Races of man / by Sonia Cole.

  • Cole, Sonia, 1918-1982.
Date:
1965
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

Credit: Races of man / by Sonia Cole. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    58/150 (page 53)
    VI Caucasoids The name 'Caucasoid' was first used by Blumenbach in the late 18th century in his studies on peoples of the Caucasus region. This area, between the Black Sea and the Caspian, was probably the original homeland of many of the populations of Europe today and it is one of the most complex areas of the world from a racial point of view. Blumenbach's term has come to be applied to the stock which is sometimes referred to as White (though it includes many people of dark brown skin colour) or European (though it includes also people of Arabia, Iran and India as well as of North and East Africa). Characteristics of the Caucasoids are as follows: skin colour ranging from white to dark brown 5 hair usually wavy, but ranges from straight to curly5 facial and body hair generally rather abundant ; all shapes of head occur; nose comparatively narrow and prominent5 lips thin; face straight or orthognathous; forehead high; chin well developed. Blood-group characters include the presence of the A 2 gene and relatively high frequencies of the rhesus negative gene cde and of the MS combination. In Europe, there is a systematic change in rhesus frequencies southwards towards the Medi terranean; going eastwards, there is a change in MN frequencies, with higher M east of the Baltic and in Russia. The incidence of B also increases eastwards, while 0, which is most frequent in peripheral areas of the north-west, decreases eastwards. The principal race of the Caucasoid stock is the Mediterranean; many other groups which have been classified in the past as separate races may be regarded as variants of the Mediterranean Pvace. This race stretches from the Atlantic to India, on both sides of the Mediterranean and down into the Horn of Africa. It merges into Mongoloids in the east, Negroids in Africa, and Veddoids in India. Although the main language group of the Caucasoids is Indo-European, members of this stock speak also Ural-Altaic (Uralic includes Finnic, Ugrian and Samoyedic; Altaic includes Turkish); Euskarian (the language of the Basques); 55