What science studies races? Anthropology studies the origin of man, his existence and development. The name of this science comes from the words "anthropos" and "logos", which can be translated as "man" and "science", respectively. Many centuries ago, people began to turn

Races of dwarfs Almost all ancient mythologies reminisce about dwarf people. The Greeks called them myrmidons and believed that dwarfs originated from ants nesting on the holy oak. Ulis led their army to the gates of Troy. The Aegean priest, given their small stature, came to the idea of

Races of freaks Ancient people believed in the existence of entire races of freaks. Historians of that time talk about tribes of sirens, centaurs, fauna, sphinxes and countless tribes of dwarfs and giants. All historians ancient greece believed in the existence of a mythical race of people with

The Sovereign of All Russia, the twelve-year-old Tsar Peter II, upon his accession to the throne, immediately, long before the official coronation, prescribed to his subjects that in letters addressed to him and requests addressed to him, the “lowest slave” should be placed before the signature of the bearer. no more and

Races Australian (Australoid) Asian-American (Mongoloid) American American Arctic Armenoid Atlanto-Baltic Balkan-Caucasian White Sea-Baltic Bushman Veddoid Grimaldian Far Eastern Eurasian

A student of the human races.

Racial studies studies the classification of races, the history of their formation and such factors of their occurrence as selective processes, isolation, mixing and migration, the influence of climatic conditions and the general geographical environment on racial characteristics.

Soviet scientists (such as V. V. Bunak, V. P. Alekseev, and others) contributed greatly to racial studies.

Racial science is sometimes identified with ethnic anthropology. However, the latter refers, strictly speaking, only to the study of the racial composition of individual ethnic groups, that is, tribes, peoples, nations, and the origin of these communities.

In that part of racial research that is aimed at studying ethnogenesis, anthropology conducts research in conjunction with linguistics, history, and archeology. In studying the driving forces of race formation, anthropology comes into close contact with genetics, physiology, zoogeography, climatology, and the general theory of speciation. The study of races in anthropology is important for solving many problems. It is important for using anthropological material as a historical source, highlighting the problems of systematics, mainly small systematic units, understanding the patterns of population genetics, clarifying some issues of medical geography.

The concept of race in modern science

The scientific usefulness of the concept of "race" was questioned as early as the 1930s. In the middle of the 20th century, the concept of the unreality of races as intraspecific divisions of mankind arose. One of the first to formulate it was the Belgian scientist J. Yerno, who declared race not a fact, but a concept.

In 1964, anthropologists from different countries, including the USSR, developed a document for UNESCO stating that since the geographical variations of the features used in classifications are complex and do not have sharp breaks, humanity cannot be divided into strictly delimited categories with clear boundaries.

Genetic studies have shown that each "racial trait" is determined by several genes, the range of each of which does not coincide. Populations differ not in genotypes, but in the frequency of certain alleles that do not affect basic human functions.

As a result, in Western anthropology in recent decades, a radical conclusion has been formed about the absence of races, and the existence of only "clinal variability". This approach has its drawbacks, as it focuses on single features. Therefore, an approach is currently being developed that takes into account the geographical distribution of several "polymorphic genetic features". The natural scientific content of the concept of "race" is associated with the recognized outdated typological approach, and attention is focused on the study of biological diversity and its causes.

In Soviet anthropology, essentially similar conclusions were voiced back in the 1930s and are currently supported in Russian science. Thus, V. V. Bunak noted the conditionality of classifications and the absence of “pure races”, and G. I. Petrov called races “historically formed categories”. Anthropologist A. A. Zubov, although he considered it wrong to reject the concept of "race", came to the conclusion that all human races together form a single subspecies of the species Homo sapiens.

Modern Russian anthropologists generally view races as populations that differ morphologically and phylogenetically, but do not consider them as taxonomically subspecies. According to anthropologist Stanislav Drobyshevsky, from a morphological point of view, races are equivalent to subspecies of other biological species. However, the definition of a subspecies implies more or less complete reproductive isolation of populations belonging to different subspecies, while races smoothly pass into each other, without clear boundaries and with a large number of intermediate options.

