Meyers Blitz-Lexikon (Leipzig, 1932) shows a Corsican man as an example of the Mediterranean type. The term Weimar Republic ( ˈvaɪmarɐ repuˈbliːk is used by historians to signify the democratic and Republican period of Germany from 1919 to 1933

Madison Grant's map, from 1916, charting the distribution of the "European races". Madison Grant ( November 19, 1865 &ndash May 30, 1937) was an American Lawyer, known primarily for his work as a Nordic race is shown in bright red; green indicates the Alpine race; yellow, the Mediterranean race. The Nordic race was one of the racial categories into which the Europeans were divided by anthropologists in the first half of the twentieth century the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries many Western anthropologists classified humans into a variety of races and subraces

The Mediterranean race was one of the three sub-categories into which the people of Europe were divided by anthropologists in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, following the publication of William Z. Ripley's book "The Races of Europe" (1899). William Zebina Ripley ( October 13, 1867 &ndash August 16, 1941) was an American Economist, lecturer at Columbia University professor The Races of Europe is the title of two books related to the Anthropology of Europeans The first book was written by American sociologist/anthropologist The others were "Nordic" and "Alpine". The Nordic race was one of the racial categories into which the Europeans were divided by anthropologists in the first half of the twentieth century the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries many Western anthropologists classified humans into a variety of races and subraces

The Mediterranean race was thought to be prevalent in southern Europe, most of North Africa, South Asia and the Middle East as well as in Wales and was characterized by moderate to short stature, long skull (dolichocephalicness), dark hair, dark eyes and complexion. The term Southern Europe can have four definitions geographical political climatic phytogeographic North Africa or Northern Africa is the Northernmost Region of the African Continent, separated by the Sahara from Sub-Saharan The Middle East is a Subcontinent with no clear boundaries often used as a synonym to Near East, in opposition to Far East. According to some theorists of this period this was due to racial mixing with non-Caucasoid peoples, others argued that it had an independent history and identity.

Early debates

These differentiations occurred following long-standing claims about the alleged differences between the Nordic and the Mediterranean people. Such debates arose from responses to ancient writers who had commented on differences between northern and southern Europeans. For the Greeks and Romans, Germanic and Celtic peoples were often stereotyped as wild red haired barbarians. The Germanic peoples are a historical group of Indo-European -speaking peoples originating in Northern Europe and identified by their use of the Germanic Celts (ˈkɛlts or /ˈsɛlts/, see Names of the Celts This article is about people with red hair also sometimes called redheads Aristotle argued that the Greeks were an ideal race because they possessed a medium skin-tone, in contrast to pale northerners and black southerners. Aristotle (Greek Aristotélēs) (384 BC – 322 BC was a Greek philosopher a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. However Tacitus argued that the Germanic tribes were an "unmixed" people, who had preserved their ancient language and race. Publius (or Gaius) Cornelius Tacitus (ca 56 &ndash ca 117 was a senator and a Historian of the Roman Empire. ^[1]. By the nineteenth century long-standing cultural and religious differences between Protestant northern Europe and the Catholic south were being reinterpreted in racial terms. ^[2]

Racial theories

In the nineteenth century the division of humanity into distinct races became a matter for scientific debate. In 1870, Thomas Huxley argued that there were four basic racial categories (Xanthocroic, Mongoloid, Australioid and Negroid). Thomas Henry Huxley PC FRS (4 May 1825 – 29 June 1895 was an English Biologist, known as "Darwin's Bulldog" for his advocacy The Nordic race was one of the racial categories into which the Europeans were divided by anthropologists in the first half of the twentieth century The term " Mongoloid " is a variation of the word "Mongol" meaning "Mongol-like" The Australoid race is a broad racial classification. The concept's existence is based on the typological method of racial classification. See also Black people Negroid is an Adjective derived from the term Negro and refers to a presumed race of people mostly from The Xanthocroic race were the "fair whites" of north and Central Europe. The Nordic race was one of the racial categories into which the Europeans were divided by anthropologists in the first half of the twentieth century According to Huxley,

