Races and their types. Large and small races of man. Theories on the origin of human races

A race is a historically established group of people that has common physical features: skin color, eyes and hair, eye shape, eyelid structure, head outlines, and others. Previously, it was accepted to divide the races into “black” (Negroes), yellow (Asians) and white (), but now this classification is considered obsolete and incomplete.

The simplest modern division is not too different from the "color". According to it, 3 main or large races are distinguished: Negroid, Caucasoid and Mongoloid. Representatives of these three races have significant distinctive features.

Negroids are characterized by curly black hair, dark brown skin (sometimes almost black), brown eyes, strongly protruding jaws, a slightly protruding wide nose, thickened lips.

Caucasoids typically have wavy or straight hair, relatively fair skin, varying eye colors, slightly protruding jaws, a narrow protruding nose with a high nose bridge, and usually thin or medium lips.

Mongoloids have straight coarse dark hair, yellowish skin tones, brown eyes, a narrow slit in the eyes, a flattened face with strongly protruding cheekbones, a narrow or medium-wide nose with a low bridge of nose, and moderately thickened lips.

In the extended classification, it is customary to distinguish several more racial groups. For example, the Amerindian race (Indians, American race) is the indigenous population of the American continent. It is close in physiological terms to, however, the settlement of America began more than 20 thousand years ago, therefore, according to experts, it is incorrect to consider the Amerindians as a branch of the Mongoloids.

Australoids (Australian-Oceanian race) - indigenous people. An ancient race that had a huge range limited by regions:, Hawaii,. The features of the appearance of indigenous Australians - a large nose, beard, long wavy hair, a massive eyebrow, powerful jaws sharply distinguish them from Negroids.

At present, there are few pure representatives of their races left. Basically, mestizos live on our planet - the result of mixing different races, which may have signs of different racial groups.

Among the variety of features inherent in representatives of different peoples, scientists are looking for features typical of large groups of the Earth's population. One of the first scientific classifications of population was proposed by K. 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 (arab. 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 been going on since the time of C. Linnaeus and J.-L. Buffon. Most scientists in the composition of modern mankind distinguish four large races - Eurasian (Caucasoid), Equatorial (Negroid), Asian-American (Mongoloid), Australoid.

Race origins

Remember: view Homo sapiens originated in Africa, from where about 100 thousand years ago its gradual settlement began in Europe and Asia. People moved to new territories, looked for 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 Asia and America were connected by a land "bridge". Him and came to North America, immigrants from Asia. Over time, moving south, they reached South America.

Settlement continued for tens of thousands of years. Scientists believe that during the migration, racial characteristics were fixed, according to which the inhabitants of different regions of the planet differ. Some of these traits must be adaptive in nature. So, a mop of curly hair among the inhabitants of the hot equatorial zone creates an air gap, protects the vessels of the head from overheating, and the dark pigment in the skin is an adaptation to high solar radiation. Enhanced evaporation of moisture and, accordingly, cooling of the body contributes to a wide nose and large lips.

fair skin Caucasians can also be regarded as adaptation to climate. Vitamin D is synthesized in the body of light-skinned people under conditions of low solar radiation. The narrow slit of the eyes in representatives of the Asian-American race protects the eyes from sand during steppe storms.

Due to the resettlement of people, isolation and mixing have become factors in the consolidation of racial characteristics. In a primitive society, people united in small isolated communities, where the possibilities of marriage unions are limited. Therefore, the predominance of one or another racial trait 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 massive, 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). Remoteness from the main migration routes also leads to isolation. On such a "lost island" people live in isolation, their appearance retains the features of distant ancestors. For example, the Scandinavians "mothballed" physical features that were formed millennia ago: blond hair, tall stature, and the like. For many millennia there was also a mixture of races. 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. Mestizos make up about half of the population of modern Mexico. Usually, most of the racial traits in mestizos are less pronounced than in the extreme manifestations of these traits: the skin of Mexican mestizos is lighter than that of the Maya Indians, and darker than that of Europeans.