To beginning of XXI century, many Western anthropologists and geneticists support the concept of the unreality of the concept of "race". According to some Russian anthropologists and historians, this concept is politically motivated and has led to the almost complete disappearance of scientific racial studies in the United States and other countries. Western Europe, as a consequence of this - a drop in the level of work on anthropology in general and new wave pseudoscientific constructions of a racist persuasion. In particular, the historian Yuri Semenov associates this approach with long period racial discrimination in these countries. Anthropologist Stanislav Drobyshevsky notes that some supporters of abandoning the term "race" call for using the term "populations", but since the 1950s, racial scientists have understood a population or a group of populations as such. . The ethnologist and archaeologist V. A. Shnirelman, recognizing the role of the political factor in the rejection of the concept of "race" by Western experts, believes that such an approach, on the one hand, is scientifically well enough, and on the other, that a scientist who talks about races "cannot stay within the bounds of pure biology." At the same time, he notes that Western experts, denying the reality of race, have in mind the understanding of race that is characteristic of racists or philistines.

However, regardless of the recognition of race as a biological reality or a social construct, all scientists agree that humanity is a single biological species, and the boundaries between populations are not rigid and are associated with geographical, social and cultural, and not biological factors.

Division into races

Concepts

There are many opinions about how many races can be distinguished within the species Homo sapiens. Existing points of view vary from the hypothesis of two main racial trunks to the hypothesis of 15 independent races. Between these extreme points of view lies a wide range of hypotheses postulating 3 to 5 racial stems.

As noted by the Soviet anthropologist V.P. Alekseev, the typological concept of race "is increasingly becoming anachronistic and receding into the history of anthropological science."

A number of hypotheses within the framework of the typological concept (for example, the existence of an equatorial race that unites the Negroid and the Australoid) have been refuted by modern genetic studies.

Population race concept

In modern Russian racial science, the population concept of race dominates. According to her, races are not discrete communities, but groups of populations, between which there are smooth transitions. With this approach, the racial type cannot be determined in an individual.

Historical race concept

According to the concept formulated by V. V. Bunak in 1938, races are not stable, but are categories that change over time. The historical concept does not contradict the population concept, but only complements it, since it explains why there are no rigid boundaries between races.

Examples of classifications

Frequently distinguished races

Caucasian race

The range of the Caucasian race includes the early area of ​​\u200b\u200bsettlement - Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, Central and Central Asia, Hindustan, and the areas in which they settled in relatively recent times - North and South America, Australia and South Africa. Characteristic features of Caucasians include an orthognathic facial profile (protruding forward in the horizontal plane). The hair is straight or wavy, usually soft (particularly in northern groups). The eyes have a wide slit, although the palpebral fissure is small, the nose is usually moderately or strongly protruding with a high nose bridge, the lips are thin or thickened, there is strong or medium hair growth on the face and body. Wide hands and feet. The color of the skin, hair and eyes is varied: from very light shades in the northern groups to very dark in the southern. On the borders of the range, it forms smooth transitions to the Ural, South Siberian, Mongoloid, Negroid, Ethiopian and Dravidian races.

Ancient humanity, represented by the early tropical populations of Homo (Homo habilis, Homo rudolfensis, Homo ergaster, etc.), was probably darkly pigmented. The biological meaning of light skin is to improve the synthesis of vitamin D, which is involved in the processes of growth and absorption of calcium by bones, which prevents the development of rickets in children in poor light conditions. This feature arose many times in various groups, starting with the Neanderthals, and is adaptive to the conditions of the Arctic climate, which until the end of the last glaciation dominated most of Europe up to the Mediterranean coast. The light color of the iris and hair is partly due to skin pigmentation, partly - it is an accidental neutral sign. The appearance of abnormally light-pigmented populations (“blue-eyed blondes”) in the north of Europe is a consequence of the repeated manifestation of the “founder effect” and the “bottleneck effect” in conditions of extreme isolation. Light pigmentation is a recessive trait - even with a heterozygous presence of the melanin synthesis allele, it easily turns into dark.

Genetic data showed that hunter-gatherers who lived 8500 years ago in what is now Spain, Luxembourg and Hungary had dark skin, they did not have the SLC24A5 and SLC45A2 genes responsible for depigmentation. Hunter-gatherers of northern Europe 7,700 years ago have these genes, as well as HERC2/OCA2, which is associated with blue eyes and probably fair skin and hair. But the final spread of the light skin gene SLC24A5 across Central and Southern Europe is associated with the migration of Neolithic farmers from the Middle East.

Negroid race

According to the latest genetic research, Negroids represent several early isolated human lines, and the Bushmen and Pygmies, in terms of genetic relationship, oppose not only all other African lines, but also all other groups of people in general. Among the Negroids, at least three races that are sharply separated from each other can be distinguished - the Negro, Central African (pygmy) and South African (Bushman, capoid).

