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The Caucasian race (sometimes called the Caucasoid race) is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as, "relating to a broad division of humankind covering peoples from Europe, the Middle East, South Asia and North Africa" or "white-skinned; of European origin" or "relating to the region of the Caucasus in SE Europe." The concept's existence is based on the now discredited typological method of racial classification.

In Europe (especially in Russia and the surrounding area), Caucasian usually refers exclusively to people who are from the Caucasus region or speak the Caucasian languages.

Origins of the term and concept

The term Caucasian originated as one of the racial categories recognised by 19th century craniology and is derived from the region of the Caucasus mountains.It has various meanings.

Caucasoid race is a term used in physical anthropology to refer to people of a certain range of anthropometric measurements . 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). His studies based the classification of the Caucasian race primarily on skull features, which Blumenbach claimed were optimized by the Caucasian Peoples. 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.

Populations, formerly called "varieties," are no longer distinguished by Latin names, according to the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature.

The Caucasus was historically an area of fascination for Europeans. Prometheus and Jason and the Argonauts were myths featured in the Caucasus. Greek mythology considered women from the Caucasus to have magical powers. 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.

Another reason the Caucasus had such an attraction to Blumenbach and other contemporaries was because of its proximity to Mount Ararat, the tallest peak in Anatolia, where, according to the Biblical account, Noah's Ark eventually landed after the flood. The tribe of Japheth was supposed to have originated in the Caucasus, then spread north and westwards. Historically, the Russian borderlands of the Caucasus and Georgia were a source of sex slaves for Middle Eastern and Mediterranean peoples.

For Blumenbach the beauty of the slave women from the Caucasus came to associate the word Caucasian with "enslaved embodiments of vulnerability". Blumenbach was enthralled by the beauty he claimed to see in exemplary Georgian skulls, so he named his racial type after the famed beauty of the Caucasian peoples. After Blumenbach's time, the term Caucasian was no longer associated with peoples from the Caucasus but continued to be used as a racial indicator.

With the development of racial theory the term Caucasoid (Caucasian-like) also came into use to encompass a larger grouping of populations with similar skull-shapes, including many North African, South Asian and Middle Eastern peoples. Carleton Coon did not use the term Caucasian and Caucasoid interchangeably. He used the term "Caucasian" or "Caucasic" to reference the subdivision of Caucasoids located around the Caucasus.

Later uses of the term

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 refer to people from the Caucasus, although it may still be used as a racial classification.

In New Zealand, the terms more commonly used to describe white people are Pākehā or "European New Zealander". In Australia the more common terms are White or Anglo-Celtic or Anglo-Saxon Australian; also despite "Aussie" being a generic term, it is sometimes applied to white Australians with the intent of excluding other Australians (Used by both those who are classed as "Aussies" and those that aren't).

United States

In the United States, "Caucasian" has primarily been used as a distinction based on skin color, for a group commonly referred to as White Americans, as defined by the government and Census Bureau. In the past, the court case United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind (1923) found persons of Subcontinental Indian origin to be Caucasian in race, but they are currently classified as Asian-Indian.

Caucasoid

In 1934, Carleton S. Coon redefined Caucasian race as Caucasoid race based on typology.

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." According to Leonard Lieberman, Rodney C. Kirk, and Alice Littlefield, the concept of race has all but been completely rejected by modern mainstream anthropology.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines Caucasoid as as noun or adjective meaning Of, pertaining to, or resembling the Caucasian race. The suffix -oid can indicate "a similarity, not necessarily exact, to something else", so Caucasoid can mean "resembling" the Caucasian race, itself a term with an inexact definition. Likewise, it can mean pertaining to or belonging to the Caucasian race.

In the past, the United States National Library of Medicine used the term Caucasoid as a "racial stock". The "racial stock" categorization scheme was replaced in 2004 with Continental Population Groups which focuses on geographic origins.

