Races and their origins - Knowledge Hypermarket. Caucasoids What are the human races

About 40% of the world's population

Representatives of this race are distinguished by wavy or straight soft hair of different shades, relatively fair skin, a wide variety of colors of the iris of the eyes (from brown to light gray and blue). Characterized by a strong development of the tertiary hairline (in particular, a beard in men), a weak protrusion of the cheekbones, a slight protrusion of the jaws (orthognathism), a narrow protruding nose with a high nose bridge, usually thin or medium lips.

Caucasian race (Caucasian or caucasian from English. Caucasian race or Eurasian) - a race common before the era of the Great Geographical Discoveries in Europe, Western Asia, Central Asia, North Africa and northern India; later - on all inhabited continents. Caucasoids settled especially widely in North America and South America, in South Africa and Australia.

Characteristic features

It is characterized, first of all, by an orthognathic face, which protrudes noticeably forward in the horizontal plane. The hair of Caucasians is straight or wavy, usually soft (especially in northern groups). The superciliary arches are often large, the slit of the eyes is always wide, although the palpebral fissure may be small, the nose is usually large, protrudes sharply, the bridge of the nose is high, the thickness of the lips is small or medium, the growth of the beard and mustache is strong. The hand and foot are wide. Skin, hair, and eye color varies from very light in northern groups to very dark in southern and eastern populations.

Subgroups

According to the outdated typological classification, it includes the Nordic, Mediterranean, Dinaric, Falian, Alpine, East Baltic, Lapponoid and other subgroups (depending on the author of the classification).

In the prehistoric period in Europe, there may have been other sub-races. So, North Africa until the last glaciation was inhabited by mechtoids, similar to the European Cro-Magnoids of the Upper Paleolithic.

In Western, Central, Southern Europe and North Africa:

nordic race
Alpine race
Falian race
Balkan-Caucasian race
Dinaric race
mediterranean race
Oriental race
Borrebu
Brunn

In Eastern Europe and Asia:

nordic race
Baltic race
East Baltic race
Balkan-Caucasian race
Caspian race
Pontic race
Dinaric race
Armenoid race
Oriental race
Alpine race
Caucasian race
Pamir-Fergana race
Ural race

Types of Caucasoid peoples in the typological classification according to the encyclopedic dictionary Meyers Blitz-Lexikon (Leipzig, 1932)

History of terms

In relation to the Caucasian race, other terms are also used.

caucasian race

Georgian skull discovered in 1795, put forward by Blumenbach as a hypothesis about the origin of Europeans from the Caucasus

Caucasian race (lat. Varietas Caucasia, or English. Caucasian race ) is a term for the white race, introduced by the German anthropologist Friedrich Blumenbach, who referred to it the inhabitants of Europe (with the exception of the Samoyeds, Laplanders, Finns, Magyars and Turks) and the inhabitants of southern Asia and northern and northeastern Africa. The name arose from the fact that Blumenbach considered the Caucasus to be the first residence of the white man, and because he recognized the tribes currently living in the Caucasus as the purest and unmixed type of this race. Currently the term caucasian in English is the official term for the white race (e.g. used for racial identity in the IAFD database). In West Slavic languages, the white race is referred to, among other things, Kavkazijska or Kaukazoidalna, in Germanic languages the terms Europide, Kaukasoid or Kaukasische, in Romance languages - caucasiano or caucasia. Blumenbach wrote:

Caucasian type - for study I took this particular type, the mountainous type of the Caucasus, because its southern slope produces the most beautiful race of people, by this race I primarily mean Georgians. All physiological signs come down to this. Thus, we must assert with great certainty that the Caucasus is the birthplace of humanity.

mediterranean race

In the 19th century, in order to avoid the often occurring confusion, the German researcher F. Müller proposed another term - mediterranean race(German Mittellandische Rasse), since the peoples belonging to it reached the height of their development on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. This term was then accepted by most ethnologists (Peschel, Helwald and others) and by the end of the 19th century almost replaced the term of Blumenbach in scientific works, but now it is used in this sense as an integral part of the larger Indo-Mediterranean race

No matter how interesting and vivid all these facts and considerations, no matter how attractive they are due to their wide coverage, synthesis of both biological and historical phenomena into one whole, perhaps it would not be worth devoting a separate article to them, if not for the absolute conviction of the author that this not the past, but the present and even the future of anthropology, its pillar path, that the application of genetic patterns to the interpretation of anthropological facts opens up wide opportunities for cardinal generalizations, that, finally, the law discovered by N. I. Vavilov can find further application in anthropology. I would like to show the latter on the example of the origin and formation of the Caucasoid race.

