Mixed races. Mainstream and mixed race people. Races and their origins - Knowledge Hypermarket Human races, how many are there?

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. According to mental abilities, i.e. abilities for cognition, creativity and in general labor activity, all races are the same. Differences in the level of culture are not associated with the biological characteristics of people 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. Evidence from race studies suggests that the differences between races are not sufficient to qualify the races as distinct biological species of humans. 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.

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The Caucasoid race (less commonly called Eurasian or Caucasoid) is distributed in Europe, Western and partly Central Asia, North Africa, northern and central India. Later, Caucasians settled in both Americas, Australia and South Africa.

Today, about 40 percent of the world's population belongs to the Caucasian race. Caucasians have an orthognathic face and hair is usually soft, wavy or straight. The size of the eyes is not a classifying feature, but the brow ridges are quite large. Anthropologists also note a high bridge of the nose, a large nose, small or medium lips, and fairly rapid growth of a beard and mustache. It is noteworthy that the color of hair, skin and eyes is not an indicator of race. The shade can be either light (among northerners) or quite dark (among southerners). The Caucasian race includes Abkhazians, Austrians, Arabs, English, Jews, Spaniards, Germans, Poles, Russians, Tatars, Turks, Croats and about 80 other peoples.

Representatives of the Negroid race settled in Central, East and West Africa. Negroids have curly thick hair, thick lips and a flat nose, wide nostrils, dark skin color, elongated arms and legs. Mustaches and beards grow quite poorly. Eye color - , but the shade depends on genetics. The facial angle is acute, since there is no mental protuberance on the lower jaw. In the last century, Negroids and Australoids were classified as a common equatorial race, but later researchers were able to prove that despite the external similarity and similar conditions of existence, the differences between these races are still significant. One of the opponents of racism, Elizabeth Martinez, proposed calling representatives of the Negroid race Congoids, based on geographic distribution (by analogy with other races), but the term never took root.

"Pygmy" is translated from Greek as "a man the size of a fist." Pygmies or Negrillies are short Negroids. The first mention of pygmies dates back to the third millennium BC. In the 16th-17th centuries, explorers of West Africa called such people “Matimba”. Pygmies were finally identified as a race in the 19th century thanks to the work of the German researcher Georg Schweinfurt and the Russian scientist V.V. Junker. Adult males of the pygmy race usually do not grow above one and a half meters. All representatives of the race are characterized by light brown skin color, curly dark hair, and thin lips. The number of pygmies has not yet been established. According to various sources, from 40,000 to 280,000 people live on the planet. Pygmies belong to underdeveloped peoples. They still live in huts built from dried grass and sticks, hunt (with bows and arrows) and gather, and do not use stone tools.

The Kapoids ("Bushmen" and "Khoisan race") live in South Africa. They are short people with yellow-brown skin and almost childlike features throughout their lives. TO characteristic features The races include coarse curled hair, early-onset wrinkles, and the so-called “Hottentot apron” (a saggy fold of skin above the pubic area). Bushmen have noticeable fat deposits on the buttocks and curvature of the lumbar spine (lordosis).

Initially, representatives of the race inhabited the territory that is now called Mongolia. The appearance of the Mongoloids testifies to the centuries-old need to survive in desert conditions. Mongoloids have narrow eyes with an additional fold at the inner corner of the eye (epicanthus). This helps protect your eyesight and dust. Representatives of the race are distinguished by thick, black, straight hair. Mongoloids are usually divided into two groups: southern (dark-skinned, short, with a small face and high forehead) and northern (tall, light-skinned, with large features and a low skull vault). Anthropologists believe that this race appeared no more than 12,000 years ago.

Representatives of the Americanoid race settled in Northern and South America. They have black hair and a nose like an eagle's beak. The eyes are usually black, the slit is larger than that of Mongoloids, but smaller than that of Caucasians. Americanoids are usually tall.

Australoids are often referred to as the Austral race. This is a very ancient race, whose representatives lived in the Kuril Islands, Hawaii, Hindustan and Tasmania. Australoids are divided into Ainu, Melanesian, Polynesian, Veddoid and Australian groups. Indigenous Australians have brown but fairly light skin, a large nose, massive brow ridges, and strong jaws. The hair of this race is long and wavy, and tends to become very coarse from the sun's rays. Melanesians often have spiral hair.

There are four human races (some scientists insist on three): Caucasoid, Mongoloid, Negroid and Australoid. How does division occur? Each race has hereditary characteristics unique to it. Such signs include the color of skin, eyes and hair, the shape and size of such parts of the face as eyes, nose, lips. In addition to external obvious distinctive features of any race of a person, there are a number of characteristics of creative potential, abilities for one or another work activity, and even structural features of the human brain.

Speaking about the four large groups, one cannot help but say that they are all divided into small subraces, which are formed from various nationalities and nationalities. No one has been arguing about the species unity of man for a long time; the best proof of this same unity is our life, in which representatives of different races get married, and in these races viable children are born.

The origin of races, or rather their formation, begins thirty to forty thousand years ago, when people began to populate new geographical areas. A person adapted to live in certain conditions, and the development of certain racial characteristics depended on this. identified these signs. At the same time, all human races retained common species characteristics that characterize Homo sapiens. Evolutionary development, or rather its level, is the same among representatives of different races. Therefore, all statements about the superiority of any nation over others have no basis. The concepts of “race”, “nation”, “nationality” cannot be mixed and confused, since representatives of different races speaking the same language can live on the territory of one state.