The Vedoid subgroup is common in Central and South India, Sri Lanka, Southeast Asia and Indonesia. Characteristic features: gracile build, short neck, dark skin, less wide nose, wide lips, medium to strong beard and mustache growth. Can be described as a gracile variant of the Australoid race, with which it is sometimes combined to form the Australo-Veddoid race. It also differs from the Australoid race in a smaller growth of a beard and mustache, less prognathism, a less wide nose, and a smaller stature. There are numerous transitions to the Mongoloid, Dravidian and Caucasoid races.

The question of the formation of racial characteristics

Most likely, races in the modern sense of the word arose only after the end of the last glaciation and the beginning of the Neolithic revolution due to the appearance of the first agricultural cultures, which managed to sharply increase their numbers in a short historical time and thereby ensure dominance over a large territory for their complex of racial traits. forming the modern "great races". Many researchers speak of the absence of races in the Upper Paleolithic, or "Upper Paleolithic polymorphism" of mankind. According to anthropologist Stanislav Drobyshevsky, the point is not that the racial traits of the Upper Paleolithic people were still “insufficiently differentiated” or “not fully formed”, but that none of their groups could achieve a long-term advantage over others - that is, , there was no greater uniformity of "undifferentiated" humanity, but, on the contrary, its greater mosaic (polymorphism), from which modern racial types subsequently crystallized. Until that moment, small populations of Paleolithic hunter-gatherers, who often lived in conditions of partial or complete isolation from each other, accumulated such a number of local features due to genetic-automatic processes that it was impossible to distinguish among them clearly defined racial groups with a stable set of traits.

At present, the adaptive nature of many racial traits is denied - it is more likely that the populations that were their carriers were simply "lucky" in evolutionary terms, which allowed a random complex of characteristics characteristic of them external signs gain a foothold and become widespread. Probably, a special role in this process was played by the appearance of the first agricultural cultures, which managed to sharply increase their numbers, pushing the groups that were carriers of other racial types to the outskirts of the range, and thereby essentially forming the so-called "big races". Outside the areas of ancient farmers, such leveling of racial characteristics on the basis of the numerical predominance of carriers of a certain type did not occur, which resulted in the preservation of a wide variety of racial characteristics among the American Indians, Australian Aborigines, Melanesians, Khoisanoid inhabitants of South Africa and other groups. It is important to note that these groups are by no means evolutionarily "stagnant" or more archaic ("protomorphic") than the "big races". Opposite - in large groups living in anthropogenic landscapes, the variability of traits drops sharply, there is a tendency for their conservation, which is violated only by cross-breeding at the boundaries of the ranges. biological evolution here it is largely replaced by social and technical development, although it does not stop at all. At the same time, small populations isolated from each other, experiencing a strong selection effect, are characterized by increased plasticity, quickly accumulating both adaptive and random, evolutionarily neutral, but noticeably affecting appearance, traits.

Thus, the “robustness” (massive build) of the Australian Aborigines is a relatively recent evolutionary acquisition, which is the result of biological adaptation to difficult living conditions, and not at all a consequence of their “protomorphism” (archaism). Moreover, judging by the data of archeology, in a relatively recent (historical) time, the trend towards an increase in massiveness among the ancestors of the natives was reversed - towards gracility, probably due to social progress or a change in environmental conditions to milder ones. At the same time, Australians of European descent do not show any signs of biological adaptation to the environment (including in the long term), because they have surrounded themselves with "second nature" - a highly developed technosphere that allows a person to exist in Australian conditions, biologically relatively bad for them adapted. From an evolutionary point of view, white Australians are perhaps more "protomorphic" and "archaic" than the Aborigines, who relatively recently (on an evolutionary scale) acquired a number of specialized (that is, progressive from an evolutionary point of view) traits.

However, the role of technology still should not be absolutized - for example, there are observations that allow us to judge the impact of natural selection on the population modern people, in very recent times (second half of the 20th century) participating in the development Far North. During the life of one generation, almost all settlers unadapted to such conditions returned to mainland- only those remained who had an adaptive type in such conditions, that is, according to the peculiarities of physique and metabolism, they were adapted to extreme cold (moreover, it is significant that in these features they resembled the local aboriginal population). If this population of people continued to reproduce endogamously and would be subjected to severe natural selection, as was usually the case during migrations in prehistoric and early historical times, a stable set of traits corresponding to adaptation to extreme cold would have been fixed in it in just a few generations.