What is the Caucasoid race as a whole now as a definite unit of anthropological classification, as a morphological unity? Its representatives are characterized by a strongly protruding narrow nose, a high nose bridge, a sharply profiled face, thin lips, straight or broadly wavy soft hair. Compared with Negroids and even Mongoloids, Caucasoids are much more light-skinned, light-haired and light-eyed, and the latter is true even for the inhabitants of the Mediterranean, Western and Central Asia - the darkest-eyed people among Caucasoids. A completely natural and logical conclusion from this morphological unity is the assertion of a genetic relationship and a common origin of Caucasoid types.

However, anthropologists do not agree in understanding the ways in which the Caucasoid race appeared. In accordance with one point of view, called monocentric, all races of modern man originated in Western Asia from neutral forms of Neanderthals, who combined the features of all three large races; according to another hypothesis, called polycentric, each race goes back to a separate group of Neanderthals who lived on the same continent. The author shares the polycentric hypothesis, based on the undoubted morphological continuity between Caucasoids and European Neanderthals, between Mongoloid races and Sinanthropus, as well as from archaeological data that paint a picture of a gradual transition from the Lower Paleolithic to the Upper, not only in Western Asia, but also in Europe, China, Southeast Asia, etc. On the other hand, the undoubted fact of the greater proximity of Caucasoids to Negroids than to Mongoloids, confirmed by the presence of an intermediate Australoid race and the wide distribution of Negro-Australoids in the Upper Paleolithic in southern Europe and Caucasoids in the Mesolithic in North Africa, and the formation of racial characteristics in the process of growth. (Children of blacks and Europeans are more similar to each other than adult blacks and Europeans. Mongoloids, on the contrary, differ from other races most of all in childhood.) The common origin of Caucasians and Negroids is very likely, and it can really go back to Western Asia, where the skeletons of Neanderthals were found, which were characterized by both Caucasoid and Negroid features.

Rice. 1. Geographic variations of skin color in Europe: 1 - very light skin (overwhelming predominance of shades 1-12 on the F. Lushan scale);
2 - slightly darker skin (shades 13-15 are quite common)

In this original group of Neanderthals, both Caucasoid and Negroid features were expressed, however, to a lesser extent than in modern races.

The formation of a typically Caucasoid combination of characters, as we now know it, obviously took place under the influence of many factors starting from the Upper Paleolithic. First of all, this is the influence of the mixing of groups of Near Asian origin with European Neanderthals; this is evidenced by the strong protrusion of the nose in representatives of the Caucasian race, the same as in European Neanderthals.

This is also evidenced by the highly developed relief on many early Upper Paleolithic skulls from Europe, a feature typical of European Neanderthals. In addition to mixing with local groups of Neanderthals, one should point to an adaptation to the harsh conditions of glacial Europe: a narrow nose limited the simultaneous inhalation of large amounts of cold air and protected the nasopharynx. Finally, in the occurrence of pigmentation characteristic of the Caucasoid race, the role of genogeographic patterns is undoubtedly great.

Rice. 2. Geographic variations of hair color in Europe: 1 - less than 50% of dark hair (shades 27.4-8 on the E. Fisher scale); 2- 30-80% dark
hair; 3 - more than 80% dark hair

The Caucasoid race is subdivided into northern and southern branches. The northern branch is the population of Scandinavia, Iceland and Ireland, England, the northern regions of the GDR and the FRG, Finland, the Baltic republics of the Soviet Union, and the northern regions of the European part of the RSFSR. Southern_Caucasoids are the population of the northern part of India, Afghanistan, Iran and Turkey, Arabic-speaking countries, Turkmen and Azerbaijan, Armenian and Georgian SSR, Southern Italy and Southern France, Spain and Portugal. The areas intermediate between these zones are occupied by a population that occupies a middle place in the anthropological classification between the northern and southern Caucasoids. In all
In these countries, anthropological features vary greatly; local anthropological types are distinguished. But it is not the slightest difficulty even for non-specialists to distinguish, for example, a Georgian or an Armenian from a Swede in appearance at first sight.