Caucasian race: inhabiting Asia, North Africa. Northern Caucasians are fair-skinned, while southerners are dark-skinned. Narrow face, strongly protruding nose, soft hair.

Mongoloid race: the center and eastern part of Asia, Indonesia and the expanses of Siberia. Dark skin with a yellowish tint, straight, coarse hair, a wide, flat face and a special eye shape.

Negroid race: most of the population of Africa. The skin is dark in color, dark brown eyes, black hair is thick, coarse, curly, large lips, and the nose is wide and flat.

Australoid race. Some scientists distinguish it as a branch of the Negroid race. India, Southeast Asia, Australia and Oceania (ancient black populations). Strongly developed brow ridges, the pigmentation of which is weakened. Some Australoids from western Australia and southern India are naturally blonde in their youth, which is due to the mutation process that once took hold.

The characteristics of each race of man are hereditary. And their development was determined primarily by the need and usefulness of a particular trait for a representative of a certain race. So, the vast one warms cold air faster and easier before it enters the Mongoloid’s lungs. And for a representative of the Negroid race, the dark color of the skin and the presence of thick curly hair, which formed an air layer that reduced the impact of sunlight on the body, were very important.

For many years, the white race was considered superior, since it was beneficial for Europeans and Americans conquering the peoples of Asia and Africa. They started wars and seized foreign lands, mercilessly exploited, and sometimes simply destroyed entire nations.

Today in America, for example, they look less and less at racial differences, there is a mixing of races, which sooner or later will certainly lead to the emergence of a hybrid population.

Humanity is a mosaic of races and peoples that inhabit our Earth. A representative of each race and each people has a number of differences in comparison with representatives of other population systems.

However, all people, despite their racial and ethnic background, are an integral part of a single whole - earthly humanity.

The concept of “race”, division into races

Race is a system of a population of people who have similar biological characteristics that were formed under the influence of the natural conditions of the territory of their origin. Race is the result of the adaptation of the human body to those natural conditions in which he had to live.

The formation of races took place over many millennia. According to anthropologists, at the moment there are three main races on the planet, including more than ten anthropological types.

Representatives of each race are connected by common areas and genes, which provoke the emergence of physiological differences from representatives of other races.

Caucasian race: signs and settlement

The Caucasoid or Eurasian race is the largest race in the world. Characteristic features of the appearance of a person belonging to the Caucasian race are an oval face, straight or wavy soft hair, wide eyes, and average thickness of lips.

The color of eyes, hair and skin varies depending on the region of the population, but always has light shades. Representatives of the Caucasian race evenly populate the entire planet.

The final settlement across the continents occurred after the end of the century of geographical discoveries. Very often, people of the Caucasian race tried to prove their dominant position over representatives of other races.

Negroid race: signs, origin and settlement

The Negroid race is one of three big races. Characteristic features of people belonging to the Negroid race are elongated limbs, dark skin rich in melanin, a wide flat nose, large eyes, and curly hair.

Modern scientists believe that the first Negroid man arose around the 40th century BC. in the territory of modern Egypt. The main region of settlement of representatives of the Negroid race is South Africa. Over the past centuries, people of the Negroid race have settled significantly in the West Indies, Brazil, France and the United States.

Unfortunately, representatives of the Negroid race have been oppressed by “white” people for many centuries. They faced such anti-democratic phenomena as slavery and discrimination.

Mongoloid race: signs and settlement

The Mongoloid race is one of the largest world races. The characteristic features of this race are: dark skin color, narrow eyes, small stature, thin lips.

Representatives of the Mongoloid race primarily inhabit the territory of Asia, Indonesia, and the islands of Oceania. Recently, the number of people of this race has begun to increase in all countries of the world, which is caused by an intensifying wave of migration.

Peoples inhabiting the earth

A people is a certain group of people who have a common number of historical characteristics - culture, language, religion, territory. Traditionally, a stable common feature of a people is its language. However, in our time, cases are common when different peoples speak a single language.

For example, the Irish and Scots speak English language, although they do not apply to the British. Today there are several tens of thousands of peoples in the world, which are systematized into 22 families of peoples. Many peoples that existed before disappeared at this point or were assimilated with other peoples.

Human races are historically established biological divisions of the species “homo sapiens” ( Homo sapiens). 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 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 summary, since there are hundreds of millions of racially mixed individuals, numerous minor races and mixed (intermediate) racial groups, including those of ancient origin (for example, 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 methods variation statistics(cm.). 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 according to a complex of genetically stable and sufficiently characteristic features physical structure.

Further descriptive features of the racial complex: the presence of a beard and mustache, the coarseness of the head hair, the degree of development of the upper eyelid and its fold - the epicanthus, the tilt 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 northeast direction, Caucasoids in the northwest, and Negroids and Australoids in the south. 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. During the formation of races, a certain role was played by natural selection, the influence of which noticeably weakened as the social environment developed. In this regard, the characteristics of modern races are of 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 importance and the direction of action of individual factors of raceogenesis changed, but the role of 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 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.