Humanity is currently represented by one species Homo sapiens (A reasonable person). However, this species is not uniform. It is polymorphic and consists of three large and many small transitional races - biological groups distinguished by small morphological characteristics. These characteristics include: hair type and color, skin color, eyes, shape of the nose, lips, face and head, proportions of the body and limbs.
Races emerged as a result of the settlement and geographic isolation of the ancestors of modern people in different natural and climatic conditions. Racial characteristics are hereditary. They arose in the distant past under the direct influence of the environment and were adaptive in nature. The following large races are distinguished.
Negroid (Australo-Negroid or Equatorial) The race is characterized by dark skin color, curly and wavy hair, a wide and slightly protruding nose, thick lips and dark eyes. Before the era of colonization, this race was common in Africa, Australia and the Pacific Islands.
Caucasoid (Euro-Asian) The race is distinguished by light or dark skin, straight or wavy hair, good development of facial hair in men (beard and mustache), narrow protruding nose, thin lips. Representatives of this race are settled in Europe, North Africa, Western Asia and Northern India.
For Mongoloid (Asian-American) The race is characterized by dark or light skin, straight, often coarse hair, a flattened wide face with strongly prominent cheekbones, and average width of lips and nose. Initially, this race inhabited Southeast, North and Central Asia, North and South America.
Although the large races differ markedly from each other in their complex of external characteristics, they are interconnected by a number of intermediate types, imperceptibly passing into one another.
The biological unity of human races is evidenced by: 1 – the absence of genetic isolation and unlimited possibilities of crossing with the formation of fertile offspring; 2 – equivalence of races in biological and psychological terms; 3 – the presence of transitional races between large races, combining the characteristics of two neighboring ones; 4 – localization of skin patterns such as arcs on the second finger (in apes – on the fifth); All representatives of the races have the same pattern of hair arrangement on the head and other morphophysiological characteristics.
Security questions:
What is the position of man in the animal world?
How is the origin of man from animals proven?
What biological factors contributed to human evolution?
Which social factors contributed to the formation Homo sapiens?
What human races are currently distinguished?
What does the biological unity of races prove?
Literature
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In modern humanity there are three main races: Caucasoid, Mongoloid and Negroid. These are large groups of people with some differences physical signs, for example, facial features, skin, eye and hair color, hair shape.
Each race is characterized by a unity of origin and formation in a certain territory.
Belongs to the Caucasian race indigenous people Europe, South Asia and North Africa. Caucasians are characterized by a narrow face, a strongly protruding nose, and soft hair. The skin color of northern Caucasians is light, while that of southern Caucasians is predominantly dark.
The Mongoloid race includes the indigenous population of Central and East Asia, Indonesia, and Siberia. Mongoloids are distinguished by their large flat wide face, eye shape, coarse straight hair, dark skin color.
There are two branches of the Negroid race - African and Australian. The Negroid race is characterized by dark color skin, curly hair, dark eyes, wide and flat nose.
Racial characteristics are hereditary, but at present they do not have significant significance for human life. Apparently, in the distant past, racial characteristics were useful for their owners: the dark skin of blacks and curly hair, creating an air layer around the head, protected the body from the effects of sunlight; the shape of the facial skeleton of the Mongoloids with a more extensive nasal cavity may be useful for warming cold air before it enters the lungs. By mental abilities, i.e., cognitive abilities, creative and in general labor activity, all races are the same. Differences in the level of culture are associated not with the biological characteristics of people of different races, but with the social conditions of the development of society.
The reactionary essence of racism. Initially, some scientists confused the level social development with biological characteristics and tried among modern peoples find transitional forms connecting humans with animals. These mistakes were used by racists who began to talk about the alleged inferiority of some races and peoples and the superiority of others in order to justify the merciless exploitation and direct destruction of many peoples as a result of colonization, the seizure of foreign lands and the outbreak of wars. When European and American capitalism tried to conquer the African and Asian peoples, the white race was declared superior. Later, when Hitler’s hordes marched across Europe, destroying the captured population in death camps, the so-called Aryan race, to which the Nazis classified the German peoples. Racism is a reactionary ideology and policy aimed at justifying the exploitation of man by man.
