[lbo-talk] Caucasian

Charles Brown charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us
Fri Aug 22 07:26:46 PDT 2008


John Goliath McCain says that the Georgians adopted Christianity early. Maybe it was in their genes !

Br'er Rabbit

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caucasian_race Origins of the term

The famed exemplary Georgian skull Blumenbach discovered in 1795 to hypothesize origination of Europeans from the Caucasus.

)picture of skull(

The term “Caucasian” originated as one of the racial categories developed in the 19th century by people studying craniology. It was derived from the region of the Caucasus mountains[5]. The 18th century German philosopher Christoph Meiners first named the concept of the Caucasian race[6], but the term was more widely popularized in the 19th c. under the name “Varietas Caucasia” by the German scientist and naturalist, Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (1752-1840) who “borrowed the name Caucasian” from Meiners.[7] Blumenbach based the classification of the Caucasian race primarily on skull features, which Blumenbach claimed were optimized by the Caucasian peoples,[8] particularly a single skull from the Caucasia which resembled German skulls.[9] It was from this similarity that he conjectured Europeans having arisen in the Caucasia.[9] Blumenbach wrote about the “primeval”[6] Caucasian race which he believed was “the oldest race of man”[6] and the “first variety of humankind”[6].

Caucasian variety – I have taken the name of this variety from Mount Caucasus, both because its neighborhood, and especially its southern slope, produces the most beautiful race of men, I mean the Georgian; and because all physiological reasons converge to this, that in that region, if anywhere, it seems we ought with the greatest probability to place the autochthones (birth place) of mankind[10]

In 1855, French diplomat and man of letters Arthur de Gobineau popularized ideas about race: “I must say, once and for all, that I understand by white men the members of those races which are also called Caucasian[11] … [these] white races … had their first settlement in the Caucasus.”[11]

The Caucasus was historically an area of fascination for Europeans. Myths of the Caucasus featured Prometheus and Jason and the Argonauts.[12] Greek mythology considered women from the Caucasus to have magical powers.[6], such as Medea of Jason and the Argonauts fame. In Greek mythology, this area was thought of as a kind of hell since Zeus imprisoned many Titans who opposed him (e.g. Prometheus) there. In this sense, these Titans were banished outside the civilized world to an area inhabited by Colchians. The Greeks considered them barbaric.[13]

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