes the Earth underwent over a long period of time caused some species to go extinct. Cuvier's theory on extinction has met opposition from other notable natural scientists like Darwin and Charles Lyell . Unlike Cuvier, they didn't believe that extinction was a sudden process; they believed that like the Earth, animals collectively undergo gradual change as

11750-805: The races presented by him are "very arbitrary". In Blumenbach's concept, the Mongolian race comprises the peoples living in Asia east of the Ob River , the Caspian Sea and the Ganges River , with the exception of the Malays , who form a race of their own in his concept. Of peoples living outside Asia, he includes the " Eskimos " in northern America and the European Finns , among whom he includes

11875-478: The revised 1795 edition of his De generis humani varietate nativa ( On the Natural Variety of Mankind ). Although Blumenbach's concept of five races later gave rise to scientific racism , his arguments were basically anti-racist, since he underlined that humankind as a whole forms one single species , and points out that the transition from one race to another is so gradual that the distinctions between

12000-509: The root term Caucasian is still in use as a synonym for white or of European , Middle Eastern , or North African ancestry, a usage that has been criticized. In the eighteenth century, the prevalent view among European scholars was that the human species had its origin in the region of the Caucasus Mountains . This view was based upon the Caucasus being the location for the purported landing point of Noah's Ark – from whom

12125-469: The second half of the 20th century, physical anthropologists have switched from a typological understanding of human biological diversity towards a genomic and population-based perspective, and have tended to understand race as a social classification of humans based on phenotype and ancestry as well as cultural factors, as the concept is also understood in the social sciences. In the United States ,

12250-433: The size of the air spaces inside of the brow ridges known as the frontal sinuses which are " vulnerable " to the cold. They also supposed that "Mongoloid" facial features reduce the surface area of the nose by having nasal bones that are flat against the face and having enlarged cheekbones that project forward which effectively reduce the external projection of the nose. Still, in 1965 a study by A. T. Steegmann showed that

12375-625: The so-called cold-adapted Mongoloid face provided no greater protection against frostbite than the facial structure of Europeans. In 1858, the California State Legislature enacted the first bill of several that prohibited the attendance of " Negroes , Mongolians and Indians " from public schools . In 1885, the California State Legislature amended its code to make separate schools for "children of Mongoloid or Chinese descent." In 1911,

12500-643: The species Homo sapiens into five groups: Besides the Caucasoid , Mongoloid , and Australoid races, he posited two races among the indigenous populations of sub-Saharan Africa: the Capoid race in the south and the Congoid race . Coon's thesis was that Homo erectus had already been divided into five different races or subspecies. " Homo Erectus then evolved into Homo Sapiens not once but five times, as each subspecies, living in its own territory, passed

12625-675: The strength of his reputation, however, continued to discourage naturalists from speculating about the gradual transmutation of species, until Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species more than two decades after Cuvier's death. Early in his tenure at the National Museum in Paris, Cuvier published studies of fossil bones in which he argued that they belonged to large, extinct quadrupeds. His first two such publications were those identifying mammoth and mastodon fossils as belonging to extinct species rather than modern elephants and

12750-493: The structure and classification of the Mollusca ; (ii) the comparative anatomy and systematic arrangement of the fishes; (iii) fossil mammals and reptiles and, secondarily, the osteology of living forms belonging to the same groups. In 1812, Cuvier made what the cryptozoologist Bernard Heuvelmans called his "Rash dictum": he remarked that it was unlikely that any large animal remained undiscovered. Ten years after his death,

12875-513: The study in which he identified the Megatherium as a giant, extinct species of sloth. His primary evidence for his identifications of mammoths and mastodons as separate, extinct species was the structure of their jaws and teeth. His primary evidence that the Megatherium fossil had belonged to a massive sloth came from his comparison of its skull with those of extant sloth species. Cuvier wrote of his paleontological method that "the form of