The inconsistency of racism has been proven by the real science of race - racial studies. Racial studies studies the racial characteristics, origin, formation and history of human races. Evidence from race studies suggests that the differences between races are not sufficient for the races to be considered different. biological species people. Mixing of races - miscegenation - occurred constantly, as a result of which intermediate types arose at the borders of the ranges of representatives of different races, smoothing out the differences between races.
Will races disappear? One of important conditions formation of races - isolation. In Asia, Africa and Europe it still exists to some extent today. Meanwhile, recently settled regions such as Northern and South America, can be compared to a cauldron in which all three racial groups are melted. Although public opinion Many countries do not support interracial marriage, there is little doubt that mixing of races is inevitable, and sooner or later will lead to the formation of a hybrid population of people.
Race- a system of human populations characterized by similarity in a set of certain hereditary biological characteristics. Traits that characterize different races often appear as a result of adaptation to different conditions environment over many generations.
Racial studies, in addition to the above-mentioned problems, also studies the classification of races, the history of their formation and such factors of their occurrence as selective processes, isolation, mixing and migration, influence climatic conditions and the geographic environment in general for racial characteristics.
Racial studies became especially widespread in National Socialist Germany, fascist Italy and other Western European countries, as well as earlier in the United States (Ku Klux Klan), where it served as a justification for institutionalized racism, chauvinism and anti-Semitism.
Sometimes racial studies are confused with ethnic anthropology - the latter refers, strictly speaking, only to the study of the racial composition of individual ethnic groups, i.e. tribes, peoples, nations, and the origin of these communities.
In that part of racial research that is aimed at studying ethnogenesis, anthropology conducts research together with linguistics, history, and archeology. When studying driving forces race formation, anthropology comes into close contact with genetics, physiology, zoogeography, climatology, general theory speciation. The study of race in anthropology has implications for many problems. It is important for resolving the question of the ancestral home of man modern look, the use of anthropological material as historical source, covering the problems of systematics, mainly small systematic units, understanding the patterns of population genetics, clarifying some issues of medical geography.
Racial studies studies geographical variations in the physical type of people, without taking into account linguistic and cultural isolation. And ethnic anthropology studies what racial variants and anthropological types inherent in a given ethnic group or people. For example, to establish into which groups the indigenous population of the Volga-Kama region is divided, to identify their general portraits, average height, level of pigmentation - this is the task of a racial scientist. And to recreate the appearance and trace possible genetic connections of the Khazars is the task of an ethnic anthropologist.
Modern division into races
There are many opinions about how many races can be distinguished within the species Homo sapiens.
Studies of classical anthropology show that there are two trunks - eastern and western, equally distributing the six races of humanity. The division into three races - “white”, “yellow” and “black” - is an outdated position. Despite all their external dissimilarity, the races of the same trunk are connected by a greater commonality of genes and habitats than neighboring races. According to the Great Soviet Encyclopedic Dictionary, there are about 30 human races (racial-anthropological types), united in three groups of races, which are called “large races”. However, in non-scientific literature the term “race” is still applied to large races, and the races themselves are called “subraces”, “subgroups”, etc. It is worth noting that the races themselves (small races) are divided into subraces, and No consensus regarding the belonging of certain subraces to certain races (small races). In addition, different anthropological schools use different names for the same races.
Western trunk
Caucasians
The natural range of Caucasoids is Europe to the Urals, North Africa, Southwest Asia and Hindustan. Includes Nordic, Mediterranean, Phalic, Alpine, East Baltic, Dinaric and other subgroups. It differs from other races primarily in its strong facial profile. Other signs vary widely.
Negroids
Natural range - Central, Western and Eastern Africa. Characteristic differences are curly hair, dark skin, widened nostrils, thick lips, etc. There is an eastern subgroup (Nilotic type, tall, narrowly built) and a western subgroup (Negro type, round-headed, medium height). The group of pygmies (Negrill type) stands apart.
