The Caucasian race (also Caucasoid is a grouping of human
beings historically regarded as a biological taxon, Including Some Or All Of
The Populations Of Europe, North Africa, The Horn Of Africa, Western Asia, Central
Asia And South Asia.
THE TERM HAS BEEN USED IN BIOLOGICAL ANTHROPOLOGY FOR MANY
PEOPLE FROM THESE REGIONS, WITHOUT REGARD NECESSARILY TO SKIN TONE
First
introduced in early racial science and anthropometry, the term was formerly
Used To Denote One Of The Three Purported Major Races (Caucasoid, Mongoloid
(not as formerly denoted a mentally retarded person. This used to be
used to denote people with Down's syndrome, and now is just generally
derogatory), Negroid) Of Humankind. Although
its validity and utility are disputed by many anthropologists, Caucasoid as a
biological classification remains in limited use in forensic anthropology.
The term "Caucasian race" was coined by the German
philosopher Christoph Meiners in his The Outline of History of Mankind
(1785).[page needed] Meiners' term was given wider circulation in the 1790's by
Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, a German professor of medicine and member of the
British Royal Society,
Meiners put forth that Caucasians had the "whitest,
most blooming and most delicate skin". In a series of articles, Meiners
boasts about the superiority of Germans among Europeans, and describes
non-German Europeans' colour as "dirty whites", in an unfavourable
comparison with Germans. SUCH VIEWS WERE TYPICAL OF EARLY SCIENTIFIC ATTEMPTS
AT RACIAL CLASSIFICATION, WHERE SKIN PIGMENTATION WAS REGARDED AS THE MAIN
DIFFERENCE BETWEEN RACES. THIS VIEW WAS SHARED BY THE FRENCH NATURALIST
JULIEN-JOSEPH VIREY, WHO BELIEVED THAT THE CAUCASIANS WERE ONLY THE
PALEST-SKINNED EUROPEANS.
IN VARIOUS EDITIONS OF ON THE NATURAL VARIETY OF MANKIND,
BLUMENBACH EXPANDED ON MEINERS' POPULAR IDEA AND DEFINED FIVE HUMAN RACES BASED
ON COLOUR, USING POPULAR RACIAL TERMS OF HIS DAY, JUSTIFIED WITH SCIENTIFIC
TERMINOLOGY, CRANIAL MEASUREMENTS, AND FACIAL FEATURES.
HE ESTABLISHED CAUCASIAN AS THE "WHITE RACE," AS
WELL AS MONGOLOID AS THE "YELLOW RACE," MALAYAN THE "BROWN
RACE," ETHIOPIAN THE "BLACK RACE," AMERICAN THE "RED
RACE."
In the 3rd edition of his On the Natural Variety of Mankind,
Blumenbach moved skin tone to second-tier importance after noticing that poorer
European people (such as peasants) whom he observed generally worked outside
often became darker skinned ("browner") through sun exposure. He also
noticed that darker skin of an "olive-tinge" was a natural feature of
some European populations closer to the Mediterranean Sea.
ALONGSIDE THE
ANTHROPOLOGIST GEORGES CUVIER, BLUMENBACH CLASSIFIED THE CAUCASIAN RACE BY
CRANIAL MEASUREMENTS AND BONE MORPHOLOGY IN ADDITION TO SKIN PIGMENTATION, AND
THUS CONSIDERED MORE THAN JUST THE PALEST EUROPEANS ("WHITE, CHEEKS
ROSY") AS ARCHETYPES FOR THE CAUCASIAN RACE.~~Al (Alex-Alexander) D Girvan.
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