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

Origin of the word "Caucasian"

According to Leonti Mroveli, the 11th century Georgian chronicler, the word Caucasian is derived from Vainakh ancestor Kavkas.^[4] "The Vainakhs, as it is already known to the reader, are the ancient natives of the Caucasus. It is noteworthy, that according to the genealogical table drawn up by Leonti Mroveli, the legendary forefather of the Vainakhs was “Kavkas”, hence the name Kavkasians, one of the ethnicons met in the ancient Georgian written sources, signifying the ancestors of the Chechens and Ingush. As appears from the above, the Vainakhs, at least by name, are presented as the most “Caucasian” people of all the Caucasians (Caucasus - Kavkas - Kavkasians) in the Georgian historical tradition."^[5][6]

Origin of the concept

The term "Caucasian race" was coined by the German philosopher Christoph Meiners in his The Outline of History of Mankind (1785).^[7] In Meiners' unique racial classification, there were only two racial divisions (Racen): Caucasians and Mongolians. These terms were used as a collective representation of what he personally regarded as either good looking or less attractive, based solely on facial appearance. For example, he considered Germans and Tatars more attractive, and thus Caucasian, while he found Jews, Slavs and Africans less attractive, and thus Mongolian.^[8]

This racial classification did not receive much support. However, in 1795, a colleague of Meiners from the University of Göttingen, Blumenbach, one of the earliest anthropologists, adopted the term Varietas Caucasia ("Caucasian Variety"), for a new major hypothetical racial division.^[9] Blumenbach named it after the Caucasian peoples (from the Southern Caucasus region), whom he considered to be the archetype for the grouping.^[10][11] Unlike Meiners, Blumenbach based his classification of the Caucasian race primarily on craniology after deciding that there was more to racial difference than skin pigmentation.^[12][13] "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." - Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, The anthropological treatises of Johann Friedrich Blumenbach 1865.

Relation to White Race

In his earlier racial typology, Meiners maintained that Caucasians had the "whitest, most blooming and most delicate skin".^[14] Europeans with darker skin he considered to be "dirty whites", admixed with Mongolian. Such views were typical of pre-anthropological attempts at racial classification, where skin pigmentation was regarded as the main difference between races. Meiners's view was shared by the French naturalist Julien-Joseph Virey, who believed that the Caucasians were only the palest-skinned Europeans.^[15]

The earliest anthropologists, such as Blumenbach however came to recognize that skin pigmentation within European populations differed, without explaining it with the obsolete idea of admixture with another race. Thus Blumenbach, in the 3rd edition of his On the Natural Variety of Mankind, recognized that poorer European people (such as peasants) whom he observed generally worked outside, often became darker skinned ("browner") through sun exposure.^[16] He also came to realize that darker skin of an "olive-tinge" was a natural feature of some European populations closer to the Mediterranean Sea.^[17] Alongside the anthropologist Georges Cuvier, Blumenbach classified the Caucasian race by cranial measurements and bone morphology rather than prioritizing skin pigmentation, and thus considered more than just the palest Europeans ("white, cheeks rosy") as archetypes for the Caucasian race.^[18]

Physical anthropology

Blumenbach owned the greatest contemporary collection of human skulls, 245 whole skulls and fragments and two mummies. Drawing from Petrus Camper's theory of facial angle, Blumenbach and Cuvier classified races, through their skull collections based on their cranial features and anthropometric measurements. Caucasian traits were recognised as: thin nasal aperture ("nose narrow"), a small mouth, facial angle of 100°-90°, and orthognathism, exemplified by what Blumenbach saw in most ancient Greek crania and statues.^[19][20] Later anthropologists of the 19th and early 20th century such as Pritchard, Pickering, Broca, Topinard, Morton, Peschel, Seligman, Bean, Ripley, Haddon and Dixon came to recognise other Caucasian morphological features, such as prominent supraorbital ridges and a sharp nasal sill.^[21] Some anthropologists in the latter half of the 20th century, used the term "Caucasoid" in their literature, such as Boyd, Gates, Coon, Cole, Brues and Krantz replacing the earlier term "Caucasian" as it had fallen out of usage.^[22]

The physical traits of Caucasoid crania are still recognised as distinct (in contrast to Mongoloid and Negroid races) within modern forensic anthropology. A Caucasoid skull is identified, with an accuracy of up to 95%, by the following features:^{[23][24][25][26][27]}

• Little or no prognathism exhibited—an orthognathic profile, with minimal protrusion of the lower face.
• Retreating zygomatic bones (cheekbones), making the face look more "pointed".
• Narrow nasal aperture, with a tear-shaped nasal cavity.

Other physical characteristics of Caucasoids include hair texture that varies from straight to curly,^[3] with wavy (cymotrichous) hair most typical on average according to Coon (1962), in contrast to the Negroid and Mongoloid races. Individual hairs are also rarely as sparsely distributed and coarse as found in Mongoloids.^[3]

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

Classification

Conceived as one of the great races, alongside Mongoloid and Negroid, it was taken to consist of a number of "subraces". The Caucasoid peoples were usually divided in three groups on linguistic grounds, termed Aryan (Indo-European), Semitic (Semitic languages) and Hamitic (Berber-Cushitic-Egyptian).