Ancient and relic races

Modern population genetics admits that the currently existing races do not exhaust the entire historical morphological diversity of people of the modern type, and that in ancient times there were races that either disappeared without a trace, or whose features were later blurred as a result of assimilation by carriers of other races. In particular, the Uralist V.V. Napolskikh put forward a hypothesis about the existence of a Paleo-Ural race in the past, the signs of which are currently blurred between the Ural-Siberian Caucasoids and Western Mongoloids, but are not characteristic of either Caucasoids in general or Mongoloids in general.

Upper Paleolithic types

Anthropologist S. V. Drobyshevsky points out that the morphological diversity of people in the Upper Paleolithic was perhaps even more pronounced than at present, and that the skulls of people of that time cannot be clearly diagnosed using modern racial classification, geographical or temporal affiliation is often also not explicitly expressed.

In particular, on the basis of European finds, he describes the following prehistoric races or morphological types identified by different authors, some of which are identified on the basis of a single skull:

• Grimaldian
• Cro-Magnon
• barma grande
• shanselyadskaya
• Oberkassel
• brunnian
• bryunn-przhedmostskaya
• aurignacian
• solutrean

In the Near East of the same time, a succession of pre-Natufians and Natufians is noted. They have proto-Caucasian features, sometimes with a Negroid admixture. At the same time, the Natufians differ from the North African groups Afalu and Taforalt. Among the East African finds, the "Bushman type", "Ethiopian type", "Negroid type" were distinguished, more massive than modern ones. Upper Paleolithic skulls from China, South-East Asia and Indonesia often do not show Mongoloidity, but converge with the eastern equatorials and are more often defined as "proto-Australoids" or "Australo-Melanesian type". Many finds of the region cannot be described in any way using modern racial classification and combine features of both southern Mongoloids and Australoids, Ainu, carriers of the Yomon (or Jomon) culture, archaic Indians and other groups.

Crossbreeding

Geographical isolation played an important role in distinguishing races as populations with distinct characteristics. Such isolation a few thousand years ago was mainly due to vast distances and a small number of people. As a result of an increase in numbers or migrations, populations contacted and mixed races or miscegenation occurred. As a result, mixed anthropological types or small races (South Siberian, Polynesian, and others) appeared.

All known races of mankind can produce fertile joint offspring, even the most isolated populations, such as the American Indians or the Australian Aborigines, "have not had enough" at least several million years of isolation before the occurrence of biological incompatibility with other groups.

As a result of mixed marriages (and miscegenation in general), individuals with mixed racial characteristics appear, and in the contact zones between the ranges of different races, entire contact races appear, possessing such at the population level. Some cultures have a special terminology for them. So, mulattoes are the result of a combination of the Negroid and Caucasoid races, mestizos - Caucasoid and Americanoid / Mongoloid, and Sambo - Negroid and Americanoid. At present, a significant part of the world's population is mestizo to one degree or another, for example, most of the inhabitants of Central and South America. On the other hand, the comparative stability of the complex of racial characteristics of such large groups of mestizo origin allows us to consider them as independent small races that are in the process of formation.

Many studies have been conducted that have shown that there are no medically harmful effects of interracial miscegenation on offspring. This is a consequence of the relatively recent divergence of the races and the constant contact between them throughout history.

Racism

Ideas about the superiority of some races (or racial types) over others were developed in the 19th - mid-20th centuries and were recognized as false from a scientific point of view. Their distribution in the history of mankind played a negative role: from the genocide of the indigenous population of the New World to the Holocaust during the Second World War.