In the main and secondary features of the external appearance and internal structure, people are very similar to each other. Therefore, from a biological point of view, most scientists consider humanity as one species of "reasonable man."

Mankind, now inhabiting almost the entire land, even in Antarctica, is not homogeneous in composition. It is divided into groups that have long been called races, and this term has established itself in anthropology.

The human race is a biological group of people similar to, but not homologous to, the subspecies group of zoological taxonomy. Each race is characterized by a unity of origin, arose and formed in a certain initial territory, or area. Races are characterized by one or another set of bodily features, related mainly to the external appearance of a person, to his morphology and anatomy.

The main racial features are as follows: the shape of the hair on the head; the nature and degree of development of hair on the face (beard, mustache) and on the body; hair, skin and iris color; the shape of the upper eyelid, nose and lips; the shape of the head and face; body length, or height.

Human races are the subject of special study in anthropology. According to many Soviet anthropologists, modern humanity consists of three large races, which are in turn subdivided into small races. These latter again consist of groups of anthropological types; the latter are the basic units of racial systematics (Cheboksarov, 1951).

In the composition of any human race, one can find more typical and less typical representatives of it. In the same way, races are found that are more characteristic, more pronounced, and comparatively little different from other races. Some races are intermediate.

The large Negroid-Australoid (black) race as a whole is characterized by a certain combination of features that are most pronounced in Sudanese blacks and distinguish it from the Caucasoid or Mongoloid large races. Among the racial characteristics of Negroids are: black, spirally curled or wavy hair; chocolate brown or even almost black (sometimes yellowish brown) skin; Brown eyes; a rather flat, slightly protruding nose with a low nose bridge and wide wings (some have a straight, narrower one); most have thick lips; very many have a long head; moderately developed chin; protruding forward dental section of the upper and lower jaws (maxillary prognathism).

On the basis of geographical distribution, the Negroid-Australoid race is also called the Equatorial, or African-Australian. It naturally falls into two small races: 1) the western, or African, otherwise Negroid, and 2) the eastern, or Oceanian, otherwise Australoid.

Representatives of a large European-Asian, or Caucasian, race (white) are generally characterized by a different combination of signs: pinkness of the skin, due to the translucence of blood vessels; some have a lighter skin color, others are darker; many have light colored hair and eyes; wavy or straight hair, medium or strong development of hair on the body and on the face; lips of medium thickness; the nose is rather narrow and protrudes strongly from the plane of the face; high bridge; poorly developed fold of the upper eyelid; slightly protruding jaws and upper face, moderately or strongly protruding chin; as a rule, a small width of the face.

Within the large Caucasoid race (white), three small races are distinguished by the color of their hair and eyes: the more pronounced northern (light-colored) and southern (dark-colored), as well as the less pronounced Central European (with an intermediate color). A significant part of the Russians belongs to the so-called White Sea-Baltic group of types of the northern minor race. They are characterized by light blond or blond hair, blue or gray eyes, and very fair skin. At the same time, their nose is often with a concave back, and the nose bridge is not very high and has a different shape than that of the northwestern Caucasoid types, namely the Atlanto-Baltic group, whose representatives are found mainly in the population of the countries of Northern Europe. With the latter group, the White Sea-Baltic has many features in common: both of them constitute the northern Caucasoid small race.

Darker-colored groups of southern Caucasians form the bulk of the population of Spain, France, Italy, Switzerland, southern Germany and the countries of the Balkan Peninsula.
The Mongoloid, or Asian-American, large (yellow) race as a whole differs from the Negroid-Australoid and Caucasoid large races in its inherent set of racial characteristics. So, in its most typical representatives, the skin is swarthy, yellowish; dark brown eyes; hair black, straight, tight; on the face, a beard and mustache, as a rule, do not develop; on the body, the hairline is very poorly developed; for typical Mongoloids, a highly developed and peculiarly located fold of the upper eyelid is very characteristic, which covers the inner corner of the eye, thereby causing a somewhat oblique position of the palpebral fissure (this fold is called the epicanthus); their face is rather flat; cheekbones are wide; the chin and jaws protrude a little forward; the nose is straight, but the bridge of the nose is low; lips are moderately developed; growth at the majority average and below average.