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

19th century classifications of the peoples of India considered the Dravidians of non-Caucasoid stock as Australoid or a separate Dravida race, and assumed a gradient of miscegenation of high-caste Caucasoid Aryans and indigenous Dravidians. In his 1939 The Races of Europe, Carleton S. Coon thus described the Veddoid race as "possess[ing] an obvious relationship with the aborigines of Australia, and possibly a less patent one with the Negritos" and as "the most important element in the Dravidian-speaking population of southern India".^[28] In his later The Living Races of Man (1965), Coon considerably amended his views, acknowledging that "India is the easternmost outpost of the Caucasoid racial region". However, he still recognized an Australoid substrate throughout the subcontinent, writing that "the earliest peoples who have left recognizable survivors were both Caucasoid and Australoid food gatherers. Some of the survivors are largely Caucasoid; others are largely Australoid."^[29]

There was no universal consensus of the validity of the "Caucasian" grouping within those who attempted to categorize human variation. Thomas Henry Huxley in 1870 wrote that the "absurd denomination of 'Caucasian'" was in fact a conflation of his Xanthochroi and Melanochroi types.^[30]

In 1920, H. G. Wells referred to the Mediterranean race as the Iberian race. He regarded it as a fourth subrace of the Caucasian race, along with the Aryan, Semitic, and Hamitic subraces. He stated that the main ethnic group that most purely represented the racial stock of the Iberian race was the Basques, and that the Basques were the descendants of the Cro-Magnons.^[31]

Origin

Anthropologists generally consider the Cro-Magnons to be the earliest or "proto" representatives of the Caucasoid race, who emerged during the Upper Paleolithic. In a study of Cro-Magnon crania, Jantz and Owsley (2003) have noted that: "Upper Paleolithic crania are, for the most part, larger and more generalized versions of recent Europeans."^[32]

William Howells (1997) has pointed out that Cro-Magnons were Caucasoid based on their cranial traits:

"...the Cro-Magnons were already racially European, i.e., Caucasoid. This has always been accepted because of the general appearance of the skulls: straight faces, narrow noses, and so forth. It is also possible to test this arithmetically. [...] Except for Predmosti 4, which is distant from every present and past population, all of these skulls show themselves to be closer to "Europeans" than to other peoples — Mladec and Abri Pataud comfortably so, the other two much more remotely."^[33]

Proponents of the multiregional origin of modern humans argue that Caucasoid traits emerged prior to the Cro-Magnon, in the Skhul and Qafzeh hominids or Neanderthals. Carleton Coon (1962) for example considered the Skhul IV specimen as a proto-Caucasoid.^[34] He further argued that the Caucasoid race is of dual origin, consisting of Upper Paleolithic (mixture of H. sapiens and neanderthalensis) types and Mediterranean (purely H. sapiens) types.

Medical sciences

In the medical sciences, where response to pharmaceuticals and other treatment can vary dramatically based on ethnicity,^[35][36] there is great debate as to whether racial categorizations as broad as Caucasian are medically valid.^[37][38] Several journals (e.g. Nature Genetics, Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, and the British Medical Journal) have issued guidelines stating that researchers should carefully define their populations and avoid broad-based social constructions, because these categories are more likely to be measuring differences in socioeconomic class and access to medical treatment that disproportionately affect minority groups, rather than racial differences.^[39] Nevertheless, there are journals (e.g. the Journal of Gastroentorology and Hepatology and Kidney International) that continue to use racial categories such as Caucasian.^[35][40]

Usage in the United States

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

In the United States, the term Caucasian has been mainly used to describe a group commonly called Whites, as defined by the government and Census Bureau.^[41] Between 1917 and 1965, immigration to the US was restricted by a national origins quota. The Supreme Court in United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind (1923) decided that Asian Indians 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 decision represented something of a contradiction because the court had itself equated "white persons" with "Caucasian" in the earlier Ozawa v. United States case, wherein it had declared skin colour irrelevant in determining whether or not a person could be classified as "white" and instead emphasized ancestry. In 1946, the U.S. Congress passed a new law establishing 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 restrictions on immigration from South Asia were finally lifted.^[42]

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.^[43]

See also

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

Diaspora

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

Notes

References

Literature

• Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, On the Natural Varieties of Mankind (1775) — the book that introduced the concept
• Gould, Stephen Jay (1981). The mismeasure of man. New York: Norton. ISBN 0-393-01489-4. — a history of the pseudoscience of race, skull measurements, and IQ inheritability
• Piazza, Alberto; Cavalli-Sforza, L. L.; Menozzi, Paolo (1996). The history and geography of human genes. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-02905-9.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) — a major reference of modern population genetics
• Cavalli-Sforza, LL (2000). Genes, peoples and languages. London: Allen Lane. ISBN 0-7139-9486-X.
• Augstein, HF (1999). "From the Land of the Bible to the Caucasus and Beyond". In Harris, Bernard; Ernst, Waltraud (ed.). Race, science and medicine, 1700–1960. New York: Routledge. pp. 58–79. ISBN 0-415-18152-6.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: editors list (link)
• Baum, Bruce (2006). The rise and fall of the Caucasian race: a political history of racial identity. New York: New York University Press. ISBN 0-8147-9892-6.
• Guthrie, Paul (1999). The Making of the Whiteman: From the Original Man to the Whiteman. Chicago, IL: Research Associates School Times. ISBN 0-948390-49-2.
• Wolf, Eric R.; Cole, John N. (1999). The Hidden Frontier: Ecology and Ethnicity in an Alpine Valley. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-21681-4.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)

External links

•  Reynolds, Francis J., ed. (1921). "Caucasian race" . Collier's New Encyclopedia. New York: P. F. Collier & Son Company.