13000-422: The supposed racial groups had been observed by Blumenbach and later by Charles Darwin . With the availability of new data due to the development of modern genetics, the concept of races in a biological sense has become untenable. Problems of the concept include: It "is not useful or necessary in research", scientists are not able to agree on the definition of a certain proposed race, and they do not even agree on

13125-438: The surface of the globe ). After Cuvier's death, the catastrophic school of geological thought lost ground to uniformitarianism , as championed by Charles Lyell and others, which claimed that the geological features of the earth were best explained by currently observable forces, such as erosion and volcanism, acting gradually over an extended period of time. The increasing interest in the topic of mass extinction starting in

13250-467: The term Hispanic is rarely used. 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. Mongoloid Mongoloid ( / ˈ m ɒ ŋ ɡ ə ˌ l ɔɪ d / ) is an obsolete racial grouping of various peoples indigenous to large parts of Asia ,

13375-939: 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. Naturalization as a United States citizen was restricted to "free white persons" by the Naturalization Act of 1790 , and later extended to other resident populations by the Naturalization Act of 1870 , Indian Citizenship Act of 1924 and Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 . The Supreme Court in United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind (1923) 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 to be "white" people. This represented

13500-404: The thoughtful professor of the laws of organic economy can reconstruct the entire animal." However, Cuvier's actual method was heavily dependent on the comparison of fossil specimens with the anatomy of extant species in the necessary context of his vast knowledge of animal anatomy and access to unparalleled natural history collections in Paris. This reality, however, did not prevent the rise of

13625-440: The three great races of humankind, alongside Mongoloid and Negroid . The taxon was taken to consist of a number of subtypes. The Caucasoid peoples were usually divided into three groups on ethnolinguistic grounds, termed Aryan ( Indo-European ), Semitic ( Semitic languages ), and Hamitic (Hamitic languages i.e. Berber - Cushitic - Egyptian ). 19th century classifications of the peoples of India were initially uncertain if

13750-659: The three-part classification, the Mongoloid, the Negroid , and the Caucasian are the three "primary racial stocks of mankind." Kroeber said that the following are the divisions of the Mongoloid stock: the "Mongolian proper of East Asia ," the " Malaysian of the East Indies ," and the " American Indian ." Kroeber alternatively referred to the divisions of the Mongoloid stock as the following: "Asiatic Mongoloids," "Oceanic Mongoloids," and "American Mongoloids." Kroeber said that

13875-456: The tooth leads to the form of the condyle , that of the scapula to that of the nails, just as an equation of a curve implies all of its properties; and, just as in taking each property separately as the basis of a special equation we are able to return to the original equation and other associated properties, similarly, the nails, the scapula, the condyle, the femur, each separately reveal the tooth or each other; and by beginning from each of them

14000-421: The transition from one race to another is so gradual that the distinctions between the races presented by him are "very arbitrary". Alongside the anthropologist Georges Cuvier , Blumenbach classified the Caucasian race by cranial measurements and bone morphology in addition to skin pigmentation. Following Meiners, Blumenbach described the Caucasian race as consisting of the native inhabitants of Europe, West Asia,

14125-403: The two decades following his death by a series of spectacular finds, mostly by English geologists and fossil collectors such as Mary Anning , William Conybeare , William Buckland , and Gideon Mantell , who found and described the first ichthyosaurs , plesiosaurs , and dinosaurs . In a 1798 paper on the fossil remains of an animal found in some plaster quarries near Paris, Cuvier states what

14250-566: The word "dinosaur" would be coined by Richard Owen in 1842. During his lifetime, Cuvier served as an imperial councillor under Napoleon , president of the Council of Public Instruction and chancellor of the university under the restored Bourbons , Grand Officer of the Legion of Honour, a Peer of France, Minister of the Interior, and president of the Council of State under Louis Philippe . He

14375-481: The work of the geologist Abraham Gottlob Werner (1750–1817), whose Neptunism and emphasis on the importance of rigorous, direct observation of three-dimensional, structural relationships of rock formations to geological understanding provided models for Cuvier's scientific theories and methods. Upon graduation, he had no money on which to live as he awaited an appointment to an academic office. So in July 1788, he took

