The
Mediterranean race was one of the three sub-categories into which the
Caucasian raceThe term Caucasian race has been used to denote the general physical type of some or all of the indigenous populations of Europe, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, West Asia, Central Asia, and South Asia...
and the people of
EuropeEurope is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally divided from Asia to its east by the water divide of the Ural Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian Sea, the Caucasus Mountains , and the Black Sea to the southeast...
were divided by anthropologists in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, following the publication of
William Z. RipleyWilliam Zebina Ripley was an American economist, lecturer at Columbia University, professor of economics at MIT, professor of political economics at Harvard University, and racial theorist...
's book "
The Races of EuropeThe Races of Europe is the title of two books related to the anthropology of Europeans. The first book was written by American sociologist/anthropologist William Z. Ripley in 1899, and was positively received by both the scientific and lay community. Harvard anthropologist Carleton Stevens Coon...
" (1899). The others were Nordic and
AlpineIn the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, many Western anthropologists classified humans into a variety of races and subraces.Of these, the name Alpines was given to a physical type of the Caucasian race predominant in central/Eastern Europe and parts of Western/Central Asia, somewhat...
.
The Mediterranean race was thought to be prevalent in
southern EuropeThe term Southern Europe, at its most general definition, is used to mean "all countries in the south of Europe". However, the concept, at different times, has had different meanings, providing additional political, linguistic and cultural context to the definition in addition to the typical...
, parts of
Eastern EuropeEastern Europe is a region lying in the Eastern part of Europe. The term is highly context-dependent and there are "almost as many definitions of Eastern Europe as there are scholars of the region"...
, most of
North AfricaNorth Africa or Northern Africa is the northernmost region of the African continent, linked by the Sahara to Sub-Saharan Africa.Geopolitically, the UN definition of Northern Africa includes the following seven countries or territories; Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, Sudan, Tunisia,Mauritania, and...
,
Northeast AfricaThe Horn of Africa is a peninsula in East Africa that juts for hundreds of kilometers into the Arabian Sea, and lies along the southern side of the Gulf of Aden. It is the easternmost projection of the African continent...
, West Asia and
South AsiaSouth Asia, also known as Southern Asia, is the southern region of the Asian continent, which comprises the sub-Himalayan countries and, for some authorities , also includes the adjoining countries on the west and the east...
, as well as parts of
WalesWales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom, bordered by England to its east, and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It is also an elective region of the European Union...
,
EnglandEngland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the North Sea to the east, with the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
,
ScotlandScotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
and
IrelandIreland is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island in the world. It lies to the north-west of continental Europe and is surrounded by hundreds of islands and islets. To the east of Ireland, separated by the Irish Sea, is the island of Great Britain...
, and was characterized by moderate to short stature, long (dolichocephalic) or moderate (mesocephalic) skull, dark hair, dark eyes and olive complexion.
These differentiations occurred following long-standing claims about the alleged differences between the Nordic and the Mediterranean people.
The
Mediterranean race was one of the three sub-categories into which the
Caucasian raceThe term Caucasian race has been used to denote the general physical type of some or all of the indigenous populations of Europe, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, West Asia, Central Asia, and South Asia...
and the people of
EuropeEurope is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally divided from Asia to its east by the water divide of the Ural Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian Sea, the Caucasus Mountains , and the Black Sea to the southeast...
were divided by anthropologists in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, following the publication of
William Z. RipleyWilliam Zebina Ripley was an American economist, lecturer at Columbia University, professor of economics at MIT, professor of political economics at Harvard University, and racial theorist...
's book "
The Races of EuropeThe Races of Europe is the title of two books related to the anthropology of Europeans. The first book was written by American sociologist/anthropologist William Z. Ripley in 1899, and was positively received by both the scientific and lay community. Harvard anthropologist Carleton Stevens Coon...
