Since the 17th century, science has put forward a number of classifications of human races. Today their number reaches 15. However, all classifications are based on three racial pillars or three large races: Negroid, Caucasoid and Mongoloid with many subspecies and branches. Some anthropologists add to them the Australoid and Americanoid races.
Racial trunks
According to molecular biology and genetics, the division of humanity into races occurred about 80 thousand years ago.
First, two trunks emerged: Negroid and Caucasoid-Mongoloid, and 40-45 thousand years ago, differentiation of proto-Caucasoids and proto-Mongoloids occurred.
Scientists believe that the origins of races originate in the Paleolithic era, although the massive process of modification swept humanity only from the Neolithic: it was during this era that the Caucasoid type crystallized.
The process of race formation continued during migration primitive people from continent to continent. Thus, anthropological data show that the ancestors of the Indians, who moved to the American continent from Asia, were not yet fully formed Mongoloids, and the first inhabitants of Australia were “racially neutral” neoanthropes.
What does genetics say?
Today, questions of the origin of races are largely the prerogative of two sciences - anthropology and genetics. The first, based on human bone remains, reveals the diversity of anthropological forms, and the second tries to understand the connections between a set of racial characteristics and the corresponding set of genes.
However, there is no agreement among geneticists. Some adhere to the theory of uniformity of the entire human gene pool, others argue that each race has a unique combination of genes. However, recent studies rather indicate that the latter are right.
The study of haplotypes confirmed the connection between racial characteristics and genetic characteristics.
It has been proven that certain haplogroups are always associated with specific races, and other races cannot obtain them except through the process of racial mixing.
In particular, Stanford University professor Luca Cavalli-Sforza, based on an analysis of “genetic maps” of European settlement, pointed out significant similarities in the DNA of the Basques and Cro-Magnon. The Basques managed to preserve their genetic uniqueness largely due to the fact that they lived on the periphery of migration waves and were practically not subject to crossbreeding.
Two hypotheses
Modern science relies on two hypotheses of the origin of human races - polycentric and monocentric.
According to the theory of polycentrism, humanity is the result of a long and independent evolution of several phyletic lineages.
Thus, the Caucasoid race formed in Western Eurasia, the Negroid race in Africa, and the Mongoloid race in Central and East Asia.
Polycentrism involves the crossing of representatives of proto-races at the borders of their areas, which led to the emergence of small or intermediate races: for example, such as the South Siberian (a mixture of Caucasoid and Mongoloid races) or the Ethiopian (a mixture of Caucasoid and Negroid races).
From the standpoint of monocentrism modern races appeared from one area of the globe during the settlement of neoanthropes, which subsequently spread across the planet, displacing more primitive paleoanthropes.
The traditional version of the settlement of primitive people insists that the human ancestor came out of Southeast Africa. However, the Soviet scientist Yakov Roginsky expanded the concept of monocentrism, suggesting that the habitat of the ancestors of Homo sapiens extended beyond the African continent.
Recent research by scientists from the Australian National University in Canberra has completely cast doubt on the theory of a common African ancestor of humans.
Thus, DNA tests on an ancient fossilized skeleton, about 60 thousand years old, found near Lake Mungo in New South Wales, showed that Australian Aboriginal has no relation to the African hominid.
The theory of multiregional origin of races, according to Australian scientists, is much closer to the truth.
An unexpected ancestor
If we agree with the version that the common ancestor of at least the population of Eurasia came from Africa, then the question arises about its anthropometric characteristics. Was he similar to the current inhabitants of the African continent or did he have neutral racial characteristics?
Some researchers believe that the African species of Homo was closer to the Mongoloids. This is indicated by a number of archaic features inherent in the Mongoloid race, in particular, the structure of the teeth, which are more characteristic of Neanderthals and Homo erectus.
It is very important that the Mongoloid-type population is highly adaptable to various habitats: from equatorial forests to the Arctic tundra. But representatives of the Negroid race are largely dependent on increased solar activity.
For example, in high latitudes, children of the Negroid race experience a lack of vitamin D, which provokes a number of diseases, primarily rickets.
Therefore, a number of researchers doubt that our ancestors, similar to modern Africans, could have successfully migrated across the globe.
Northern ancestral home
IN Lately More and more researchers are declaring that the Caucasian race has little in common with the primitive man of the African plains and argue that these populations developed independently of each other.