Pygmies
Pygmies compared to a person of average height
The natural range of pygmies is the western part of Central Africa. Height from 144 to 150 cm for adult men, light brown skin, curly, dark hair, relatively thin lips, large body, short arms and legs, this physical type can be classified as a special race. The possible number of pygmies can range from 40 to 200 thousand people.
Kapoids, Bushmen
Caucasoid (Eurasian) races
Northern forms Atlanto-Baltic White Sea-Baltic Transitional (intermediate) forms Alpine Central European Eastern European Southern forms Mediterranean Indo-Afghan Balkan-Caucasian Near Asian (Armenoid) Pamir-Fergana Mongoloid (Asian-American) races
Asian branch of Mongoloid races Continental Mongoloids North Asian Central Asian Arctic race Pacific Mongoloids American races
Australoid (Oceanian) races
Veddoids Australians Ainu Papuans and Melanesians Negritos Negroid (African) races
Negroes Negrilli (Pygmies) Bushmen and Hottentots Mixed forms between Caucasians and the Asian branch of the Mongoloids
Central Asian groups South Siberian race Ural race and subural type Laponoids and sublapanoid type Mixed groups of Siberia Mixed forms between Caucasoids and the American branch of Mongoloids
American mestizos Mixed forms between the Caucasoid and Australoid major races
South Indian race Mixed forms between the Caucasoid and Negroid major races
Ethiopian race Mixed groups of Western Sudan Mixed groups of Eastern Sudan Mulattoes South African "coloreds" Mixed forms between the Asian branch of Mongoloids and Australoids
South Asian (Malay) race Japanese East Indonesian group Other mixed race forms
Malagasy Polynesians and Micronesians Hawaiians and Pitcairns
Idaltu
Idaltu (lat. Homo sapiens idaltu) is one of the most ancient races of people of the modern species. The Idaltu inhabited the territory of Ethiopia. The approximate age of the found Idaltu man is 160 thousand years.
See also
Notes
Links
| Races | |
|---|---|
| Western trunk | |
| Caucasian | Alpine type | Borreby | Brunns | Gorids | Dinaric type | Indo-Afghan type | (Armenoids | Caucasians | Caspians | Pontids) | Cordida | Ladoga type | Neodanubian type | Northern European type (Atlanto-Baltic type | East Baltic type) | Mediterranean type | Trenders | Falsky type |
| Negroid race | Negrillian type | Negro type | Nilotic type |
| Capoid minor race | |
| Ethiopian minor race | |
| Eastern trunk | |
| Mongoloid race | Laponoid type | Sinids | Tungids | Turanids |
| Amerinda | Paleoamerican type | Patagonian minor race |
In modern humanity there are three main races: Caucasoid, Mongoloid and Negroid. These are large groups of people who differ in certain physical characteristics, such as facial features, skin, eye and hair color, and hair shape.
Each race is characterized by a unity of origin and formation in a certain territory.
The Caucasian race includes the indigenous populations of Europe, South Asia and North Africa. Caucasians are characterized by a narrow face, a strongly protruding nose, and soft hair. The skin color of northern Caucasians is light, while that of southern Caucasians is predominantly dark.
The Mongoloid race includes the indigenous population of Central and East Asia, Indonesia, and Siberia. Mongoloids are distinguished by a large, flat, wide face, eye shape, coarse straight hair, and dark skin color.
There are two branches of the Negroid race - African and Australian. The Negroid race is characterized by dark skin color, curly hair, dark eyes, a wide and flat nose.
Racial characteristics are hereditary, but at present they do not have significant significance for human life. Apparently, in the distant past, racial characteristics were useful for their owners: the dark skin of blacks and curly hair, creating an air layer around the head, protected the body from the effects of sunlight; the shape of the facial skeleton of the Mongoloids with a more extensive nasal cavity may be useful for warming cold air before it enters the lungs. In terms of mental abilities, i.e., abilities for cognition, creative and general labor activity, all races are the same. Differences in the level of culture are associated not with the biological characteristics of people of different races, but with the social conditions of the development of society.