Such a set of features is more common, for example, among the northern Chinese, who are typical Mongoloids, but taller. In other Mongoloid groups one can find less or thicker lips, less tight hair, shorter stature among him. A special place is occupied by the American Indians, for some signs, as it were, bring them closer to the large Caucasoid race.
There are also groups of types of mixed origin in humanity. The so-called Lapland-Urals include the Lapps, or Sami, with their yellowish skin, but soft dark hair. According to their bodily features, these inhabitants of the far north of Europe connect the Caucasoid and Mongoloid races.

There are also such groups that at the same time have a great similarity with two other, more sharply different races, and the similarity is due not so much to mixing as to ancient family ties. Such, for example, is the Ethiopian group of types, linking the Negroid and Caucasoid races: it has the character of a transitional race. This appears to be a very ancient group. The combination in it of the signs of two large races clearly testifies to very distant times, when these two races still represented something unified. The Ethiopian race includes many inhabitants of Ethiopia, or Abyssinia.

In total, humanity falls into about twenty-five to thirty groups of types. At the same time, it represents unity, since among the races there are intermediate (transitional) or mixed groups of anthropological types.

It is characteristic of most human races and groups of types that each of them occupies a definite common territory in which this part of mankind has historically arisen and developed.
But due to historical conditions, it happened more than once that one or another part of the representatives of a given race moved to neighboring or even very distant countries. In some cases, some races have completely lost contact with their original territory, or a significant part of them have undergone physical extermination.

As we have seen, representatives of one race or another are characterized by approximately the same combination of hereditary bodily features related to the external appearance of a person. However, it has been established that these racial characteristics change during individual life and in the course of evolution.

The representatives of each human race, as a result of their common origin, have a somewhat closer relationship with each other than with representatives of other human races.
Racial groups are characterized by strong individual variability, and the boundaries between different races are usually not pronounced. So. some races are connected by imperceptible transitions with other races. In a number of cases it is very difficult to establish the racial composition of the population of a given country or population group.

The definition of racial characteristics and their individual variability is based on the techniques developed in anthropology and with the help of special tools. As a rule, hundreds and even thousands of representatives of the studied racial group of mankind are subjected to measurements and inspection. Such techniques make it possible to judge with sufficient accuracy the racial composition of a particular people, the degree of purity or mixedness of a racial type, but do not give an absolute opportunity to attribute some people to one or another race. This depends either on the fact that the racial type in a given individual is expressed unsharply, or on account of the fact that this person is the result of mixing.

Racial characteristics in a number of cases vary markedly even during a person's life. Sometimes, over a period of not very long time, the signs of racial divisions also change. So, in many groups of mankind, the shape of the head has changed over the past hundreds of years. The largest progressive American anthropologist Franz Boas found that the shape of the skull changes within racial groups even over a much shorter period, for example, when moving from one part of the world to another, as happened with immigrants from Europe to America.

Individual and general forms of variability of racial characteristics are inextricably linked and lead to continuous, although usually hardly noticeable, modifications of the racial groups of mankind. The hereditary composition of the race, while sufficiently stable, is nevertheless subject to constant change. We have so far talked more about racial differences than about similarities between races. However, we recall that the differences between races appear quite clearly only when a set of features is taken. If we consider racial characteristics separately, then only very few of them can serve as more or less reliable evidence of an individual's belonging to a particular race. In this regard, perhaps the most striking feature is the spirally curled, or, in other words, curly (finely curly) hair, so characteristic of typical Negroes.

In very many cases it is completely impossible to establish. to which race a particular person should be attributed. Thus, for example, a nose with a rather high back, bridge of medium height, and wings of medium width may be found in some groups of all three great races, as well as other racial characters. And this is regardless of whether this person came from a marriage between representatives of two races or not.