See also

• Caucasian-American
• Caucasian peoples
• Craniofacial anthropometry
• Scientific racism
• Caucasus
• European
• Languages of the Caucasus
• Race (U.S. Census)
• White American
• White people
• Race and genetics
• European American
• European people

Books

• Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, On the Natural Varieties of Mankind (1775) — the book that introduced the concept
• Stephen Jay Gould, The Mismeasure of Man — a history of the pseudoscience of race, skull measurements, and IQ inheritability
• L. Luca Cavalli-Sforza, The History and Geography of Human Genes — a major reference of modern population genetics
• L. Luca Cavalli-Sforza, Genes, Peoples, and Languages
• H. F. Augstein, "From the Land of the Bible to the Caucasus and Beyond," in Waltraud Emst and B. Harris, Race, Science and Medicine, 1700-1960 (London: Routledge, 1999): 58-79.
• Bruce Baum, The Rise and Fall of the Caucasian Race: A Political History of Racial Identity (New York: New York University Press, 2006)
• Paul Lawrence Guthrie, The Making of the Whiteman: From the Original Man to the Whiteman (Paperback), ISBN 0-948390-49-2

Footnotes

1. http://www.askoxford.com/concise_oed/caucasian?view=uk
2. O'Neil, Dennis. "Biological Anthropology Terms." 2006. May 13, 2007. Palomar College.
3. University of Pennsylvania
4. Reinhard, K.J., & Hastings, D. (Annual 2003) Learning from the ancestors: the value of skeletal study.(study of ancestors of Omaha Tribe of Nebraska). In American Journal of Physical Anthropology, p177(1).
5. University of Pennsylvania
6. ^ Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, The anthropological treatises of Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, translated by Thomas Bendyshe. 1865. November 2, 2006.
7. ^ Painter, Nell Irvin. Yale University. Collective Degradation:Slavery and the Construction of Race. Why White People are Called Caucasian. 2003. October 9, 2006.
8. Caucasus, Historical Notes
9. Coon, Carleton. The Races of Europe. ChapterXII. August 8, 2006.
10. Katsiavriades, Kryss. Qureshi, Talaat. English Usage in the UK and USA. 1997. October 26, 2006. ; see also Pearsell, Judy and Trumble, Bill (Eds) Oxford English Reference Dictionary. 2002.
11. BBC News - Long-term tensions behind Sydney riots.
12. Tishkoff, S. A., and Kidd, K. K. Implications of biogeography of human populations for 'race' and medicine: Nature Genetics, 36, S21 - S27 (2004)  
13. http://www.nature.com/ng/journal/v36/n11s/full/ng1438.html
14. Leonard Lieberman, Rodney C. Kirk, and Alice Littlefield, "Perishing Paradigm: Race—1931-99," American Anthropologist 105, no. 1 (2003): 110-13
15. http://dictionary.oed.com/cgi/entry/50034773?single=1&query_type=word&queryword=Caucasoid&first=1&max_to_show=10
16. http://www.bartleby.com/64/C008/037.html
17. http://www.nlm.nih.gov/pubs/techbull/nd03/nd03_med_data_changes.html

References

• Leroi A., M. (2005) A Family Tree in Every Gene. The New York Times,, 14 March, p.A23.reproduced in Race and Genomics.
• Lewonin, R. C. (2005). Confusions About Human Races from Race and Genomics, Social Sciences Research Council. Retrieved 28 December 2006.
• Risch, N., Burchard, E., Ziv, E. and Tang, H. (2002). "Categorization of humans in biomedical research: genes, race and disease". Genome Biology. 3 (7): comment2007.2001 - comment2007.2012. {{cite journal}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |month= (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
• Rosenberg NA, Pritchard JK, Weber JL, Cann HM, Kidd KK, et al. (2002) Genetic structure of human populations. Science 298: 2381–2385.Abstract
• Rosenberg NA, Mahajan S, Ramachandran S, Zhao C, Pritchard JK, et al. (2005) Clines, Clusters, and the Effect of Study Design on the Inference of Human Population Structure. PLoS Genet 1(6): e70 doi:10.1371/journal.pgen.0010070
• Templeton, A.R. (1998). Human races: A genetic and evolutionary perspective. Am. Anthropol. 100, 632–650.Partial access to article. Retrieved 01 January 2007.
• Camberg, Kim (2005-12-13). "Long-term tensions behind Sydney riots". The BBC. Retrieved 2007-03-03.

• Race
• Race (historical definitions)
• Physical anthropology