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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Caucasian race | 1/4 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caucasian_race | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T09:17:56.351278+00:00 | kb-cron |
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 the historical race classifications was being used, usually included ancient and modern populations from Europe, Western Asia, North Africa, South Asia, and some parts of Central Asia 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 humans (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 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, the root term Caucasian is still in use as a synonym for people considered "white" or of European, Middle Eastern, or North African ancestry as defined by the United States census. Currently, its continued usage as a racial descriptor has been criticized. The term also sees usage in other English-speaking countries like Australia.
== History of the concept ==
=== Caucasus as the origin of humanity and the peak of beauty === 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 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 Georgians; 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.
=== Göttingen school of history ===
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 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. As a supporter of the polygenist theory of human origins, he subscribed to a "binary [greater] racial scheme" of superior Caucasians and inferior Mongoloids in which he did not include Jews as Caucasians and to whom he ascribed a "permanently degenerate nature". Using a "bundle of notions" led to creations of purported subraces on a continental and state basis with implied decreased respective scientific weight. Meiners' term was given wider circulation in the 1790s by many people. Other members of the Göttingen school of history would make the addition of Negroids.
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 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 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. He ultimately 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. This usage later grew into the widely used color terminology for race, contrasting with the terms Negroid, Mongoloid, and Australoid.