A huge variety of nationalities is represented on planet Earth, which are characterized by a certain religion, traditions, cultural values... A broader concept is the races that unite people according to morphological characteristics. They were formed as a result of the evolution and socio-historical development of the population. The racial identity of a person has always been of interest, its origin, formation, signs are studied by anthropology.

Concept

The etymology of the word "race" appeared from the middle of the XIX century as a result of borrowing from French"Race", German language"Rasse". Further destiny words unknown. However, there is a version that the concept came from the Latin word "generatio", which means "the ability to be born."

A race is a system of human populations that is characterized by similarities in hereditary biological characteristics (external phenotype) that have formed in a certain geographical area.

The morphological features that make it possible to divide the population into groups include:

  • height;
  • body type;
  • the structure of the skull, face;
  • color of skin, eyes, hair, their structure.

The concepts of nationality, nation and race should not be confused. The latter may include representatives of different nationalities and cultures.

The significance of races lies in the formation of adaptive characteristics in the population that facilitate the existence of a certain territory... Studying groups of people with identical morphological features deals with the section of anthropology - race studies. Science considers the definition, classification, how the factors of development and formation of racial characteristics appeared.

What races are: main types and settlement

Until the 20th century, the number of races in the world was 4, depending on the characteristic features. Large groups united representatives of humanity, while differences in appearance often became the reason why feuds and conflicts occurred between peoples.

The main races of people that are on earth, taking into account the territory of settlement, are shown in the table:

There are no Negroids outside the African continent. Australoids are located within a certain area. The percentage of races on earth was distributed according to the following indicators:

  • Asian population - 57%;
  • Europeans (excluding Russia) - 21%;
  • Americans - 14%;
  • Africans - 8%;
  • Australians - 0.3%.

There are no inhabitants in Antarctica.

Modern classification

After the XX century, the following classification became widespread, which includes 3 racial types. This phenomenon is due to the unification of the Negroid and Australoid groups into mixed races.

There are modern varieties of races:

  • large (European, a mixture of Asian and Negroid, equatorial race - Australo-Negroid);
  • small ( different types that were formed from other races).

The racial division includes 2 stems: western and eastern.

  • Caucasians;
  • negroids;
  • capoids.

The eastern trunk includes the Americanoids, Australoids, and Mongoloids. According to anthropological characteristics, the Indians belong to the Americanoid race.

There is no generally accepted classification of separation according to various characteristics, which is considered direct evidence of the continuity of biological processes of variability.

Signs of human races

Racial features include many characteristics of the human structure, which are formed under the influence of hereditary factors and influences environment. External signs human form studies biology.

Specialists have been interested in races since ancient times. Their distinctive features, description, pictures, help to understand the race of a particular person.

Caucasian

Whites are characterized by light or dark skin tones. Hair, straight or wavy, from light to dark in color. In men, hair grows on the face. The shape of the nose is narrow and protruding, the lips are thin. They belong to this race.

Subraces are distinguished Caucasian race:

  • southern Caucasian;
  • northern Caucasoid.

The first type is characterized by dark, and the second - blond hair, eyes and skin.

The face of the classic European is personified by the False race. The Falids are a kind of Cromanid race that has undergone Nordic influence. The second name of this subtype is the Northern Cromanid. They differ from the Nordids by a low and wide face, a low set on the bridge of the nose, a pronounced red skin tone, a steep forehead, a short neck and a massive torso.

Falids are common in the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Poland, Sweden, Iceland, Germany, and the western part of the Baltic states. Falids are rare in Russia.

Australoid

The Australoids include the Veddoids, Polynesians, Ainu, Australians, and Melanisians.

There are several features of the Australoid race:

  • The elongated skull in relation to other parts of the body is dolichocephaly.
  • The eyes are set wide, the slit is wide with a dark or black iris.
  • A wide nose with a pronounced flat bridge of the nose.
  • Hairiness is developed on the body.
  • Dark coarse hair, sometimes blonde due to a genetic mutation. Hair can be slightly frizzy or frizzy.
  • Average height, sometimes above average.
  • Slim and elongated physique.

It is difficult to recognize a representative of the Australoid race due to the mixing of different nations.

Mongoloid

Mongolian people have special traits that allow them to adapt to complex climatic conditions: sands and winds in the desert, snow drifts.

The characteristics of the Mongoloid appearance include a number of signs:

  • Oblique section of the eyes.
  • On the inner corner of the eye there is an epicanthus - a fold of skin.
  • Light, dark brown iris.
  • Short-headedness (a feature of the structure of the skull).
  • Thickened, strongly protruding ridges above the eyebrow.
  • Weak hair on the face and body.
  • Dark straight hair with a tight structure.
  • A narrow nose with a low bridge of the nose.
  • Narrow lips.
  • Yellow or dark skin.