On the south and west this type comes into contact and mixes with the "Melanochroi," or "dark whites". . . In these regions are found, more or less mixed with Xanthochroi and Mongoloids, and extending to a greater or less distance into the conterminous Xanthochroic, Mongoloid, Negroid, and Australioid areas, the men whom I have termed Melanchroi, or dark whites. Under its best form this type is exhibited by many Irishmen, Welshmen, and Bretons, by Spaniards, South Italians, Greeks, Armenians, Arabs, and high-caste Brahmins. . . I am much disposed to think that the Melanochroi are the result of an intermixture between the Xanthochroi and the Australioids. It is to the Xanthochroi and Melanochroi, taken together, that the absurd denomination of "Caucasian" is usually applied. ^[3]

By the late nineteenth century Huxley's Xanthocroic group had been redefined as the "Nordic" race, while his Melanochroi became the Mediterranean race. In Germany, Britain and the USA it became common for white supremacists to promote the merits of the blond, blue-eyed Nordic race as the most advanced of human population groups: the "master race". White supremacy is a racist ideology based on the assertion that White people are superior to other racial groups. The Nordic race was one of the racial categories into which the Europeans were divided by anthropologists in the first half of the twentieth century The master race ( German: die Herrenrasse) is a concept in Nazi Ideology, which holds that the Germanic and Nordic Southern Europeans were deemed to be inferior, an argument that dated back to Arthur de Gobineau's claims that racial mixing was responsible for the decline of the Roman Empire. Joseph Arthur Comte de Gobineau ( July 14, 1816 — October 13, 1882) was a French Aristocrat, novelist and man of The Roman Empire was the post-Republican phase of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial ^[4] However, in southern Europe itself alternative models were developed which stressed the merits of Mediterranean peoples, drawing on established traditions dating from ancient and Renaissance claims about the superiority of civilization in the south. The Renaissance (from French Renaissance, meaning "rebirth" Italian: Rinascimento, from re- "again" and nascere Some of these arguments were taken up by African-American writers to counter the arguments of Nordicists who considered any deviation from "pure" whiteness to be a taint. African Americans or Black Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have origins in any of the black populations of Africa

The fact that Mediterranean peoples were responsible for the most important of ancient western civilizations was a problem for the promoters of Nordic superiority. Giuseppe Sergi's much-debated book The Mediterranean Race (1901) argued that the Mediterranean race had in fact originated in Africa, and that it also included a number of dark-skinned African peoples, such as Ethiopians and Somalis. Giuseppe Sergi (1841 – 1936 was an influential Italian anthropologist of the early twentieth century notable for his opposition to Nordicism (cf NOTE This intro is the result of careful NPOV work Please do not make potentially controversial edits to it without first discussing on the talk page Somalis ( Soomaaliyeed, الصوماليون are an ethnic group located in the Horn of Africa, also known as the Somali Peninsula. Sergi's studies claimed that the Mediterraneans, the Africans and the Nordics all originated from an original Eurafrican Race. ^[5]. According to Sergi the Mediterranean race, the "greatest race of the world", was responsible for the great civilizations of ancient times, including those of Egypt, India, Carthage, Greece, and Rome. Ancient Egypt was an Ancient Civilization in eastern North Africa, concentrated along the lower reaches of the Nile River in what is now Carthage (Καρχηδών Karkhēdōn, Carthago from the Phoenician קרת חדשת phn-Latn Qart-ḥadašt meaning new town) refers The term ancient Greece refers to the period of Greek history lasting from the Greek Dark Ages ca Ancient Rome was a Civilization that grew out of a small agricultural community founded on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 10th century BC These Mediterranean peoples were quite distinct from the peoples of northern Europe. Sergi also argued that the Mediterranean race was closely related to a Hamitic African population, which included such groups as the Tutsi. Hamitic is an obsolete ethno-linguistic classification of some Ethnic groups within the Afro-Asiatic (previously termed "Hamito-Semitic" language family The Tutsi are one of three native Peoples of the nations of Rwanda and Burundi in central Africa, the other two being the Twa ^[6] To Sergi the Semites were a branch of the Eurafricans who were closely related to the Mediterraneans. ^[7]

