The 4th edition of Meyers Konversationslexikon (Leipzig, 1885-1890) shows the "Caucasian race" (in blue) as comprising "Aryans", "Semites" and "Hamites". "Aryans" are further sub-divided into "European Aryans" and "Indo-Aryans" (the latter corresponding to the group now designated Indo-Iranians). Adjacent to the "Caucasians" are the "Sudan-Negroes" to the south (shown in brown), the Dravidians in India (shown in green) and Asians to the east (shown in yellow, subsuming the peoples now grouped under Ural-Altaic (light yellow) and Sino-Tibetan (solid yellow)).

The Caucasian race, sometimes the Caucasoid race, is a term of racial classification, coined around 1800 by Johann Friedrich Blumenbach for the "white" race of mankind, which he derived from the region of the Caucasus.^[1] It was thus in use as denoting populations of Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, and parts of Central and South Asia, or more narrowly people of European origin.^[2] The concept's existence is based on the now obsolete typological method of racial classification.^[3][4]

Origins of the term

The term Caucasian originated as one of the racial categories recognized by 19th century craniology and is derived from the region of the Caucasus mountains^[5].The concept of a "Caucasian race" or Varietas Caucasia was first proposed under those names by the German scientist and classical anthropologist, Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (1752-1840).^[5] His studies based the classification of the Caucasian race primarily on skull features, which Blumenbach claimed were optimized by the Caucasian Peoples.^[6] Blumenbach writes:

Caucasian variety - I have taken the name of this variety from Mount Caucasus, both because its neighborhood, and especially its southern slope, produces the most beautiful race of men, I mean the Georgian; and because all physiological reasons converge to this, that in that region, if anywhere, it seems we ought with the greatest probability to place the autochthones (birth place) of mankind.^[7]

The Caucasus was historically an area of fascination for Europeans; Prometheus and Jason and the Argonauts were myths featured in the Caucasus.^[8] Greek mythology considered women from the Caucasus to have magical powers.^[9] In Greek mythology, this area was thought of as a kind of hell since Zeus imprisoned many Titans who opposed him (e.g. Prometheus) there.

Physical anthropology

The famed exemplary Georgian skull Blumenbach discovered in 1795 to hypothesize origination of Europeans from the Caucasus.

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

19th century classifications of the peoples of India considered the Dravidians of non-Caucasoid stock, as "Australoid" (Thomas Huxley 1865) or a separate "Dravida" race (Edgar Thurston) and assumed a gradient of miscegenation of high-caste Caucasoid "Aryans" and indigenous Dravidians. Carleton S. Coon in his 1939 The Races of Europe classifies the Dravidians as Caucasoid as well, due to their "Caucasiod skull structure" and other physical traits (e.g. noses, eyes, hair), in his 1969 The Living Races of Man stating that "India is the easternmost outpost of the Caucasian racial region".

With the turn away from racial theory in the late 20th century, the term Caucasian as a racial classification fell into disuse in Europe. Thus, in the United Kingdom, Caucasian is more likely than in the United States to describe people from the Caucasus, although it may still be used as a racial classification.^[11]

Sarah A Tishkoff and Kenneth K Kidd state, "Despite disagreement among anthropologists, this classification remains in use by many researchers, as well as lay people."^[12] According to Leonard Lieberman, Rodney C. Kirk, and Alice Littlefield, the concept of race has all but been completely rejected by modern mainstream anthropology.^[13]

The United States National Library of Medicine used the term Caucasian as a race in the past, but has discontinued its usage in favor of the term "European".^[14]

United States

In the United States, Caucasian has been mainly a distinction, based on skin color, for a group commonly called White Americans, as defined by the government and Census Bureau.^[15]

Between 1917 and 1965, immigration to the USA was restricted by "national origins quota". The Supreme Court in United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind (1923) decided Indians were not Caucasian, because most common people did not consider them to be Caucasian.

Notes

References

Literature

• Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, On the Natural Varieties of Mankind (1775) — the book that introduced the concept
• — a history of the pseudoscience of race, skull measurements, and IQ inheritability
• — a major reference of modern population genetics

See also

• Scientific racism
• Craniofacial anthropometry
• Race and genetics
• Race (U.S. Census)
• Race (historical definitions)
• Caucasian peoples
• White people
• European people
• White American
• European American

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