However, variations of all the features characteristic of local Caucasoid types are characteristic of them, they do not cover several peoples or groups of peoples, they reveal, as anthropologists say, a mosaic distribution on a geographical map. The only signs that oppose the population of the north and south of Europe, separating the northern and southern Caucasians, are signs of pigmentation, eye, hair and skin color. Anthropologists zealously, at first, I would say, just frantically looking for some more features with which to distinguish northern Europeans from southern ones, the northern, or Baltic, branch of the Caucasoid race from the southern, or Mediterranean. The search was in vain: they were never successful, not a single sign was found, except for pigmentation, the variations of which would differ in a strictly regular distribution on the map of Europe. And since the pigmentation of the ancient population remains unknown, the ancient areas of the northern and southern Caucasians, their ratio on the European geographical map in the early eras of the formation of the Caucasian race remain unknown.

How are all three signs, reflecting the development of the pigment, geographically distributed now? The most dark-skinned people live in the northern part of India, Afghanistan, the Turkmen and Azerbaijan SSR, in the Arab countries. Persians, Armenians, Georgians and other peoples of the Caucasus, Greeks, Bulgarians, southern Italians and French, Spaniards and Portuguese are more light-skinned, although they seem dark-skinned when compared, say, with Russians. Let's remember Italian films - don't the characters in them give the impression of very dark people? But they have people not only from southern, but also from northern Italy, whose population is noticeably lighter than southern Italians. Northern French and Belgians, Germans of the southern and central regions of Europe, Croats and Slovenes, Hungarians, Czechs, Slovaks, Ukrainians, Russians of the southern regions have even lighter skin. The Russians of the central regions, Belarusians, Poles, Germans of the northern regions are almost as fair-skinned as the Scandinavians, who make up the last step in the scale of skin tones - very little pigment is deposited in them (Fig. 1). Maps of the distribution of various shades of hair and eye color - from the darkest to the lightest - in the population of Europe differ little from the map of the distribution of skin color (Fig. 2, 3). Thus, in Europe, it is possible to distinguish, as it were, several zones from south to north, and the population of each subsequent more northern zone will be noticeably lighter-skinned, light-eyed and fair-haired than the peoples living in the previous zone.

From morphology we now turn to geography and consider the geographical outlines of the Old World, and in particular Eurasia. If the formation of the Caucasoid race or that combination of anthropological features on the basis of which the Caucasoid race was formed took place in Western Asia, then Europe can rightly be considered in relation to this zone as a peripheral region.

Rice. 3. Geographical variations in eye color in Europe: 1 - light eyes (shades 9-12 on the scale of V.V. Bunak), occur in more than 60%
cases; 2 - 40-60% light eyes; 3 - 20-39.9% of light eyes; 4 - less than 20% light
eye

Asia Minor lies in the center of the Old World, in the area where all three continents meet, while Europe looks like a monstrous peninsula of the single continent of Eurasia. From this point of view, it is curious that the most intense depigmentation in Europe is characteristic not for the population of the entire northern zone, but specifically for the peoples of Scandinavia, that is, for those peoples who are farthest from the center of the Old World - Western Asia. The sequence, the gradual lightening of the hair, eyes and skin of people in the direction to the northwest from Western Asia, which is not in all other directions, is also noteworthy.

If the reader has not yet guessed where the author is driving, then, in any case, he is prepared for this: the author believes that the only successful explanation of all the facts noted, and, moreover, an explanation that does not require any additional hypotheses, can be N.I. Vavilov about pushing recessives to the peripheral regions from the center of the range. Skin color also appears to be a recessive trait, as do other features associated with depigmentation. All depigmentation thus acts as a single complex, although the accumulation of several recessive genes in the genotype leads to complete depigmentation. Pushing them to the outlying regions fully explains why in Europe the color of hair, eyes and skin brightens from south to north (gradual pushing away from the center of race formation), why the greatest depigmentation is characteristic of the population of Scandinavia (the greatest distance from the center of race formation), why this process manifested itself precisely during the formation of the Caucasoid race, and not any other (a peculiar geographical position of Europe as a peninsula of the Eurasian continent and, therefore, a geographical prerequisite for isolation). So, the law of the displacement of recessive mutations to the outskirts of the species or racial range, the law, the effect of which is brilliantly illustrated in relation to a person using the example of the population of the Western Hindu Kush and Scandinavia, can also be extended to a much more general phenomenon - the emergence and formation of one of the main racial trunks of modern humanity. . Genogeography and population genetics make a great contribution to the clarification and understanding of the extremely important problem of race formation, and Nikolai Ivanovich Vavilov was one of the pioneers in introducing their methods and laws into anthropology almost 60 years ago.