The fact of the interweaving of racial characteristics is one of the proofs that the races have a common origin and are blood related to one another.
Racial differences are usually secondary or even tertiary features in the structure of the human body. Some of the racial characteristics, such as skin color, are largely related to the adaptability of the human body to the natural environment. Such traits took shape in the course of the historical development of mankind, but they have already lost their biological significance to a large extent. In this sense, the human races are not at all similar to the subspecies groups of animals.

In wild animals, racial differences arise and develop as a result of the adaptation of their organism to the natural environment in the process of natural selection, in the struggle between variability and heredity. Subspecies of wild animals, as a result of long or rapid biological evolution, can and do turn into species. Subspecific features are vital for wild animals, have an adaptive character.

Breeds of domestic animals are formed under the influence of artificial selection: the most useful or beautiful individuals are taken to the tribe. The breeding of new breeds is carried out on the basis of the teachings of I. V. Michurin, often in very short periods of time, over the course of only a few generations, especially in combination with proper feeding.
Artificial selection did not play any role in the formation of modern human races, and natural selection played a secondary role, which it has long lost. It is obvious that the process of origin and development of human races differs sharply from the ways of origin of breeds of domestic animals, not to mention cultivated plants.

The first foundations for a scientific understanding of the origin of human races from a biological point of view were laid by Charles Darwin. He specifically studied the human races and established the undoubted very close similarity between them in many basic characteristics, as well as their blood, very close relationship. But this, according to Darwin, clearly indicates their origin from one common trunk, and not from different ancestors. All further development of science confirmed his conclusions, which form the basis for monogenism. Thus, the doctrine of the origin of man from different monkeys, i.e., polygenism, turns out to be untenable and, consequently, racism loses one of its main supports (Ya. Ya. Roginsky, M. G. Levin, 1955).

What are the main features of the type of "reasonable man" that are characteristic of all modern human races without exception? The main, primary features should be recognized as a very large and highly developed brain with a very large number of convolutions and grooves on the surface of its hemispheres and the human hand, which, according to Engels, is an organ and a product of labor. The structure of the leg is also characteristic, especially the foot with a longitudinal arch, adapted to support the human body when standing and moving.

Important features of the type of modern man include the following: the spinal column with four bends, of which the lumbar, which developed in connection with upright posture, is especially characteristic; the skull with its rather smooth outer surface, with a strongly developed brain and a poorly developed facial region, with high frontal and parietal areas of the brain region; strongly developed gluteal muscles, as well as the muscles of the thigh and lower leg; weak development of hair on the body with the complete absence of tufts of tactile hair, or vibrissae, in the eyebrows, mustache and beard.

Possessing a combination of these features, all modern human races are at the same high level of development of physical organization. Although in different races these basic species features are not quite equally developed - some are stronger, others are weaker, but these differences are very small: all races completely have features of the type of modern man, and none of them is Neanderthaloid. In all human races, there is not one that is biologically superior to any other race.

Modern human races have equally lost many of the simian traits that the Neanderthals still had, and acquired the progressive traits of Homo sapiens. Therefore, none of the modern human races can be considered more ape-like or more primitive than others.

Adherents of the false doctrine of higher and lower races claim that the Negroes are more like monkeys than the Europeans. But from a scientific point of view, this is completely wrong. Negroes have spirally curled hair, thick lips, a straight or convex forehead, no tertiary hairline on the body and face, and very long legs relative to the body. And these signs indicate that it is Negroes who are more sharply different from chimpanzees. than Europeans. But the latter, in their turn, differ more sharply from monkeys in their very light skin coloration and other features.

A great contribution to the description of human races was made by the Soviet scientist Valery Pavlovich Alekseev (1929-1991). In principle, we are now guided precisely by his calculations in this interesting anthropological issue. So what is race?