C. G. Seligman also stated that "it must, I think, be recognized that the Mediterranean race has actually more achievement to its credit than any other, since it is responsible for by far the greater part of Mediterranean civilization, certainly before 1000 B. C. (and probably much later), and so shaped not only the Aegean cultures, but those of Western as well as the greater part of Eastern Mediterranean lands, while the culture of their near relatives, the Hamitic pre-dynastic Egyptians, formed the basis of that of Egypt. "^[8]

In the USA the idea that the Mediterranean race included African peoples was taken up in the early twentieth century by African-American writers such as W.E.B. Dubois, who used it to attack white supremacist ideas about racial "purity". William Edward Burghardt Du Bois (duːˈbɔɪz ( February 23, 1868 August 27, 1963) was an American Civil rights activist Such publications as the Journal of Negro History stressed the cross-fertilization of cultures between Africa and Europe, and adopted Sergi's view that the "civilizing" race had originated in Africa itself. ^[9] This fed into the development of Afrocentrism. Afrocentrism or Afrocentricity is a World view that emphasizes the importance of African people in culture philosophy and history

Later 20th century

Later in the 20th century the concept of a distinctive Mediterranean race was still considered useful by theorists such as Earnest Hooton in Up From the Ape (1931) and Carleton Coon in his revised edition of Ripley's Races of Europe (1939). Earnest Albert Hooton ( November 20, 1887, Clemansville Wisconsin &ndash May 3, 1954, Cambridge Massachusetts) was a Carleton Coon may refer to Carleton Coon American jazz musician co-founder of the Coon-Sanders Original Nighthawk Orchestra Carleton S These writers thought the Nordic race was the northern variety of Mediterraneans that lost pigmentation through natural selection due to the environment. Natural selection is the process by which favorable Heritable traits become more common in successive Generations of a Population of

Hooton argued that even a skilled anthropologist would have a difficult time separating a Nordic from Mediterranean skeleton. He thought a destabilized blend of the two existed mostly in Britain that he labeled "Nordic-Mediterranean", with hazel eyes (rather than pure brown), dark hair color (mainly dark brown) and dolichocephalic skull. Coon argued that smaller Mediterraneans traveled by land from the Mediterranean basin north into Europe in the Mesolithic era. The Mesolithic or Middle Stone Age was a period in the development of human technology in between the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age and the Neolithic or New Stone Age Taller Mediterraneans (Atlanto-Mediterraneans) were Neolithic seafarers who sailed in reed-type boats and colonized the Mediterranean basin from a Near Eastern origin. B Syria - Belka Woman from Damascus Arab from Baghdadjpg|thumb|Inhabitants of the Near East late nineteenth century He argued that they also colonized Britain where their descendants may be seen today, characterized by dark brown hair, dark eyes and robust features. The British Isles (Irish variously Na hOileáin Bhriotanacha, Oileáin Iarthair Eorpa, Éire agus an Bhreatain Mhór; Ellanyn Goaldagh Eileanan He stressed the central role of the Mediterraneans in his works, claiming "The Mediterraneans occupy the center of the stage; their areas of greatest concentration are precisely those where civilization is the oldest. This is to be expected, since it was they who produced it and it, in a sense, that produced them". ^[10]

After the 1960s the concept of an exact Mediterranean race fell out of favor, though the distinctive features of Mediterranean populations continued to be recognized.

See also

• Genetic history of Europe
• History of the Mediterranean region
• Ancient Greece
• Tartessos
• Ancient Rome
• Minoan civilization
• Mesopotamia
• Ancient Egypt
• Persian Empire
• Hittites
• Neo-Babylonian Empire
• Sumer

• Mediterranean sea (oceanography term)

Notes

References

• Racial Theories in Fascist Italy, by Aaron Gilette, 2002, Routledge, London.
• Talks with Mussolini, Emil Ludwig, Boston: Little, Brown. 1933, p. 202.
• The Aryan Myth, Leon Poliakov, New York: Basic Books. 1974

External links

• Excerpt on the Mediterranean subrace from Earnest Hooton, 1946.
• Excerpt on the Mediterranean subrace from Carleton Coon, 1958.
  • Examples of Mediterraneans (plates 16-26) from Coon's The Races of Europe