G. F. Debets told the author that after talking with N. I. Vavilov for half an hour, he remembered this conversation for the rest of his life - N. I. Vavilov’s judgments on anthropology, ethnogenesis, and ancient history were so deep and subtle. A huge mind, which accumulated vast and diverse knowledge, discovered general laws that operate at all levels of life and the interaction of biological systems, laws that are widely applicable to explaining the biological characteristics of a person.

"Anthropologist - a worker of natural science"

Praskovya Nikolaevna Tarnovskaya, Russian anthropologist

At the origins of each scientific discipline are individuals who leave an imprint on the entire national school of development, becoming symbols of the nation, reflecting the essence of the scientific worldview in a concentrated form. If we talk about such an important area of natural science as physical anthropology, then its specificity and style in America in the twentieth century. can be understood directly through the prism of the life of such a truly outstanding scientist as Carleton Stevens Coon (1904–1981). It can be said without exaggeration that he was the "number one" person of that era, who managed to make the contours of American science recognizable and understandable throughout the world. But his main merit lies in the fact that he developed a truly humanistic aspect of physical anthropology. Not the spirit of militarism, hedonism and reckless practical development of reality, which are associated today in the mass public consciousness with the American mentality, but a fruitful progressive synthesis of the exact, natural and human sciences was carried out by Kuhn in his writings. It was people like him who began to rapidly change in the twentieth century. ideas about the USA as a country of the nouveau riche, showing the whole world that, in addition to gangsters, bankers, cowboys and black lumpen, there is also a significant class of intellectuals and spiritual people who are not obsessed with problems of momentary gain, but build their life strategy of behavior in a truly classical canons of European idealism. This, in our opinion, is the key to understanding the historical significance of the scholar Carlton Stevens Kuhn. In this perspective, this contribution to the development of science becomes clear and understandable.

His fundamental innovation was the first of its kind, unique and fruitful synthesis of three areas of research that had developed quite independently before him, namely: cultural anthropology, prehistoric archeology and physical anthropology. It was a real breakthrough in the entire complex of sciences for the study of man, finally ending the useless competition of the exact, natural and human sciences in this matter, and the above disciplines acquired the limits of competence that were appropriate for them. The synthesis of human sciences has become truly harmonious and internally consistent.

Carlton S. Kuhn's scientific career in cultural anthropology began from 1924 to 1928 during his expeditions and fieldwork in Morocco, culminating in the publication of ethnographic works on the tribes of the region. Continuing the line of research he had begun, Kuhn later studied the populations of Albania, Ethiopia, and Yemen. Before World War II, he wrote the book Principles of Anthropology, which was published in 1942. In it, Kuhn gave an analysis of human behavior in society based on the principles of the legal system. He was also interested in the development of appropriate terminology in society and its adaptation to the daily needs of people. He summarized these provisions of his research later in the book Lectures on the Fundamentals of Anthropology (1948). Thinking about the causes of wars at this fateful moment in history, Kuhn came to the conclusion that the energy capabilities of organisms are completely projected onto the entire structure of their social behavior in the form of a predictable norm, which is easily recognized in all social manifestations they create. Thus, biological potencies inevitably form socio-cultural relationships at any stage of development of living beings in the entire hierarchy of being. Carlton S. Kuhn promoted this idea tirelessly, both during his lectures to students and in the process of organizing the richest collection of the University of Pennsylvania Museum, and later with his monograph "History of Man" (1954).

In his opinion, even the conscious impact of man on nature is not able to shake this basic biological law of the Universe, the action of which is easily recognized at all stages of the development of our society: from the beginning of making fire to the era of the invention of atomic weapons. The very principle of struggle lies in the energetic disparity of organisms, this is the principle of world evolution, first comprehensively considered by Charles Darwin. Carlton S. Kuhn was, of course, a consistent Darwinist. He most fully outlined his views on this issue in the work "The Evolution of Man and the Avalanche of Culture" (1970).