Thus, the American anthropologist J. Clark believes that when representatives of the “black race” in the process of migration reached Southern Europe and Western Asia, they encountered there the more developed “white race”.
Researcher Boris Kutsenko hypothesizes that at the origins of modern humanity there were two racial trunks: Euro-American and Negroid-Mongoloid. According to him, the Negroid race comes from forms of Homo erectus, and the Mongoloid race comes from Sinanthropus.
Kutsenko considers the regions of the Arctic Ocean to be the birthplace of the Euro-American trunk. Based on data from oceanology and paleoanthropology, he suggests that global climate changes that occurred at the Pleistocene-Holocene boundary destroyed the ancient continent of Hyperborea. Part of the population from the territories that went under water migrated to Europe, and then to Asia and North America, the researcher concludes.
As evidence of the kinship of Caucasians and North American Indians Kutsenko refers to craniological indicators and characteristics of the blood groups of these races, which “almost completely coincide.”
Device
Phenotypes modern people, living in different parts planets, this is the result of long evolution. Many racial characteristics have obvious adaptive significance. For example, dark skin pigmentation protects people living in the equatorial belt from excessive exposure to ultraviolet rays, and the elongated proportions of their body increase the ratio of body surface to its volume, thereby facilitating thermoregulation in hot conditions.
In contrast to the inhabitants of low latitudes, the population of the northern regions of the planet, as a result of evolution, acquired predominantly light skin and hair color, which allowed them to receive more sunlight and meet the body's needs for vitamin D.
In the same way, the protruding “Caucasian nose” evolved to warm the cold air, and the epicanthus among the Mongoloids was formed as a protection for the eyes from dust storms and steppe winds.
Sexual selection
For ancient man it was important not to allow representatives of other ethnic groups into their area. This was a significant factor that contributed to the formation of racial characteristics, thanks to which our ancestors adapted to specific environmental conditions. Sexual selection played a big role in this.
Each ethnic group, focused on certain racial characteristics, consolidated its own ideas of beauty. Those who had these signs more clearly expressed had a greater chance of passing them on to inheritance.
While fellow tribesmen who did not meet the standards of beauty were practically deprived of the opportunity to influence their offspring.
For example, the Scandinavian peoples, from a biological point of view, have recessive characteristics - light-colored skin, hair and eyes - which, thanks to sexual selection that lasted for millennia, were formed into a stable form adaptive to the conditions of the north.
Striving to explain origin of human races goes back to ancient times. In particular, the ancient Greeks called the cause of the emergence of the black race Phaeton, the son of the sun god Helios, who flew too close to the ground in his father’s chariot and burned white people. The Bible traced the origin of human races to the skin color of the sons of Noah, whose offspring were people with different characteristics.
The first attempts to scientifically substantiate raceogenesis date back to the 17th-18th centuries. The first to propose their classifications were the French physician Francois Bernier in 1684 and the Swedish scientist Carl Linnaeus in 1746, who identified four races of people. Linnaeus based his classification on psychosomatic signs in addition to physiological ones.
The first who began to use skull parameters in the classification of races was the German scientist Johann Blumenbach, who in the 70s of the 18th century identified five races: Caucasian, Mongolian, American, African and Malay. He also relied on the then prevailing ideas about greater beauty and mental development white race compared to others.
In the 19th century, many more complex and ramified classifications appeared; researchers began to distinguish small races within large ones, most often focusing on cultural and language features. In this series are, for example, the classification of J. Virey, who divided the white and black races into their constituent tribes, or the classifications of J. Saint-Hilaire and T. Huxley, who identified four or five main and many minor races that constitute them.
In the 20th century, two main approaches to characterizing races and their classification dominated: typological and population. With the typological approach, the definition of race was carried out on the basis of stereotypes that were believed to be inherent to the entire race. It was believed that the races had some absolute differences. These differences were identified based on the descriptions of individual individuals. Among the typological classifications is the classification of I.E. Deniker, who was guided exclusively by biological characteristics and based his classification on hair type and eye color, thereby dividing humanity into six main groups, within which races were distinguished.
With the development of population genetics, the typological approach has shown its inconsistency. To a greater extent, the population approach is scientifically sound, considering not individual individuals, but groups of their populations. Classifications using this approach are based not on stereotypes, but on genetic traits. At the same time, many transitional races are distinguished, between which there are no absolute differences.
Basic hypotheses of the origin of races
There are several main hypotheses of the origin of human races: polycentrism (polyphyly), dicentrism and monocentrism (monophyly).