" (1899). The others were Nordic and
AlpineIn the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, many Western anthropologists classified humans into a variety of races and subraces.Of these, the name Alpines was given to a physical type of the Caucasian race predominant in central/Eastern Europe and parts of Western/Central Asia, somewhat...
.
The Mediterranean race was thought to be prevalent in
southern EuropeThe term Southern Europe, at its most general definition, is used to mean "all countries in the south of Europe". However, the concept, at different times, has had different meanings, providing additional political, linguistic and cultural context to the definition in addition to the typical...
, parts of
Eastern EuropeEastern Europe is a region lying in the Eastern part of Europe. The term is highly context-dependent and there are "almost as many definitions of Eastern Europe as there are scholars of the region"...
, most of
North AfricaNorth Africa or Northern Africa is the northernmost region of the African continent, linked by the Sahara to Sub-Saharan Africa.Geopolitically, the UN definition of Northern Africa includes the following seven countries or territories; Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, Sudan, Tunisia,Mauritania, and...
,
Northeast AfricaThe Horn of Africa is a peninsula in East Africa that juts for hundreds of kilometers into the Arabian Sea, and lies along the southern side of the Gulf of Aden. It is the easternmost projection of the African continent...
, West Asia and
South AsiaSouth Asia, also known as Southern Asia, is the southern region of the Asian continent, which comprises the sub-Himalayan countries and, for some authorities , also includes the adjoining countries on the west and the east...
, as well as parts of
WalesWales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom, bordered by England to its east, and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It is also an elective region of the European Union...
,
EnglandEngland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the North Sea to the east, with the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
,
ScotlandScotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
and
IrelandIreland is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island in the world. It lies to the north-west of continental Europe and is surrounded by hundreds of islands and islets. To the east of Ireland, separated by the Irish Sea, is the island of Great Britain...
, and was characterized by moderate to short stature, long (dolichocephalic) or moderate (mesocephalic) skull, dark hair, dark eyes and olive complexion.
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,
GermanicThe Germanic peoples are a historical ethno-linguistic group, originating in Northern Europe and identified by their use of the Indo-European Germanic languages which diversified out of Common Germanic in the course of the Pre-Roman Iron Age...
and
CeltCelts is a modern term used to describe any of the European peoples who spoke, or speak, a Celtic language...
ic peoples were often stereotyped as wild
red hairRed hair varies from a deep orange-red through burnt orange to bright copper. It is characterized by high levels of the reddish pigment pheomelanin and relatively low levels of the dark pigment eumelanin. People with red hair are often referred to as redheads.Approximately 1% to 2% of the human...
ed barbarians.
Pseudo-AristotlePseudo-Aristotle is a general cognomen for authors of philosophical or medical treatises who attributed their work to the Greek philosopher Aristotle, or whose work was later attributed to him by others....
argued that the Greeks were an ideal race because they possessed a medium skin-tone, in contrast to pale northerners and dark southerners. However
TacitusPublius Cornelius Tacitus was a senator and a historian of the Roman Empire. The surviving portions of his two major works—the Annals and the Histories—examine the reigns of the Roman Emperors Tiberius, Claudius, Nero and those who reigned in the Year of the Four Emperors...
argued that the Germanic tribes were an "unmixed" people, who had preserved their ancient language and race.. By the nineteenth century long-standing cultural and religious differences between Protestant northern Europe and the Catholic south were being reinterpreted in racial terms.
Racial theories
In the nineteenth century the division of humanity into distinct races became a matter for scientific debate. In 1870,
Thomas HuxleyThomas Henry Huxley PC FRS was an English biologist, known as Darwin's Bulldog for his advocacy of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution....
argued that there were four basic racial categories (Xanthocroic, Mongoloid,
AustralioidThe Australoid race is a broad racial classification. The concept originated with a typological method of racial classification. They were described as having dark skin with wavy hair, in the case of Aboriginal Australians, or hair ranging from straight to kinky in the case of Melanesian and...
and
NegroidNegroid, or congoid, is a racial category used to describe people of sub-Saharan African origin. The concept originated with the typological method of racial classification and is still used by many anthropologists, especially physical anthropologists working in the forensic field of craniofacial...