His contribution to the development of archeology was based on the study of caves and depressions rich in remains of human fossils almost throughout the ecumene. In Morocco and India he studied Neolithic history; in Iran - artifacts of the Iron Age. In Afghanistan and Syria, he discovered traces of the Mesolithic culture, which turned out to be older than Western European ones. In Africa, in Sierra Leone, he explored the historical remains of the Pleistocene era.

In the field of physical anthropology, Kuhn immortalized his name with the fundamental gigantic study "The Races of Europe" (1939), which has not lost its significance to this day due to a truly encyclopedic generalization of information on this region. In 1950, in collaboration with S.M. Garn and J.B. Birdsell, he published another work, "Race", in which he clearly and systematically set forth the basic principles of racial differentiation among people.

Finally, he was one of the first in world anthropological practice to begin using the radiocarbon method to establish the historical age of fossil remains.

Like every truly great anthropologist, Kuhn created his original racial theory, which was called - “multiregional concept” (“multiregional model”). Based on the analysis of various data, the scientist came to the conclusion that various modern races descended from five main independent ancestral forms in five geographical zones and at different times. Thus, in particular, Europe is the result of a long history of evolutionary progress of the main branches of the White race. The same is observed in other centers of race formation. In accordance with the traditions of the American school of anthropology, Kuhn used such concepts as "White race" and "Caucasian race" in his works to define the definition of the Caucasian race. The last term in the European system of scientific coordinates is not currently used.

But at the same time, he reliably indicated, based on information about migration processes, the percentage concentration of the genetic contribution of immigrants from Northern Europe in various regions of the globe. The early stages of human evolution, according to his research, are characterized by the parallel existence of Neanderthaloid forms with the predecessors of modern human races in all inhabited regions, which is actually indicated by the results of recent excavations.

According to Kuhn, the races inhabiting their territory could be at different stages of the evolutionary path and overcome the critical barrier between the primitive and intelligent states at different times. Assessing observed differences in skull volume and cultural achievement, Kuhn suggested that African populations had lagged behind other races and that the current Australian Aborigines still retain features of the primitive Homo erectus. Predictable consequences follow naturally from his theory. Since each race has its own population of first ancestors, despite the mixing and migration in the process of evolution, people of the original biological type must meet. Thus, the erectus of Javanese man, who lived 800 thousand years ago, and his descendants, the Australian aborigines, are united by such common features as a powerful sagittal crest on the upper part of the skull and extremely massive brow ridges. The so-called “Peking Man”, who lived in China from 500 to 200 thousand years ago, had such features in common with modern Mongoloids as a flat face and spatulate incisors of the front teeth, etc. As a racial theorist, Kuhn finally formalized his views on evolution in his fundamental work The Origin of Races (1962).

Lesson plan

1. What human races do you know?
2. What factors cause the evolutionary process?
3. What influences the formation of the gene pool of a population?

What are human races?

Human predecessors are Australopithecus;
- the most ancient people - progressive australopithecines, archanthropes (pithecanthropes, synanthropes, Heidelberg man, etc.);
- ancient people - paleoanthropes (Neanderthals);
- fossil people of the modern anatomical type - neoanthropes (Cro-Magnons).

The historical development of man was carried out under the influence of the same factors of biological evolution as the formation of other types of living organisms. However, a person is characterized by such a unique phenomenon for living nature as an increasing influence on the anthropogenesis of social factors (labor activity, social lifestyle, speech and thinking).

For a modern person, social and labor relations have become leading and determining.

As a result of social development Homo sapiens has acquired unconditional advantages among all living beings. But this does not mean that the emergence of the social sphere canceled the action of biological factors. The social sphere only changed their manifestation. Homo sapiens as a species is an integral part of the biosphere and a product of its evolution.

These are historically formed groupings (groups of populations) of people, characterized by the similarity of morphological and physiological features. Racial differences are the result of people's adaptation to certain conditions of existence, as well as the historical and socio-economic development of human society.

There are three large races: Caucasoid (Eurasian), Mongoloid (Asian-American) and Australo-Negroid (Equatorial).

Chapter 8

Fundamentals of ecology

After reading this chapter, you will learn:

What does ecology study and why does every person need to know its basics;
- what is the significance of environmental factors: abiatic, biotic and anthropogenic;
- what role do the environmental conditions and internal properties of the population group play in the processes of change in its size over time;
- about different types of interactions of organisms;
- about the features of competitive relations and factors that determine the outcome of competition;
- on the composition and basic properties of the ecosystem;
- about energy flows and the circulation of substances that ensure the functioning of systems, and about the role in these processes

Even in the middle of the XX century. the word ecology was known only to specialists, but now it has become very popular; most often it is used, speaking about the unfavorable state of the nature around us.