The distinguishing feature is small growth.

Yellow-skinned Mongoloids predominate in number among the population.

Negroid

The fourth group is characterized by a list of features:

  • Bluish-black skin color due to the increased content of pigment - melanin.
  • The eyes are large in shape with a wide slit of black or dark brown color.
  • Coarse, curly black hair.
  • Short stature.
  • Long hands.
  • Flat, wide nose.
  • The lips are thick.
  • The jaw protrudes forward.
  • The ears are large.

On the face, the hairline is not developed, the beard and mustache are poorly expressed.

Origin

For a long period of time, people with a white skin color were considered representatives of the superior race. On the basis of this, military conflicts were unleashed in the struggle for the first race on earth. Whole nations were mercilessly exterminated for the right to rule the planet.

Some Interesting Facts about the origin of races. The German anthropologist F. Blumenbach considered the most beautiful representatives of the Georgians. Present special term"Caucasian race", which is considered the most numerous.

Mixing of blood of representatives is widespread different groups... For example, mulatto is a term for a mixture of an Asian and a European. The mixture of the Negroid and Mongoloid races is determined by Sambo, and the Caucasian and Mongoloid is the mestizo.

Of interest is the question of what race the Indians belong to - they were formed from the Australoid group.

Rasens are one of the famous species of the Great Race. In world history, her descendants were called Tyrrhenians.

The appearance of the Rasens is characterized by a number of signs:

  • Brown eyes;
  • dark blond or dark brown hair;
  • short stature.

Most often, Rasens have blood group 2. The representatives of this race are characterized by steadfastness, strong spirit and fury, which contributed to high level military readiness.

They act as an East Slavic ethnos. In terms of quantity, it is the most numerous people on the planet. According to Wikipedia, there are a total of 133 million representatives of Russian nationality.

Racism

Decoding of racism: "Discrimination against people by ethnicity, skin color, culture, citizenship, religion and mother tongue."

The term refers to a reactionary ideology and policy that is aimed at the justified exploitation of people.

Racism flourished in the middle of the 19th century in America and England, Germany and France. It was this that served as ideological support for the slave trade, the seizure of land by colonies in Oceania, Australia, Asia, Africa, America.

Racists adhere to the ideology that there is a definite connection between mental, intellectual, social qualities and physical structure. The higher and lower races were distinguished.

The adherents of racist ideology believed that initially pure races arose, and later the mixing of peoples formed new ones. Children appeared with combined features of appearance.

It is believed that mestizo differs from their blood parents:

  • attractive appearance;
  • poor adaptation to living conditions;
  • predisposition to genetic diseases;
  • low reproductive function, blocking further mixing of blood;
  • possible homosexual preferences.

The problem of incest is the crisis of self-identification: during military conflicts, it is difficult to determine the identity of the same citizenship and nationality.

Cross-breeding is observed constantly, and as a result, transitional types appear at the boundaries of the ranges, smoothing out the differences.

The mixing of races from the point of view of science is considered as a species unity of people, their relationship and fertility of offspring. However, the problem is the possible disappearance small people or a small branch of a large race.

Racism runs counter to the ideals of any human society. He speaks a global problem humanity.

How were the races formed on planet Earth?

So, "Homo sapiens" appeared in East Africa. What were they, the first representatives of the species to which you and I belong? Most likely - short and dark-skinned, with thick hair, a flat nose and deep-set dark eyes.

Creating a "verbal portrait" of an ancient ancestor, scientists seem to be looking back at our closest relatives - great apes, who have lived in Africa for millions of years. But where did all those red-haired Anglo-Saxons, gray-eyed blondes Norwegians and Russians, yellow-faced Chinese, Indians with mahogany skin, black West Africans and olive-brown Mediterranean inhabitants come from? After all, they are all people, which means they belong to the same species.

People settled on the Earth, and over time, variability human body made itself felt: signs that appeared in the new conditions of life became characteristic of large groups of people. Scientists called these groups races. Today there are three main races on Earth: European, Negroid and Mongoloid, that is, white, black and yellow. In addition, there are over a dozen intermediate races. Representatives of the Alpine, White Sea-Baltic, Indo-Afghani and Mediterranean sometimes live only in Europe.

Human races differ not only in appearance. There are other signs that are characteristic of each of them. So, among the Mongoloids, people with a blood group prevail in China, Mongolia and South East Asia smallpox epidemics often happened, and people with such a blood group tolerate this disease easily. Black Africans do not suffer from most of the tropical diseases that are fatal to Europeans. There are also differences in the structure of the teeth, skull, and patterns on the pads of the fingers of people belonging to different races and subraces. And it's all. The rest of the people of the Earth are not biologically different from each other. People of different races marry and give birth healthy children that inherit the characteristics of both races. Black, yellow, white - all have contributed to the treasury of human thought, science, culture and art. The absurd inventions of racists who insist on the superiority of some races over others are becoming simply ridiculous in our time.