The hypothesis of polycentrism, one of the creators of which was the German anthropologist Franz Weidenreich, suggests the existence of four centers of origin of races: in East Asia (the center of the emergence of the Mongoloids), in South-East Asia(Australoids), Sub-Saharan Africa (Negroids) and Europe (Caucasoids).
This hypothesis was criticized and rejected as erroneous, since science does not know cases of the formation of one species of animals in different centers, but with the same evolutionary path.
The dicentrism hypothesis, advanced in the 1950s and 60s, offered two approaches to explaining the origins of races. According to the first, the center of formation of Caucasoids and Negroids was in Western Asia, and the center of formation of Mongoloids and Australoids was in Southeast Asia. From these centers, Caucasoids began to settle throughout Europe, Negroids - along the tropical belt, and Mongoloids initially settled in Asia, after which some of them went to the American continent. The second approach of the dicentrism hypothesis places the Caucasoid, Negroid and Australoid races in one trunk of raceogenesis, and the Mongoloid and Americanoid races in another.
Just like the polycentrism hypothesis, the dicentrism hypothesis was rejected by the scientific community for similar reasons.
The monocentrism hypothesis is based on the recognition of the same mental and physical level of all races and their origin from one common ancestor in one fairly extended place. Supporters of monocentrism attribute the region of race formation to the Eastern Mediterranean and Western Asia, from where human ancestors began to settle into other regions, gradually forming many smaller racial groups.
Stages of the origin of human races
Genetic studies date the exodus of modern humans from Africa to a period of 80-85 thousand years ago, and archaeological research confirms that already 40-45 thousand years ago people living outside Africa had certain racial differences. The formation of the first prerequisites for the formation of races, therefore, should have occurred in the period 80-40 thousand years ago.
V.P. Alekseev in 1985 identified four main stages in the origin of human races. He attributed the first stage to the time of formation modern man, that is, 200 thousand years ago. According to Alekseev, at the first stage, the formation of primary foci of race formation took place and two main trunks of race formation were formed: the western, which includes Caucasoids, Negroids and Australoids, and the eastern, which includes Mongoloids and Americanoids. At the second stage (15-20 thousand years ago), secondary centers of race formation emerged, and the formation of evolutionary branches began within the western and eastern racial trunks. Alekseev attributed the third stage to the period 10-12 thousand years ago, when the formation of local races began in tertiary centers of race formation. At the fourth stage (3-4 thousand years BC), the differentiation of races began to deepen and came to its modern state.
Factors of origin of human races
Natural selection had the greatest influence on the formation of human races. During the formation of races, such characteristics were fixed in populations that made it possible to better adapt to the conditions of the population’s habitat. For example, skin color affects the synthesis of vitamin D, which regulates calcium balance: the more melanin it contains, the more difficult it is for sunlight, which stimulates the production of vitamin D, to penetrate deep into the body. Thus, to get enough of the vitamin and have a normal balance of calcium in the body, people with lighter skin need to be further from the equator than people with dark skin.
The difference in facial features and body type among representatives of different races is also due to natural selection. It is generally accepted that the elongated nose of Caucasians evolved as a means of preventing hypothermia in the lungs. The flat nose of Negroids, on the contrary, contributes to better cooling of the air entering the lungs.
Other factors influencing the formation of human races are genetic drift, as well as isolation and mixing of populations. Thanks to genetic drift, the genetic structure of populations changes, which entails a slow change in the appearance of people.
Isolation of populations contributes to changes in the genetic composition within them. During isolation, the characteristics characteristic of the population at the beginning of isolation begin to be reproduced, as a result of which, over time, the differences in its appearance from the appearance of other populations will increase. This happened, for example, with the indigenous inhabitants of Australia, who developed separately from the rest of humanity for 20 thousand years.
The mixing of populations leads to an increase in the diversity of their genotypes, as a result of which a new race is formed. Nowadays, with the growth of the planet's population, the intensification of globalization processes, and the migration of people, the process of mixing of representatives of different races is also intensifying. The percentage of mixed marriages is increasing, and, according to many researchers, in the future this may lead to the formation of a single human race.