The reactionary essence of racism. Initially, some scientists confused the level of social development with biological characteristics and tried to find transitional forms among modern peoples that connect humans with animals. These mistakes were used by racists who began to talk about the alleged inferiority of some races and peoples and the superiority of others in order to justify the merciless exploitation and direct destruction of many peoples as a result of colonization, the seizure of foreign lands and the outbreak of wars. When European and American capitalism tried to conquer the African and Asian peoples, the white race was declared superior. Later, when Hitler’s hordes marched across Europe, destroying the captured population in death camps, the so-called Aryan race, to which the Nazis included the German peoples, was declared superior. Racism is a reactionary ideology and policy aimed at justifying the exploitation of man by man.
The inconsistency of racism has been proven by the real science of race - racial studies. Racial studies studies the racial characteristics, origin, formation and history of human races. Data obtained from race studies indicate that the differences between races are not sufficient to consider the races as different biological species of people. Mixing of races - miscegenation - occurred constantly, as a result of which intermediate types arose at the borders of the ranges of representatives of different races, smoothing out the differences between races.
Will races disappear? One of the important conditions for the formation of races is isolation. In Asia, Africa and Europe it still exists to some extent today. Meanwhile, newly settled regions such as North and South America can be compared to a cauldron in which all three racial groups are melted. Although public opinion in many countries does not support interracial marriage, there is little doubt that miscegenation is inevitable and will sooner or later lead to the formation of a hybrid population of people.
Human races are historically established biological divisions of the species “Homo sapiens” (Homo sapiens) in human evolution. They differ in complexes of hereditarily transmitted and gradually changing morphological, biochemical and other features. The modern geographic areas of distribution, or areas, occupied by races make it possible to outline the territories in which the races were formed. Due to the social nature of man, races are qualitatively different from subspecies of wild and domestic animals.
If for wild animals the term “geographical races” can be applied, then in relation to humans it has largely lost its meaning, since the connection of human races with their original areas is disrupted by numerous migrations of masses of people, as a result of which a mixture of very different races and peoples and new human associations were formed.
Most anthropologists divide humanity into three large races: Negroid-Australoid (“black”), Caucasoid (“white”) and Mongoloid (“yellow”). Using geographical terms, the first race is called the equatorial, or African-Australian, the second, the European-Asian, and the third, the Asian-American race. The following branches of the large races are distinguished: African and Oceanian; northern and southern; Asian and American (G. F. Debets). The Earth's population now amounts to over 3 billion 300 million people (data for 1965). Of these, the first race accounts for approximately 10%, the second - 50%, and the third - 40%. This is, of course, a rough total count, since there are hundreds of millions of racially mixed individuals, numerous minor races and mixed (intermediate) racial groups, including ancient origin(eg Ethiopians). Large, or primary, races occupying vast territories are not completely homogeneous. They are divided according to physical (corporal) characteristics into branches, into 10-20 small races, and those into anthropological types.
Modern races, their origin and taxonomy are studied by ethnic anthropology (racial studies). Groups of the population are subjected to research for examination and quantitative determination of so-called racial characteristics, followed by processing of mass data using the methods of variation statistics (see). For this, anthropologists use scales of skin color and iris, hair color and shape, eyelid shape, nose and lips, as well as anthropometric instruments: compasses, goniometer, etc. (see Anthropometry). Hematological, biochemical and other examinations are also carried out.
Belonging to one or another racial division is determined in men 20-60 years old based on a complex of genetically stable and fairly characteristic signs of physical structure.
Further descriptive signs of the racial complex: the presence of a beard and mustache, the coarseness of the scalp hair, the degree of development upper eyelid and its folds - the epicanthus, the slope of the forehead, the shape of the head, the development of the brow ridges, the shape of the face, the growth of body hair, the type of build (see Habitus) and body proportions (see Constitution).
Skull shape options: 1 - dolichocranial ellipsoid; 2 and 3 - brachycranial (2 - round, or spheroid, 3 - wedge-shaped, or sphenoid); 4 - mesocranial pentagonal, or pentagonoid.
