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69-516: 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 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,

138-526: 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

207-487: 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

276-564: 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 Government lawyers later recognized that the Supreme Court had "withdrawn" this approval in Thind .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

345-586: A country as the result of a revolution against them, such as the French Revolution . The term aristocracy derives from the Greek ἀριστοκρατία ( aristokratia from ἄριστος ( aristos ) 'excellent' and κράτος ( kratos ) 'power'). In most cases, aristocratic titles were and are hereditary. The term aristokratia was first used in Athens with reference to young citizens (the men of

414-431: 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on the emerging genetics to classify humans, the debate over Origin of Races has been "viewed as the last gasp of an outdated scientific methodology that was soon to be supplanted."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

483-546: 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

552-399: 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

621-470: 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 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

690-837: 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

759-407: 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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828-406: 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

897-533: 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,

966-533: 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

1035-485: 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 , 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

1104-402: A term for race was first introduced in 1785 by Christoph Meiners , 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

1173-576: Is a compound word stemming from the singular of aristoi , aristos ( ἄριστος ), and the Greek word for power, kratos ( κράτος ). From the ancient Greeks, the term passed to the European Middle Ages for a similar hereditary class of military leaders, often referred to as the nobility . As in Greece, this was a class of privileged men and women whose familial connections to

1242-519: 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

1311-646: 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

1380-739: Is so gradual that the distinctions between 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

1449-623: 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 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

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1518-554: 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

1587-570: 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

1656-676: 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

1725-745: 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"),

1794-556: 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

1863-459: The biblical story of Adam and Eve or on secular research. Since polygenism stressed 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...

1932-494: 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

2001-538: 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

2070-564: 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,

2139-491: 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 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

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2208-786: The Australian as a secondary race (subrace) of 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

2277-760: 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

2346-473: The European Finns , among whom he includes 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

2415-615: The Mongolians from the Orangs ". During the 19th century, diverging opinions were pronounced whether Native Americans or Malays should be included in 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

2484-528: 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

2553-526: 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

2622-518: 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, the Indian peninsula, and North Africa. This usage later grew into the widely used color terminology for race , contrasting with

2691-487: The aristocracy included the upper class of people (aristocrats) with hereditary rank and titles. In some, such as ancient Greece , ancient Rome , or India , aristocratic status came from belonging to a military class. It has also been common, notably in African and Oriental societies, for aristocrats to belong to priestly dynasties. Aristocratic status can involve feudal or legal privileges. They are usually below only

2760-551: 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,

2829-660: 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,

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2898-498: 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

2967-537: 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

3036-616: 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

3105-618: The historical race classifications was being used, usually included ancient and modern populations from all or parts of Europe , Western Asia , Central Asia , South Asia , North Africa , and the Horn of Africa . 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

3174-458: The monarch of a country or nation in its social hierarchy . In modern European societies, the aristocracy has often coincided with the nobility , a specific class that arose in the Middle Ages , but the term "aristocracy" is sometimes also applied to other elites , and is used as a more general term when describing earlier and non-European societies. Aristocracy may be abolished within

3243-541: 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

3312-430: 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

3381-593: 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

3450-550: 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

3519-492: 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

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3588-438: The ruling class) who led armies at the front line. Aristokratia roughly translates to "rule of the best born". Due to martial bravery being highly regarded as a virtue in ancient Greece , it was assumed that the armies were being led by "the best". This virtue was called arete ( ἀρετή ). Etymologically, as the word developed, it also produced a more political term: aristoi ( ἄριστοι ). The term aristocracy

3657-432: 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

3726-621: 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,

3795-643: 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

3864-636: 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 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

3933-420: 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

4002-436: 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. Aristocrat The aristocracy is historically associated with a "hereditary" or a "ruling" social class . In many states,

4071-501: The term Mongolian for his division of humanity into five races in 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

4140-941: 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

4209-466: 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 the Ainu people , under the Caucasoid label. However, many scientists maintained

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4278-441: 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

4347-659: 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

4416-452: 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 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

4485-407: 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 the transition from one race to another is so gradual that the distinctions between the races presented by him are "very arbitrary". Alongside

4554-421: Was brought about both by scientific and medical experts as well as people of Asian ancestry, including those from Mongolia. Caucasoid The Caucasian race (also Caucasoid , Europid , or Europoid ) is an obsolete racial classification of humans based on a now-disproven theory of biological race. The Caucasian race was historically regarded as a biological taxon which, depending on which of

4623-592: 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

4692-413: 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, 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

4761-436: 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 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

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