This is a relatively stable biological characteristic of the human species. Combines their general appearance and psychophysical features. At the same time, it is important to understand that this unity does not in any way affect the form of the hostel and the ways of living together. General signs are purely external, anatomical, but they cannot be used to judge the intellect of people, their ability to work, live, engage in science, art and other mental activities. That is, representatives of different races are absolutely identical in their mental development. They also have exactly the same rights, and, consequently, duties.

The ancestors of modern man are the Cro-Magnons. It is assumed that their first representatives appeared on Earth 300 thousand years ago in Southeast Africa. As the millennia passed, our distant ancestors spread throughout the world. They lived in different climatic conditions, and therefore acquired strictly specific biological characteristics. A single habitat gave rise to a common culture. And within this culture ethnic groups were formed. For example, the Roman ethnic group, the Greek ethnic group, the Carthaginian ethnic group and others.

Human races are divided into Caucasians, Negroids, Mongoloids, Australoids, Americanoids. There are also sub-races or minor races. Their representatives have their own specific biological traits that other people do not have.

1 - Negroid, 2 - Caucasoid, 3 - Mongoloid, 4 - Australoid, 5 - Americanoid

Caucasians - white race

The first Caucasians appeared in Southern Europe and North Africa. From there they spread throughout the European continent, came to Central, Central Asia and Northern Tibet. They crossed the Hindu Kush and ended up in India. Here they settled the entire northern part of Hindustan. They also mastered the Arabian Peninsula and the northern regions of Africa. In the 16th century, they crossed the Atlantic and populated almost all of North America and most of South America. Then it was the turn of Australia and South Africa.

Negroids - black race

Negroids or Negroes are considered the indigenous inhabitants of the tropical zone. This explanation is based on melanin, which gives the skin its black color. It protects the skin from the burns of the scorching tropical sun. No doubt, it prevents burns. But what clothes do people wear on a hot sunny day - white or black? Of course white, because it reflects the sun's rays well. Therefore, in extreme heat, having black skin is unprofitable, especially with high insolation. From this we can assume that the Negroes appeared in those climatic conditions where cloudiness prevailed.

Indeed, the oldest finds of Grimaldi (Negroids), belonging to the Upper Paleolithic, were discovered on the territory of Southern France (Nice) in the Grimaldi cave. In the Upper Paleolithic, this whole area was inhabited by people with black skin, woolly hair and large lips. They were tall, slender, long-legged hunters of large herbivores. But how did they end up in Africa? Just like the Europeans came to America, that is, they moved there, pushing the indigenous population.

Interestingly, South Africa was inhabited by Negroids - Bantu Negroes (the classic Negroes we know) in the 1st century BC. e. That is, the pioneers were contemporaries of Julius Caesar. It was at this time that they settled in the forests of the Congo, the savannas of East Africa, reached the southern regions of the Zambezi River and ended up on the banks of the muddy Limpopo River.

And who did these black-skinned European conquerors supplant? After all, someone lived before them on these lands. This is a special southern race, which is conditionally called " Khoisan".

Khoisan race

It includes Hottentots and Bushmen. They differ from blacks in brown skin and Mongoloid features. They have a different throat. They do not pronounce words on the exhale, like all of us, but on the inhale. They are considered the remnants of some ancient race that inhabited the Southern Hemisphere for a very long time. There are very few of these people left, and in the ethnic sense, they do not represent anything integral.

Bushmen- quiet and calm hunters. They were pushed out by Bichuani Negroes into the Kalahari Desert. That's where they live, forgetting their ancient and rich culture. They have art, but it is in a rudimentary state, since life in the desert is very difficult and you have to think not about art, but about how to get food.

Hottentots(the Dutch name of the tribes), who lived in the Cape Province (South Africa), became famous for being real robbers. They stole cattle. They quickly became friends with the Dutch and became their guides, translators and farm workers. When the British captured the Cape Colony, the Hottentots made friends with them. They live on these lands to this day.