For more than a century, various expeditions of anthropologists have been working in various parts of the globe, studying the diversity of humankind. Tribes have been studied in the most inaccessible areas (in tropical forests, deserts, highlands, islands), and as a result, modern humanity has been studied in morphological and physiological terms, perhaps better than any other biological species. Research has revealed the exceptional diversity of physical and genotypic characteristics of human populations and their fine adaptation to living conditions. Research has also shown that although modern humanity belongs to one single species Homo sapiens, this type is polymorphic , since it forms several different intraspecific groups, which have long been called races.
Race(fr. race- “genus”, “breed”, “tribe”) is a historically established intraspecific grouping consisting of populations Homo sapiens, characterized by similarities in morphophysiological and mental properties. Each race is distinguished by a set of hereditarily determined characteristics. Among them: skin color, eyes, hair, features of the skull and soft parts of the face, body size, height, etc.
External features of the structure of the human body were the main criteria for dividing humanity into races.
Modern humanity is divided into three main races: Negroid, Mongoloid and Caucasian.
Races of man |
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Negroid race |
Mongoloid race |
Caucasian |
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There are two large branches - African and Australian: the blacks of West Africa, the Bushmen, the Pygmy Negritos, the Hottentots, the Melanesians and the aborigines of Australia |
indigenous people of Asia (with the exception of India) and America (from the northern Eskimos to the Indians of Tierra del Fuego) |
population of Europe, the Caucasus, southwest Asia, northern Africa, India, as well as the population of America |
Negroid race characterized by dark skin color, curly, spirally twisted hair (on the head and body), a wide and slightly protruding nose, and thick lips. The Negroid race includes the blacks of West Africa, Bushmen, Pygmy Negritos, Hottentots, Melanesians and aborigines of Australia. There are two large branches of the Negroid race - African and Australian. Groups of the Australian branch are characterized, in contrast to the African branch, by wavy hair type.
Mongoloid race characterized by dark or light skin, straight and rather coarse hair, a flattened face shape, prominent cheekbones, protruding lips, a narrow palpebral fissure, a strong development of the upper eyelid fold and the presence of an epicanthus, or “Mongolian fold.”
Epicanthus - a fold of skin in the area of the corner of a person’s eye, covering the lacrimal tubercle; It is especially strongly developed in children and women and occurs more often in women than in men.
The Mongoloid group includes all the indigenous populations of Asia (with the exception of India) and America. The Americanoids are distinguished as a special branch in the Mongoloid race, i.e. indigenous people of America (from northern Eskimos to Tierra del Fuego Indians). They differ from Asian Mongoloids in two features - significant protrusion of the nose and the absence of epicanthus, which brings them closer to Caucasians.
Caucasian characterized by light or dark skin, straight or wavy soft hair, a narrow protruding nose, light (blue) eye color, thin lips, a narrow and wide head. Caucasians inhabit Europe, the Caucasus, southwestern Asia, northern Africa, India and are part of the population of America.
Within each race distinguish small races , or subracess (anthropological types) . For example, the Caucasian group includes the Atlanto-Baltic, Indo-Mediterranean, Central European, Balkan-Caucasian and White Sea-Baltic. Within the Mongoloid - North Asian, Arctic, Far Eastern, South Asian and American. There are also several subraces within the Negroid race. According to the concept, which does not take into account origin, large races are divided into 22 small ones, some of which are transitional.
The very existence of transitional races testifies to the dynamism of racial characteristics. Transitional small races combine not only morphological characteristics, but also the genetic characteristics of large ones. Social factors and characteristics environment caused differences between races and their subraces in connection with human settlement around the globe.
Racial characteristics are hereditary, but at present they do not have significant significance for human life. Therefore, now representatives of different races often live in the same territory. But in the distant past, when there was still action social factors was small, of course, many of the characteristics characteristic of a particular race were an adaptation to certain physical, geographical and climatic conditions of the external environment and were developed under the influence of natural selection.
N For example, the dark coloring of the skin and hair of the inhabitants of the equatorial regions of the Earth arose as protection from the burning effect of the ultraviolet rays of the sun. The blacks of Africa have developed a high, elongated cranium, which is heated less than a round and low one. Curly hair, which creates an air layer around the head, has developed as protection against overheating when exposed to hot temperatures. sun rays; thick lips, a wide nose, and elongated body proportions with low weight emerged as ways to increase body surface area, useful for thermoregulation (heat loss) in hot climates. The type with wider body proportions relative to volume developed in climate conditions with significant negative temperatures. The flat face of the Mongoloids with a slightly protruding nose turned out to be useful in conditions of a sharply continental climate and strong winds; moreover, the smooth, streamlined surface is less susceptible to frostbite.