14500-405: Was brought about both by scientific and medical experts as well as people of Asian ancestry, including those from Mongolia. Georges Cuvier Jean Léopold Nicolas Frédéric, baron Cuvier (23 August 1769 – 13 May 1832), known as Georges Cuvier ( / ˈ k j uː v i eɪ / ; French: [ʒɔʁʒ(ə) kyvje] ), was a French naturalist and zoologist , sometimes referred to as

14625-747: Was consistent with the supposed sacred immutability of "species", but, again, the idea of extinction, of which Cuvier was the great proponent, obviously was not. Many writers have unjustly accused Cuvier of obstinately maintaining that fossil human beings could never be found. In his Essay on the Theory of the Earth , he did say, "no human bones have yet been found among fossil remains", but he made it clear exactly what he meant: "When I assert that human bones have not been hitherto found among extraneous fossils, I must be understood to speak of fossils, or petrifactions, properly so called". Petrified bones, which have had time to mineralize and turn to stone, are typically far older than bones found to that date. Cuvier's point

14750-595: Was deprecated by a group of genetic experts in an article in The Lancet due to its "misleading connotations". The term continued to be used as a pejorative in the second half of the 20th century, with shortened versions such as mong in slang usage. In the 21st century, this usage of the term is deemed "unacceptable" in the English-speaking world and has fallen out of common use because of its offensive and misleading implications. The terminology change

14875-538: Was eminent in all these capacities, and yet the dignity given by such high administrative positions was as nothing compared to his leadership in natural science. Cuvier was by birth, education, and conviction a devout Lutheran , and remained Protestant throughout his life while regularly attending church services . Despite this, he regarded his personal faith as a private matter; he evidently identified himself with his confessional minority group when he supervised governmental educational programs for Protestants . He also

15000-516: Was further developed by Western scholars in the context of racist ideologies during the age of colonialism . With the rise of modern genetics , the concept of distinct human races in a biological sense has become obsolete. In 2019, the American Association of Biological Anthropologists stated: "The belief in 'races' as natural aspects of human biology, and the structures of inequality (racism) that emerge from such beliefs, are among

15125-582: Was his collection of specimens from the New World, many of them obtained from Native Americans. He also maintained an archive of Native American observations, legends, and interpretations of immense fossilized skeletal remains, sent to him by informants and friends in the Americas. He was impressed that most of the Native American accounts identified the enormous bones, teeth, and tusks as animals of

15250-582: Was known as Baron Cuvier. He died in Paris during an epidemic of cholera . Some of Cuvier's most influential followers were Louis Agassiz on the continent and in the United States, and Richard Owen in Britain. His name is one of the 72 names inscribed on the Eiffel Tower . Jean Léopold Nicolas Frédéric Cuvier was born in Montbéliard , where his Protestant ancestors had lived since the time of

15375-470: Was often placid for extended periods of time in between sudden disturbances. The 'Preliminary Discourse' became very well known and, unauthorized translations were made into English, German, and Italian (and in the case of those in English, not entirely accurately). In 1826, Cuvier published a revised version under the name, Discours sur les révolutions de la surface du globe ( Discourse on the upheavals of

15500-415: Was that all human bones found that he knew of, were of relatively recent age because they had not been petrified and had been found only in superficial strata. He was not dogmatic in this claim, however; when new evidence came to light, he included in a later edition an appendix describing a skeleton that he freely admitted was an "instance of a fossil human petrifaction". The harshness of his criticism and

15625-774: Was very active in founding the Parisian Biblical Society in 1818, where he later served as a vice president. From 1822 until his death in 1832, Cuvier was Grand Master of the Protestant Faculties of Theology of the French University. Cuvier was critical of theories of evolution, in particular those proposed by his contemporaries Lamarck and Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, which involved the gradual transmutation of one form into another. He repeatedly emphasized that his extensive experience with fossil material indicated one fossil form does not, as

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