Australoids

Australoids are also called Australians. How they got to the lands of Australia is unknown. But they were there a long time ago. It was a huge number of small tribes with different customs, rituals and culture. They did not like each other and practically did not communicate.

Australoids are not similar to Caucasoids, Negroids and Mongoloids. They only look like themselves. Their skin is very dark, almost black. The hair is wavy, the shoulders are wide, and the reaction is extremely fast. Relatives of these people live in South India on the Deccan Plateau. Maybe from there they sailed to Australia, and also settled all the islands nearby.

Mongoloids - yellow race

Mongoloids are the most numerous. They are divided into a large number of sub-races or small races. There are Siberian Mongoloids, North Chinese, South Chinese, Malay, Tibetan. What they have in common is a narrow slit of the eyes. The hair is straight, black and coarse. The eyes are dark. The skin is swarthy, has a slight yellowish tint. The face is broad and flattened, the cheekbones protrude.

americanoids

Americanoids populate America from the tundra to Tierra del Fuego. Eskimos do not belong to this race. They are alien people. The hair of the Americanoids is black and straight, the skin is swarthy. The eyes are black and narrower than those of Caucasians. These people have a huge number of languages. Among them, it is even impossible to make any classification. There are many dead languages ​​now, as their speakers have died out and the languages ​​have been written down.

Pygmies and Caucasians

pygmies

Pygmies belong to the Negroid race. They live in the forests of equatorial Africa. Notable for their small stature. They have it 1.45-1.5 meters. The skin is brown, the lips are relatively thin, the hair is dark and curly. Living conditions are poor, hence the small growth, which is the result of a small amount of vitamins and proteins necessary for the body for normal development. Currently, short stature has become a genetic heredity. Therefore, even if the pygmy babies are heavily fed, they will not become tall.

Thus, we have considered the main human races that exist on Earth. But it should be noted that race has never been of decisive importance for the formation of culture. It is also noteworthy that over the past 15 thousand years, no new biological types of people have appeared, and the old ones have not disappeared. Everything is still stable. The only thing is that there is a mixing of people of different biological types. There are mestizos, mulattos, sambo. But these are not biological and anthropological, but social factors determined by the achievements of civilization..

Human races are biological subdivisions of the species Homo sapiens that have historically developed in the evolution of man. They differ in complexes of hereditarily transmitted and gradually changing morphological, biochemical and other features. The modern geographical areas of distribution, or areas, occupied by races, make it possible to outline the territories in which 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 "geographic races" can be applied, then in relation to man it has largely lost its meaning, since the connection of human races with the original areas is broken by numerous migrations of masses of people, as a result of which there was a mixing of the most diverse 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, the third, the Asian-American race. There are the following branches of large races: African and Oceanian; northern and southern; Asian and American (G. F. Debets). The population of the Earth is now over 3 billion 300 million people (data for 1965). Of these, the first race accounts for approximately 10% of the second - 50% and the third - 40%. This is, of course, a rough total count, as there are hundreds of millions of racially mixed individuals, numerous minor races, and mixed (intermediate) racial groups, including those of ancient origin (such as the Ethiopians). Large, or primary, races, occupying vast territories, are not completely homogeneous. They are divided according to physical (bodily) characteristics into branches, into 10-20 small races, and those into anthropological types.

Modern races, their origin and systematics are studied by ethnic anthropology (racial science). Population groups are subjected to research for survey and quantitative definition of so-called racial signs with the subsequent processing of mass data by methods of variation statistics (see). Anthropologists use for this scale the color of the skin and the iris of the eyes, the color and shape of the hair, the shape of the eyelid, nose and lips, as well as anthropometric instruments: compasses, goniometer, etc. (see Anthropometry). Hematological, biochemical and other examinations are also conducted.

Belonging to one or another racial division is determined on men 20-60 years old according to a complex of genetically stable and quite characteristic signs of the physical structure.