Many morphological characteristics of races serve as evidence that in race formation natural environment, its abiotic and biotic factors had a great influence. Like the entire living world, in man during the period of his formation, external conditions caused variability and the emergence of various adaptive properties, and natural selection preserved the most good options fitness. Adaptive properties of the race were manifested not only in appearance, but also in human physiology, for example, in the composition of the blood, the characteristics of fat deposition, and the activity of metabolic processes.
These differences arose in connection with the settlement of people in new habitats. It is believed that Homo sapiens formed off the eastern shores of the Mediterranean Sea and in northeastern Africa. From these areas, the first Cro-Magnons settled in Southern Europe, throughout South and East Asia up to Australia. Through the northeastern tip of Asia they came to America - first to the west of North America, from where they descended to South America.
Foci of race formation and ways of dispersal of races: 1 - the ancestral home of man and resettlement from it; 2—center of disorganization and dispersal of Australoids; 3 - center of race formation and settlement of Caucasians; 4—center of race formation and settlement of Negroids; 5 - center of race formation and settlement of Mongoloids; 6.7 - centers of race formation and settlement of Americanoids
Races began to form during the process of human settlement of different territories of the Earth about 40-70 thousand years ago, i.e., even at the stage of the early Cro-Magnon man. At that time, many racial characteristics had great adaptive significance and were fixed by natural selection in a certain geographical environment. However, with the development social relations(communication, speech, joint hunting, etc.), with the strengthening of social factors, the influence of the environment, as well as the pressure of natural selection, ceased to be a shaping force for humans. Despite the emergence of numerous racial differences in morphological and physiological characteristics, reproductive isolation between human races did not occur. There are also no differences between races in intellectual potential and mental abilities.
Active movement around the planet and the resulting joint settlements of many people in the same territories have shown that the isolation of human races, their morphological, physiological and mental differences as a result of mixed marriages is reduced and even lost. This serves as convincing confirmation of the unity of the species Homo sapiens and proof of the biological equivalence of all human races. Racial differences concern only the characteristics of morphology and physiology, but they are variations of the single heredity of man as a species.
Despite the diversity of races of modern man, they are all representatives of one single species. The presence of fertile marriages between people of different races confirms their genetic non-isolation, which indicates the integrity of the species. Unity of the species Homo sapiens is ensured by a common origin, an unlimited ability to interbreed between people of different races and ethnic groups, as well as the same level of their general physical and mental development.
All human races stand at the same biological level of development.
Among the variety of characteristics inherent in representatives different nations, scientists look for traits that are typical of large groups of the Earth's population. One of the first scientific classifications of population was proposed by C. Linnaeus. He identified four main groups of people, who are characterized by similarities in skin color, facial features, hair type, and the like. His contemporary Jean-Louis Buffon called them races (Arabic races - beginning, origin). Today, scientists define races not only by the similarity of hereditary features of appearance, but also by the origin of a particular group of people from a certain region of the Earth.
How many races are there on our planet??
Disputes around this issue have continued since the times of C. Linnaeus and J.-L. Buffon. Most scientists distinguish four large races as part of modern humanity - Eurasian (Caucasoid), Equatorial (Negroid), Asian-American (Mongoloid), Australoid.
Origin of races
Let's remember: the view Homo sapiens originated in Africa, from where about 100 thousand years ago its gradual spread throughout Europe and Asia began. People moved into new territories, found places suitable for living, and settled in them. Millennia passed, and separate groups of people reached the northeastern border of Asia. In those days, there was no Bering Strait yet, so a land “bridge” connected Asia and America. This is how immigrants from Asia came to North America. Over time, moving south, they reached South America.
The settlement continued for tens of thousands of years. Scientists believe that during migration, racial characteristics were fixed, which distinguish the inhabitants of different regions of the planet. Some of these signs must be adaptive in nature. Thus, a shock of curly hair among residents of the hot equatorial zone creates air gap, protects the vessels of the head from overheating, and the dark pigment in the skin adapts to high solar radiation. A wide nose and large lips contribute to increased evaporation of moisture and, accordingly, cooling of the body.
Light skin Caucasians can also be regarded as adaptation to climate. In the body of light-skinned people, vitamin D is synthesized in conditions of low solar radiation. The narrow eye shape of representatives of the Asian-American race protects the eyes from sand during steppe storms.