Eternal wanderers

The resettlement of people, which began 150 thousand years ago, took them tens of thousands of kilometers from the places where they originally lived. Our ancestors wandered from mainland to mainland, even crossed the oceans and often found themselves in conditions that were nothing like their ancestral home - East Africa... Suffice it to say that already a hundred thousand years ago, primitive hunters learned how to successfully survive in the harsh climate of Eastern Siberia and Alaska. In this they were helped not only by the amazing adaptability of the human body, but also by what animals do not have - the mind and the ability to use tools for obtaining food. It wasn't just climate change, the depletion of natural resources, or the hostility of their closest neighbors that pushed people to travel. Since ancient times, man has striven by all means to know the world in which he lives. Curiosity, the "greed" of the mind, the desire to see and understand what is hidden behind the foggy horizon, remain one of the essential qualities"Homo sapiens" and in our days, when people have already stepped far beyond their planet.

Three colors of humanity

The Negroid race is characterized by dark brown skin and a thick head of curly hair, strongly protruding jaws and a wide nose. All this, as well as thickened lips and wide nostrils, made it possible to better regulate body temperature in hot and humid equatorial climates.

People with light, smooth or wavy hair and pale skin were most likely to survive in the cooler climates of Europe, where the number of sunny days in the post-glacial period was very small. The eyes of Europeans are most often from light brown to pale blue, and a narrow nose has a high bridge.

Mongoloid race formed in semi-deserts Central Asia... The main features of this race are yellowish skin, coarse dark hair, narrow eyes, flat face with strongly protruding cheekbones. All of these signs have arisen as a result of living in a climate with sharp temperature changes and frequent dust storms. The Indians of North and South America are also close to the Mongoloid race.

In modern humanity, there are three main races: Caucasian, Mongolian and Negroid. it large groups people differing in some physical signs such as facial features, skin, eye and hair color, hair shape.

Each race is characterized by the unity of origin and formation in a certain territory.

The indigenous population of Europe, South Asia and North Africa belongs to the Caucasoid race. Caucasians are characterized by a narrow face, a strongly protruding nose, and soft hair. The skin color of northern Caucasians is light, and of southern Caucasians it is predominantly dark.

The indigenous population of Central and East Asia, Indonesia, Siberia belongs to the Mongoloid race. Mongoloids are distinguished by a large flat wide face, cut eyes, hard straight hair, and dark skin color.

In the Negroid race, two branches are distinguished - African and Australian. The Negroid race is characterized by dark color skin, curly hair, dark eyes, wide and flat nose.

Racial features are hereditary, but at present they are not essential 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 action of sunlight, the shape of the facial skeleton of Mongoloids with a larger nasal cavity is possibly useful for heating cold air before it enters the lungs. By mental abilities, i.e., the ability to learn, creative and in general labor activity, all races are the same. Differences in cultural level are not related to biological characteristics people of different races, but with the social conditions of the development of society.

The reactionary nature of racism. Initially, some scholars confused the level social development with biological characteristics and tried among modern peoples to find transitional forms connecting humans with animals. These mistakes were used by racists, who began to talk about the alleged inferiority of some races and peoples and the superiority of others 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 the supreme. Later, when Hitler's hordes marched across Europe, destroying the captured population in the death camps, the so-called Aryan race was declared the highest, to which the Nazis ranked the Germanic peoples. Racism is a reactionary ideology and policy aimed at justifying the exploitation of man by man.

The failure of racism has been proven by the real science of race — race. Racial studies studies racial traits, origins, formation, and history human races... The data obtained by racial studies indicate that the differences between races are not sufficient to consider races as different biological species of people. Mixing of races - crossbreeding - took place constantly, as a result of which intermediate types arose at the boundaries of the ranges of representatives of different races, smoothing out the differences between races.

Will races disappear? One of important conditions formation of races - isolation. In Asia, Africa and Europe, it still exists to some extent today. Meanwhile, newly populated regions such as the North and South America can be compared to a cauldron in which all three racial groups are melted down. Although public opinion in many countries does not support interracial marriage, there is little doubt that the mixing of races is inevitable, and sooner or later will lead to the formation of a hybrid population of people.

Hello everybody! For those who are interested in what the human races are, I’ll tell you now, and I’ll also tell you about how the most basic of them differ.

- large historically formed groups of people; subdivision of the species Homo sapiens - Homo sapiens, represented by modern mankind.