see also

Notes

1. The definition that is accepted in modern Russian anthropology
2. Roginsky Ya. Ya., Levin M. G. Anthropology: Textbook for university students. - 3rd ed., revised and additional. - M.: Higher school, 1978. - S. 341.
3. Drobyshevsky S.V., Borinskaya S.A. About differences between races… and about TV scammers // Anthropogenesis.ru
4. V. A. Shnirelman. Tolerance threshold. v.1. 2011 Chapter 5. p. 92-104
5. Race / M. Vasmer. Etymological dictionary of the Russian language
6. Race / P. Ya. Chernykh. Historical and etymological dictionary of the modern Russian language
7. Glossary Archived April 22, 2015. // Bogatenkov D. V., Drobyshevsky S. V. Anthropology
8. The Race Concept in Six Regions: Variation Without Consensus. Leonard Lieberman Katarzyna A. Kaszycka Antonio J. Martinez Fuentes Leonid Yablonsky Rodney C. Kirk Goran Štrkalj Qian Wang Li Sun. Collegium Antropologicum, Vol.28 No.2 Prosinac 2004.
9. Machine-gun belt in the antique layer and other heritage of epistrophes.
10. Zubov A. A. The myth of the unreality of the intraspecific diversity of mankind // Science of man and society: results, problems, prospects. - M., 2003. - S. 11-22. ISBN 5-201-13740-7
11. Stanislav Vladimirovich Drobyshevsky, Scientific Editor of ANTROPOGENESIS.RU, Ph.D., Associate Professor of the Department of Anthropology, Faculty of Biology, Lomonosov Moscow State University Lomonosov. It is racialists who are the real fighters against racism.
12. Yablonsky L. T. Some tasks of modern racial science at the present stage // Human Science and Society: Results, Problems, Prospects. - M., 2003. - S. 23-36. ISBN 5-201-13740-7
13. Y. Semenov. Philosophy of history. 2003. 1.9. Races, racism and the concept of racial determinism
14. The concept of "race" goes to the trash? The latest achievement of American science!
15. Alekseev V.P. Favorites. T.2. Anthropogeography. - M.: Nauka, 2007. - S. 23. ISBN 978-5-02-035544-6
16. Typological concept // Bogatenkov D. V., Drobyshevsky S. V. Anthropology
17. The formation of mankind // Alekseev V.P. Science, 2007. - S. 255. ISBN 978-5-02-035543-9
18. Bunak V.V. The genus Homo, its origin and subsequent evolution / Ed. editor d.h.s. A. A. Zubov. - M.: Nauka, 1980. - 329 p.
19. Victor Shnirelman "Chain dog of the race": couch racology as a defender of the "white man"
20. Formation of mankind // Alekseev V.P. Favorites. T.1. Anthropogenesis - M.: Nauka, 2007. - S. 255-258. ISBN 978-5-02-035543-9
21. Drobyshevsky S. V. Introduction. On the complexity of studying racial variability // Anthropogenesis.ru
22. "Bunak is always right": about the main Soviet anthropologist
23. Stanislav Vladimirovich Drobyshevsky, Scientific Editor of ANTROPOGENESIS.RU, Ph.D., Associate Professor of the Department of Anthropology, Faculty of Biology, Lomonosov Moscow State University Lomonosov. What about Europeans?
24. Scientists told about the recent change of skin color by Europeans
25. Alexander G. Kozintsev, Doctor of Historical Sciences, Chief Researcher of the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Peter the Great (Kunstkamera). Racial classification in the light of new genetic data.
26. The Negro race / Pestryakov A.P. // Nanoscience - Nikolai Cabasila. - M. : , 2013. - S. 268-269. - (Great Russian encyclopedia: [in 35 volumes] / ch. ed. Yu. S. Osipov; 2004-2017, v. 22). - ISBN 978-5-85270-358-3. Archived from the original on December 30, 2017. (Retrieved December 30, 2017)
27. Central African race / Pestryakov A.P. // Great Russian Encyclopedia: [in 35 volumes] / ch. ed. Yu. S. Osipov. - M.: Great Russian Encyclopedia, 2004-2017. Archived from the original on December 30, 2017. (Retrieved December 30, 2017)
28. , With. 337.
29. , With. 355.
30. Stanislav Vladimirovich Drobyshevsky, Scientific Editor of ANTROPOGENESIS.RU, Ph.D., Associate Professor of the Department of Anthropology, Faculty of Biology, Lomonosov Moscow State University Lomonosov. Are Indians Protomorphic?
31. Stanislav Vladimirovich Drobyshevsky, Scientific Editor of ANTROPOGENESIS.RU, Ph.D., Associate Professor of the Department of Anthropology, Faculty of Biology, Lomonosov Moscow State University Lomonosov. What about Europeans?
32. Stanislav Vladimirovich Drobyshevsky, Scientific Editor of ANTROPOGENESIS.RU, Ph.D., Associate Professor of the Department of Anthropology, Faculty of Biology, Lomonosov Moscow State University Lomonosov. Of the Negro and Melanesian races.
33. Stanislav Vladimirovich Drobyshevsky, Scientific Editor of ANTROPOGENESIS.RU, Ph.D., Associate Professor of the Department of Anthropology, Faculty of Biology, Lomonosov Moscow State University Lomonosov. On "Upper Paleolithic polymorphism".
34. Stanislav Vladimirovich Drobyshevsky, Scientific Editor of ANTROPOGENESIS.RU, Ph.D., Associate Professor of the Department of Anthropology, Faculty of Biology, Lomonosov Moscow State University Lomonosov.
35. Stanislav Vladimirovich Drobyshevsky, Scientific Editor of ANTROPOGENESIS.RU, Ph.D., Associate Professor of the Department of Anthropology, Faculty of Biology, Lomonosov Moscow State University Lomonosov.