Sometimes this term is used in combination with words such as society, family, culture, health. Is ecology really such a vast science that it can cover most of the problems facing humanity?

Kamensky A. A., Kriksunov E. V., Pasechnik V. V. Biology Grade 10
Submitted by readers from the website

What are the characteristics of the Caucasian race in general? What groups can be distinguished among Caucasians? What is the reason for the variability within one race? Candidate of Biological Sciences Stanislav Drobyshevsky talks about this.

The Caucasoid race is most often called that, although the term "Eurasian race" is accepted in Russian anthropology. One could call it a "Eurasian-African race", but there is no such term. The Caucasoid race is far from being settled only in Europe, its range is much wider, not even counting the fact that Caucasoids have now settled anywhere: in Australia, in America, in Africa. But even the original area of the addition of the Caucasoid race included, in addition to Europe proper, also the north of Africa, to the Sahara, and at some time the Sahara was a rather important region, and, probably, people lived there the same way, and the entire Middle East, which is geographically Asia , and further, up to Northern India. Currently, about half are, strictly speaking, Caucasians.

In total, the Caucasoid race is one of the most widely distributed: from the Atlantic Ocean to the Indian Ocean, around the entire Mediterranean Sea. And it is natural that in such a vast area it is very heterogeneous. Nevertheless, there are common features that allow it to be distinguished.

The Caucasoid race is characterized by the lightest color of skin, eyes and hair, with the amendment that this is generally true for the skin, because all Caucasoids of non-equatorial significance have much lighter skin, although the most southern ones are still darker than the northern ones. And for the eyes and hair, this is not entirely true, because some Caucasians have the lightest hair and eyes in general on the planet, and some have very dark ones. There is a pronounced gradient across the skin as well. The center of lordship is located in the Baltic Sea area: the Baltic States, Finland, Karelia, Sweden, Norway, Denmark - and the farther south, the darker it gets.

Regarding hair and eyes, already at the level of the Mediterranean, almost only dark hair and eyes are found, but with some frequency there may be others. In North Africa, light ones are extremely rare. In Northern Egypt, for example, where Caucasians live, approximately 2% of light eyes. Blond hair and eyes are found among Kabyles, for example, in the Atlas Mountains, in Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, but this is rare. Sometimes it slips, say, in the Hindu Kush and Pakistan. And these individual light-colored people in the southern populations gave reason to talk about the soldiers of Alexander the Great, who, of course, were blond and reached India, about the vandals who passed through Africa to Tunisia and settled there, and now their blood is in the kabilas. It was, there was both Alexander the Great and the vandals, but it is unlikely that they had such a direct influence. Moreover, fair-haired, light-eyed people in the south are individuals, and their fractions of a percent, as a rule, or 2% maximum for eyes in Egypt.

From the very north to the south there is variability. This variability is quite cunning, it is not consistent everywhere, because the territory of both Europe and the entire western part of Asia is not blocked by some transcendent geographical barriers. There are, of course, the Alps in the middle of Europe, there is the Caucasus, there is the same Hindu Kush, but they are quite bypassed on the sides. And Europe has always been a place of rapid population movements, people did not sit still. I'm not talking about the 20th century, but about earlier times: both in the Bronze Age and in the Neolithic, people wandered back and forth, and from north to south, and from south to north, from west to east, from east to west. Therefore, at present, it is extremely problematic to single out any strict variants of Caucasians. Nevertheless, several main groups stand out.

She is the most darkly pigmented in all the main indicators, and, in addition, she, like all Caucasians, has thin lips, a narrow nose - the narrowest of all that she has. This is very interesting, because to the south live equatorials with a wide nose. And the contrast is very sharp. He is in India with the Dravidian race, for example, or South Indian, in Africa with the Ethiopian race, or with, if it is West Africa. This is very interesting, because it says that after all, there was a period of rather sharp isolation of the Proto-Caucasians and other proto-Equatorials.

