Caucasian race by Levan Urushadze
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See also Caucasian
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In physical anthropology, Caucasian (Varietas Caucasia) is a race that includes most of the natives of Northern, Eastern and Central Europe, West and central Asia, North Africa, and as far east as the Indian subcontinent. This category was first proposed by the German scientist Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (1752-1840), who coined the term in his treatise "De generis Humani Varietate Nativa" ("On the Natural Variety of Mankind", 1775). His studies based the classification of the Caucasian race primarily on skull features, which Blumenbach claimed were optimized by Georgian people, one of the indigenous peoples of the Caucasus and other Ibero-Caucasian peoples.
Later anthropologists have further expanded upon the classification of the Caucasian race proposed by Blumenbach, and have subdivided the Caucasian group into Mediterranean race.
While the term Caucasian is still used for the lack of a better word in describing the peoples of western Eurasia, careful speakers generally limit the term to describe the Caucasian peoples and the inhabitants of Asia Minor, especially when describing any specific ethnic or cultural traits.
Popularly, the word "white" is used synonymously with "Caucasian" in North America.
Literature
- V. Alekseev. A study of the paleoanthropology of the Caucasus (a monograph), Moscow, 1962 (in English)
- M.G. Abdushelishvili. About Craniology of the ancient and modern population of the Caucasus (a monograph), Tbilisi, 1966 (in Russian)
- M.G. Abdushelishvili. The genesis of the aboriginal population of the Caucasus in the light of anthropological data (a monograph), Tokyo, 1968 (in English)
References
- Adapted from the Wikipedia article, "Caucasian" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caucasian_race, used under the GNU Free Documentation License