Thanks to the settlement of people, isolation and mixing became factors in the consolidation of racial characteristics. In primitive society, people united in small isolated communities, where the possibilities of marriage were limited. Therefore, the predominance of one or another racial characteristic often depended on random circumstances. In a small closed community, any hereditary trait can disappear if the person who has this trait leaves no descendants. On the other hand, manifestations of a certain trait can become widespread, since due to the limited number of marriages it is not replaced by other traits. Because of this, for example, the number of dark-haired residents or, conversely, fair-haired ones may increase.
Reasons for the isolation of human communities
The reason for the isolation of human communities There may be geographical barriers (mountains, rivers, oceans). Distance from the main migration routes also leads to isolation. On such a “lost island” people live in isolation, their appearance retains the features of their distant ancestors. For example, the Scandinavians “preserved” physical features that were formed thousands of years ago: blond hair, tall height, and the like. Mixing of races also occurred over many millennia. People born from marriages between representatives of different races are called mestizos. Thus, the colonization of America resulted in many marriages between Indians (representatives of the Mongoloid race) and Europeans. Mestizo people make up about half of the population of modern Mexico. Typically, most racial characteristics in mestizos are weaker compared to the extreme manifestations of these traits: the skin of Mexican mestizos is lighter than that of the Mayans and darker than that of Europeans.
The current appearance of humanity is the result of the complex historical development of human groups and can be described by identifying special biological types - human races. It is assumed that their formation began to occur 30-40 thousand years ago, as a consequence of the settlement of people in new geographical areas. According to researchers, their first groups moved from the area of modern Madagascar to South Asia, then Australia, a little later on Far East, to Europe and America. This process gave rise to the original races from which all subsequent diversity of peoples arose. The article will consider what main races are distinguished within the species Homo sapiens (reasonable humans), their characteristics and features.
The meaning of race
To summarize the definitions of anthropologists, a race is a historically established set of people who have a common physical type (skin color, hair structure and color, skull shape, etc.), the origin of which is associated with a specific geographical area. At present, the relationship between race and area is not always clearly visible, but it certainly existed in the distant past.
The origins of the term "race" are uncertain, but there has been much debate in scientific circles over its use. In this regard, initially the term was ambiguous and conditional. There is an opinion that the word represents a modification of the Arabic lexeme ras - head or beginning. There is also good reason to believe that the term may be related to the Italian razza, which means "tribe". It is interesting that in its modern meaning this word is first found in the works of the French traveler and philosopher Francois Bernier. In 1684 he gives one of the first classifications of the main human races.
races
Attempts to put together a picture classifying human races were made by the ancient Egyptians. They identified four types of people according to their skin color: black, yellow, white and red. AND for a long time This division of humanity remained. The Frenchman Francois Bernier tried to give a scientific classification of the main types of races in the 17th century. But more complete and constructed systems appeared only in the twentieth century.
It is known that there is no generally accepted classification, and they are all quite arbitrary. But in the anthropological literature they most often refer to Y. Roginsky and M. Levin. They identified three large races, which in turn are divided into small ones: Caucasian (Eurasian), Mongoloid and Negro-Australoid (equatorial). When constructing this classification, scientists took into account the morphological similarity, geographical distribution of races and the time of their formation.
Characteristics of race
Classic racial characteristics are determined by the complex physical features related to the appearance of a person and his anatomy. The color and shape of the eyes, the shape of the nose and lips, the pigmentation of skin and hair, and the shape of the skull are the primary racial characteristics. There are also secondary features such as physique, height and proportions of the human body. But due to the fact that they are very changeable and depend on environmental conditions, they are not used in racial studies. Racial characteristics are not interconnected by one or another biological dependence, therefore they form numerous combinations. But it is precisely stable traits that make it possible to distinguish races of a large order (main), while small races are distinguished on the basis of more variable indicators.
Thus, the main characteristics of a race include morphological, anatomical and other characteristics that have a stable hereditary nature and are minimally subject to environmental influences.
Caucasian
Almost 45% of the world's population belongs to the Caucasian race. The geographical discoveries of America and Australia allowed it to spread throughout the world. However, its main core is concentrated within Europe, the African Mediterranean and southwest Asia.