). The Xanthocroic race were the "fair whites" of north and Central Europe. 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 Melanochroi, or dark whites. Under its best form this type is exhibited by many Irishmen, Welshmen, and Bretons, by Spaniards, South Italians, Greeks, South Slavics, 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.
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 raceThe master race was a concept in Nazi ideology, which holds that the Teutonics , one of the branches of what in the late 19th and early 20th century was called the Aryan race, represent an ideal and "pure race"...
". Southern/Eastern Europeans were deemed to be inferior, an argument that dated back to
Arthur de GobineauJoseph Arthur Comte de Gobineau was a French aristocrat, novelist and man of letters who became famous for developing the racialist theory of the Aryan master race in his book An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races...
's claims that racial mixing was responsible for the decline of the
Roman EmpireThe Roman Empire was the post-Republican phase of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean. The term is used to describe the Roman state during and after the time of the first emperor,...
. However, in southern Europe itself alternative models were developed which stressed the merits of Mediterranean peoples, drawing on established traditions dating from ancient and
RenaissanceThe Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Florence in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe...
claims about the superiority of civilization in the south. 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.
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 SergiGiuseppe Sergi was an influential Italian anthropologist of the early twentieth century, notable for his opposition to Nordicism in his books on the racial identity of ancient Mediterranean peoples.- Life :...
'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 peoples from the African continent, such as Ethiopians and
SomalisSomalis are an ethnic group located in the Horn of Africa, also known as the Somali Peninsula. The overwhelming majority of Somalis speak the Somali language, which is part of the Cushitic subgroup of the Afro-Asiatic language family...
. Sergi's studies claimed that the Mediterraneans, the Africans and the Nordics all originated from an original Eurafrican Race. According to Sergi, anthropologist of the early twentieth century, notable for his opposition to Nordicism, in his books on the racial identity of ancient Mediterranean peoples the Mediterranean race, the "greatest race of the world", was responsible for the great civilizations of ancient times, including those of Persia,
EgyptAncient Egypt was an ancient civilization of eastern North Africa, concentrated along the lower reaches of the Nile River in what is now the modern country of Egypt. The civilization coalesced around 3150 BC with the political unification of Upper and Lower Egypt under the first pharaoh, and...
,
IndiaAncient India may refer to:*The ancient History of India, which generally includes the ancient history of the whole Indian subcontinent **Indus Valley Civilization — during the Bronze Age...
,
CarthageCarthage refers both to an ancient city in present-day Tunisia, and a modern-day suburb of Tunis. The civilization that developed within the city's sphere of influence is referred to as Punic or Carthaginian...
,
GreeceAncient Greece is the civilisation belonging to the period of Greek history lasting from the Greek Dark Ages ca. 1100 BC and the Dorian invasion, to 146 BC and the Roman conquest of Greece after the Battle of Corinth. It is generally considered to be the seminal culture which provided the...
, and
RomeAncient Rome was a civilization that grew out of a small agricultural community founded on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 10th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea, it became one of the largest empires in the ancient world....
. These Mediterranean peoples were quite distinct from the peoples of northern Europe. To Sergi, the Semites were a branch of the Eurafricans who were closely related to the Mediterraneans.
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
EgyptiansEgyptians is the name of the nationality and Mediterranean North African ethnic group native to Egypt....
, formed the basis of that of Egypt."
In the USA, the idea that the Mediterranean race included certain populations on the African continent was taken up in the early twentieth century by African-American writers such as W. E. B. Du Bois, who used it to attack white supremacist ideas about racial "purity". 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.
Physical traits
According to C. S. Coon, typically marked Mediterranean features include skin color ranging "from pink or peaches-and-cream to a light brown", a relatively prominent nose, considerable body hair, and dark brown to black hair.