Indo-Mediterraneans, among other things, have a relatively small body size, they are quite graceful on a Caucasoid scale, but on a global scale, they cannot be said to be particularly small. Although there are groups almost. For example, in the Sahara Biasutti described the so-called Paleo-Saharan type. I even saw his representative in Egypt. These are Bedouins, and on the face they are plus or minus the same as the others, and they are about a meter and fifty tall. There are such populations, and in conditions of isolation, in oases, in nomadic life, such populations can arise.

To the north of the Indo-Mediterraneans live groups of the Balkan-Caucasian race. The Balkan-Caucasian race is distributed mainly in the Balkans, including the Carpathians, nearby territories, and in the Caucasus. But there is a question: to what extent are the Caucasian and Balkan populations related to each other? They could have acquired similar traits independently, but with a high probability they were related to some extent. Sometimes they are also called the Dinaric type, there are other terms, but less often used.

The Balkan-Caucasian race is characterized by increased massiveness. Its representatives have a very large chest, large face sizes. In the North Caucasus, the width of the face is one of the largest in the world, in Georgia it is also large. Very powerful growth of beard, mustache and body hair, not counting the Ainu, who have the maximum value. But given that the Ainu are currently heavily mixed with the Japanese and with other peoples, the Balkan-Caucasian race is now perhaps in the first place. Large body sizes in Europe are the largest among Montenegrins - at least recently there were such - and in the Caucasus too. Ossetians, for example, are very tall, but not only them, there are a lot of other peoples close to them.

The Balkan-Caucasian race apparently arose in conditions of rather powerful isolation, in mountainous conditions, and there are clearly traces of adaptation to mountain conditions, including at the biochemical level. For example, the increased development of the muscles, because the muscles store blood well and, accordingly, oxygen, the development of the respiratory tract, that is, large lungs and, accordingly, a large chest. Some also drag a large nose with a convex back here, but I’m not sure that this somehow helps to breathe, but nevertheless this sign is also there.

Further north is the distribution zone of the Central European, or Middle European, race. This is probably the largest part in terms of numbers, if we take the population within the Eurasian race. Although, given that India has a population close to a billion, Pakistan also has a lot, then maybe the Indo-Mediterranean race gives about the same number. But the Central European race on the scale of the Caucasoid race is a little average: with a straight back of the nose, with a relatively small face size, and very variable, most often with blond hair - light blond, dark blond - the hair is usually wavy, and the growth of the beard and mustache is large in size. global scale, but averaged over the Caucasoid scale. Basically, it was just the representatives of the Central European race that settled other parts of the world in the era of the Great Geographical Discoveries, that is, they got to America, Australia, South Africa and many other places, they tried to get to India and Asia, but they didn’t succeed very well.

The Central European race is very variable, there are many options.

Many anthropologists have tried to find some logic in the distribution of these variants, but they are not very successful.

Because if he looks from north to south, from west to east, the signs change randomly. Here, let's say, the face is wider, narrower here, wider again here, narrower here again. And the maximum approximation, apparently, was found by Vasily Evgenievich Deryabin, who discovered that the signs, at least in the central part of Russia, among Russians are distributed not from west to east or from north to south, but along river valleys. Maybe in Europe it looks like it works. Because in Russia there has always been trouble with roads, and it was possible to settle in summer on boats, in winter on sledges, and the river is a good road, but building a road through fields, forests and somewhere else is a big problem. Therefore, the groups living along the river are similar to each other. And since the rivers flow in cunning zigzags, the distribution of anthropological features turns out to be cunning zigzags.

The northernmost Caucasians are usually divided into two races. In general, these are northern Caucasians, the northern Caucasian race, but, strictly speaking, these are two options. To the west - the Atlanto-Baltic race. They are large, very light in skin, hair and eyes, with a straight narrow nose and a rather elongated face of rather great height, but small width. And to the east, in the area of the White Sea and a little further to the east - the White Sea-Baltic race, or the White Sea-Baltic race, which is shorter, which has a wider face, more often a concave back of the nose, a slightly snub nose, smaller eyes, smaller beard and mustache growth .

Of course, this description may give the impression that by looking at a person, you can determine what race he belongs to. This is not entirely true, because the differences I have described are average differences and slightly exaggerated by me. And if we find ourselves in a specific settlement of people, then we will find very different people in any settlement. Therefore, typology by eye, by photography, or even by individual measurements, is, strictly speaking, impossible, that is, we can determine the race only by studying the population of people.