Further descriptive features of the racial complex: the presence of a beard and mustache, the rigidity of the hair of the head, the degree of development of the upper eyelid and its fold - epicanthus, the slope of the forehead, the shape of the head, the development of the superciliary ridges, the shape of the face, the growth of hair on the body, the type of constitution (see Habitus) and body proportions (see Constitution).

Options for the shape of the skull: 1 - dolichocranial ellipsoid; 2 and 3 - brachycranial (2 - rounded, 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.), allows you to clarify somatoscopic observations and make a more correct comparison of the racial composition of tribes, peoples, individual populations (see) and isolates. Racial characters vary and are subject to sexual, age, geographical and evolutionary variability.

The racial composition of mankind is very complex, which to a large extent depends on the mixing (miscegenation) of the population of many countries in connection with ancient migrations and modern mass migrations. Therefore, on the land area inhabited by mankind, contact and intermediate racial groups are found, formed from the interpenetration of two or three or more complexes of racial features during the miscegenation of anthropological types.

The process of racial miscegenation greatly increased in the era of capitalist expansion after the discovery of America. As a result, for example, Mexicans are half-mestizo 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.

The races are biologically equivalent and related by blood. The basis for this conclusion is the doctrine developed by Charles Darwin about monogenism, that is, about 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, as Charles Darwin emphasized, could not have arisen through convergence, or convergence of characters, of different ancestral species. The species of monkeys that served as an ancestor for humans probably lived in South Asia, from where the most ancient people settled on the Earth. Ancient people, the so-called Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis), gave rise to "reasonable man." But modern races did not originate from Neanderthals, but were formed anew under the influence of a combination of natural (including biological) and social factors.

The formation of races (racial genesis) is closely connected with anthropogenesis; both processes are the result of historical development. Modern man arose over a vast territory, approximately from the Mediterranean to Hindustan or somewhat more. From here, Mongoloids could form in the northeast direction, Caucasoids in the northwest, and Negroids and Australoids in the south. However, the problem of the ancestral home of modern man is still far from being fully resolved.

In more ancient eras, when people settled on Earth, their groups inevitably fell into conditions of geographic and, consequently, social isolation, which contributed to their racial differentiation in the process of interaction of factors of variability (see), heredity (see) and selection. With an increase in the abundance of the isolate, a new settlement occurred and contacts with neighboring groups arose, which caused miscegenation. In the formation of races, natural selection also played a certain role, the influence of which, as the social environment developed, noticeably weakened. In this regard, the signs of modern races are of secondary importance. Aesthetic or sexual selection also played a certain role in the formation of races; sometimes racial features could acquire the value of identifying features 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 racial genesis changed, but the role of social influences increased. If for the primary races miscegenation was a differentiating factor (when the miscegenated groups again fell into conditions of isolation), now mixing levels out racial differences. Currently, about half of humanity is the result of miscegenation. Racial differences that have naturally arisen over long millennia must be and will be, as K. Marx pointed out, eliminated by historical development. But racial traits will still manifest themselves for a long time in various combinations, mainly in individuals. Cross-breeding often causes the emergence of new positive features of the physical warehouse and intellectual development.

The race of the patient must be taken into account when evaluating some of the findings of the medical examination. This applies mainly to the features of the color of the covers. The color of the skin, characteristic of a representative of the "black" or "yellow" race, in the "white" will turn out to be a symptom of Addison's disease or icterus; the purple tint of the color of the lips, the bluish nails of the Caucasoid, the doctor will evaluate as cyanosis, in the Negro - as a racial feature. On the other hand, color changes in "bronze disease", jaundice, cardio-respiratory failure, distinct in Caucasians, can be difficult to determine in representatives of the Mongoloid or Negroid-Australoid race. Of much less practical importance are corrections for racial characteristics in assessing physique, height, shape of the skull, etc., and so on. As for the alleged predisposition of a given race to a particular disease, increased susceptibility to infection, etc., these features, as a rule, do not have a “racial” character, but are associated with social, cultural, domestic and other living conditions, the proximity of natural foci of infection, the degree of acclimatization during resettlement, etc.