human races

We live in a very difficult time, there are already about 6 billion people on earth. Among them there are no and cannot be two absolutely identical; even twins developing from the same egg, despite the great similarity of their external appearance and internal state, always differ from one another in some small features. Bodily differences are especially noticeable between territorial groups of people who are distant from each other and live in other geographic and climatic conditions.

View division homo sapiens on race happened 2 and a half centuries ago. The origin of the term "race" is not exactly established. According to some scientists, this is a modification of the slave word "ras" (man, beginning, root). There is also an opinion that the term is related to the Italian "razza", which means "tribe". According to the French traveler Francois Bernier, the word "RASA" came from Sanskrit, the ancient language of the Indo-Aryans. In 1682 he created one of the first classifications of human races.

Metis(French métis, from late Latin misticius - mixed, from Latin misceo - I mix) - descendants from interracial marriages. Anthropologically, mestizos usually occupy an intermediate position between intermingled races. It is a mixture of one race with another.
Mulattos- descendants from mixed marriages of representatives of the Negroid and Caucasian races.
Sambo(Spanish zambo) - descendants from mixed marriages of Indians and blacks. AT different countries and at different times the term had different meanings. Old dictionaries define him as a mixture of a black man and a mulatto, or a black woman and a mulatto. The old pronunciation is "zambo", "zamboin".

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. They are united by a common appearance and psychophysical characteristics. 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 activity. That is, representatives of different races in their own way mental development absolutely the same. 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, got into the Middle, 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 the entire North America and most 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 entire 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.

What's interesting is that South Africa was inhabited by Negroids - Bantu Negroes (classic Negroes that 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 subraces or minor 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

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 has Brown color, lips are relatively thin, 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..

At present, according to various scientists, there are 34-40 races. Races differ from each other in 30-40 elements. Racial features are hereditary, are adaptive to the conditions of existence. There are three main approaches to the classification of races:

a) regardless of origin

b) taking into account origin and kinship

c) based on the population concept

The most plausible is the latter. It lies in the fact that large races are huge populations, small races are subpopulations of large ones, within which specific ethnic formations (nations, nationalities) are smaller populations. This results in a structure that includes levels of hierarchy:

Individual - ethnos - small race - big race.

The formation of races.

There are 4 stages of race formation.

At the first stage there was a formation of primary centers of race formation and the main racial trunks - western and eastern. Chronologically, this falls on the epochs of the Lower and Middle Paleolithic, about 200 thousand years ago, i.e. coincide with the rise of modern man.

Consequently, the main racial combinations in the western and eastern regions of the Old World took shape simultaneously with the formation of signs inherent in modern man, as well as with the migration of part of humanity to the New World.

At the second stage the allocation of secondary centers of race formation and the formation of branches within the main racial trunks. Chronologically, this stage falls on the Upper Paleolithic, partly the Mesolithic, ca. 15-20 thousand years ago.

At the third stage racial formation is the formation of local races. By time - this is the eve of the Mesolithic and Neolithic, approx. 10-12 years ago.

At the fourth stage Quaternary centers of race formation arose and populations with deep racial differentiation similar to modern ones were formed. It began in the Bronze and Early Iron Ages, i.e. in 4-3 thousand BC

Historians, as a rule, judge nations and peoples on the basis of the peculiarities of language and culture, but this is not enough. The language can be borrowed from another people, as, for example, the Russian language has become the predominant and even the only one for many small peoples of Russia (now you can meet representatives of the Chuvash, Mordovians, Komi and other peoples who speak only Russian and consider Russian as their native language) . The culture of peoples also changes in close contact with another people. The question of races, peoples and nations is very complex and confusing. However, the parallels drawn by no means claim to be true.