A unified anthropometric examination on a living person, as well as on the skeleton, mostly on the skull (Fig.), makes it possible to clarify somatoscopic observations and make a more correct comparison of the racial composition of tribes, peoples, individual populations (see) and isolates. Racial characteristics vary and are subject to sexual, age, geographic and evolutionary variability.
The racial composition of humanity is very complex, which largely depends on the mixed nature of the population of many countries in connection with ancient migrations and modern mass migrations. Therefore, in the land area inhabited by humanity, contact and intermediate racial groups are found, formed from the interpenetration of two or three or more complexes of racial characteristics during the crossbreeding of anthropological types.
The process of racial miscegenation increased greatly during the era of capitalist expansion after the discovery of America. As a result, for example, Mexicans are half mixed race between Indians and Europeans.
A noticeable increase in interracial mixing is observed in the USSR and other socialist countries. This is the result of the elimination of all kinds of racial barriers on the basis of correct scientifically based national and international policies.
Races are biologically equivalent and blood related. The basis for this conclusion is the doctrine of monogenism developed by Charles Darwin, i.e., the origin of man from one species of ancient bipedal apes, and not from several (the concept of polygenism). Monogenism is confirmed by the anatomical similarity of all races, which could not, as Charles Darwin emphasized, arise through convergence, or convergence of characteristics, of different ancestral species. The species of monkey that served as the ancestor for humans probably lived in South Asia, from where ancient people spread across the Earth. Ancient people, the so-called Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis), gave rise to “homo sapiens”. But modern races did not arise from Neanderthals, but were formed anew under the influence of a combination of natural (including biological) and social factors.
The formation of races (raceogenesis) is closely related to anthropogenesis; both processes are the result of historical development. Modern man arose over a vast territory, approximately from the Mediterranean to Hindustan or somewhat larger. From here, Mongoloids could have formed in the northeastern direction, Caucasoids in the northwestern direction, and southern directions- Negroids and Australoids. However, the problem of the ancestral home modern man is still far from complete resolution.
In more ancient eras, when people settled on Earth, their groups inevitably found themselves in conditions of geographic and, consequently, social isolation, which contributed to their racial differentiation in the process of interaction of factors of variability (q.v.), heredity (q.v.) and selection. With an increase in the number of isolates, new settlement occurred and contacts with neighboring groups arose, causing crossbreeding. When forming races famous role natural selection also played a role, the influence of which as it developed social environment weakened noticeably. In this regard, the characteristics of modern races have secondary importance. Aesthetic, or sexual, selection also played some role in the formation of races; sometimes racial characteristics could acquire the meaning of identifying characteristics for representatives of one or another local racial group.
As the human population grew, both the specific significance and the direction of action of individual factors of raceogenesis changed, but the role social influences increased. If for primary races miscegenation was a differentiating factor (when miscegenated groups again found themselves in conditions of isolation), now miscegenation levels out racial differences. Currently, about half of humanity is the result of crossbreeding. Racial differences, which naturally arose over many millennia, must and will, as K. Marx pointed out, be eliminated by historical development. But racial characteristics will continue to manifest themselves for a long time in certain combinations, mainly in individuals. Crossbreeding often leads to the emergence of new positive features of physical makeup and intellectual development.
The race of the patient must be taken into account when evaluating some medical examination data. This applies mainly to the peculiarities of the color of the integument. The skin color characteristic of a representative of the “black” or “yellow” race will turn out to be a symptom of Addison’s disease or icterus in a “white” race; A doctor will evaluate a purple tint of lip color and bluish nails in a Caucasian as cyanosis, and in a Negro as a racial feature. On the other hand, color changes due to “bronze disease,” jaundice, and cardiorespiratory failure, which are distinct in Caucasians, can be difficult to detect in representatives of the Mongoloid or Negroid-Australoid race. Much less practical significance have and less often may require adjustments for racial characteristics when assessing physique, height, skull shape, etc. As for the allegedly occurring predisposition of a given race to a particular disease, increased susceptibility to infection, etc., these characteristics, like As a rule, they do not have a “racial” character, but are associated with social, cultural, everyday and other living conditions, the proximity of natural foci of infection, the degree of acclimatization during relocation, etc.