At the heart of the concept lies the biological, primarily physical similarity of people and common territory that they inhabit.
A complex of hereditary physical features the race is characterized, these features include: eye color, hair, skin color, height, body proportions, facial features, etc.

Since most of these traits can change in a person, and mixing has been taking place between races for a long time, it is rarely when a particular individual possesses the entire set of typical racial traits.

Large races.

There are many classifications of human races. Most often, there are three main or large races: Mongoloid (Asian-American), equatorial (Negro-Australoid) and Caucasoid (Eurasian, Caucasian).

Among the representatives of the Mongoloid race skin color varies from swarthy to light (mainly in North Asian groups), hair is usually dark, often straight and stiff, nose is usually small, eyes are oblique, folds of the upper eyelids are significantly developed, and in addition, there is a fold covering inner corner eyes, hair is not very developed.

Among the representatives of the equatorial race dark pigmentation of skin, eyes, and hair that is broadly wavy or curly. The nose is wide, predominantly protruding forward Bottom part faces.

Representatives of the Caucasian race light skin color (with variations from very light, mostly in the North to dark, even brown skin). Curly or straight hair, horizontal eye shape. Strong or moderate hair on the chest and face in men. Nose prominently protruding, straight or slightly sloping forehead.

Small races.

Large races are divided into small, or anthropological types. Within the Caucasian race, there are White Sea-Baltic, Atlantic-Baltic, Balkan-Caucasian, Central European and Indo-Mediterranean small races.

Now virtually the entire land is inhabited by Europeans, but by the beginning of the Great Geographical Discoveries (the middle of the 15th century), their main area included Middle and Front, India, and North Africa.

All small races are represented in modern Europe... But the Central European variant is outnumbered (Germans, Austrians, Slovaks, Czechs, Poles, Ukrainians, Russians). In general, the population of Europe is very mixed, especially in cities, due to relocation, influx of migrations from other regions of the Earth and cross-breeding.

Usually, in the middle of the Mongoloid race, the South Asian, Far Eastern, Arctic, North Asian and American minor races are distinguished. That being said, the American is sometimes seen as a large race.

All climatogeographic zones were inhabited by Mongoloids. A wide variety of anthropological types is characteristic of modern Asia, but different Caucasoid and Mongoloid groups prevail in numbers.

The Far Eastern and South Asian small races are the most widespread among the Mongoloids. Among Europeans - Indo-Mediterranean. The indigenous population of America is a minority in comparison with the various European anthropological types and population groups of representatives of all three major races.

The Negro-Australoid, or Equatorial, race includes three minor races of African Negroids(Negroid or Negro, Negro and Bushman) and the same number of ocean australoids(Australian or Australoid race, which in some classifications is distinguished into an independent large race, also Melanesian and Vedoid).

The area of ​​the equatorial race is not continuous: it covers most of Africa, Melanesia, Australia, partly Indonesia and New Guinea. The Negro minor race is numerically predominant in Africa, and in the south and north of the continent significantly specific gravity has a Caucasian population.

The indigenous population of Australia is a minority relative to emigrants from India and Europe, as well as a fairly numerous representatives of the Far Eastern race. The South Asian race is predominant in Indonesia.

At the level with the aforementioned races, there are also races that have occurred as a result of a long mixing of the population of certain regions, for example, the Uralic and Lapanoid races, to which both the features of the Mongoloids and Caucasians belong, or the Ethiopian race, intermediate between the Caucasian and equatorial races.

Thus, now you can figure out by facial features which of the races this person belongs to.🙂

Humanity is a mosaic of races and peoples that inhabit our Earth... The 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 race and ethnicity, 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 a similarity in 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, this 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 that provoke the emergence of physiological differences from representatives of other races.

Caucasoid race: signs and settlement

The Caucasian or Eurasian race is the largest race in the world in terms of numbers. A characteristic feature of the appearance of a person belonging to the Caucasian race is an oval face, straight or wavy soft hair, a wide cut of the eyes, and an average thickness of the lips.

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

The final settlement on the continents took place 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 the three great races. The characteristic features people belonging to the Negroid race are elongated limbs, dark, melanin-rich skin, wide flat nose, big eyes, curly hair.

Modern scholars believe that the first man of the Negroid race arose around the 40th century BC. on the territory of modern Egypt. The main region of settlement of representatives of the Negroid race - 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 anti-democratic phenomena such as slavery and discrimination.

Mongoloid race: signs and settlement

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

Representatives of the Mongoloid race predominantly inhabit the territory of Asia, Indonesia, and the islands of Oceania. V recent times the number of people of this race begins to increase in all countries of the world, which is caused by the intensification of the wave of migration.

The peoples inhabiting the earth

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

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