According to Renato Biasutti: "Skin color 'matte'-white or brunet-white, chestnut or dark chestnut eyes and hair, not excessive pilosity; medium-low stature (162), body of moderately longilinear forms; dolichomorphic skull (78) with rounded occiput; oval face; leptorrhine nose (68) with straight spine, horizontal or inclined downwards base of the septum; large open eyes."
Later 20th century
Later in the 20th century the concept of a distinctive Mediterranean race was still considered useful by theorists such as
Earnest HootonEarnest Albert Hooton was a U.S. physical anthropologist known for his work on racial classification and his popular writings such as the book Up From The Ape...
in
Up From the Ape (1931) and
Carleton S. CoonCarleton Stevens Coon, was an American physical anthropologist, Professor of Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania, lecturer and professor at Harvard, and president of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists.-Biography:Carleton Coon was born in Wakefield, Massachusetts...
in his revised edition of Ripley's
Races of Europe (1939). These writers thought the Nordic race was the northern variety of Mediterraneans that lost pigmentation through
natural selectionNatural selection is the process by which heritable traits that make it more likely for an organism to survive and successfully reproduce become more common in a population over successive generations...
due to the environment.
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.
According to Carleton Coon the "homeland and cradle" of the Mediterranean race is in
North AfricaNorth Africa or Northern Africa is the northernmost region of the African continent, linked by the Sahara to Sub-Saharan Africa.Geopolitically, the UN definition of Northern Africa includes the following seven countries or territories; Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, Sudan, Tunisia,Mauritania, and...
and
Southwest AsiaWestern Asia, West Asia, Southwest Asia or Southwestern Asia are terms that describe the westernmost portion of Asia. The terms are partly coterminous with the Middle East - which describes geographical position in relation to Western Europe rather than location within Asia...
, in the area from
MoroccoMorocco, officially the Kingdom of Morocco, is a country located in North Africa with a population of nearly 32 million and an area just under . Its capital is Rabat, and its largest city is Casablanca. Morocco has a coast on the Atlantic Ocean that reaches past the Strait of Gibraltar into the...
to
AfghanistanThe Islamic Republic of Afghanistan is a landlocked country in south central Asia. It is variously described as being located within Central Asia, South Asia, or the Middle East...
. Coon argued that smaller Mediterraneans traveled by land from the Mediterranean basin north into Europe in the
MesolithicThe 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. The term was introduced by John Lubbock in his work Pre-historic Times, published in 1865. The term was, however, not much used...
era. Taller Mediterraneans (Atlanto-Mediterraneans) were Neolithic seafarers who sailed in reed-type boats and colonized the Mediterranean basin from a
Near EastNear East today is an ambiguous term that covers different countries for archeologists and historians, on one hand, and for political scientists, economists, and journalists, on the other...
ern origin. He argued that they also colonized
BritainThe British Isles are a group of islands off the northwest coast of continental Europe that include Great Britain, Ireland and numerous smaller islands. There are two sovereign states located on the islands: the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and Ireland...
where their descendants may be seen today, characterized by dark brown hair, dark eyes and robust features. 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".
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
- Race (classification of human beings)
- Genetic history of Europe
The genetic history of Europe can be inferred from the patterns of genetic diversity across continents and time. The primary data to develop historical scenarios coming from sequences of mitochondrial, Y-chromosome and autosomal DNA from modern populations and if available from ancient DNA...
- History of the Mediterranean region
The history of the Mediterranean region is the history of the interaction of the cultures and people of the lands surrounding the Mediterranean Sea —the central superhighway of transport, trade and cultural exchange between diverse peoples...
- Mediterranean sea
In oceanography, a mediterranean sea is a mostly enclosed sea that has limited exchange of deep water with outer oceans and where the water circulation is dominated by salinity and temperature differences rather than winds....
(oceanographyOceanography , also called oceanology or marine science, is the branch of Earth science that studies the ocean...
term)