Historical race concepts have varied across cultures and over time, and have been controversial for social, political and scientific reasons. Until the 19th century, race was thought by many to constitute an immutable and distinct type or species which shared particular racial characteristics, such as body constitution, temperament and mental capacities.
One concept, that of Christian Europe, conceived of the races as constituting a hierarchical chain of life known as the Great Chain of Being, which was believed to have been created by God, in which the people thought the Christian European races were closest to God in perfection.
Read more about Historical Race Concepts: Etymology, Earliest Views On Ethnic Differences, Medieval Theories, Early Modern Period, Age of Enlightenment, Racial Anthropology (1850-1930), Decline of Racial Studies After 1930
Famous quotes containing the words historical, race and/or concepts:
“This seems a long while ago, and yet it happened since Milton wrote his Paradise Lost. But its antiquity is not the less great for that, for we do not regulate our historical time by the English standard, nor did the English by the Roman, nor the Roman by the Greek.... From this September afternoon, and from between these now cultivated shores, those times seemed more remote than the dark ages.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither
yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet
favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.”
—Bible: Hebrew Ecclesiastes (l. IX, 11)
“Germany collapsed as a result of having engaged in a struggle for empire with the concepts of provincial politics.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)