In the Caucasian group, the following combination of characteristics is distinguished:
- clearly profiled face;
- pigmentation of hair, skin and eyes from the lightest to darkest shades;
- straight or wavy soft hair;
- medium or thin lips;
- narrow nose, strongly or moderately protruding from the plane of the face;
- the fold of the upper eyelid is poorly formed;
- developed hair on the body;
- large hands and feet.
The composition of the Caucasoid race is divided into two large branches - northern and southern. The northern branch is represented by Scandinavians, Icelanders, Irish, English, Finns and others. South - Spaniards, Italians, southern French, Portuguese, Iranians, Azerbaijanis and others. All the differences between them lie in the pigmentation of the eyes, skin and hair.
Mongoloid race
The formation of the Mongoloid group has not been fully studied. According to some assumptions, the nation was formed in the central part of Asia, in the Gobi Desert, which was distinguished by its harsh, sharply continental climate. As a result, representatives of this race of people generally have strong immunity and good adaptation to dramatic changes in climatic conditions.
Signs of the Mongoloid race:
- brown or black eyes with a slanting and narrow cut;
- drooping upper eyelids;
- moderately widened nose and lips average size;
- skin color from yellow to brown;
- straight, coarse dark hair;
- strongly prominent cheekbones;
- poorly developed hair on the body.
The Mongoloid race is divided into two branches: northern Mongoloids (Kalmykia, Buryatia, Yakutia, Tuva) and southern peoples (Japan, inhabitants of the Korean Peninsula, South China). Behind prominent representatives The Mongoloid group may include ethnic Mongols.
The Equatorial (or Negro-Australoid) race is large group people, which makes up 10% of humanity. It includes Negroid and Australoid groups, which mostly live in Oceania, Australia, tropical Africa and the regions of South and Southeast Asia.
Most researchers consider the specific characteristics of a race as the result of the development of a population in a hot and humid climate:
- dark pigmentation of the skin, hair and eyes;
- coarse, curly or wavy hair;
- the nose is wide, slightly protruding;
- thick lips with a significant mucous part;
- prominent lower face.
The race is clearly divided into two trunks - the eastern (Pacific, Australian and Asian groups) and the western (African groups).
Minor races
The main races in which humanity has successfully imprinted itself on all continents of the earth, branching into a complex mosaic of people - small races (or races of the second order). Anthropologists identify from 30 to 50 such groups. The Caucasian race consists of following types: White Sea-Baltic, Atlanto-Baltic, Central European, Balkan-Caucasian (Pontozagros) and Indo-Mediterranean.
The Mongoloid group distinguishes: Far Eastern, South Asian, North Asian, Arctic and American types. It is worth noting that some classifications tend to consider the last of them as an independent large race. In today's Asia, the most dominant are the Far Eastern (Koreans, Japanese, Chinese) and South Asian (Javanese, Sunda, Malay) types.
The equatorial population is divided into six small groups: African Negroids are represented by the Negro, Central African and Bushman races, Oceanic Australoids - Veddoid, Melanesian and Australian (in some classifications it is put forward as the main race).
Mixed Races
In addition to second-order races, there are also mixed and transitional races. Presumably they were formed from ancient populations within the boundaries of climatic zones, through contact between representatives of different races, or appeared during long-distance migrations, when it was necessary to adapt to new conditions.
Thus, there are Euro-Mongoloid, Euro-Negroid and Euro-Mongol-Negroid subraces. For example, the laponoid group has characteristics of three main races: prognathism, prominent cheekbones, soft hair and others. The bearers of such characteristics are the Finno-Permian peoples. Or the Ural, which is represented by Caucasian and Mongoloid populations. She is characterized by the following dark straight hair, moderate skin pigmentation, brown eyes, and medium hair. Mostly distributed in Western Siberia.
- Until the 20th century, representatives of the Negroid race were not found in Russia. During the period of cooperation with developing countries, about 70 thousand blacks remained living in the USSR.
- Only one Caucasian race is capable of producing lactase throughout its life, which is involved in the digestion of milk. In other major races, this ability is observed only in infancy.
- Genetic studies have determined that fair-skinned residents of the northern territories of Europe and Russia have about 47.5% of Mongolian genes and only 52.5% of European ones.
- A large number of people who identify as pure African Americans have European ancestors. In turn, Europeans can discover Native Americans or Africans in their ancestors.
- The DNA of all inhabitants of the planet, regardless of external differences (skin color, hair texture), is 99.9% the same, therefore, from the standpoint of genetic research, the existing concept of “race” loses its meaning.